The postlude is measured like its two predecessors, but this time the number of lines offers no visible reason for it; with twelve O Mistress Mine is in itself complete. The only thing missing in the score is a proper source-indication. If
The postlude is measured like its two predecessors, but this time the number of lines offers no visible reason for it; with twelve O Mistress Mine is in itself complete. The only thing missing in the score is a proper source-indication. If this is a hint, it is an enigmatic one, for ‘William Shakespeare’ is simply insufficient to find out that this text is absolutely not in itself; it is in the play ‘Twelfth-Night, or; what you will’. And this mere fact is enough to alter the numbers:
By good fortune the song’s original theatre music has survived. Interestingly, its most striking feature is the way it spoils things. There is only one explanation why Shakespeare should have allowed his composer Thomas Morley (1557-1603), to ruin the poems’ superb structure by repeating four of its lines: it informed the audience the play features sixteen of them.
There is no hard evidence to link Morley’s music to the play’s first performance, but it is a plausible option.
The original source for both Shakespeare and Morley is a now lost song that was popular enough to deserve it a four part instrumental setting in Morley’s 1599 First Book of Consort Lessons. Being the sole source of the melody, this setting of a song of sixteen lost lines is adapted to fit Shakespeare’s text from ca. 1600, whenever it is to be sung on its original tune.
—This approach invariably results in a song with the modest instrumental accompaniment that is within the range of the small band of musicians that could be expected on a commercial theatre company ’s payroll. While the singer has apart from the period’s usual independency of his line no great technical challenges to face. Which is consistent with a performance by an actor with good singing qualities like Robert Armin: the song’s original performer.
—Aga