Campaspe (play)

Campaspe is an Elizabethan era stage play, a prose comedy with inset songs by John Lyly based on the story of the love triangle between Campaspe, a Theban captive, the artist Apelles, and Alexander the Great, who commissioned him to paint her portrait.

Title page of Q3 (1584)

Act I

• GRANICHUS:
  O for a Bowle of fatt Canary,
  Rich Palermo, sparkling Sherry,
  Some Nectar else, from Juno’s Daiery,
  O these draughts would make us merry.
  PSYLLUS:
  O for a wench, (I deale in faces,
  And in other dayntier things,)
  Tickled am I with her Embraces,
  Fine dancing in such Fairy Ringes.
  MANES:
  O for a plump fat leg of Mutton,
  Veale, Lambe, Capon, Pigge, and Conney,
  None is happy but a Glutton,
  None an Asse but who wants money.
  CHORUS:
  Wines (indeed,) and Girles are good,
  But brave victuals feast the bloud,
  For wenches, wine, and Lusty cheere,
  Jove would leape down to surfet heere.
  • Scene ii, line 88, "Song"

Act III

O Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?

• CAMPASPE: Were women never to faire, mẽ wold be false.
  APELLES: Were womẽ never so false, men wold be fond.
  • Scene iii, line 28

• APELLES:
  Cupid and my Campaspe playd
  At Cardes for kisses, Cupid payd;
  He stakes his Quiver, Bow, and Arrows,
  His Mothers doves, and teeme of sparrows;
  Looses them too; then, downe he throwes
  The corrall of his lippe, the rose
  Growing on’s cheek (but none knows how),
  With these, the cristall of his Brow,
  And then the dimple of his chinne:
  All these did my Campaspe winne.
  At last, hee set her both his eyes;
  Shee won, and Cupid blind did rise.
    O Love! has shee done this to Thee?
    What shall (Alas!) become of mee?
  • Scene v, line 62, "Song by Apelles"
  • Variants: line 74, "for Thee"

Act V

• TRICO singeth:
  What Bird so sings, yet so dos wayle?
  O t’is the ravish’d Nightingale.
  Jug, jug, jug, tereu, shee cryes,
  And still her woes at Midnight rise.
  Brave prick song! who is’t now we heare?
  None but the Larke so shrill and cleare;
  Now at heavens gats she claps her wings,
  The Morne not waking till shee sings.
  Heark, heark, with what a pretty throat
  Poore Robin red-breast tunes his note;
  Heark how the jolly Cuckoes sing
  Cuckoe, to welcome in the spring,
  Cuckoe, to welcome in the spring.
  • Scene i, line 32, "Song"
  • Cp. the opening words of the song in Cymbeline, II, iii, 21