The King's Delight
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"The King's Delight", also known as "When once I lay with another man's wife" or<br> "Gamesters and Lawyers" is an English air and country dance Tune in 6/4 time and<br> D Major.<br> The parts are played AB or AABB (Barlow).<br> The tune appears in Playford's Apollo's Banquet: Select tunes and Jiggs for the<br> Treble Violin (1670), Musick's Handmaid (1678), Introduction to the Skill of<br> Musick (14th edition, 1700) Supplement to the Third Edition of The Dancing Master<br> (1665) and other of the Playford Restoration-era publications.<br> "The King's Delight" was entered into the music manuscript collection of<br> Northumbrian musician Henry Atkinson (1694-95) and a manuscript collection dated<br> 1704 known as Agnes Humes' MS (at one time kept in the Advocate's Library,<br> Edinburgh) also contains the piece. John Gay adapted it for a song in his ballad<br> opera The Beggar's Opera (1728) where it is known by its first line: "The gamesters<br> and lawyers are jugglers alike".<br> Frank Kidson finds it had been previously used as an air for a "not over refined<br> song" (Kidson prudishly refuses to print even the first line of that ribald piece,<br> but mentions it is given in the early editions of Gay's opera as the original name<br> of the air--he is referring to "When once I lay with another man's wife").<br> Arnold made further use of the melody in his opera Two to One (1784). <br> I was also printed in Kidson's Old English Country Dances (1890) and<br> Barlow's Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master (1985).<br> It was recorded by The King's Noyse on The King's Delight: 17c. Ballads for Voice<br> and Violin Band (1992).<br>
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