Shakespeare Songs from Victor Records

Feb 20, 2019



From The Tempest

Where the Bee Sucks; 2. Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies

From Twelfth Night

O Mistress Mine

From Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure

Come Away Death; 2. Take, Oh Take Those Lips Away

From As You Like It

It Was a Lover and His Lass

From Twelfth Night and Henry VIII

She Never Told Her Love; 2. Orpheus with His Lute

From Love's Labours Lost

When Daisies Pied and Violets Blue (The Cuckoo Song)

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, The Victor Talking Machine Company produced a series of recordings of songs from the plays of William Shakespeare, sung by a variety of operatic vocalists of the day including American tenor Lambert Murphy (listed here under his pseudonym of Raymond Dixon), baritone Reinald Werrenrath, and soprano Laura Littlefield. If The Bard ever did specify melodies for the songs featured in his plays, nothing has survived today, and the arrangements used here by Victor are mostly more modern inventions. There are, however, a couple by the eighteenth century composers Thomas Arne and Joseph Haydn, and "O Mistress Mine" and "It Was a Lover and His Lass" by the Elizabethan musician Thomas Morley. Although contemporaries, it is not known if Morley and Shakespeare ever actually were acquainted, though some do suspect that they were and even collaborated.