Annotation:What shall he have that kill'd the deer
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WHAT SHALL HE HAVE THAT KILL'D THE DEER. English, Air (6/4 time). E Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. The tune is a round, or catch, and was printed in John Hilton's Catch as Catches Can (1652). Shakespeare devotes a short scene in As You Like It (1599, act IV, scene 2) entirely to the round, which presumably would be sung by the actors playing foresters. Shakespeare's lyric begins:
What shall he have that killed the deer?
His leather skin and
horns to wear.
Then sing him home.
(The rest shall bear this burden.)
Take thou no scorn to wear the horn.
It was a crest ere thou wast born.
Thy father’s father wore it,
And thy father bore it.
The horn, the horn, the lusty horn
Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.
The air to the song is unknown, but several have composed or adapted adequate vechicles.
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Kines (Songs From Shakespeare's Plays and Popular Songs of Shakespeare's Time), 1964; p. 48.
Recorded sources:
See also listing at:
See Sir Henry Bishop's c. 1862 round setting of Shakespere's words at IMSLP [1]