APPENDIX. Part 3.
Reading edition
§ 1.—EXTRA SONGS IN THE WESTMINSTER-DROLLERY, 1674.
“A living Drollery!” (Shakespeare’s Tempest, Act iii. sc. 3.)
Before concluding our present series, The Drolleries of the Restoration, we have gladly given in this volume the fourteen pages of Extra Songs contained in the 1674 edition of Westminster-Drollery, Part 1st. Sometimes reported as amounting to “nearly forty” (but, perhaps, this statement referred to the Second Part inclusive), it is satisfactory to have joined these six to their predecessors; especially insomuch that our readers do not, like the original purchasers, have to pay such a heavy price as losing an equal number of pages filled with far superior songs. For, the 1671 Part First contained exactly 124 pages, and the 1674 edition has precisely the same number, neither more nor less. The omissions are not immediately consecutive, (as are the additions, which are gathered in one group in the final sheet, pp. 111-124.) They were selected, with unwise discrimination, throughout the volume. Not fourteen pages of objectionable and relinquishable facetiæ; but ten songs, from among the choicest of the poems. Our own readers are in better case, therefore: they gain the additions, without yielding any treasures of verse in exchange.
We add a list of what are thus relinquished from the 1674 edition, noting the pages of our Westm. D. on which they are to be found:—
P. 5. Wm. Wycherley’s, A Wife I do hate 1671
— 10. Dryden’s, Phillis Unkind: Wherever I am do.
— 15. Unknown, O you powerful gods, ? do.
— 28. T. Shadwell’s, Thus all our life long, 1669
— 30. Dryden’s, Cellamina, of my heart, 1671
— 31. Ditto, Beneath a myrtle shade, do.
— 116. Ditto, Ditto (almost duplicate), do.
— 47. Ditto, Make ready, fair Lady, 1668
— —. Etherege’s, To little or no purpose, do.
— 91. T. Carew’s, O my dearest, I shall, &c., bef. 1638
— 100. Ditto, or Cary’s, Farewell, fair Saint, bef. 1652
Thus we see that most of these were quite new when the Westminster-Drollery first printed them (in four cases, at least, before the plays had appeared as books): they were rejected three years later for fresh novelties. But the removal of Carew’s tender poems was a worse offence against taste.
Except the odd Quakers’ Madrigall of “Wickham Wakened” (on p. 120; our p. 188), which is not improbably by Joe Haynes, we believe the whole of the other five new songs of 1674 came from one work. We are unable at once to state the name and author of the drama in which they occur. The five are given (severely mutilated, in two instances) in Wit at a Venture; or, Clio’s Privy-Garden, of the same date, 1674. Here, also, they form a group, pp. 33-42; with a few others that probably belong to the same play, viz., “Too weak are human eyes to pry;” “Oh that I ne’er had known the power of Love;” “Must I be silent? no, and yet forbear;” “Cease, wandering thought, and let her brain” (this is Shirley’s, in the “Triumph of Beauty,” 1645); “How the vain world ambitiously aspires;” “Heaven guard my fair Dorinda:” and, perhaps, “Rise, golden Fame, and give thy name or birth.” Titles are added to most of these.
Page 179. So wretched are the sick of Love, is, on p. 37 of Wit at a Venture, entitled Distempered Love. The third verse is omitted.
Page 181. To Arms! To Arms! &c., on p. 39, entitled The Souldier’s Song; 13th line reads “Where we must try.”
Page 182. Beauty that it self can kill, on p. 35; reading, in 20th line, “When the fame and virtue falls || Careless courage,” &c.
Page 183. The young, the fair, &c., on p. 33, is entitled The Murdered Enemy; reading Clarissa for Camilla; and giving lines 17th and 19th, “Her beauties” and “Fierce Lions,” &c. Line 23rd is “And not to check it in the least.”
Page 184. How frailty makes us to our wrong.
Called A Moral Song in Wit at a Venture, p. 41, which rightly reads “grovel,” not “gravel,” in line 6; but omits third verse, and all the Chorus.
Page 188. The Quaker and his Brats.
We have not seen this elsewhere. Attributed to “the famous actor, Joseph Haines,” or “Joe Haynes,”
Who, while alive, in playing took great pains, Performing all his acts with curious art, Till Death appear’d, and smote him with his dart.
His portrait, as when riding on a Jack-ass, in 1697, is extant. He died 4th April, 1701, and was mourned by the Smithfield muses.
§ 2.—ADDITIONAL NOTES To the 1671-72 Editions of WESTMINSTER-DROLLERY.
Page 81. Is she gone? let her go.
This is a parody or mock on a black-letter ballad in the Roxburghe Collection, ii. 102, entitled “The Deluded Lasses Lamentation: or, the False Youth’s Unkindness to his Beloved Mistress.” Its own tune. Printed for P. Brooksby, J. Deacon, J. Blare, J. Black. In four-line verses, beginning:—
Is she gone? let her go, I do not care, Though she has a dainty thing, I had my share: She has more land than I by one whole Acre, I have plowed in her field, who will may take her.