Fair Phyllis

[Anita or Paul Langholz]

Can someone set me straight on what's going on in this madrigal? Fair
Phyllis is sitting alone feeding her livestock, and the shepherds don't
know where she is. "But after her lover Amyntas hied." Who is Amyntas?
Is Amyntas another woman who is "panting" over Phyllis' lover? Or is
Amyntas a man? If so, you've got to wonder about "HER lover." "Up and
down he wandered..." Who? Phyllis' lover? When they fell a-kissing,
who found whom? I'm confused. Is this a two- or a three-way chase?

Paul Langholz
lan...@netins.net

[Paul Sinasohn]

If you remember the "hie" is an archaic term for "went to"/"came
to"/"hastened upon"/traveled,
then it makes more sense. If I remember correctly, Amnytas is a guy who
hies to Phyllis and they start a-kissing. He found her when the other
shepards (Phyllis' colleagues) had no idea where she was.

But it's been a while.

Paul, who must now "hie" to the classroom to teach for 3 days a computer
course that isn't ready. yet.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Sinasohn sina...@netcom.com SF Native CAL '80

Editor, Academic Computers Magazine CASA Arrangements Librarian

Bass & Business manager: PRESS ANY KEY - Acappella At Your Fingertips

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[Eliza, a Scribbling Dame]

On 17 Feb 1997, Anita or Paul Langholz wrote:

> Can someone set me straight on what's going on in this madrigal?

The ambiguity arises in the lines

The shepherds knew not whither she was gone

But after her lover Amyntas hied.

Amyntas is Phyllis's lover; the denotation of the sentence is that the
shepherds, not knowing where Phyllis was, scurried after Amyntas instead
while he was looking for her. (Amyntas appears in other poetry about
Phyllis--Pilkington wrote a madrigal called "Amyntas with his Phyllis
Fair," for example.) Then, when Amyntas found Phyllis, they fell
a-kissing, presumably with the shepherds looking on.

As a grammar maven I find it intriguing that the word "Amyntas" in
Farmer's text has no commas around it, making it technically a restrictive
appositive--which in modern English would imply that the fair Phyllis
wasn't necessarily the FAITHFUL Phyllis.

Reading too much in,
Eliza at UCI

[Nina Gilbert]

Paul Langholz is getting entangled with Fair Phyllis, and he asks:

>Can someone set me straight on what's going on in this madrigal? Fair
>Phyllis is sitting alone feeding her livestock, and the shepherds don't

>know where she is. "But after her lover Amyntas hied." Who is Amyntas?
>. . .

> "Up and
>down he wandered..." Who? Phyllis' lover? When they fell a-kissing,

>who found whom? . . .

Since you've sort of stumbled into my dissertation topic (which started out
as a search to find out who was the original Fair Phyllis), I'm going to
show off.

Short answer: Amyntas is a man. Phyllis is hying (hurrying) after her
lover, namely Amyntas.

When he (Amyntas) finds her (Phyllis), they fall a-kissing (in happy triple
time). Then, of course, the tenors comment, via that well-placed repeat,
"Up and down he wandered."

Longer answer: Phyllis is such a generic shepherdess type that by 1699 she
is a transitive verb! According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "to
Phillis" meant "to address in pastoral verses." Two centuries later, when
Gilbert & Sullivan need "an Arcadian shepherdess" (in _Iolanthe_?), they
name her Phyllis. She's all over Spenser, Tasso, Virgil, and Sannazaro,
too.

The *original* Phyllis was one of those mythological women who got turned
into a plant by the gods. She "first appears in Greek legend as the
betrothed of Demophoon, son of Theseus. When Demophoon fails to appear on
the promised wedding day, she hangs herself and the gods turn her into an
almond tree."

Source for the above quote:

Part of the entry under "Phyllis" in:

"Who's who in Arcadia: a madrigal directory." American Choral Foundation
Research Memorandum Series, No. 141 (May 1986). Available from Chorus
America <chor...@libertynet.org>.

"Phyllis" gets the longest of the 120 entries in the Who's Who; there's a
slew on Amyntas too. In Farmer's madrigal, they are just generic
nymph-and-shepherd names that fit the iambic pentameter.

Disclaimer: the Who's Who was the appendix to my dissertation, but I have
no financial connection to its sale by Chorus America.

Hope this helps!

Nina Gilbert

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Nina Gilbert
Music Department, University of California-Irvine
ngil...@uci.edu; NLGi...@aol.com
voice mail: 714-824-3854; department fax: 714-824-4914
http://www.arts.uci.edu/music/gilbert/ (updated February 12)

[Lee]

Paul Langholz wrote:

>Can someone set me straight on what's going on in this madrigal? Fair
>Phyllis is sitting alone feeding her livestock, and the shepherds don't
>know where she is. "But after her lover Amyntas hied." Who is Amyntas?

> Is Amyntas another woman who is "panting" over Phyllis' lover? Or is

>Amyntas a man? If so, you've got to wonder about "HER lover." "Up and

>down he wandered..." Who? Phyllis' lover? When they fell a-kissing,

>who found whom? I'm confused. Is this a two- or a three-way chase?
>
>Paul Langholz
>lan...@netins.net

Ya see, it's like this:
There's this shepherd girl -- Phyllis, by name (they're ALWAYS named
Phyllis!) -- who has gone off feeding her flock. Meanwhile, along comes
her lover, Amyntas. He asks the other shepherd-guys, "Y'all seen Phyll?"

They, being about as bright as the sheep, knew not whither she had gone.
So poor ole Amyntas goes wandering up hill and down dale, looking for her
on his own.

Eventually he finds her and they kiss.

END OF STORY!

EXCEPT that the composer, John Farmer ("Farmer's do it in the fields")
knows that the story doesn't really end there. He wasn't quite prepared
to alter the poem, but with a little selective repetition he manages to
get the TRUE STORY across.

As the poem ends "... then they fell a-kissing, a-kissing, a-kissing, and
then they fell a-kissing." ... he completes the picture with "... up and
down he wandered, up and down, up and down..."

This piece always gets a surprised laugh from our audiences -- at least
from the alert ones. They are never quite prepared for the level of
earthiness of Elizabethan humor. Check out all the Elizabethan "falas"
with the understanding that those nonsense syllables are the equivalent
of Richard Nixon's "expletive deleted." It brings the pieces suddenly
into focus.

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