7d

SSMYNSHALL AND SWARLAND

RICHARD MYNSHALL'S LUTE BOOK:Private library of Robert Spencer, Woodford Green, Essex. Dating from 1597 (date written on f.5v). Book written almost entirely in the hand of Richard Mynshall (b1582) with three pieces added at the end of Mynshall's section by two further hands.

THE JOHN SWARLAND BOOK OF LUTE SONGS: London, British Library Add.Ms.15117. Signed on the endpaper by John Swarland, but not apparently entirely written out by him. Lute songs interspersed with some solos. c1615.

Mynshall was written by a very young scribe in 1595, and was almost certainly prepared under the direction of a tutor.[1] The mature use-hand of the young Richard Mynshall is seen only in the secretary script that he uses when writing out an index to the contents and occasionally in titles within the book. (See table 40 below, p.228.) For his tablature he chose italic which was clearly his second hand, and one he was not entirely comfortable with when he began copying the lute music. (See example 60.)

ex.60[2] Mynshall f.7v, Richard Mynshall

Because this script is still in a state of evolution during copying, the characteristics of his hand change quite significantly through the book, particularly in the titles of the pieces. Although some titles are remarkably crude, others show more flow and sense of proportion in the duct and demonstrate the emergence of a quite elegant italic hand. Such is the difference in appearance of the better-written examples, which appear irregularly interspersed among the cruder titles, that it is possible the neater ones were written by a scribe more experienced in the use of italic--perhaps Mynshall's teacher. A second scribe copied a single piece at the end of Mynshall's copying, and is followed by a third hand contributing the final piece in the book. Spencer believes that the last scribe is the mature form of Mynshall's hand,[3] and it certainly has much in common with the earlier part of the book.

Whether or not the last piece in Mynshall is in fact in Richard Mynshall's mature tablature hand is quite significant. It is certainly likely that this is the case, since two similar hands would have been unlikely to appear in the same book unless they were related. The slight angulation to the right in the later hand would be commensurate with faster and more confident copying, and an older scribe would be likely to have dispensed with the flamboyant decoration of his early years. Examples 60 and 61 show folios 7v and 12v from Mynshall, the first in the hand of Richard Mynshall, the second possibly Mynshall later in life.

ex. 61 Mynshall f.12v, ?Richard Mynshall

The form of the letter 'c' is different, excluding the serif, and the higher letters and flags seem to have settled into a fixed form. The second scribe uses both # and + graces, in a clearly different hand from Mynshall's ornaments, and without the cross-hatch variations of Mynshall earlier in the book. The high letters could have been written by the same scribe, and the flourish on the descender of the 'g' is similar to that tried on some folios by Mynshall. The 'f' and the single flags, on the other hand, use significantly different strokes from those employed by Mynshall. The spacing of the letters is very regular, and many features of the duct have changed, including the addition of hold signs to his copying by Mynshall Scribe C, unlike Mynshall. Mynshall may have started to use hold signs as his playing became more accomplished, but scribal practices overall in this repertory show that a scribe either used hold signs or not, and did not change this habit even when learning from a teacher who employed them. John Dowland, who used hold signs in his own copying, added hold signs to the copying of both Margaret Boardand one of the Folger scribes, both of whom it appears he taught at some time in their careers. Neither scribe, however, picked up the usage from Dowland, and neither use them either before or after Dowland taught them.

Swarland, a book of lute songs and solos, is so called because of the inscription 'John swarland / His Booke' written horizontally on a front end-paper (the book is in upright format), although Swarland himself does not appear to have been responsible for the contents.[4] He may have been an owner of the book after the lute music was copied. The back of the (?parchment) wrapper is a will written in the seventh year of the reign of James I, i.e. 24 March 1609 to 23 March 1610 and the back end-paper shows the dates 1630, 1608 and 1633, though all these dates appear to refer to legal cases and seem to be in a later seventeenth-century hand than that in the music part of the book. On the same end-paper is the inscription 'This Booke be...[?...longs to/?...gun by] / Hugh Floyd', also in a mid seventeenth-century hand.

