{"id":84330,"date":"2015-04-02T18:16:37","date_gmt":"2015-04-02T22:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=84330"},"modified":"2015-04-02T20:46:21","modified_gmt":"2015-04-03T00:46:21","slug":"my-mistress-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/02\/my-mistress-face\/","title":{"rendered":"My Mistress\u2019 Face"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"kms1948\"<\/a>

Albert Gottschalk, Eftermiddag i april<\/i> (Afternoon in April), 1897.<\/p><\/div>\n

The variable nature of April weather has long made it fodder for poets. (Or for poets in temperate climates, at any rate.) If you\u2019ve come into contact with any choral pieces in your time, chances are you\u2019ve come across this Thomas Morley pastoral:<\/p>\n

\n

April is in my mistress\u2019 face,
And July in her eyes hath place;
Within her bosom is September,
But in her heart a cold December.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The popular madrigal, if that\u2019s not a contradiction in terms, was published in 1594; it\u2019s believed to have been based on the work of the Italian baroque poet\u00a0Livio Celiano.\u00a0Orazio Vecchi, who set the poem, was a well-known composer; his \u201cMadrigal Comedies,\u201d sort of a cappella proto-operas, were all the rage amongst the late sixteenth-century nobility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Morley was celebrated, too. Though his background was humble, he became the organist at Saint Paul\u2019s, and his many compositions were widely published. Scholars don\u2019t know for sure whether he and Shakespeare actually interacted\u2014they were contemporaries, and lived for a while in the same parish\u2014but Morley did set a version of As You Like It<\/em>\u2019s \u201cIt Was a Lover and His Lass\u201d during the playwright\u2019s lifetime. (Like most things Shakespeare, it\u2019s all highly speculative\u2014but the men were both in favor with the court and moved in similar circles.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unlike the Bard, Morley was known for his business acumen. From 1598 to 1602 he held one of the royally granted monopolies known as \u201cprinting patents,\u201d and as such published much of the music produced in his era. This, in turn, would have helped to fuel the English Madrigal vogue that lasted through the first three decades of the seventeenth century. And it\u2019s part of the reason we know \u201cApril Is in My Mistress\u2019 Face\u201d in its original form.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Mad Men<\/em> ignited a vogue for thin lapels and old-school cocktails, and\u00a0Downton Abbey<\/em> influenced waistlines, it\u2019s fun to think about whether April\u2019s\u00a0Wolf Hall<\/em> TV adaptation will start a new madrigal craze. Probably not. But then, the motif of the inconstant, materialistic woman is a perennial pop-music favorite.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review, and the\u00a0<\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The variable nature of April weather has long made it fodder for poets. (Or for poets in temperate climates, at any rate.) If you\u2019ve come into contact with any choral pieces in your time, chances are you\u2019ve come across this Thomas Morley pastoral: April is in my mistress\u2019 face, And July in her eyes hath […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[10692,5762,17653,17652,17654,7221,165,948,17651,2154],"class_list":["post-84330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-april","tag-downton-abbey","tag-livio-celiano","tag-madrigals","tag-orazio-vecchi","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-shakespeare","tag-thomas-morley","tag-wolf-hall"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThomas Morley: My Mistress\u2019 Face<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on the popular madrigal (if that\u2019s not a contradiction in terms).\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/02\/my-mistress-face\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My Mistress\u2019 Face by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"April 2, 2015 \u2013 The variable nature of April weather has long made it fodder for poets. 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