Music and Gender in English Renaissance Drama

Katrine Wong, Katrine K. Wong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415806701
• eBook ISBN: 9781136169694
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Medieval & Early Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

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.

1 Introduction

Delphia, the title character of The Prophetess (1622) by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger,¹ prophesies that Diocles will become the new emperor when he has slain a certain “mighty Boar” (1.2.35). Hoping to ascend to the throne as he has been promised, Diocles spends much of his time hunting and killing “hideous and fierce” boars (1.2.38), though in vain. Finally he comes face to face with Aper, a regicide, a “too much honourd villain” (1.1.15), and a man who is the true mighty boar:

DIOCLES	…since my future fate depends upon thee,
	Thus, to fulfill great Delphia’s Prophecie,
	Aper (thou fatal Boar) receive the honour
	To fall by Diocles hand. Shine clear, my Stars,
	That usher’d me to taste this common air,
	In my entrance to the world, and give applause
	To this great work.
	Musick.
Delphia	Strike Musick from the Spheres.
	..............................................
Diocles	Ha? In the Air?
All	Miraculous.
Maximinian	This shews the gods approve The Person, and the Act.

(2.3.43–52)

Senators and guards in the scene, as if on the cue of the music from the air, all hail Diocles as the new king and dress him with “Imperial Robes” (2.3.63). A blank song, a song for which no words are provided in a dramatic text, is heard at the investiture. Maximinian continues to marvel at the heavenly endorsement signified through the song: “Still the gods / Expresse that they are pleas’d with this election” (2.3.66–7). Shortly after the prophetess’s art has “honoured [Diocles] with various Musicks, and sweet sounding airs” (3.1.169), she arranges a she-devil to appear to the accompaniment of music at the demand of a foolish offi cer, Geta:

Geta	I would have a handsom, pleasant and a fine she-devil,
	To entertain the Ladies that come to me;
	A travell’d devil too, that speaks the tongues,
	And a neat carving devil.
	Musick.
	Enter a She-devil.
Delphia	Be not fearful.
Geta	A prettie brown devil ifaith; may I not kiss her?
Delphia	Yes, and embrace her too; she is your servant. Fear not; her lips are cool enough.

(3.2.105–11)

Delphia calls herself “the Mistris of my Art” (2.1.81) and has “the Musick of the Spheres attending” on her (2.1.72). Throughout the play, she has the power to invoke preternatural music for scenes of either divine or diabolical revelation, just as the above two quotations have shown. The “Musick from the Spheres” that Delphia causes to sound after Diocles’s valiant killing of Aper is perceived to be “in the air.” To say that certain music is “in the air” often indicates that the music is coming from the sky. All witnesses of this musical episode find the sonic experience amazing, with Maximinian exclaiming that the music “shews the gods approve / the Person, and the Act.” Under this sign of celestial approval, Delphia in effect becomes a representative of heavenly power. What the prophetess does can be interpreted as anointing Diocles as the new king with her supernatural music. The attribute of divinity in music is established at an early stage in the play and is reinforced by Maximinian’s continual awe. In the second incident, the music accompanying the entrance of a she-devil conjured by the prophetess for the foolish Geta embodies another kind of supernatural power associated with music. The demonic figure responds to Delphia’s musical summoning and materializes in front of Geta. Delphia’s music is compatible with both the divine and the diabolic; both heaven and hell are subject to and within the reach of the power of the prophetess’s music.

The above example illustrates two of the most common and contrastive associations of music in the general perception during the English Renaissance, namely, heavenly order and demonic disorder. Such dichotomy finds extensive application in recent studies of theatrical function and significance 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 can prove otherwise. This book, building upon the conventional construction of binarism, offers an alternative model of hybridity which explores how playwrights at the time both created their musical characters and scenarios according to the received cultural use and perception of music, and experimented with the multivalent meanings and significance embodied in theatrical music. Music and Gender looks at how male and female characters participate and interact in musical activities both inside and outside the contemporary societal decorum. Their behaviors vary in degrees of conformity and subversion. The present discussion, with a focus on non-Shakespearean drama, examines musical characters and episodes from a large number of early modern plays, many of which have not received critical consideration. It will broaden our understanding of theatrical representation of music, or musical dramaturgy, as well as complicating the discussion of musical portrayal and construction of gender in English Renaissance drama.

