One Shakespeare song has been made famous by the beautiful music which the great German song writer, Schubert, wrote to it. It is from _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ and is called _Who is Sylvia?_ Many of the English composers of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Henry Purcell and Dr. Arne made music for the Shakespeare songs because they were so lovely and so well written that they almost sang themselves; this we call lyric verse. Thomas Weelkes (1575?–1623) whose madrigals were included in _The Triumphs of Oriana_, also wrote many _Fancies for Strings_ which were the ancestors of the string quartets, the highest type of music. CRYES OF LONDON Several composers of this period, Thomas Weelkes, Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) and Richard Deering (1580?–1630) wrote pieces using the old “Cryes of London” as their themes. Each trade had its own song, and the street pedlars used these tunes just as the fruit vendors, old-clothes men, and flower vendors cry their wares in our streets today. There is this difference, however; the street cries of today are mere noise, while the old “Cryes of London” were interesting and usually beautiful songs. _Cherry Ripe_ is one of them, and Campion used it in 1617 in his famous old song, _There is a Garden in Her Face_. Some of the composers made rounds and catches based on the “Cryes,” and Weelkes in his _Humorous Fancy_ used the songs of the chimney-sweep, the bellows-mender, and the vendors of fruit, fish and vegetables. In telling about this “fancy,” Frederick Bridge, a British composer and professor of music in Gresham College, says: “The Fancy at one point leaves its regular course, and for a few bars a delightful dance tune is introduced, to the words, whatever they mean, ‘Twincledowne Tavye.’ It is as if the vendors of fish, fruit and vegetables met in the street and had a bit of a frolic together.” Bridge also says that he thinks all lovers of Shakespeare will be glad to make the acquaintance of the music of the “Cryes of London” which saluted the poet’s ears in his daily walk. Orlando Gibbons called his composition on the “cryes,” a _Burlesque Madrigal_, and beside the cries, he has used in one of the inner parts for viol, an old plain-song melody, a form used very often by the Italian madrigalists of the 16th century. Richard Deering’s _Humorous Fancy_, _The Cryes of London_, is the most elaborate of the three we have mentioned, having among many other tradesmen’s songs, those of the rat-catcher (this makes us think of Browning’s _Pied Piper of Hamelin_), the tooth-drawer, and the vendor of garlic. SOME FAMOUS COMPOSERS