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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.
