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MUSIC AND SOCIETY IN ELIZABETHAN DRAMA
Abstract
This dissertation explores dramatic music as it refers to the Elizabethan world. It discusses works by Marlowe, Lyly, Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Marston, Webster, and Middleton. Chapter I views Elizabethan society and music. Chapter II finds the trumpet is an emblem of identification in Tamburlaine. Shakespeare emphasizes themes of order and responsibility with the aid of music in his history plays. The primary musical technique of King Richard II is analogy, but song, also, is integral to King Henry IV and King Henry V. The following two chapters consider music in comedy. Contrasting music helps convey the self-indulgence of Orsino and the revelers in Twelfth Night; Feste's epilogue song summarizes human joy and human weakness. Jonson satirizes courtiers' vanities in Cynthia's Revels and the English taste for ballads in Bartholomew Fair through song. In Volpone "Come, my Celia" epitomizes self-deception and coalesces the audience's attention. Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle satirizes middle-class musical pretensions and the affectation of melancholy. Chapter V discusses affective music and masques in tragedy. Musical dissonance and irony in The Malcontent contribute to the sense of a disordered world. The affective music of "O, let us howl" in The Duchess of Malfi conveys horror and foreshadows Ferdinand's madness; consonant music in the last section foreshadows the Duchess' acceptance of death. In The Maid's Tragedy straightforward masque is ironic; in Women Beware Women a masque covers murder. Chapter VI deals with the fragmented mind and world of King Lear. Bits of song increase the sense of fragmentation, link the Fool with Lear, and unite Lear's condition with conditions of humankind. The final chapter discusses The Tempest, in which music is critical to the portrayal of honor and dishonor. Ariel sings a lyric to lead Ferdinand to Miranda, but plays the lowly pipe and tabor to lead Caliban and his companions into the mire. Heavenly music implies restoration of order; "Where the Bee sucks" implies the freedom of the virtuous human spirit. Music in drama thus contributes to expressions of human proclivities and dilemmas and the timeless concerns of order and redemption.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature
Recommended Citation
SULLIVAN, WINIFRED HELEN, "MUSIC AND SOCIETY IN ELIZABETHAN DRAMA" (1986). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8701223.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8701223