WHEN my friend Professor Vaughan asked me if I had thought over any subject for a dissertation, I felt depressed. For I remembered the melancholy compilation that is expected from a student who sets out to take a degree in English Literature.

Whilst pondering over possible subjects, a music-teacher of my youth, the late Wallis Vincent, A.R.C.O. (one whom I admired greatly not only for his musicianship, which was considerable, but also for his delight in humorous poetry, his ready wit, and his genial kindness), lent me his manuscript of a popular lecture on “Shakespeare and Music.” I was struck by the amount of fun he had got out of it, and foresaw that to make a deeper study of the subject would be to tread an interesting path. I made up my mind not to work the ground already appropriated by Mr E. W. Naylor and re-worked by Mr L. C. Elson, but to go further afield and describe the share taken by musicians in an Elizabethan play.

I drew up a scheme, was lucky enough to have it accepted, and proceeded to collect materials to make it into a dissertation. The result is the following little book. It does not assume to be more than a sketch, which at some future time I hope to enlarge. I should have liked to read and ransack every play of the period for material, but alas, I had not time enough for this.