The music in Swarland is by two scribes, the second being one who appears in a number of other sources, discussed below as, possibly, Richard Allison, dating from 1588 (Walsingham), c1600-1605 (Dd.9.33), c1610 (Sampson) and c1615 (Dd.4.22). The work of these two scribes in Swarland seems to have been contemporary and could therefore date from any time in the 30 years spanned by these sources: 1585-1615.[5] Certainly the hand of Allison is clearly recognisable, and does not seem to change a great deal despite the length of time he was active. Mynshall, copied from 1597 on, places Richard Mynshall's copying life precisely alongside the activity of Allison.

Example 62 is taken from Swarland, and the similarities between this folio and Mynshall's known hand (shown in example 60 above) are very striking, particularly the letter 'c', the shapes of the flags, the overall layout and the double bars and decoration of the final bar. The inaccuracies in barring and rhythm seen in Mynshall are also evident, though to a lesser extent, and mostly corrected, in Swarland.

Mynshall's ornament signs, though not unusual, are fairly distinctive, partly because he appears to scratch them with the edge of the nib to get the finest line in both directions. They are all variations of the # sign, with varying numbers of crosses both horizontally and vertically, and slightly irregular angulation. They are added liberally to some pieces, and not at all to others; an indication that they may not necessarily have been put in by Mynshall, or that he may have been copying from two exemplars: one heavily graced, and the other not. Example 63 is taken from f.1 of his copying in Mynshall. The first piece is ungraced, but the second is liberally decorated with several different forms of the # sign.

ex. 62 Swarland f.8v, Swarland A: ?Richard Mynshall

ex. 63 Mynshall f.5

Swarland A uses the + or x sign grace, which Mynshall uses only once,[6] placed after or beneath their notes. As in Mynshall, some pieces are graced, while others are not. The # sign also appears, similar in appearance to Mynshall's sign, but only in the simple form without the additional cross-hatching.

The higher letters (f, g, h, j, k) are usually more distinctive than lower ones in tablature, but because of the state of development of the script, they appear in a number of forms; with descenders sometimes flourished, and sometimes simply curled under. In fact, in this case it is the lower letters (a, b, c, d, e) that are more regular, and are most distinctive. The 'c'is characterised by a small 45deg. serif on the angle of the vertical and horizontal strokes, visible in example 63. This old-fashioned formation is clearly visible on all the tablature appearances of the letter, but not in the titles where the more modern rounded form of the letter is employed. Almost every internal double bar and all the terminal bars are decorated differently, the only regular feature being that they are all decorated, giving the manuscript an appearance of uncontrolled exuberance.

The inconsistency in Richard Mynshall's writing has been attributed to his youth when he compiled Mynshall, and this is not an unreasonable hypothesis. The writing certainly looks as though it was executed by a child, though the secretary script that Mynshall would have learned first in the late 1590s shows that his hand was not lacking in finesse in his formal hand. If the first script in Swarland was also executed by Mynshall, then it appears that his italic hand did not undergo much deliberate improvement later in life, although by c1615 (the approximate date for the compilation of Swarland) he was comfortable enough with its use to write an index in italic. Mynshall's tablature never seems to settle into the regular form that most hands acquire with time, a form like that of Mynshall Scribe C, which is how one might expect the earlier hand to mature. Like Allison, discussed below, Mynshall's hand shows an irregularity related to the types of pen he used. He was probably one of those not particularly highly-taught writers who bought job lots of pens and ink from stationers, and probably did not bother to re-shape or trim the nibs himself. Mynshall's lack of attention to his pens leads to variations in his script, all showing the same overall characteristics, but varying in size and pressure. Like many writers, he probably kept a pot of pens beside him, and when one nib became soggy, he set it aside to dry and harden up, and used another, switching between the two as he went. Because they had not been cut and finished similarly, variations in the hand appear.

