Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes: A Song History
The words are Ben Jonson's "Song: To Celia," published in 1616 as part of The Forest,[1] and printed that year in his folio Workes.[2] The poem is less original than it sounds: editors describe it as an artful assembly of images drawn from the prose love letters of Philostratus, a Greek sophist, including the opening idea of pledging a toast with the eyes alone.[2] Scholars agree on the borrowing, though Jonson reworked those scattered conceits into a new and tightly made lyric, and it became his most anthologized poem.[1]
Wine Glass, engraved blown lead glass, 1780–1825. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.
The melody now sung to it is a separate and later creation, and its composer is uncertain. It appeared around 1790 in John Wall Callcott's A Select Collection of Catches, Canons and Glees, set for two trebles and bass; Callcott, a pupil of Haydn, is sometimes credited with the tune, but it is thought to be older, so he may have arranged rather than composed it, and the antiquarian William Chappell could not trace its origins.[3] One modern publisher's notes, finding no printing earlier than Callcott's, lean toward giving him the credit while admitting that authorship cannot be settled with certainty.[4] The poem had other settings too, among them an entirely different melody by Elizabeth Turner in 1756, and in the nineteenth century it was arranged as a song, apparently by Colonel Mellish (1777–1817).[3]
The glee also circulated in America: an undated Philadelphia printing in the Levy Sheet Music Collection at Johns Hopkins presents it for three voices in The Ladies Collection of Glees, Rounds & Chorusses.[5] Instrumentalists took it up as an air, with printings in Aird's sixth and last volume of Scotch, English, Irish and foreign airs (1803) and in Riley's Flute Melodies (New York, 1814).[3] Dana Gruber includes it in Play Pretty, a hybrid songbook and teaching book for mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, where it serves as a lesson in playing turns.[6]
Sources
- Encyclopedia.com: "Song: To Celia".
- University of Toronto Libraries, Representative Poetry Online: "Song to Celia".
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Drink to Me Only".
- Philip Sparke: "Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes (Cornet Solo with Brass Band)".
- Johns Hopkins University, Levy Sheet Music Collection: "The Ladies Collection of Glees, Rounds & Chorusses for Three Voices. (5) Glee. Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Dana Gruber, Play Pretty".
- Image: Wine Glass, engraved blown lead glass, 1780–1825. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.