Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0

Word count: 254K words
Chapters: 26

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 by Thomas D'UrfeyAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: M: Music, Release Date: Sep 21, 2008

Editor's review

This is the fifth of six volumes of Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, a ballad collection compiled by Thomas D’Urfey, a documentary text belonging to English music and popular literature. Its value lies not in a continuous narrative but in preserving the lyrics of a large number of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English ballads, drinking songs, humorous ditties, and stage interludes, allowing readers to observe the colloquial speech, popular tastes, and forms of music publishing of the time. As a public-domain ebook, it is best browsed as a document: it can serve as marginal material for the history of English balladry and as an entry point into early modern English popular entertainment. There is no need to read it straight through; it is better to skip among topics or pieces and to use annotations or background materials to understand archaic words, puns, and period allusions. For general readers it is more a reference library to dip into than a连贯 piece of entertainment.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying the history of English ballads, folk songs, and popular music
Readers interested in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English popular literature
Readers needing public-domain lyrics for translation or linguistic research
Readers who like browsing documentary ebooks and skipping among pieces

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting a coherent novelistic plot or complete narrative
Beginners needing modern Chinese annotations and detailed introductions
Readers unaccustomed to early English spelling and archaic words

Reading tips

Read the table of contents and opening notes first, pick titles that interest you, and browse piece by piece.
Mark archaic words or allusions as you go, then look them up together after finishing a group.
Read alongside background on English ballads or music history to understand the context.
Do not feel obliged to read straight through; treat the book as a reusable library of lyrics.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a ballad collection?

It is not a novel but the fifth volume of an English collection of ballads and humorous ditties compiled by Thomas D’Urfey. The content consists mainly of lyrics and short popular songs, suitable for browsing by piece rather than continuous reading by plot.

Can I read this book without a music background?

You can, but adjust your expectations. The book preserves lyrics with limited melodic information, so readers are mainly encountering early English popular language and street-level humor. If you are completely unfamiliar with the background, understanding puns and allusions will be somewhat difficult.

Why does the language feel unfamiliar?

Because the text preserves earlier English spelling, colloquial expressions, and period allusions, which are distant from modern English. Try a short piece first, mark difficulties, and use background materials to understand them; do not struggle over every word.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Project Gutenberg Author

Project Gutenberg is not a single author but a nonprofit digital library founded by Michael Hart in 1971 and one of the world's earliest free ebook platforms. It relies on volunteers to digitize, proofread, and freely distribute public-domain works and is now operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Its collection contains 2,692 works, mainly religious texts, epics, and story collections, including the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims volumes, the epic Mahabharata, a literal translation of the Arabian Nights, and Danish editions of the Old and New Testaments. Public information is limited, and its nature is closer to a public-interest compiling and dissemination body; these texts are open to the public, easy to consult and circulate, and have had a profound influence on the spread of ebooks and the preservation of public-domain resources.