“O Mistress Mine”

Posting folk songs from this day till the ending of the world!

“O Mistress Mine” is another lyric from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that I set to music back in my days as a Waldorf teacher. In fact, my recording of it this week is directly a result of my former student Joshua (who played Orsino in the play) requesting it in a comment on my YouTube channel. I couldn’t remember the tune, but, after rummaging through tons of crap in my office, I found a DVD of the performance.

The song appears in the play when, in Act 2, Scene 3, the clown Feste stumbles upon Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Maria in the midst of a late-night drinking carousal.

SIR ANDREW
Excellent! why, this is the best fooling, when all
is done. Now, a song.

SIR TOBY BELCH
Come on; there is sixpence for you: let's have a song.

SIR ANDREW
There's a testril of me too: if one knight give a--

CLOWN
Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?

SIR TOBY BELCH
A love-song, a love-song.

SIR ANDREW
Ay, ay: I care not for good life.

The song is in the long tradition in the West of carpe diem: Seize the day. Youth’s a stuff will not endure, so gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

Here are the lyrics:

O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?  
O stay and hear! your true-love’s coming  
That can sing both high and low;  
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,  
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting—          
Every wise man’s son doth know.  
  
What is love? ’tis not hereafter;  
Present mirth hath present laughter;  
What’s to come is still unsure:  
In delay there lies no plenty,—          
Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty,  
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

The last cultural iteration of the carpe diem before everybody stopped getting married until they finished graduate school only to find out they were no longer fertile: