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Hi there! And welcome to the treatise of the month, where we look at both prominent and lesser-known treatises from the 17th century. These monthly posts spotlight fantastic works that are free and accessible online. I hope this space inspires you to spend some time with these historical gems ☺️ Happy reading!
What a title.
I first came across this treatise when it was casually mentioned in Houle’s Meter and Music 1600-1800 book as an interesting example of a madrigal. And yes, to be clear, this is a treatise on beekeeping, but it is significant to the field of musicology because in it, Charles Butler composed a madrigal to mimic the “piping” a bee makes when the hive is about to “swarm,” or divide into factions. The resulting composition is somewhat of a wonder.
Here are the details of the work:
Full Title
The feminine monarchie: or The historie of bees; Shewing their admirable nature, and properties, their generation, and colonies, their gouernment, loyaltie, art, industrie, enemies, warres, magnanimitie, etc. Together with the right ordering of them from time to time and the sweet profit arising thereof. Written out of experience by Charles Butler.
Time and place
Written in rural Wootton (Bedfordshire) and published in London in 1609. The madrigal, a preface, and poetry were added in a 1623 revision. It was reprinted in 1634 in Butler’s own phonetic spelling system, which is pretty difficult to read in my opinion. I recommend reading from the 1623 version for this reason.
Contents
Preface
On the nature of the bees, and their Queen
Of the bee garden, and seats for the hives
Of the hives, and the dressing of them
Of the breeding of bees, and the drone
Of their swarming, and the hiving of them*
Of their work
Of their enemies
Of feeding them
Of removing them
Of the fruit and profit of them
*contains the madrigal, most significant chapter
Length commitment: 100 pages
Original language: English. Has some Latin quotes and mottos without translations.
Link
Full text of the 1623 version available for free on the Internet Achieve here: https://archive.org/details/RAM2023-1081/mode/2up
Charles Butler's Feminine Monarchie
Charles Butler (1571-1647) was a man of exceptional and eclectic talents. He entered university at age 10, approximately 3 years ahead of average for the time, obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree at age 13 and his Masters of Arts at 16. He became a rector and then a school master before he accepted an incumbency at Wootton-St. Lawrence at age 29. It was here that he oversaw a vast bee garden on the church’s grounds and went on to write the Feminine Monarchie “out of experience.” This was far from his only output; an avid writer, he published treatises and other works on a variety of subjects ranging from logic, to music, to grammar, to marrying your first cousin (his daughter married his nephew).
This treatise is significant in three major ways: from a musical perspective, from a gender/feminism perspective, and from a historical one. Let’s start with the historical one.
Anyone who loves English history will find meaning in this treatise. Butler writes extensively about the power struggle between the Queen and the “Prince.” The word “princess” did not exist in Early Modern English, but he means it in this way–young female bees, anatomically Queens, who are created as back-ups if something should happen to the current Queen and are sadly killed if not used – “the poore ladie must die,” as he puts it. Butler seems particularly interested in the mutiny that can occur during the swarming process should any Prince attempt to take control of a part of the hive over an elder Prince or without the consent of the Queen.
If the swarm be not parted, or be parted and put together, costeth [the Prince] her life, as well as the lives of some of her followers.
A plot to overthrow the rightful ruler, according to Butler, generally results in the death of that treasonous Prince. What a time to be writing this! During his lifetime, Butler saw the rise of Queen Elizabeth, the Babington plot to assassinate her, and the resulting beheading of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587. Butler offers only two options for a Prince to survive the monarchy–the hive must swarm, that is, to divide into factions, or the old Queen must die. The vicious and deadly situation between the rivals Elizabeth and Mary certainly seem to find a parallel in Butler’s hives.
The treatise is also significant from a feminist perspective as Butler was among the first to declare that bees are led by a Queen and not a King, as was widely accepted due to the outdated writings of Aristotle, or so Butler argues (Butler has much to say about Aristotle’s beekeeping theories) (Who knew Aristotle even had beekeeping theories). Also, Butler had quite a few disparaging remarks about the male sex in bees. Drone bees are so anatomically different then their female counterparts–they do not have stingers to defend the hive and don’t contribute labor–that other naturalists of the time thought they were a different species altogether. Butler is among the first to correctly identify the drone as the male bee.
