This book was the first comprehensive survey of Purcell's dramatic music. It is concerned as much with the London theatre world - playhouses, poets, actors, singers, producers - as with the music itself. Purcell wrote music for more than fifty plays of various types, most of them produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, between 1690 and 1695. The songs, dialogues, choruses, act tunes and larger musical scenes are often active participants in the spoken drama, not simply grafted-on entertainments. The extraordinary semi-operas - Dioclesian, King Arthur, and The Fairy-Queen - are placed in the context of a theatre that thrived mainly on plays that, though less lavish, were no less musical. The traditional picture of a composer trapped within a degraded musical society, his natural predilection for opera ignored, is redrawn to show a consummate dramatist exploiting a remarkably musical theatre.

My Barney

Barney, my little friend lies here Complete in all save breath.

He's just the same as yesterday,

His little face, so calm in sleep.

But, Oh That change

Which all of us so dread,

With tearful eyes I stand, I gaze,

He can't be dead

He sleeps.

Soon he will awake and lick my hand.

I know that he will be with me today.

He'll run about the yard.

He'll chase his cats and play.

He'll leap into my arms to snuggle down.

He'll breathe a sigh, content.

My little Barney is not dead.

Such gentle souls forever live,

In boundless measure of the tender love

They, forever give.

XXX

"My little Barney, my ' Little Min-Pin' was struck down in my driveway by a speeding pickup truck.

Ten and one-half years we lived in love together."

Caprice, April 5, 2011