Choyce Drollery: Songs and Sonnets: Being a Collection of Divers Excellent Pieces of Poetry, of Several Eminent Authors.
History
Choyce Drollery: Songs and Sonnets: Being a Collection of Divers Excellent Pieces of Poetry, of Several Eminent Authors.
English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700; English wit and humor; Songs, English -- Texts
Another Fire-ballad (in addition to the coarse squib in present vol., pp.
33-7,) is “Zeal over-heated;” telling of a fire at Oxford, 1642; tune,
Chivey Chace; and beginning, “Attend, you brethren every one.” It is not
improbably by Thomas Weaver, being in his _Love and Drollery_, 1654, p.
21.
Page 92, 370. _Cast your caps and cares away._
Of this song, from Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Beggar’s Bush,” bef. 1625,
the music set by Dr. John Wilson is in his _Cheerfull Ayres_, 1659-60, p.
22.
Pages 97, 371. _Come, let us drink._
“Mahomet’s Pigeon,” a frequent allusion: compare _M. D. C._, pp. 11, 192;
and present appendix, p. 356.
Pages 100, 108 (App.) 371. _Satires on Gondibert._
See Additional Note in this vol. § 3, _post_, for a few words on
D’Avenant. Since printing _M. D. C._, we have been enabled (thanks to W.
F. Fowle, Esq., possessor of) to consult the very rare Second Satire,
1655, mentioned on p. 371. It is entitled, “The Incomparable Poem
GONDIBERT VINDICATED from the Wit-Combats of Four ESQUIRES, _Clinias_,
_Dametas_, _Sancho_, and _Jack Pudding_.” [With this three-fold motto:—]
Χοτέει καὶ ἀοίδ τω ἀοίδω.
_Vatum quoque gratia rara est._
Anglicè,
_One Wit-Brother_ || _Envies another_.
Printed in the year 1655.” It begins on p. 3, with a poetical address to
Sir Willm. Davenant, asking pardon beforehand in case his “yet-unhurt
Reputation” should suffer more through the champion than from the
attack made by the four “Cyclops, or Wit-Centaurs,” two of whom he
unhesitatingly names as “Denham and Jack Donne,” or “Jack Straw.” But
even thus early we notice the sarcasm against D’Avenant himself: when
in reference to the never-forgotten “flaws” in his face, the Defender
writes:—
Will _shew thy face_ (be’t what it will),
_We’l push ’um yet a quill for quill_.
The third poem, p. 8, again to the Poet, mocks him as well as his
assailants’ lines (our _M. D. C._, p. 108) with twenty triplets:—
_After so many poorer scraps_
_Of Playes which nere had the mishaps_
_To passe the stage without their claps, &c._
Next comes a poem “Upon the continuation of Gondibert,” “Ovid to Patmos
pris’ner sent.” (Later, we extract the chief lines for the “Sessions”
Add. Note.) He is told,
_Wash thee in ~Avon~, if thou flie,_
_My wary ~Davenant~ so high,_
_Yet ~Hypernaso~ now you shall_
_Ore fly this Goose so Capitall._ (p. 14.)
After five others, came one Upon the Author, beginning,
_~Daphne~, secure of the buff,_
_Prethee laugh,_
_Yet at these four and their riff raff;_
_Who can hold_
_When so bold?_
_And the trim wit of ~Coopers~ green hill_, ...
Ending thus:—
_~Denham~, thou’lt be shrewdly shent_
_To invent_
_Such Drawlery for merriment, &c...._
_A Drawing ~Donne~ out of the mire._
A burlesque of Gondibert on same p. 18, as “Canto the Second, or rather
Cento the first;” begins “_All in the Land of ~Bembo~ and of ~Bubb~_.”
One stanza partly anticipates Sam. Butler:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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