The song poetry of Robert Herrick : an examination of the eleven songs by Herrick in Bodleian Library MS Don.c.57

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that Robert Herrick deliberately wrote certain poems to be set to music. Although there is a significant amount of seventeenth-century literature on composition and the art of matching words to notes, some of which I cite in the following thesis, the majority of the evidence presented in this thesis is taken from Herrick's song texts and the music composed for them. The song texts I have examined can be found in the Bodleian Library MS Don.c 57. I chose to work with this manuscript because it contains a fairly broad survey of Herrick's poetical style and the music to which his verses were set. By examining metres, syllable organization within each line, punctuation, vowel sounds, structure, thematic organization and numerous other features of the song texts, I have demonstrated how it is virtually inconceivable that Herrick was not highly conscious of the fact that he was writing poetry specifically for musical setting, and that he made a distinction between this poetry and that which was not intended for musical setting. In order to strengthen this last assertion, I have also compared different versions of the same poems, particularly those which were altered for inclusion in Hesperides after having first been used as song texts.