Arne, Thomas Augustine (1710–78), English composer, the leading musical figure of the London theatre in the mid-18th cent., producing operas,
masques, and much incidental music for plays. The masque of
Alfred (1740) added ‘Rule Britannia’ to the canon of English song; and his music for seven of Shakespeare's plays included some of the most famous of all English Shakespeare settings (‘Where the bee sucks’, ‘When daisies pied’, ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun’, and many others). For the Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1769 he collaborated with
Garrick in an ‘Ode upon Dedicating a Building to Shakespeare’.
