A. Characters: their Sources.—T. Warton, in 1785 (Milton's Poems on Several Occasions), pointed out that "the names of some of the characters as Sacrapant, Chorebus, and others, are taken from the Orlando Furioso." Peele quotes Ariosto freely near the end of Edward I. Storojenko (Grosart's Greene, I, 180) thinks the Sacrapant in Greene's Orlando Furioso "a very transparent parody of Tamburlaine." Mr. Fleay, with some daring, asserts that Huanebango is travestied from Huon o'Bordeaux, and is "palpably Harvey." Erestus, says the same authority, is from Kyd's Soliman and Perseda; "the play is evidently full of personal allusions, which time only can elucidate." Mr. Ward remarks that Jack is "namesake and rival of the immortal giant-killer." The classics, of course, are represented. Warton remarked that the story of Meroe could be found in Adlington's translation of Apuleius, 1566; but it is hardly necessary to go to such a source for the "White Bear of England's Wood."
B. The Song of the Harvesters—When the harvest-men enter again, and sing the song "doubled,"—as here,—it is evidently the same thing, a companion piece, only with reaping in place of sowing, and words to match:—
"Lo, here we come a-reaping, a-reaping,
To reap our harvest-fruit.
And thus we pass the year so long,
And never be we mute."
Is it too much, then, to assume that the present song is to be restored somewhat as follows?—
They would naturally enter with motions of sowing or of reaping, and the opening words would fit the action. Moreover, "In your sweethearts well may it prove" must refer to requital not for the act of sowing, but for the prayers invoked. These craft-songs were common enough. In Summer's Last Will and Testament the harvest-men sing an old folk-song of this kind, if one may judge by the Hooky, hooky of the refrain, said by one of the Dodsley editors (ed. 1825, IX, 41) to be heard still "in some parts of the kingdom." The curious in these matters may find valuable information about songs of labour in general, with imitative action and suitable refrains, in BÜcher's Arbeit und Rhythmus, Abhandlungen d. phil.-hist. Classe d. kÖnigl. SÄchsischen Gesell. d. Wissenschaften, Bd. XVII.
Additional Note—P. 368, l. 491, for 'church stile,' P. A. Daniel queries 'church ale'?—but see Overbury' Characters (Works, p. 145), "A Sexton": 'for at every church stile commonly ther's an ale-house.'
