Note 78 — ACT II. SCENE I.
Reading edition
the canaries] A quick and lively dance, frequently mentioned by our early writers: “As to the air itself, it appears, by the example in the Opera of Dioclesian [set to music by Purcell, and containing a dance called the Canaries], to be a very sprightly movement of two reprises or strains, with eight bars in each,” &c. Hawkins’s Hist. of Music, vol. iv. p. 391—cited by Reed.