For your listening and viewing enjoyment, Purcell's "Music for a while" [1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BpX3Gx8Aig&hd=1 Dryden's text from the play 1. Musick for a while Shall your Cares beguile: Wondring how your Pains were eas'd. 2. And disdaining to be pleas'd; 3. Till Alecto free the dead From their eternal Bands; Till the Snakes drop from her Head, And whip from out her Hands. Dryden's text is very unusual in form, with both irregular line lengths and verses. You can see Purcell made some interesting changes to the poem, adding an extra syllable in the last line to make it symmetrical, and adding "alls" with the "shalls" to make better melismas. Or perhaps there is a different version (other than the printed song texts) ....if you know of one, please let me know. Other interesting variants are changing "hands" and "bands" to the singular, even though "bands" in the sense of bonds, not the musical ensemble, is usually plural. Alecto is one of the Furies--the Furies had snakes for hair, like the Gorgons (think Medusa)--and here the meaning is difficult to determine. In addition to the obvious context of the play Oedipus, in which the song appears, the Furies appear in many classical works. Reading the various references in Greek plays, Virgil, and so on, the best fit I can find is from Dante's Inferno, where Dante and Virgil try to pass the gates of Dis--which is guarded by the Furies and the fallen angels--wherein are held the heretics as well as the more serious criminals. Seneca, in Hercules Furens, writes "Begin, [Furies] handmaids of Dis, make haste to brandish the burning pine; let Megaera lead on her band bristling with serpents and with baleful hand snatch a torch from the blazing fire." Another possibility is that Alecto is conflated with Medusa. This is unlikely, as Dryden was so well versed in the Classics, however Medusa was the only Gorgon who was not immortal (and lost her head), and freeing the dead could refer to changing people back from stone. I think the sense of Alecto freeing the dead is ironic. The Furies were first and foremost known for being relentless avengers, therefore the sense may be that "Music will always beguile our cares till beyond the end of time," as it would be impossible for the Furies to change their stripes and let their prisoners free, just as we use the expression "till Hell Freezes over." One of the great Purcell songs. dt
-- References 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BpX3Gx8Aig&hd=1 To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
