Meaning of shakespeare a bridal song?

Answer 1

The lyric "Roses, their sharp spines being gone" is a song sung right at the beginning of the Shakespeare and Fletcher play The Two Noble Kinsmen, which commences with the wedding of Hippolyta and Theseus. The stage direction reads:

Music. Enter Hymen with a torch burning; a boy in

a white robe before, singing and strewing flowers;

after Hymen, a nymph, encompassed in her tresses,

bearing a wheaten garland; then Theseus between two

other nymphs with wheaten chaplets on their heads;

then Hippolyta the bride, led by Pirithous, and another

holding a garland over her head, her tresses likewise

hanging; after her, Emilia holding up her train;

then Artesius and attendants

In the song, the singer describes a long list of different kinds of flowers: roses, pinks, daisies, primroses and so on, and then sings: "All dear Nature's children sweet lie 'fore bride and bridegroom's feet, blessing their sense" The stage direction then has the boy suit the action to the word and strew flowers before the bride and bridegroom's feet. He then calls upon the birds to sing for the wedding, but not the ones with ugly voices, like the raven and chough.

As with anything which claims to be a poem by Shakespeare and is not Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, or one of the Sonnets, it's probably a song which somebody forcibly removed from one of Shakespeare's plays and gave a stupid title to. Your best bet if faced with one of these is to find out which play it is from and figure out what context Shakespeare intended it to appear in.