In order to comprehend many of the Shakespearian allusions, it is necessary to begin by examining the orchestra of his time, for, while voices remain practically the same in all ages, the instruments of music undergo changes that cause the music of one epoch to be very dissimilar from that of another. Such a combination of instruments as a modern would call an "orchestra" scarcely existed at the end of the sixteenth century.

During the poet's life, the opera was invented in Italy (1594-1600) and new combinations of instruments began. But the influence of the new school was not felt in England during the lifetime of Shakespeare. Nevertheless, England had been accustomed to combinations of musical instruments from a very early epoch. Chaucer mentions

"Cornemuse and Shalmyes

And many other maner pipe,"

which were undoubtedly instruments with which he was acquainted, and also speaks of concerted playing, "Bothe yn Dowced and yn Rede."

'Prof. T. R. Lounsbury invited the author, in 1894, to join in the search of the solution of the mystic words, " Bothe yn Dowced and yn Rede," which end this citation. But beyond the fact that Grassineau, in 1740, defines it as "Douced, a musical instrument with strings of wire, commonly called a Dulcimer," no reference to "Dowsed" was found in any of the old musical dictionaries to which reference was had. Murray's new Oxford dictionary, however, defines it as "a wind-instrument resembling a flute."

A detailed account of English instruments of the Elizabethan epoch is given by Michael Drayton (1563-1631), contemporary and friend of Shakespeare, in his great work entitled "Poly-Olbion," the first part of which was published in 1613. The following extract is found in the fourth song, and illustrates a trial or contention between the Welsh and the English; the Welsh have displayed their instruments in detail and the English answer them :

"The English that repined to be delayed so long,
All quickly at the hint, as with one free consent,
Strook up at once and sung each to the instrument;
(Of sundry sorts there were, as the musician likes)

On which the practiced hand with perfect'st fingering strikes,
Whereby their right of skill might liveliest be expressed.
The trembling lute some touch, some strain the violl best,
In setts' which there were seene, the Musick wondrous choice,
Some likewise there affect the Gamba with the voice,

To shew that England could varietie afforde.
Some that delight to touch the sterner wyerie chord,
The Cithron, the Pandore, and the Theorbo strike;
The Gittern and the Kit the wandering fidlers like.
So there were some againe, in this their learned strife,
Loud instruments that loved, the Cornet and the Phife,
The Hoboy, Sagbut deepe, Recorder and the Flute,
Even from the shrillest Shawm unto the Cornemute,
Some blow the Bagpipe up, that plaies the country 'round,
The Tabor and the Pipe some take delight to sound."

Most of these instruments will be defined in the ensuing chapters; it is interesting to find them thus

' Of "sets of viols" more hereafter.

grouped together in a poem which Shakespeare must have been familiar with.

There can be little doubt as to the reliability of Drayton in his list of instruments. The elder Disraeli, in his "Amenities of Literature," sums up the Poly-Olbion" thus:

"This remarkable poem remains without a parallel in the poetical annals of any people. . . . It is a choregraphical description of England and Wales; an amalgamation of antiquarianism, of topography, and of history. . . . This poem has the accuracy of a road-book!"

But we can complete our survey of the musical combinations of the Shakespearian epoch by studying a more prosaic writer than Michael Drayton. Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, has left to the world a very precise description of Elizabethan music in the second and third centuries, or chapters, of his "Sylva Sylvarum."

As a passing eccentricity of the time is occupying itself with endeavouring to prove that Bacon was really the author of Shakespeare's works, it may be of double interest to compare the stolid cataloguing of the one with the poetic musical fervour of the other, and in a later chapter, devoted to the dances of Shakespeare, we shall find the poet enthusiastic, the philosopher disdainful, when commenting upon a similar subject.