but if so, it would have been neither graceful nor prudent for other actors to hold the circumstance up to derision. The point plainly lies in the constantly repeated "sixpence a day." Now sixpence a day was the sum which the Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal received for each child's board; and Hunnis, who succeeded Edwards in that post in 1566, complained in 1583, in a petition to the Council, that he was unable to maintain "an usher, a man-servant, for the boys, and a woman to keep them clean, on an income of 6d. a day each for food, and 40l. a year for apparel and all expenses" (I quote from the article 'Hunnis' in the 'Dict. Nat. Biog.'). Is it far-fetched to suppose that this is the point of the joke? the suggestion, that is to say, that Bottom is to take a choirboy actor's place, and keep it for life. In Mr. Verity's edition of 'M.N.D.' I find quoted the following apt passage from Ben Jonson's 'Masque of Christmas,' performed before James I. in 1616, where a boy is supposed to act for the first time before the Court, and his mother asks the Master of the Revels, "How does his Majesty like him, I pray? Will he give eightpence a day, think you?" Possibly wages were higher under James than under Elizabeth, though I rather gather that the old woman (Venus) has named an unusually high sum. Anyhow, this passage shows that Court audiences then knew enough about acting-boys' salaries to be ready to appreciate a joke on the subject.
Excepting the two Farrant songs, I have met with none in musical collections which can certainly be said to be extracts from plays. But there are other songs of the same period, "passions," laments, invocations to Death, &c., which may very probably have had a similar origin. The older musical antiquaries were evidently puzzled by them, and generally dubbed them 'A Complaint of Queen Anne Boleyn,' who in their opinion must have spent the last hours of her unhappy life iii composing swan-songs. Two of the songs which I have in mind are composed by Robert Johnson, a Scottish priest, who fled to England before the Reformation on accusation of heresy, and seems to have settled at Windsor: it is riot known whether he had anything to do with the chapel there, but one would be inclined to guess that he may have been, like Farrant, an arranger of plays for the children; but this is mere conjecture. One of these songs, "Defiled is my name," is printed in Hawkins's 'Hist, of Music' as a 'Complaint of Anne Boleyn'; but it is much more likely to be a song from a 'Rape of Lucrece' or a 'Story of Susanna.' Another, for treble voice and instruments, is a setting of the words:—
Come, pale-faced Death, and end my weary life:
Past from the soul this body full of grief;
Strike home, sweet Death, and stop my vital breath;
Where Life breeds care, there's nothing sweet but Death.
Then end my days and ease my sad laments:
End wretched Life, and end my discontents.
If we except the phrase "Stop my vital breath," which illustrates Pythias's lament for Damon, and suggests to modern readers a familiar formula of Lord Foppington's, there is nothing here for any one to smile at.
Another song written for the same combination is in the same MSS. (B.M. Addl. 30480-4), and may also be by Johnson, though no composer's name is given. It begins:—
O death, rock me asleep, bring me to quiet rest,
Let part my wery giltles gost out of my carfull brest.
Toull on the passing bell,
Ring out the doolefull knell,
Let the sound my death tell,
Death doth drawe neigh;
Sounde my deth dolefully,
For now I dye.
Another entirely different setting of these words will be found in Chappell's 'Popular Music of the Olden Time,' which in yet another version is printed in Wooldridge's edition of Chappell's 'Old English Popular Music.' In the last version it may be noted that the singer announces the fact "now I dye" seven times in every verse, and there are several verses. This song is well known, Pistol quoting it in '2 Hen. IV.,' II. iv.:—
What! shall we have incision? shall we imbrue?
Then death rock me asleep, abridge my doleful days!
This fact rather tends to confirm one in one's belief that the song is from a play, in spite of the following learned opinions reported by Chappell (first ed., i. 237), who says:—
this point, seems to me to be singularly unfortunate: because Preston was not an actor, but a Cambridge don; and the circumstances in which the Queen gave him a pension of 20l. a year (not sixpence a day), with the title of "her scholar," have no bearing upon the matter.
