Note 582:C — Chapter III · (continued 2)
Reading edition
Ibid. p. 346. Act iv. sc. 3.—We shall add, in this note, in order to complete the catalogue, all the fragments of ancient minstrelsy that have escaped our enumeration in the text.
In Troilus and Cressida, Pandarus, lamenting the approaching departure of Cressida, expresses his sorrow by quoting an old song beginning—
"O heart, o heart, o heavy heart, Why sigh'st thou without breaking."
Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xv. p. 393.
Hamlet, bantering Polonius, quotes part of the first stanza of a ballad entitled, Jephtha, Judge of Israel. This has been published by Dr. Percy, retrieved, as he relates, from utter oblivion by a lady, who wrote it down from memory as she had formerly heard it sung by her father.—Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 142.; and Percy's Reliques, vol. i. p. 189.
It is probable that Hamlet, who appears to have been well versed in ballad-lore, has again introduced two morsels from this source, in his dialogue with Horatio on the conduct of the king at the play: they strongly mark his triumph in the success of his plan for unmasking the crimes of his uncle:—
"Why let the strucken deer go weep," &c. —— "For thou dost know, O Damon dear," &c.
Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. pp. 212. 214.
Iago in the drunken scene with Cassio, in the view of adding to his exhilaration, sings a portion of two songs; the first apparently a chorus,—
"And let me the canakin, clink, clink," &c.
the second,
"King Stephen was a worthy peer,"
from a humorous ballad of Scotch origin, preserved by Percy in his Reliques, vol. i. p. 204.—Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. pp. 334. 336.
In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio, in the following passage, alludes to two ballads of considerable notoriety:—
"Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim, When king Cophetua lov'd the beggar maid;"
the first line referring to the celebrated ballad of Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudesly, and the second to King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid; popular pieces which are again the objects of allusion in Much Ado about Nothing, act i.; and in the Second Part of Henry IV. act v. sc. 3.—Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 77.; and Percy's Reliques, vol. i. pp. 154. 198.
The same play will afford us three or four additional references; Mercutio, ridiculing the old Nurse, gives us a ludicrous fragment commencing "An old hare hoar," vol. xx. p. 116.; and Peter, after calling for two songs called Heart's ease, and My heart is full of woe, attempts to puzzle the musicians by asking for an explanation of the epithet silver in the first stanza of A Song to the Lute in Musicke, written by Richard Edwards, in the "Paradise of Daintie Devises," and commencing,
"Where griping griefs the hart would wounde."
Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 220. 222. and Percy's Reliques, vol. i. p. 196.