Music in Shakespearean Tragedy by Sternfeld F. W.;

Author:Sternfeld, F. W.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Facsimile I. ‘Come o'er the burn’.

Ex. 6.

Ex. 7.

Ex. 8.

Appendix VII

‘He that has and a Little Tiny Wit’

Ex. 9.

Ex. 10.

No source earlier than the eighteenth century is known for this lyric. In 1772 there appeared in London a volume of songs from the repertory of the famous Vauxhall Gardens, entitled The New Songs in the Pantomime of the Witches; the Celebrated Epilogue in the Comedy of Twelfth Night . . . sung by Mr, Vernon at Vauxhall; composed by F. Vernon . . . Printed and Sold by John Johnston . . . Covent Garden, where may be had . . . King Arthur with Purcell's Chorusses. . . . The name of Purcell on the title-page reminds us that much of the music used at Vauxhall (or Drury Lane) in the eighteenth century was adapted from older sources. Whether Joseph Vernon (1738–82) composed a new tune for Shakespeare's comedy or whether he arranged a traditional melody, is difficult to determine now. In any event, an accurate transcript from the 1772 volume is given in Music Example 9.1

In 1859 William Chappell published a variation of Vernon's melody (Chappell 1.225), though, curiously, he does not mention his source. His version is in G major, while Vernon's composition is in G minor, and there are several melodic variants, though none of them change the basic contours of the tune. Chappell said of his illustration that it was

still sung on the stage to this tune. It has no other authority than theatrical tradition.

Music Example 10 reproduces Chappell's version to which the stanzas from King Lear and below it that from Twelfth Night have been fitted. It will be observed that at the end of bars 2 and 8 Chappell inserted the extra syllable ‘a’ (as Vernon had done before him) which is, however, neither in Shakespeare's tragedy nor in his comedy. Still, this is a small detail in a tune which may well be traditional and which sounds—at least in its surviving shape—like a song from a ballad opera.

The lack of antiquity in the tradition of the tune induced Wool-dridge, when he revised Chappell's standard work in 1893, to omit the song altogether, since no melody previous to Vernon's publication survives. But the lyric has been reprinted from Chappell as late as 1955 (J. H. Long, Shakespeare's Use of Music, Gainesville, Florida, p. 182) and is still widely used on the stage.

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