Shakespeare and Music | Page 6

authors shows clearly that singing in parts (especially of "catches") was a common amusement with blacksmiths, colliers, cloth-workers, cobblers, tinkers, watchmen, country parsons, and soldiers.
In Damon and Pithias, 1565, Grimme, the collier, sings "a bussing [buzzing] base," and two of his friends, Jack and Will, "quiddel upon it," i.e., they sing the tune and words, while he buzzes the burden.
Peele's Old Wives Tale, 1595, says, "This smith leads a life as merry as a king; Sirrah Frolic, I am sure you are not without some round or other; no doubt but Clunch [the smith] can bear his part."
Beaumont and Fletcher's Coxcomb has
"Where were the watch the while? good sober gentlemen, They were, like careful members of the city, Drawing in diligent ale, and singing catches."
Also in B. and F.'s Faithful Friends--
"Bell.--Shall's have a catch, my hearts?
Calve.--Aye, good lieutenant.
Black.--Methinks a soldier[3] should sing nothing else; catch, that catch may is all our life, you know."
[Footnote 3: Drayton (James I.'s reign) in his "Battle of Agincourt," l. 1199, has--"The common Souldiers free-mens catches sing"--of the French before the battle (freemen is a corruption of threemen).]
[In Bonduca, a play of B. and F's., altered for operatic setting by Purcell in 1695, there is a catch in three parts, sung by the Roman soldiers.]
In Sir William Davenant's (Davenant flourished 1635) comedy The Wits, Snore, one of the characters, says--
"It must be late, for gossip Nock, the nailman, Had catechized his maids, and sung three catches And a song, ere we set forth."
Samuel Harsnet, in his Declaration of Egregious Impostures, 1603, mentions a 'merry catch,' 'Now God be with old Simeon' (for which see Rimbault's Rounds, Canons, and Catches of England), which he says was sung by tinkers 'as they sit by the fire, with a pot of good ale between their legs.'
And in The Merry Devill of Edmonton, 1631, there is a comical story of how Smug the miller was singing a catch with the merry Parson in an alehouse, and how they 'tost' the words "I'll ty my mare in thy ground," 'so long to and fro,' that Smug forgot he was singing a catch, and began to quarrel with the Parson, 'thinking verily, he had meant (as he said in his song) to ty his mare in his ground.'
Finally, in Pammelia, a collection of Rounds and Catches of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 parts, edited by Thomas Ravenscroft, and published in 1609, there is a curious preface, which states that 'Catches are so generally affected ... because they are so consonant to all ordinary musical capacity, being such, indeed, as all such whose love of musick exceeds their skill, cannot but commend.' The preface further asserts that the book is 'published only to please good company.'
To go on to instrumental music among the lower classes of Elizabethan and Shakespearian times; there is an allusion in the above quoted passage from Morley (1597) to the habit of playing on an instrument in a barber's shop while waiting one's turn to be shaved. This is also referred to in Ben Jonson's Alchemist and Silent Woman. In the latter play, Cutberd the barber has recommended a wife to Morose. Morose finds that instead of a mute helpmate he has got one who had 'a tongue with a tang,' and exclaims 'that cursed barber! I have married his cittern that is common to all men': meaning that as the barber's cittern was always being played, so his wife was always talking.
There is a poem of the 18th century which speaks of the old times,
'In former time 't hath been upbrayded thus, That barber's musick was most barbarous.'
However true that may have been--at all events it is certain that in the 16th and 17th centuries it was customary to hear instrumental music in a barber's shop, generally of a cittern, which had four strings and frets, like a guitar, and was thought a vulgar instrument.[4]
[Footnote 4: The Cittern of the barber's shop had four double strings of wire, tuned thus--1st, E in 4th space of treble staff; 2nd, D a tone lower; 3rd, G on 2nd line; 4th, B on 3rd line. The instrument had a carved head. See L.L.L. V. ii., lines 600-603, of Holofernes' head. Also the frontispiece, where the treble viol and viol-da-gamba have carved heads, both human, but of different types. Fantastic heads, as of dragons or gargoyles, were often put on these instruments.]
Another use of instrumental music was to entertain the guests in a tavern. A pamphlet called The Actor's Remonstrance, printed 1643, speaks of the decay of music in taverns, which followed the closing of theatres in 1642, as follows:--"Our music, that was held so delectable and precious [i.e., in Shakespeare's times], that they scorned to come to a tavern under twenty shillings salary for two hours,