Note 1. This poem and the second following, No. 255, are undoubtedly by the same author. There are conflicting opinions, however, as to his identity. This song was published with six others in England’s Helicon, 1600, and signed “Shepherd Tony.” It is also found in Anthony Munday’s Primaleon, 1619. “And though Anthony Munday,” says Mr. Quiller-Couch, “(‘our best plotter’ according to Meres, and elsewhere less reverently, ‘the Grub Street Patriarch’), could write poorly enough, as a rule, the evidence is sufficient that he was the ‘Shepherd Tony’ and author of this graceful lyric.” “This charming lyric,” writes Mr. Bullen, in his edition of England’s Helicon, “was written by ‘Shepherd Tony,’ who contributed six other poems. It would be pleasant to be able to identify the Shepherd Tony; but I fear that he will remain a mere nominis umbra. The suggestion that the delightful lyrist was Anthony Copely, author of A Fig for Fortune, 1596, and Wits, Fits, and Fancies, 1614, is ridiculous; and equally ridiculous is the suggestion that he was Anthony Munday.” This, however, was written before Mr. Bullen had become familiar with all of Munday’s writings; and after the discovery of this poem in the Primalean, he became convinced of the identity of Munday and the Shepherd Tony, recanting in an interesting note in the Introduction to the Lyrics from Elizabethan Romances. [back]
