I
The musical instrument familiar to us as the cittern is a member of
the lute family. This pear-shaped, shallow-bodied instrument enjoyed
great favour during the sixteenth century, particularly among amateurs
who "must at all times have formed the majority of cittern
players."[6] There are several reasons for
the instrument's popularity: the wire strings (plucked by a plectrum)
stayed in tune much longer than the cat-gut strings of the sibling lute;
the right-hand playing technique was easy to learn; and the instrument
was relatively inexpensive. Perhaps for these reasons, the cittern
quickly became a standard item in barbers' shops, where it was provided
for the pre-tonsorial enjoyment of waiting customers (a Renaissance
equivalent of magazines or newspapers).
The presence of citterns in barbers' shops is widely referred to
by Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, so much so that the association
can be considered part of the stock dramatic parlance of the period. In
Jonson's The Staple of News Pennyboy Junior recounts how his
"barber Tom, . . . one Christmas, . . . got into a masque at Court, by
his wit, / And the good means
of his cittern, holding up thus / For one o' the music."
[7] In Lyly's
Midas (3.2.35) Motto, the
barber, reminds his man that he has taught him several skills of the
trade, including "the tuning of a cittern" ("tune" has the dual meaning
"play" and "put in tune"; see
OED tune 3a).
[8] Oliver the weaver, in Middleton's
The
Mayor of Queenborough, tells how he helped a poor barber who, it
seems, was forced to pawn his cittern: "I gave that barber a
fustian-suit, and twice redeemed his cittern: he may remember me."
[9] In Jonson's
Epicoene Morose chooses
his silent [
sic] bride on the advice of Cutbeard the barber.
When his bride proves talkative, Morose exclaims "That cursed barber! .
. . I have married his cittern, that's common to all men."
[10] The equation of silence with chastity and
speech with promiscuity was a Renaissance commonplace; Morose's cittern
analogy subtly links his wife's noise- making capacity with her presumed
general availability. Dekker and Middleton similarly suggest sexual
availability in
2 Honest Whore when Matheo denounces Bellafront
as a whore, "A Barbers Citterne for euery Seruingman to play vpon."
[11]
The above references show that cittern playing in barbers' shops
was a firmly entrenched custom.[12] But
what relevance do citterns have in the context of Petruccio's criticism
of sartorial slashing? It is here that the engravings on citterns are
of relevance.
Besides being known for its presence in barbers' shops, the
cittern was
renowned for its exaggerated decorative carvings, usually of
heads or gargoyle-like figures, situated on the instrument's neck at the
top of the peg-box. It is these carvings which, I suggest, Petruccio
has in mind when he condemns Katherine's dress for the elaborate
slashing and pinking on the sleeves: "Here's snip and nip and cut and
slish and slash, / Like to a [cittern] in a barber's shop."
The cittern differs from the lute in being a carved instrument
made from one piece of wood -- a skilled, but also a practical method of
creation in days of unstable glue, damp interior storage conditions, and
plentiful trees. (The less hardy lute is a constructed instrument.)[13] Although the precise development of the
English cittern is unclear,[14] there is no
doubt that, in terms of decoration, in England and on the continent,
from medieval times onward, the instrument was characterised by "a crude
figure-head on its narrow end."[15] So
standard was it that books of cittern music included carvings of
gargoyles, animals, and clowns in their illustrations of fretting: see
the illustration, reproduced from Thomas Robinson, New Citharen
Lessons (London, 1609),sigs H4v and I1r.
The earliest recorded dramatic reference to a cittern-head comes
from Shakespeare. In Love's Labour's Lost Holofernes (as Judas
Maccabaeus) is interrupted and taunted by the on- stage audience:
Holofernes
I will not be put out of
countenance.
Biron
Because thou hast
no face.
Holofernes
What is this?
Boyet
A cittern-head.
Dumaine
The head of a bodkin.
Biron
A death's face in a ring.
Longueville
The face of an old Roman coin,
scarce seen. (5.2.602-608)
When Clara beats Bobadilla in Fletcher's
Love's Cure,
"Cittern-head" is included in her terms of abuse.
[16] Ford twice uses cittern-head as an insult.
In
The Fancies Secco, the barber, is denounced as "a
cittern-headed gewgaw,"
[17] and when
Cuculus in
The Lover's Melancholy hopes to be a "head-piece" in
the Chronicles, Rhetias retorts that his head-piece shall be "Of
woodcock without brains i't. Barbers shall wear thee on their
citterns."
[18] Marston talks of fools as
"brainless cittern-heads" in
The Scourge of Villainy,
[19] while an extended discussion of citterns and
their heads in Massinger's
The Old Law concludes with a
derogatory equation of cittern-heads with fools. Gnotho, having asked
if the tavern boasts music, is answered in the affirmative: "here
are sweet wire-drawers in the house" (the reference to wires clearly
identifies the instruments as citterns or gitterns). A conversation
begins concerning the similarities between cittern playing and wine
drawing (for example, both require pegs). But, says the butler, "the
heads of your instruments differ; yours are hogs-heads, theirs cittern
and gittern-heads." The bailiff concludes the discussion with "All
wooden heads; there they meet again."
[20]
It is clear that English Renaissance dramatists did not intend
comparison to a cittern or a cittern-head to be flattering. All the
above references occur in sequences of abuse. Petruccio's sartorial
railing is, I believe, part of the traditional derogatory association.
And given other Renaissance dramatists' regular specification of the
carved cittern head as the area of ridicule, Petruccio's insult is
surely the comparison of the tailor's elaborate pinking with the
cittern's grotesque wooden carvings.