Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851. Various
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p>Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851
OUR THIRD VOLUME
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NOTES
OLD BALLAD UPON THE "WINTER'S TALE."
Some of your correspondents may be able to give me information respecting an old ballad that has very recently fallen in my way, on a story similar to that of Shakspeare's Winter's Tale, and in some particulars still more like Greene's novel of Pandosto, upon which the Winter's Tale was founded. You are aware that the earliest known edition of Greene's novel is dated 1588, although there is room to suspect that it had been originally printed before that year: the first we hear of the Winter's Tale is in 1611, when it was acted at court, and it was not printed until it appeared in the folio of 1623.
The ballad to which I refer has for title The Royal Courtly Garland, or Joy after Sorrow: it is in ordinary type, and was "Printed and sold in Aldermary Churchyard, London." It has no date, and in appearance does not look older than from perhaps, 1690 to 1720; it may even be more recent, as at that period it is not easy to form a correct opinion either from typography or orthography: black-letter has a distinguishing character at various periods, so as to enable a judgment to be formed within, perhaps, ten years, as regards an undated production: but such is not the case with Roman type, or white-letter. What I suspect, however, is that this ballad is considerably older, and that my copy is only a comparatively modern reprint with some alterations; it requires no proof, at this time of day, to show that it was the constant habit of our old publishers of ephemeral literature to reprint ballads without the slightest notice that they had ever appeared before. This, in fact, is the point on which I want information, as to The Royal Courtly Garland, or Joy after Sorrow. Can any of your correspondents refer me to an older copy, or do they know of the existence of one which belongs to a later period? I cannot be ignorant of DR. RIMBAULT'S learning on such matters, and I make my appeal especially to him.
It is very possible that it may bear a different title in other copies, and for the sake of identification I will furnish a few extracts from the various "parts" (no fewer than six) into which the ballad is divided; observing that they fill a closely printed broadside, and that the production is entirely different from Jordan's versification of the Winter's Tale, under the title of The Jealous Duke and the injured Duchess, which came out in his Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie, 8vo. 1664. It is singular that two ballads, hitherto wholly unknown, should have been written upon the same incidents of the same drama, although we are yet without evidence that Jordan's effusion was ever published as a broadside.
Not a single name is given to any of the persons in my Royal Courtly Garland, but the places of action are reversed exactly in the same way as in Greene's novel of Pandosto, where what Shakspeare represents as passing in Sicily occurs in Bohemia, and vice versa; moreover, the error of representing Bohemia as a maritime country belongs to my ballad, as well as to the novelist and the dramatist. The King of Bohemia, jealous of an "outlandish prince," who he suspected had intrigued with his queen, employs his cup-bearer to poison the prince, who is informed by the cup-bearer of the design against his life.
"For fear of the king the prince dare not stay:
The wind being fair, he sailed away,
Saying, I will escape from his blood-thirsty hand
By steering away to my native land."
Not long after his departure, the queen, "who had never conceived before" (which varies both from Greene and Shakspeare), produces a daughter, which the king resolves to get rid of by turning it adrift at sea in "a little boat." He so informs the queen, and she in great grief provides the outfit for the infant voyager:
"A purse of rare jewels she placed next her skin,
And fasten'd it likewise securely within;
A chain round her neck, and a mantle of gold,
Because she her infant no more should behold."
It is revealed to the king in a dream that his wife is innocent, but she soon dies of a broken-heart. Meanwhile, the prince, on his return to his own dominions, marries, and has a son. The infant princess is driven on shore in his kingdom, and is saved by an old shepherd, and brought up by him and his wife as their own child, they carefully concealing the riches they had found in the "little boat."
"This child grew up, endued with grace,
A modest behaviour, a sweet comely face;
And being arrived at the age of fifteen,
For beauty and wisdom few like her were seen."
"Her" is misprinted him in the original, and the whole, as may be expected, is not a first-rate specimen of typography. The son of the prince sees and falls in love with the supposed shepherd's daughter, and, to avoid the anger of the prince his father, he secretly sails away with her and the old shepherd. By a storm they are driven on the coast of Bohemia:
"A violent storm on the sea did arise,
Drove them to Bohemia; they are took for spies;
Their ship was seized, and they to prison sent:
To confine them a while the king's fully bent."
Here we arrive at an incident which is found in Greene, but which Shakspeare had the judgment to avoid, making the termination of his drama as wonderful for its art, as delightful for its poetry. Greene and my ballad represent the king of Bohemia falling in love with his own daughter, whom he did not recognise. She effectually resisted his entreaties, and he resolves "to hang or burn" the whole party; but the old shepherd, to save himself, reveals that she is not his daughter, and produces "the mantle of gold" in which he had found her:
"He likewise produced the mantle of gold.
The king was amazed the sight to behold;
Though long time the shepherd had used the same,
The king knew it marked with his own name."
This discovery leads directly to the unwinding of the plot: the young prince makes himself known, and his father being sent for, the lovers are "married in triumph" in Bohemia, and the old shepherd is made "a lord of the court."
If any of your readers can inform me of another copy of the above ballad, especially unmodernised (the versification must have suffered in the frequent reprints) and in black-letter of an early date,