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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
entertainment; yet, it perfectly fits not only the dramatic context but also the
historical context of its performance, which perhaps becomes most apparent
if we juxtapose the four-line song Edgar and the Fool sing in the Quarto with
a passage describing “rime” and musical “concord” in Puttenham’s handbook.
Although the text lacks stage instructions, and thus we cannot say for certain
the following passage was intended to be sung, its rhythm and jingling rhyme
scheme suggest such a performance: “Come ore the broome Bessy to mee./ Her
boat hath a leake, / and she must not speake, / Why she dares not come, ouer
to thee.”*!? It is also worth remarking that this song could have had topical
references and could even have been an indirectly indecent reference to Queen
Elizabeth, since it strongly resembles the first verse of William Birch’s 1564
ballad entitled “Song between the Queen’s Majesty and England”: “Come over
the bourn, Bessy, come over the bourn, Bessy, Sweet Bessy, come over to me;
and I shall thee take, And my dear lady make, Before all that ever I see.”**°
However, The Arte of English Poesy associates end rhymes with the common
poetry most likely enjoyed by ordinary people in the Christmas season,
which would perfectly conform to the circumstances of the 1606 Whitehall
performance, and also with the character of a fool in a dramatic context:
Note also that rime or concorde is not commendably vsed both in the end and
middle of a verse, vnlesse it be in toyes and trifling Poesies, for it sheweth a certaine
lightnesse either of the matter or of the makers head, albeit these common rimers
vse it much [...] so on the other side doth the ouer busie and too speedy returne of
one maner of tune, too much annoy & as it were glut the eare, vnlesse it be in small
& popular Musickes [...] or historicall rimes, made purposely for recreation of the
common people at Christmasse diners & brideales, and in tauernes & alehouses and
such other places of base resort, also they be vsed in Carols and rounds and such
light or lasciuious Poemes, which are commonly more commodiously vttered by
these buffons or vices in playes then by any other person.*!
Asa result, the very fact that the song cited above was omitted from the Folio
shows how textual alternations like this could turn the “chronicle historie,”
as it was recorded in the 1608 Quarto, into a less amusing yet more tragically
decent piece of writing.
To summarize, the mock trial scene contains all the indecent and unmannerly
elements that the 1606 courtly audience would have found entertaining.
While modern adaptations provide various interpretations of King Lear which
319 Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, G3v.
0 Quoted in the following nineteenth-century critical edition: William Shakespeare: King Lear,
A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare. Vol 5, ed. Horace Howard Furness, Philadelphia, J. B.
Lippincott Company, 1880, 208.
321 Ibid., 68-69.
. 82.