a shakespearean medley

Oh Mistress Mine

Oh Mistress mine! where are you roaming?
Oh! stay and hear, your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further pretty sweeting.
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
What is love? tis not hereafter,
Present mirth, hath present laughter:
What's to come, is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.


Take, O take those Lips away

Take, O take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn!
But my kisses bring again,
Bring again;
Seals of love, but seal'd in vain,
Seal'd in vain!


Sigh No More

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh nor more;
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never;
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny;
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into. Hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo,
Or dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into. Hey, nonny, nonny.


The above are three works by William Shakespeare. The first and third are excerpts taken from broader works by Shakespeare to be appreciated independently. The first is intended to be sung aloud, taken from Twelfth Night, Act II Scene iii. The last, also intended as a song, is from Much Ado About Nothing, sung by the character Balthasar. I was simply flipping through pages in Norton… when I happened across “Oh mistress mine.” I have to admit, before I even looked at the poem, I began to sing a song that I had learned in chorus. We had sung a medley of three different songs, songs our director alluded to as “very popular, well known verses from the seventeenth century.”

You can imagine my surprise when I realized that I was singing the very words that were written in the anthology. Apparently, I had never taken the time to look up who had written the lyrics for the song. So often we sing songs that are madrigals (medieval/renaissance pieces) that are author-less, the original writers swept away with each century, that I had simply assumed this was another collection of anonymous works.

As I continued to hum the medley softly to myself, I realized that on the page preceding my discovery there was another revelation! As I sang, “Sigh no more ladies, sigh no more,” the words turned rather mocking in my own mouth! There was Shakespeare’s “Sigh No More” staring me in the face, the third verse of our medley! I decided to look up the second verse, “Take O Take,” and what do you know, there it was, another Shakespearean poem!

This brings me to a question that we’ve addressed in class. Where do we draw the line between poetry and lyrics? What exactly is the difference? Is there a difference? I know we have had several discussion on these very questions, but I feel as if somehow we never really answered them. We sort of danced around the answer in debating semantics, but never really concluded anything. Is there anything to conclude?

I know that when I sang these same words for chorus, that they had an entirely different feel. The stress was always primarily on the musicality of the piece. We had a guest director, one of five vocalists who were admitted into the vocal program at the Chinese Conservatory of Music, and while he encouraged us emote an interpretation of the piece, the focus was always on the music. The lyrics were a way to intensify the music. The music was primary means of expression and the lyrics acted as accentual emphasis. When I read the very same words as a poem, they have a complete different weight and a different rhythm than that which we forced the lines to move along.

So does the music distract from the merit of poem? What about the fact that two of these poems are meant to be sung?