The Drone, which is a big Hive-Bee without sting, hath been always reputed as a greedy lozell…yet is he but an idle companion, living by the sweat of others' brows. For he worketh not at all, either at home or abroad, and yet spendeth as much as two labourers…The truth is, they are the same species, but a different sex.
He goes on to write this jaw-dropper of a 17th-century statement:
...in these [bees], the females have the preeminence...the Feminine gender is more worthy than the Masculine.
Wow. But at the end of the day, Butler is still a man of the 17th-century and his feminism can only go so far. He makes sure that human females don’t get any bold ideas by including:
But let no nimble-tongued Sophisters gather a false conclusion from these true premises, that they, by the example of these [bees], may arrogate to themselves the like superiority.
For the time, it was a start. At least the bees got some respect.
But onto the reason you’re really reading this–the Melissomelos, or Bees Madrigal, found in chapter 5 on the swarming of bees. Swarming occurs when the hive gets too large to support itself and must divide into factions. The old Queen will take part of the hive and the eldest or "chief" Prince will be promoted to Queen to take the other part. To begin this phenomenon, the Prince must produce a sound called “piping” and the Queen must answer, an exchange which Butler describes in musical terms. Butler displays an extensive knowledge of pitch and counterpoint, revealing obvious musical training.
This song being contained within the compass of an eight from C-sol-fa-ut to C-sol-fa, the Prince composeth her part within the four upper Clefs [pitches] G, A, B and C usually in triple mode, beginning with an odd minim in G-sol-re-ut, and tuning the rest of her notes, whereof the first is a semibreve, in A-la-mi-re. Sometimes she taketh higher key, sounding the odd minim in A-la-mi-re, and the rest in B-fa-b-me. Sometime, specially toward their coming forth, she riseth yet higher to C-sol-fa, holding the time of three or four semibreves, more or less. The Queen’s part, contained within the four lower Clefs, consisteth of minims altogether in triple mode; commonly in Fa-fa-ut, sometimes in C-sol-fa-ut, sometimes in the other two clefs between them: continuing her tune the time of nine or ten semibreves more or less.
Of his madrigal, Butler writes:
In this Melissomelos, or Bees Madrigal, musicians may see the grounds of their Art: first their Modes, sometime the triple or imperfect of the more, sometimes the double or imperfect of the less: then the tunes of the six notes, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la; whereof the Queen soundeth the first four and the Prince the other two, together with the doubling of fa-sol in the two higher Clefs, to make up the full Eight: and lastly the six Concords, an imperfect Third, a perfect Third, a Diatessaron [fourth], a Diapente [fifth], a Sixt, and a Diapason [seventh].
Butler then pens what is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE passage in the entire treatise as it is such a beautiful intersection of musical values and the human experience, for which the Baroque is known:
And if any man dislike the harshness of the Seconds and Sevenths, which now and then hit among them, he sheweth himself no experienced Artist, which knoweth not that as well in Musick as in [domestic life], there must sometime be Discords; yea and that in either they have their laudable use, as serving to make sweet Concords the sweeter.
Turn the page and you’ll find the madrigal, which appears as four pages of music in four parts. Two parts are printed upside down, suggesting it was intended to be read around a table with one on a part. There is only one recording of this work I have found, performed by Peter Jackson and the Choir of St. Mary’s–clearly a much larger group than it was intended for and it’s missing some of the verses, but you will get the gist of Butler’s compositional style and his creative ideas.
When the hive looks as though it is large enough to divide, the Prince will begin piping. If the Queen answers her with piping, this is an approval to split the hive–silence, however, is a flat rejection, which could result in the death of the Prince. Butler brilliantly portrays this exchange in his madrigal. Listen for the solo piping Prince (2:20). At the end of the work, the solo Prince is joined in harmony by the voice representing the Queen, and thus an approval to split the hive is granted (3:50). This is a very happy ending for the Prince, as it means she will gain a kingdom, and more importantly, she will get to live!
And to that happy ending, Charles Butler would go on to write a treatise entirely dedicated to music called “The principles of musik in singing and setting” just a few years later (also accessible on the Internet Archive). Even with Butler’s exclusively musical treatise, for some reason, the beekeeping-centered Feminine Monarchie still seems to be the one that captures the imagination of the musical community–perhaps we all just have a bit of naturalist at heart.
Have you read the Feminine Monarchie? What did you think? Leave a comment and join our nerdy community 🧡
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