A while back I said, rather sloppily, that "all" the incidental music in the early episodes was based on "The Beggar's Opera" (itself based on traditional airs). Someone queried this and pointed out tunes such as "Man Is For The Woman Made" and "Summer Is Icumen In", which crop up a lot. This started a new layer of interest for me when I next watched the early programmes, listening and making notes about the music. As we had already agreed, the whole thing opens with a phrase based on "I'm like a skiff on the ocean tossed" at the very start of the credits. What fascinated me this time through was that tunes of songs (from "Beggar's Opera" and otherwise) are sometimes used incidentally, and sometimes thematically - that is, with application to the story. The "skiff" musical line crops up a good deal in all kinds of situations - usually exciting ones - being of course a major theme of the whole saga. But in "Hubert" it illustrates Rowena's marriage quandary, which is comparable to Lucy's when she sings it in "Beggar's Opera". The same tune becomes a tavern song in "Blackbird".
"O Polly, you might have toyed and kissed" occurs in the very first episode, and then again a couple of stories later to accompany Little John's first meeting with Joan.
Also in that episode "Since laws were made for every degree", a condemned prisoner's song in "Beggar's Opera", is used with sinister aptness. It is really "Greensleeves" but the prison words change the shape of the song quite a lot, and "The Adventures" uses both versions at different times. It's thematic again in "Ladies of Sherwood", incidental in "Friar Tuck" etc.
Another of Macheath's prison songs "Man may escape from rope and gun (but not from woman!)" is used fully thematically in "Maid Marian" as Marian visits Robin in gaol, having apparently betrayed him.
"Man is for the woman made (and the woman for the man)" is fully thematic in the same story, when Marian does the cooking! And, funnily enough, going back to "Dead Or Alive", the Sheriff has the line "Woman, they say, needs man" (interesting, considering how his soft spot for Marian developed).
In "The Challenge", both "O Polly" and the well-known tune 'Lillibullero' (in "Beggar's Opera", sung as "The modes of the court so common are grown/That a true friend can hardly be met") are given new words. And "The Prisoner" has not only "O Polly" again, but a song which became a hit for Steeleye Span, "All around my hat".
And of course the opening snatches of song in the earlier seasons are based on the tune of "Early one morning".
Anyway, it shows how looking at a different aspect of the series can open a new dimension of interest.
Regards to all - Roger
