Lawes and the Cavalier Poets

Abstract IN the previous chapter Lawes’s songs were divided for the purpose of broad analysis into three basic types: (1) those in common time, (2) those in triple time, and (3) those beginning in common time but ending with a final couplet or stanza in triple. On the whole common time implied the declamatory style, whereas triple time invariably meant tuneful strophic settings often employing dance rhythms. A more subtle distinction must now be made between various types of common-time song. The first (1a) comprises those that are either tuneful or mildly declamatory, and strophic; that is, the same music serves for all stanzas. (These have sometimes been called ‘ballads’, and though the term is too ambiguous to be of much use, it seems appropriate to a song like Sir John Suckling’s ‘Out upon it, I have lov’d’.) The second (lb), typified by Robert Herrick’s ‘Whither are all her false oaths blown’, comprises those that are more highly declamatory and through-composed; what we may now regard as the ‘declamatory ayre’ proper.