ABSTRACT
Throughout the histories of music Henry Lawes has been viewed as a composer who was quite skilled at setting the poetic texts of numerous Cavalier writers, among them Herrick, Carew, Suckling, Lovelace, Waller, and Milton.2 Many of these poets wrote praises to him detailing his
skill and oering their gratitude for the way he elevated and, in a sense, completed their poetry with his music. Katherine Philips, another of Lawes’s contemporaries, was among the many poets impressed with him. Her poem of praise to Lawes was printed in the opening pages of his Second Book of Ayres and Dialogues of 1655, and it pays homage to his ability to upli the poetic text through music.3 She writes:
Philips’s connection with Lawes, however, goes far beyond her commendatory poem. Indeed, one poem by Philips was set to music for this collection, and her circle of friends played a signicant role in Lawes’s Second Book of Ayres, a fact that has been brought forward by literary historians and musicologists alike.4 What has not been considered by scholars, however, is the way in which the Philips/Lawes artistic collaboration operated, and if Lawes in fact did for Philips’s poetry what so many other poets claimed he did for theirs. Also, since Philips’s work is at least woman-identied, if not actually lesbian, several theoretically interesting questions arise. How is Philips’s lesbian stance delineated in her poetry? What was the seventeenth century’s understanding of female friendship and love, the subject of most of Philips’s poetry? And nally, how did Lawes set her verses, and did his musical response project, mask, or suppress the lesbian voice?