Although the flagging in the two sources appears at first glance to lack regularity, closer examination shows that it is surprisingly consistent, and single flags particularly show distinctive and frequently recurring shapes. It is the flags and the style of the tablature letter 'c', as well as some of the terminal bar decorations, that link the two sources.

Both the Mynshall Scribe C tablature and that in Swarland are for larger lutes than Mynshall was using when he first started playing. Mynshall learned to play with music for a six-course lute. Mynshall C used a lute with seven courses, and Swarland A one with ten, though the tenth course is very rarely used and some of the solo pieces do not use more than the first six courses.

Very few lute sources have an index. Mynshall and Swarland do, though they use different scripts. Table 40 shows the index from Mynshall and a portion of the longer one from Swarland. If the scribe is Mynshall, he may have been comfortable enough with his italic hand by c1615 to use it for his index; equally probably, they may not have been written by the same scribe.

Table 40 COMPARISON OF INDEXES FROM MYNSHALL AND SWARLAND

Conclusion

The strongest arguments against these two scribes being Richard Mynshall are the dates of the two books. The date of the watermark of Swarland--in this case reasonably exact--is substantiated by circumstantial evidence that places it undoubtedly in the second decade of the seventeenth century,almost certainly after 1615. The date 1597 was doodled in Mynshall at the time of copying, almost certainly by Richard Mynshall himself. Pedagogical books nearly always contain a retrospective repertory, and Mynshall may have been doodling a date from his exemplar, rather than making a point about the year in which he was copying. The absence of deliberate dates from other books (whatever their purpose), and the fact that Mynshall is certainly the youngest scribe known in the repertory if he was copying in 1597, give grounds for suspicion about the date of copying. However, the arms on the cover, the watermark of the end-papers and the 'Essex letter' of 1599 copied at the back of the book place it indisputably late in the reign of , and confirm Mynshall's copying date of 1597. It is quite possible that Mynshall's mature hand did not change significantly from the hand he used in 1597, particularly if he did not write tablature very frequently. However, neither the apparently immature text hand nor the tablature of Richard Allison changed over this period (i.e. c1595-1615), so it is reasonable to suppose that Mynshall's hand also did not change. The activity of the Allison scribe discussed in the following case study shows that it is quite likely that Mynshall's tablature hand remained basically unchanged for some twenty years, arguing strongly for the probability that the hand in Swarland did belong to him.

TABLE 41
TERMINAL BARS AND OTHER FIGURES IN MYNSHALL AND SWARLAND
Mynshall
Swarland

There are far more similarities between Mynshall and Swarland A than between Mynshall and Scribe C in Mynshall. The duct, angulation and detailed characteristics, including the graces scratched with the side of the nib, are virtually identical to Mynshall's current tablature hand, as are the titles. The final bar decoration frequently matches a pattern which Mynshall uses more than once, but is not used by Mynshall Scribe C, and the occasional caricature face that Mynshall doodles by using terminal bar strokes and fermatas is also to be seen in Swarland (see table 41, particularly the lowest of the examples given in each column). Although Mynshall's hand looks irregular, in fact the spacing and angulation of individual letters is very consistent right through his copying in Mynshall and is echoed in Swarland. The likelihood, therefore, is that the late hand in Mynshall on f.12v (shown in example 61) is probably not that of Richard Mynshall, but of another scribe, and that Mynshall is the principal scribe of Swarland.
If Mynshall and Swarland are linked, then that brings Mynshall in turn into the Allison group discussed below. The occurrence of a lute solo scribe who also writes lute songs is very rare--witness the apparent polarization of both printed and manuscript sources into either lute song or lute solo. Swarland is unique in that it preserves both types of repertory side by side, and Richard Mynshall is therefore significantly one of only two solo lute scribes who are also known to have copied lute songs, both of whom are represented only in Swarland as scribes of lute song.

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