CHAP. VII - Some literary allusions to music in Elizabethan plays

Summary

There are many allusions to instruments of music in our elder poets, and an interesting list might be compiled showing the uses of the various sorts. But not until the Elizabethan age did music provide materials for poetic imagery. The medieval poets in mentioning music piled instrument on instrument. Thus in The Squyr of Lowe Degre—

“There was myrth and melody

With harpe, getron, and sautry,

With rote, ribible and clokarde,

With pypes, organs and bumbarde,

With fydle, recorde and dowcemere,

With trumpette and with claryon clere.”

And so in Piers Plowman, the poet is not content with saying he cannot play music, he must emphasise the fact by cataloguing the accomplishments of a wandering minstrel

“Ich can not tabre, ne trompe, ne telle faire gestes,

Ne fithelyn at festes, ne harpen,

Japen, ne jagelyn, ne gentillische pipe,

Nother sailen, ne sautrien, ne singe with the giterne.”

We can easily imagine how one of our early poets would have interpreted the following thought from Marlowe's Tamburlaine (Act II. Sc. 4):

“The cherubins and holy seraphins

That sing and play before the king of kings

Use all their voices and their instruments

To entertain divine Zenocrate.”