Hyder E. Rollins

“ There is every reason to believe that the Handfull was actually issued in 1566. The absence of a license-fee is not unprecedented, [14] and the difference in title between the 1566 entry and the 1584 edition is of no importance. The Gorgious Gallery itself was registered under two other names before its present title was decided on; [15] and it should be observed that the running title of both the Handfull and the single leaf discovered by Ebsworth is "Sonets and Histories, to sundrie new Tunes," a title much more appropriate for the 1566 entry than for the Handfull itself. ”

“ Those who are interested in the matter and who wish to draw their own conclusions will find it profitable to compare the ballad of "All in a Garden Green" (cf. No. 18 below) , printed in the Extracts, I, 196, with "A merrye new ballad, of a countrye wench and a clowne" printed in the Shirburn Ballads, p. 220; Collier's "Lady Jane's Lament" (Extracts, I, 72) with the printed ballad included in the Ballad Society's Ballads from MSS., I, 427; Collier's "The Damned Soule in Hell" (Extracts, I, 117) with "The pittifull lamentation of a damned soule" (Shirburn Ballads, p. 260) ”

“ L. Gibson is without doubt the Leonard Gibson who signed his ballad, "A very proper Dittie, To the tune of Lightie Loue," with the full name. His Tower of Trustinesse, a work in prose and verse, is dated 1555 in Lilly's Ballads, p. xxx, and 1534 in Hazlitt's Handbook, p. 228. Another work is dated 1582 in Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica, p. 219, and in Crawford's Englands Parnassus, p. xx. The "proper Dittie" was printed by Richard Jones (fl. 1564–1602) without date (Lilly, p. 113) . If no more facts are forthcoming, it is not unreasonable to suppose that No. ”

“ This ballad, beginning "Ye louing wormes come learne of me," R. W. Bond prints among the early poems of John Lyly (Works, III, 465) . In marginal glosses he notes resemblances between the phrases and ideas in the ballad and in Lyly's Euphues, Campaspe, etc., and remarks (ibid., 438) , "Few, I believe, will be found to question the correctness of my attribution of . . . A Warning for Wooers" to Lyly. Nevertheless, as Collier (Extracts, I, 110) long ago pointed out, Richard Jones licensed No. ”

“ Samuel Rowlands, in his Melancholic Knight, 1615 (Works, ed. Hunterian Club, II, No. xxiv, p. 37) , refers to "Thou scuruie Ballat of I wale in woe"; and the first line is burlesqued in Rowley's Match at Midnight, V, i, where Randall sings, "Hur wail in woe, hur plunge in pain." No one, I believe, has noticed that in the old play of Misogonus (Brandl's Quellen, p. 456) one of the characters sings a "songe to the tune of Labondolose Hoto," beginning ”

“ Mr. Crawford considers it "a work of considerable merit, containing some notable songs" [3] ; and Sir Sidney Lee (Cambridge History of English Literature, III, 249) speaks of it as a collection of "lyric poems." Few persons seem to have recognized that the poems are street ballads, pure and simple.
In 1566 the following entry was made in the Stationers' Registers [4] :
It has been generally assumed that the extant edition of the Handfull is a re-issue, with additions, of the 1566 Pleasant Sonnets. ”

“ For the tune, see No. 2, above; for the author, No. 11, above. "A boke intituled Perymus and Thesbye" was licensed by Griffith in July, 1563 (Trans., I, 215) , and a ballad would inevitably have followed the book, or pamphlet.
14. "A Sonet of a Louer. . . . To Calen o Custure me: sung at euerie lines end."
The ballad of "Callin o custure me" was "tolerated" to John Alde on March 10, 1581–2 (Trans., II, 407) ; our "Sonet," then, as Arber (p. x) points out, cannot have been in the 1566 edition. [22]
15. ”