The lasting influence of Twelfth Night

On Saturday June 10th, Seven Times Salt will perform at La Grua Center in Stonington. Included on their program, Easy As Lying: The Music of Shakespeare’s Globe, are some songs from Shakespeare’s immensely popular comedy Twelfth Night., including two whose lyrics were tapped for titles of 20th century works.

O Mistress Mine, by Thomas Morley, is sung by the clown Feste in Act II.

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear! Your truelove’s coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further, pretty sweeting.
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.
…
What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter.
Present mirth hath present laughter.
What’s to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty.
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

Who borrowed the bolded lyric? Noël Coward, for the title of his 1943 play.

Feste performs another song in Act II, Come Away Death.

Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Fly away, fly away, breath,
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there.

Who borrowed the bolded lyric? Agatha Christie, for her 1940 mystery featuring Hercule Poirot.