Scan 264
A dictionary of old English music & musical instruments 1923, 1923
10 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. Printed page 234. See the scan on archive.org.
1for the Viols in England. They came more and more into favour, even usurping the place hitherto held by the lutes. Composers and publishers encouraged the fashion by issuing ever-increasing quantities of music for the Viols. It was part of everyone's education to learn at least one of the instruments of the family, and to play on it at sight (Peacham, Compleat Gentleman). The literary works of the Seventeenth Century abound with references to chance visitors being asked to take up a Viol and "bear a part" in the consort. This explains the ubiquity of the Chest of Viols (q.v.). The manner in which the playwrights of the era helped themselves to the instruments proves how common they were. In Twelfth Night (I, 3) Shakespeare gives the sentence, "he plays o' the Viol-de-Gamboys" to prove the culture of one of his characters; and in Pericles (I, 1) we have:
3 You are a fair viol and your sense the strings,
4 Who, finger'd to make man his lawful music,
5 Would draw heaven down and all the gods, to hearken.
7In George Chapman's comedy Monsieur d'Olive (Act III, 1606) a dandy of the period says: "Here shall stand my Court Cupbord, with its furniture of Plate: Heere shall runne a Winde Instrument: Heere shall hang my base viall: Heere my Theorbo: and heere will I hang my selfe." Middleton, in A Trick to Catch the Old One (1608), says: "She now remains in London to learn fashions, practise music; the voice between her lips, and the viol between her legs, she'll be a fit consort very speedily"—a reference that shows how early the ladies played the Gamba in Stuart England. With this evidence of the instrument's popularity it will not be necessary to draw on the State Papers for further proofs. Suffice it to say that the Calendar of State Papers contains countless entries concerning the appointment of violists, their work, and their instruments.
9During the Commonwealth the Viols suffered no neglect, in spite of the historians who would have us think of this as a mirthless and songless period. The Puritan wife of the Puritan soldier, Colonel Hutchinson, said of her husband that "he had a great love to music, and often diverted himself with a viol on which he played masterly." Of course, there were a few fanatics who thought that because the puritanical decree
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