When Griping Griefs the Heart Doth Wound

DESCRIPTION: "When griping griefs the heart doth wound, And doleful dumps the mind oppress, Then music with her silver sound, With speedy help doth lend redress." Music praises the gods and brings joy. It is a gift to humanity
AUTHOR: Possible Richard Edwards (source: Seng)
EARLIEST DATE: 1576 (Edwards's The Paradise of Dainty Devices, according to Seng)
KEYWORDS: nonballad love music
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Percy/Wheatley-ReliquesOfAncientEnglishPoetry I, pp. 187-189, "A Song to the Lute in Music" (1 text)
Rimbault-Musical IllustrationsOfBishopPercysReliques VI, p. 49, "A Song to the Lute in Musicke" (1 partial text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Peter J. Seng, _Tudor Songs and Ballads from MS Cotton Vespasian A-25_, Harvard University Press, 1978, #17, pp. 32-33, "Where gripinge greues the hart wold wound" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: London, British Library, MS. Cotton Vespasian A.xxv (67), folio 137
ST PJSwgghw (Partial)
NOTES [167 words]: This has never, to my knowledge, been collected in oral tradition -- but it spread somehow, because Shakespeare quotes the first four lines in Romeo and Juliet (Act IV, scene v; it's lines 126-128, 142-143 in the SIgnet and RIverside Shakespeare; 123-125, 138-139 in the Orgel/Braunmuller Pelican). And it's in the manuscript song collection in the British Library, Cotton Vespasian A.25 (in an orthography much older than Shakespeare's) and in British Library MS. Harley 7392, plus it's in The Paradise of Dainty Devices (according to Seng, p. 34). Seng, p. 35, reports several copies of the music as well. And Percy printed it. That's enough evidence that I would allow at least the possibility that it's a folk song, and so include it. What's more, the versions aren't all the same; Shakespeare's version begins with the word "When," but the Cotton Vespasian version has "Where."
For more information about the manuscript British Library Cotton Vespasian A.xxv, see the notes to "The Hawthorn Green."
Last updated in version 6.5
File: PJSwgghw

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