the words of the madrigal
As far as I can make out, the words to "Brightly Dawns Our Wedding Day" don't really make any sense, but it doesn't have to. The pretty music sweeps most audiences away, I think, and they never even notice. Singers tell me that the words of most madrigals don't make a lot of sense.
The terms that might be unfamiliar to some performers are madrigal itself, whither, thee, prithee, and tocsin.
madrigal
A nice definition, quoted in the OED, from the 1597 Introd. Mus is
"The light musicke hath beene of late more deeply diued into .. the best kind of it is termed Madrigal .. it is a kinde of musicke made upon songs and sonnets. .. As for the musicke it is next unto the Motet, the most artificial and to men of vnderstanding most delightfull." (180)
The technical definition, also from the first edition of the OED, is
"A kind of part song for three or more voices (usually, five or six) characterized by adherence to an ecclesiastical mode, elaborate contrapuntal imitation; also applied loosely to part songs or glees not bound by these conditions."
whither
By the time the OED was written, whither as it is used here was archaic and literary only. In normal discourse, everybody would have used the word "where."
prithee
By 1885, prithee -- "I pray thee" or "I ask you" -- was archaic and quaint.
thee
Like "whither" and "prithee," thee was old-fashioned and literary by Gilbert's day. For most of his audience, it would have been archaic and quaint, associated with high literature, love poetry, and formal romanticism.
tocsin
By Gilbert's day, a tocsin had come to mean generally a bell rung to sound an alarm, to raise the people and call them, for example, to arms.
This discussion is based on the definition of the word madrigal in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which requires a little explanation.
To Act II of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.
To the homepage of this Mikado website.
Email Sharon Cogdill.
This URL: http://web.stcloudstate.edu/scogdill/mikado/madrigal.html.
Last update: 3 May 1998.