From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the

Folgers director. This podcast is called That Old and Antique Song we heard last night. It was not that

long ago when you could ask, where's the beef, or make reference to the Hayes office, or

floy, or a dog dog face and be confident that others

would get the reference.

You knew people would understand because those phrases were in the common parlance, put there

by commercials, cartoons, movies, or songs.

This is a tradition that apparently goes back a long way, at least as far back as Shakespeare's

time, or so we learned in 2004, when Ross Duffin, a professor at Case Western Reserve

University, released Shakespeare's Songbook, a title that gives only a hint of the book's subject.

This isn't only a book about the songs in Shakespeare's plays. It's also about songs that

aren't in Shakespeare's plays, but can nevertheless help the plays make more sense, if you know

the song. It seems there are musical hints in the plays that were flying over the heads of

most audiences 400 years later, that is, until Ross pulled back the veil. He explains all that

now in a conversation with Rebecca Shear. So, Ross, as we get started here, I want you to share

an anecdote, because I really think it drives home the significance of what you've discovered.

When you first submitted your manuscript for Shakespeare's songbook to W.W. Norton, what was it that the editor told you?

Well, at first, I didn't hear anything at all. And I understood that in a way because major publishers would rarely accept an unsolicited manuscript anyway.

And I realized that who knew there was anything new to be said about songs in Shakespeare after 400 years.

But there was one researcher in the 1960s, Peter Seng, who seemed to have found everything there was to find.

Right, yes. Peter Seng's book is really valuable, was a really valuable tool for me.

He talked about 70 songs in the plays of Shakespeare and really wrote up everything that was

...