when the original ballad of "Row Well" was at the height of its popularity.
9. "The Historie of Diana and Acteon. To the Quarter Braules."
"A ballett intituled the Cater bralles bothe Wytty and mery" was licensed by Thomas Colwell in 1565–66 (Collier's Extracts, I, 120; Trans., I, 298). No. 9, then, could have appeared in the 1566 Pleasant Sonnets. Various broadside versions of this ballad are extant: see Roxburghe Ballads, II, 520. The first line, "Diana and her darlings deare," is quoted in Richard Brome's Damoiselle, V, i, and in his Jovial Crew, III (Dramatic Works, ed. Pearson, I, 455; III, 396).
10. A fragmentary ballad on the power of Venus.
This imitates William Elderton's ballad, "The Pangs of Love" (reprinted in Collier's Old Ballads, Percy Society, I, 25, and elsewhere), with the "Lady, lady" refrain. Elderton's "Pangs" was registered in 1559 (Trans., I, 96), and was perhaps the most widely imitated ballad written during the reign of Elizabeth. No. 10 was almost certainly written sometime in the period between 1559 and 1565, when innumerable other imitations and moralizations were pouring from the press.
11. "The Louer complaineth the losse of his Ladie, To Cicilia Pauin. " (Signed) Finis. I. Tomson.
These lines in the opening stanzas of the ballad,
Heart, what makes thee thus to be,
in extreame heauinesse? . . .
Why would I cloake from her presence,
My loue and faithfull diligence? . . .
No, no, I wil shew my woe,
in this calamitie,
indicate that this was perhaps the ballad of "a harte Declarynge his heavenes wyshyng that yt were knowen," which Richard Jones licensed several months before the Pleasant Sonnets (Trans., I, 297). It is hopeless to try to identify I. Tomson with any of the very many John Tomsons who were students at Oxford and Cambridge in 1565–84.
12. "The Louer compareth some subtile Suters to the Hunter. To the tune of the Painter."
No details about the tune are in Popular Music, I, 161; but, as Arber (p. viii) notes, A. Lacy licensed a ballad of "ye paynter
