By Mitchell Sandler and Anne Hodgkinson, 16 June 2026
Mitchell is a professional singer whose specialisms include Renaissance and baroque music. He recently had occasion to ask AI about a particular song. We thought the results were worth sharing with SENSE.
John Maynard’s ‘The XII Wonders of the World’ (1611) are solo songs accompanied by lute and viola da gamba (the latter, like a cello, would have played the bass accompaniment). Each piece describes a professional from the subject’s own point of view: the Courtier, the Lawyer, the Marchant (sic) and so forth. The poem texts, by Sir John Davies, had appeared as part of a clever dinnertime entertainment at a party in 1600. Each of twelve chargers had a poem underneath – only after finishing the meal could the plate be turned over and the poem read.
While preparing ‘The Lawyer’ for a concert, I read that each piece is meant to exemplify a personality as defined by the theory of humours. Each of the four humours (yellow gall, black gall, blood and phlegm) have three possible expressions: vegetative, sensory and rational. There’s nothing in Maynard’s score to explain which humour/expression is illustrated by which song. Perhaps one is meant to guess. Maybe that was the point of the game at that dinner party. My guess was that the Lawyer exemplified the rational expression of the phlegmatic: calm, meticulous, intellectual.
I mentioned this obscure collection of songs to a musicologist friend, who sought ChatGPT’s help in further explaining this repertoire. The results she shared were enlightening. What follows is a sample of what we learnt (AI’s comments in italics).
Can you tell me more about how the various personality types and the four humours were related in late-Renaissance England, and how Maynard might have portrayed those personalities and humours through his music?
In late-Renaissance England, ideas about personality were deeply shaped by the ancient medical theory of the Four Humours, which remained influential well into the 16th and early 17th centuries. In The XII Wonders of the World (1611), John Maynard sets texts by Sir John Davies that describe twelve archetypal figures (e.g. the soldier, the lawyer, the lover, the divine). Each character reflects a distinct personality ‒ many of which align closely with humoral theory. Although Maynard doesn’t explicitly label humours, the musical characterization strongly suggests them. So when listening to The XII Wonders of the World, you’re not just hearing songs ‒ you’re hearing a kind of musical psychology, where each piece becomes a portrait of a human temperament as understood in Renaissance England.
When asked about The Lawyer specifically, ChatGPT says: the Lawyer is a mixed type, with both phlegmatic and choleric traits: clever, verbal, and strategic ‒ someone who persuades, parses language, and navigates complexity. If you want, I can pull out a specific line from The Lawyer and walk through how a singer might interpret it musically and rhetorically ‒ it’s especially fun if you’ve heard someone perform it.
My friend answers: ‘That would be great!’
A line often paraphrased from Sir John Davies’ text goes something like: ‘I wrangle, and by subtle sleight…’ Even if the exact wording differs in your edition, this captures the core idea: argument (wrangle), cleverness (subtle), strategy (sleight).
This all sounds plausible, but out here in the real world, those words aren’t in the song at all. Although ChatGPT has tried to cover that possibility by remarking that ‘the exact wording’ might differ in your edition, nothing even resembling this line is anywhere to be found in any of the twelve songs.
Nonetheless ChatGPT goes on to analyse how Maynard has set this hallucinated line, and how and why it so clearly illustrates the Lawyer’s personality.
Here’s the actual text of ‘The Lawyer’:
The Law my calling is; my robe, my tongue, my pen,
Wealth and opinion gaine, and make me judge of men.
The knowne dishonest cause I never did defend,
Nor spunne out sutes in length, but wisht and sought an end.
Nor counsaile did bewray, nor of both parties take,
Nor ever tooke I fee, for which I never spake.
Rather than delighting in cunning legal argument, the Lawyer is at pains to show that the good opinion he enjoys comes from his moral rectitude. All the conclusions drawn by ChatGPT are based on its own hallucinated text ‘I wrangle, and by subtle sleight…’
I thought it was time I had a chat with AI myself.
I asked AI mode in Google Search for the source of that line. I was told that it is from Samuel Daniel’s sonnet sequence Delia. Specifically sonnet 10.
Again, nowhere in this or any other of the Delia sonnets is there a line which resembles ‘I wrangle, and by subtle sleight…’
I mentioned to Google AI mode that I couldn’t find that line anywhere in the Delia poems. AI responded, encouragingly:
No, it’s good that you’re sceptical. In fact the line is from Nicholas Breton’s poem ‘A Quarrel with Love’. In the poem, the speaker describes his struggles with the deceptive nature of love, using the following context: I wrangle, and by subtle sleights, I find out many a way...
Having two lines now instead of just the one, I felt it might be possible to run the true author to ground. I told Google AI that I couldn’t find the quote anywhere in Breton’s poetry. This is the answer I got:
The phrase ‘I wrangle and by sleights I find out many a way’ is actually from the Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney. It is part of a longer poem titled ‘A Farewell’... which was published in the famous Elizabethan anthology England’s Helicon (1600). The poem explores the deceptive and frustrating nature of love. Here is the relevant stanza where your quote appears:
Oft have I mused, but now at length I find,
The cause why Love is now so out of season:
It is because men’s hearts are so inclined
To follow will, and leave the rule of reason.
I wrangle and by sleights I find out many a way,
To make my fancy still on fancy’s object stay.
Is this fact or hallucination? If the latter, I would have to say it sounds convincing to me. It’s about love, while the real poem is about death. Sidney is fortunately one of the better-known Elizabethan poets, so there are plenty of online sources to check. Here, in fact, is how the poem in question actually begins (and there is no other stanza beginning ‘Oft have I mused…’):
Oft have I mused, but now at length I find
Why those that die, men say, ‘they do depart.’
‘Depart!’ A word so gentle, to my mind,
Weakly did seem to paint death’s ugly dart.
Here follow 24 lines of poetry. Needless to say, the ‘I wrangle’ line does not appear anywhere. The fact is that AI is never at a loss for an answer. You can ask AI not to hallucinate, and then you get more truthful answers (though based on what it finds online). I gave it free rein and here it has hallucinated a plausible Renaissance poem rather than come up short. Impressive!
So the conclusion has to be: if you need an answer that corresponds to reality, say so. If, on the other hand, you want something creative, allow AI to chatsplain and just make something up.
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Blog post by: Mitchell Sandler and Anne Hodgkinson |
