Music in English Renaissance Drama

Music in English Renaissance Drama PDF

Author: John H. Long

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-10-21

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 081318634X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Nowhere is the richness and variety of the English Renaissance better shown than in the dramatic works of the period which combined to an unusual degree the arts of poetry, music, acting, and dance. This collection of essays by a number of distinguished scholars offers a series of views of the music of this drama—ranging from the mystery cycles still performed in the late sixteenth century to the cavalier drama of the early seventeenth. The essays included here are mainly concerned with the minor dramatic forms—the mystery plays, the "entertainments," the masques, and the works of such playwrights as Marston and Cartwright—which reveal more extensively the blending of music and drama; and they illustrate a variety of approaches to the dramatic art. The collection as a whole demonstrates the need for an interdisciplinary consideration of this important area of study. Of especial value to musicologists is the bibliography of extant music used in dramatic works of the period.

Music and Gender in English Renaissance Drama

Music and Gender in English Renaissance Drama PDF

Author: Katrine K. Wong

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1136169695

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book offers a survey of how female and male characters in English Renaissance theatre participated and interacted in musical activities, both inside and outside the contemporary societal decorum. Wong’s analysis broadens our understanding of the general theatrical representation of music, or musical dramaturgy, and complicates the current discussion of musical portrayal and construction of gender during this period. Wong discusses dramaturgical meanings of music and its association with gender, love, and erotomania in Renaissance plays. The negotiation between the dichotomous qualities of the heavenly and the demonic finds extensive application in recent studies of music in early modern English plays. However, while ideological dualities identified in music in traditional Renaissance thinking may seem unequivocal, various musical representations of characters and situations in early modern drama would prove otherwise. Wong, building upon the conventional model of binarism, explores how playwrights created their musical characters and scenarios according to the received cultural use and perception of music, and, at the same time, experimented with the multivalent meanings and significance embodied in theatrical music.