"Will had her to the wine," illustration to "Phillada Flouts Me"
Edwin Austin Abbey American
This is one of a series that Abbey drew for Harper's to illustrate the anonymous seventeenth century English poem "Phillada Flouts Me." In the verse, the narrator grows increasingly depressed as the young woman he desires ignores him. Here we see the young man entering a tavern where a more successful and sophisticated rival raises a glass. The related stanza reads:
I woo'd her for to dine,
But could not get her;
Will had her to the wine–
He might entreat her.
With Daniel she did dance,
On me she look'd askance:
Oh, thrice unhappy chance!
Phillada flouts me.
A wood engraving after Abbey's drawing appeared in Harper's "New Monthly Magazine," vol. 75 (July 1887), p. 165 and in the book "Old Songs, with drawings by Edwin A. Abbey & Alfred Parsons," 1889 (see MMA 21.36.112).
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