This song is from the comedy _As You Like It_, a story of the adventures of a group of courtiers and rustics in the forest of Arden. A charming element in Shakespeare’s romantic comedies is the introduction of song-poems or lyrics. All the writers of those days, the days of Good Queen Bess, wrote songs. England was “a nest of singing birds.” They were real songs, too, filled with joy and musical language, and all the people sang them to the accompaniment of the quaint musical instruments of the time. And all the people took part in games and pageants in “Merrie England,” and listened to the strange tales of seafarers, and went to the playhouse to see Shakespeare’s _As You Like It_. =Discussion.= 1. Why is the thought of green holly appropriate in connection with the winter wind? 2. What feeling does ingratitude arouse? 3. Why does the poet say the “tooth” of the wind is not so keen as man’s ingratitude? 4. What change of feeling do you notice after line 6? 5. What do you think caused the change? 6. In the second stanza read lines that show the poet did not really think that “life is most jolly.” 7. Which lines explain the poet’s distrust of friendship? 8. Which word in stanza I is explained by line 3 of stanza 2? 9. Find a word in stanza 1 that gives the same thought as the second line of the second stanza. 10. Give the meaning of “warp” in stanza 2 (an old Saxon proverb said, “Winter shall warp water”). =Phrases= benefits forgot, 84, 13 friendship is feigning, 84, 18 WHEN ICICLES HANG BY THE WALL WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp’d, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit; Tu-who—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson’s saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow. And Marian’s nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit; Tu-who—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. NOTES AND QUESTIONS For Biography, see page 85. This is the second part of a song of four stanzas, found in the comedy _Love’s Labor’s Lost_. The first two stanzas are descriptive of spring, and introduce the song of the cuckoo. The last two stanzas are given here. =Discussion.= 1. Do these lines describe life in the city or in the country? 2. What does the use of names, Dick, Tom, Joan, and Marian, add to the poem? 3. For what use were logs brought into the hall? 4. Can you see fitness in the use of the word “greasy”? 5. What is the song of the owl? 6. Explain the second line of stanza 2. 7. Why is the owl called “staring”? =Phrases=