' The
preface further asserts that the book is 'published only _to please
good company_.'
To go on to _instrumental_ music among the lower classes of
Elizabethan and Shakespearian times; there is an allusion in the above
quoted passage from Morley (1597) to the habit of playing on an
instrument in a barber's shop while waiting one's turn to be shaved.
This is also referred to in Ben Jonson's _Alchemist_ and _Silent
Woman_. In the latter play, Cutberd the barber has recommended a wife
to Morose. Morose finds that instead of a mute helpmate he has got one
who had 'a tongue with a tang,' and exclaims 'that cursed _barber_! I
have married his _cittern_ that is common to all men': meaning that as
the barber's cittern was always being played, so his wife was always
talking.
There is a poem of the 18th century which speaks of the old times,
'In former time 't hath been upbrayded thus,
That _barber's musick_ was most _barbarous_.'
However true that may have been--at all events it is certain that in
the 16th and 17th centuries it was customary to hear instrumental
music in a barber's shop, generally of a cittern, which had four
strings and frets, like a guitar, and was thought a vulgar
instrument.[4]
[Footnote 4: The Cittern of the barber's shop had four double strings
of wire, tuned thus--1st, E in 4th space of treble staff; 2nd, D a
tone lower; 3rd, G on 2nd line; 4th, B on 3rd line.
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