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unknown, but we learn from the induction to the Malcontent that it was 'not received' by the audience at the Globe in 1604.[1] There was also, of course, the final 'jig'.[2] For an overture, the public theatres seem to have employed nothing beyond three soundings of a trumpet, the last of which was the signal for the prologue to begin.[3] Probably the musical element tended to increase. A special music-room perhaps existed already at the Swan in 1611, and, if so, may have been, as it was in the later theatres, in the upper part of the tire-house.[4]
- [Footnote: inventories of 1598 (H. P. 115, 116, 118) include 'iij trumpettes and
a drum, and a trebel viall, a basse viall, a bandore, a sytteren . . . j chyme of bells . . . iij tymbrells . . . j sack-bute'.]*
- ↑ Malcontent, ind. 89. The additions for the King's are 'to entertain a little more time, and to abridge the not-received custom of music in our theatre'. But 'abridge' only means shorten, and there are s. ds. for music between the acts of Sejanus (Globe, 1603) and in the plot of Dead Man's Fortune (Admiral's, c. 1590, H. P. 133); cf. Dekker, Belman of London (1608, Works, iii. 76), 'These were appointed to be my Actes, in this goodly Theater, the musicke betweene, were the Singers of the Wood'. But such evidence is rare, and Lawrence, i. 75, and Cowling, 67, do not discriminate sufficiently the practice of the public theatres from that of the private theatres on the one hand and the early neo-classic court plays on the other. Here music is an integral part of the intermedii or dumb-shows, which are little more than survivals in the full-blown public drama; cf. F. A. Foster in E. S. xliv. 8, and Hamlet, III. ii. 13, 'inexplicable dumb-shows'.
- ↑ Cf. p. 551.
- ↑ Alphonsus, prol., 'after you haue sounded thrise, let Venus be let downe from the top of the Stage'; Heywood, Four Prentices, prol., 'Do you not know that I am the prologue? Do you not see the long black velvet coat upon my back? Have I not all the signs of the prologue about me? Have you not sounded thrice?'; Dekker, Satiromastix, epist., 'In steed of the trumpets sounding thrice, before the play begin, it shall not be amisse . . . first to beholde this short Comedy of Errors'; G. H. B. (cf. App. H), 'untill the quaking prologue hath (by rubbing) got cullor into his cheekes, and is ready to give the trumpets their cue that hee's upon point to enter'; E. M. O. (Q_{1}), 107, 'Inductio, sono secundo', 402, 'Sound the third time. Enter Prologue'. Jonson has a similar arrangement (F_{1}) in the private house plays Cynthia's Revels and Poetaster, but probably the trumpets were here replaced by more elaborate music; cf. 1 Ant. Mellida, ind. 1, 'the music will sound straight for entrance'; What You Will, ind. 1 (s. d.), 'Before the music sounds for the Act'; C. Revels (Q_{1}), 1435, 'Like an unperfect Prologue, at third musique'. Surely this is the origin of the 'first', 'second', and 'third' (or 'curtain tune') music of the Restoration and eighteenth-century overtures, described by Lawrence, ii. 155. Exceptionally the prologue in Percy's C. and C. Errant is between the second and third sounding.
- ↑ Chaste Maid in Cheapside, V. iv. 1 (s. d.), 'There is a sad song in the music-room'; cf. Thracian Wonder, IV. i. 182, 'Pythia speaks in the musick Room behind the Curtain', 186, 'Pythia above, behind the curtains.' But these, although early plays, are in late prints, and the other examples of a music-room 'above' given by Lawrence, i. 91, are Caroline. Jasper Mayne says of Jonson (1638, Jonsonus Virbius), 'Thou laid'st no sieges to the music-room'. My own impression is that when the lord's
