I couldn’t write one madrigal, let alone all the pieces Thomas Morley wrote. That said, I’m still going to poke a little fun at him.
“Hark! A calendar! April, nay but we did to write that last year… ah, but May! Brilliant!”
Last week we listened to “April is in my Mistress Face”, so this week, let’s enjoy “Now is the Month of Maying”, both by our English friend with the dapper mustache, Thomas Morley.
Thanks Morley, and thanks King’s Singers for this fun welcome to the month. ^_^ Next Monday, something non-English. I promise. 
-Sara
The website is beautiful and I love Madrigal Monday!! The history behind madrigal music is very interesting, please continue to give us more. I am happily anticipating singing at this year’s Rennaisaince Festival in Holly, Michigan. I look forward to creating new garb and showing it off!
A game called Barley Break is mentioned in the tune, both in the act of the “Nymphs tread out their ground” (bases or plots) and “… Shall we play Barley Break?”
The naughty bit is that in this highly structured society, couples could often, um “fall” into one of the bases tramped out of very tall grass and be, at least for a bit, hidden from sight…to, well, kiss, cuddle, grope…but a full “roll in the hay” couldn’t really happen while the game was afoot, right?
From Wikipedia: Barley-Break is an old English country game frequently mentioned by the poets of the 17th and 18th centuries. It was played by three pairs, each composed of a man and a woman, who were stationed in three bases or plots, contiguous to each other. The couple occupying the middle base, called hell or prison, endeavoured to catch the other two, who, when chased, might break to avoid being caught. If one was overtaken, he and his companion were condemned to hell. From this game was taken the expression “the last couple in hell,” often used in old plays.
Its use in literature usually has sexual connotations. The best known example is in Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s play The Changeling, in which an adulterer tells his cuckold “I coupled with your mate at barley-break; now we are left in hell”. The use of the phrase in Thomas Morley’s madrigal Now Is the Month of Maying probably means something similar to the idiom “roll in the hay”.