Anyway, looking for something to put myself back to sleep with last night, I read the footnotes in my Arden Edition (the 1979 version, Harold F. Brooks, ed., I believe there is a newer). Imagine my surprise to learn that choral singing in the hound pack qualified, in Shakespeare's time, as a kind of art form. Here is Gervase Markham, in Country Contentments (1615--quoted in fn. 105 of Brooks, p. 92-3):
If you would have your kennell for sweetness of cry, then you must compound it of some large dogges, that have deepe solemne mouthes, and are swift in spending [sc. quick to give tongue], which must, as it were, beare the base of the consort, then a double number of roaring, and loud ringing mouthes, which must beare the counter-tenour; then some hollow, plaine, sweet mouthes, which must bear the meane or middle part; and soe with these partes of musicke you shall make your cry perfect.Brooks' notes also provide enlightening support for another great Shakespearean theme: the idea of Shakespeare as the great responder, a creature of his time who makes richer the richness that he finds there. We find strands for the fabric in Chaucer (mainly) but also in Sir Philip Sydney (of course) Arthur Golding (tracking Ovid).
