CHAPTER III


During the first ten years of his mastership Purcell composed
much--precisely how much we can only guess. It was not until 1690 that
he began the huge string of incidental theatre sets which were for so
long spoken of as his operas. Mr. Barclay Squire, to whom all who are
interested in Purcell are deeply indebted, has clearly established that
by 1690, though not more than two years earlier, his one opera, _Dido
and Aeneas_, was written. If we take this as belonging to the period
which began in 1690, we have for these first ten years only ten plays to
which he provided music, and of these several are very doubtful, and the
rest not very important. During the remaining six years of his life he
wrote music for forty-two plays. Several sets are of the greatest
importance, amongst them _Dioclesian, King Arthur, The Fairy Queen_ and
_The Tempest_.

We cannot tell how many of the anthems belong to this period. One might
surmise that most of them do, as his activity at the theatre later on
must have occupied most of his time. But if we had no dates for Mozart's
three greater symphonies, we might readily fall into the mistake of
attributing them to another year than that of their composition, and
the mistake would be natural, if not inevitable, when we consider the
enormous amount of music we know Mozart to have written in 1788. In
Purcell we find the same terrific, superhuman energy manifested as the
day of his death drew near, and perhaps we may be wrong in imagining
that the theatre wholly absorbed him. A few of the anthems may with
great probability be ascribed to certain dates because of the royal
events with which they are connected. For example, two ("I was Glad,"