In the same year he composed the first theatre
pieces he is known to have composed--those for Lee's _Theodosius_. (I
disregard as fatuous the supposition that in his boyhood he wrote the
_Macbeth_ music attributed, perhaps wrongly, to Locke.) It was not for
some time that he gained the supremacy at the theatre which he now held
in the Church. That very trustworthy weathercock John Dryden, Poet
Laureate, continued to flatter others for many long days to come. In
this same year he composed the first of a long series of odes of
welcome, congratulation or condolence for royal or great personages, and
about this year he married.
CHAPTER III
During the first ten years of his mastership Purcell composed
much--precisely how much we can only guess. It was not until 1690 that
he began the huge string of incidental theatre sets which were for so
long spoken of as his operas. Mr. Barclay Squire, to whom all who are
interested in Purcell are deeply indebted, has clearly established that
by 1690, though not more than two years earlier, his one opera, _Dido
and Aeneas_, was written. If we take this as belonging to the period
which began in 1690, we have for these first ten years only ten plays to
which he provided music, and of these several are very doubtful, and the
rest not very important.
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