Hand in hand with fairy grace (Benjamin Cooke)
Music files
ICON | SOURCE |
---|---|
Midi | |
MusicXML | |
Capella | |
Web Page | |
File details | |
Help |
- Editor: James Gibb (submitted 2021-09-16). Score information: A4, 12 pages, 252 kB Copyright: CPDL
- Edition notes: Uses the alternative text.
- Editor: Christopher Shaw (submitted 2019-08-27). Score information: A4, 14 pages, 138 kB Copyright: CC BY SA
- Edition notes: Please click on the link for preview/playback/PDF download.
- Editor: Andrew Pink (submitted 2007-09-20). Score information: A4, 16 pages, 375 kB Copyright: Personal
- Edition notes:
General Information
Title: Hand in hand with Fairy grace
Composer: Benjamin Cooke
Lyricist: William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Scene II
Number of voices: 5vv Voicing: SSATB
Genre: Secular, Glee
Language: English
Instruments: A cappella
First published: 1795
2nd published: 1851 Novello's Glee Hive
Description: The "alternative" text is spurious; it is not a variant reading of Shakespeare, but a bowdlerization in the high-Victorian manner. It is worth preserving as an example of Novello's anachronistic approach to his sources. In an era when (allegedly) piano legs were covered up because they were suggestive, any hint at sexual intercourse was taboo; even more particularly when associated with fairies. Thus "To the best bride-bed will we,/Which by us shall blessed be;/And the issue there create/Ever shall be fortunate,/So shall all the couples three/Ever true in loving be;" is re-written as "To the children’s bed will we,/Which by us shall blessed be;/And the infants will we fate/Ever to be fortunate,/So shall all these children three/Ever true and happy be;". This prudery appears comical today, but the serious point is that it subverts and traduces Cooke's antiquarian interests. It is a trait commonly found in Victorian editions of earlier settings of Elizabethan and Jacobean texts.
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
Titania: Hand in hand, with fairy grace, |
Hand in hand, with fairy grace, |