The negotiation between the sublime and the corrupt in music has always been an important topic in social and philosophical perception of the art since classical times. In The Republic, Plato draws a distinction between musical modes. Dorian and Phrygian modes are suitable for “men of a warlike disposition” and can “most fittingly imitate the voice and accents of a brave man in time of war,” whereas the Ionian and Lydian modes are appropriate for luxury, laziness, and parties.² He believes that one’s disposition depends on the kind of music one listens to:

So if you give music the chance to play upon your soul, and pour into the funnel of your ears the sweet, soft, lamenting modes…if you spend your whole life humming them, bewitched by song, then the first effect on a nature with any spirit in it is to soften it, like heating iron, making it malleable instead of brittle and unworkable. But if you press on regardless, and are seduced by it, the next stage is melting and turning to liquid—the complete dissolution of the spirit. It cuts the sinews out of your soul, and turns it into a “feeble warrior.”…People like this become hot-tempered and quick to anger, irritable instead of spirited.³

Depending on the modes of music a man chooses to engage himself in, music can either strengthen masculinity or dissolve a man’s prowess and determination. Fondness for soft music is unacceptable for men of military valor. Lodowick Lloyd writes that “Mars claymed Musicke in the fielde,… Venus occupieth Musicke in chambers. That kind of gentle and soft Musick, the Egyptians forbade the youth to be taught therin, least from men, they would become againe women.”⁴ In The Maid’s Tragedy (ca.1610)⁵ by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, when military leader Melantius is invited to join in a masque and “tread a souldiers measure,” he excuses himself and calls courtly dances “soft and silken warres” (1.1.40, 41). He would rather “daunce with armes” to music that is “shrill and all confus’d / That stirs [his] blood” (1.1.42–3). Another Fletcherian military man, Captain Pontius in Valentinian (ca.1614)⁶ proclaims boldly that his songs

Goe not to’th Lute, or Violl, but to’th Trumpet,

My tune kept on a Target, and my subject

The well struck wounds of men, not love, or women.

(3.2.10–12)

His music, with a strong militaristic quality, is differentiated from the more amorous and feminine music elsewhere in this tragedy, such as the music of seduction employed in 2.5. Similarly, Benedick in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (1598)⁷ ridicules the newly love-smitten Claudio because “there was no music with him but the drum and the fife, and now had he rather hear the tabor and the pipe” (2.3.13–15).

Aristotle speaks of the benefits of enjoying music in moderation in The Politics. Music to Aristotle is one of the four “customary branches of education.”⁸ His endorsement of the importance of musical education is alluded to in Richard Mulcaster’s Positions:

Some men thinke it to be too too sweete, and that it may be either quite forborne, or not so much followed. For mine owne parte I dare not dispraise it, which hath so great defendours, and deserveth so well, and I must needs allow it, which place it among those, that I do esteeme the cheife principles, for training up of youth, not of mine owne head alone, but by the advise of all antiquitie, all learned philosophie, all skilfull training, which make Musick still one of the principles,… to bring youth first up in.⁹

Boethius in the 6^th century also thinks that music has direct effect and affect upon the internal harmony of the listeners: “music is related not only to speculation but to morality as well. Nothing is more characteristic of human nature than to be soothed by sweet modes and disturbed by their opposites.”¹⁰ Nonetheless the said actions of music are also dependent on the listener’s disposition: “A lascivious mind takes pleasure in the more lascivious modes… Contrariwise, a sterner mind either finds joy in the more stirring modes and is braced by them.”¹¹ The Roman philosopher agrees with Plato and recommends the study of music that is “chaste, simple, and masculine, not effeminate, savage, and inconsistent.”¹² Saint Isidore of Seville, some 100 years later, gives music a well-rounded praise in Etymologiarum. Goodness is attached to music in an unconditional manner, and is prevalent in all aspects of the universe:

Thus without music no discipline can be perfect, for there is nothing without it. The very universe, it is said, is held together by a certain harmony of sounds, and the heavens themselves are made to revolve by the modulation of harmony.¹³

This notion is taken up in the Renaissance by Gioseffo Zarlino, who affirms that “there is no good thing that does not have a musical disposition” in Institutioni harmoniche.¹⁴ This Renaissance music theorist is convinced that music “leads man back to the contemplation of celestial things and has such power that it perfects everything it is joined to.”¹⁵ The canon of English Renaissance drama houses many eulogies for the practice of music. An expansive one can be found in Samuel Rowley’s When You See Me, You Know Me (ca.1604).¹⁶ Doctor Tye, the music instructor of the young prince, describes music to be “fit for Kings, / And not for those knowes not the chimes of strings” (G4r). He calls music “heavenly, for in Heaven is Musicke” (G4r). In his ornate speech about the virtuous appeal of music (G4r–v), he states that through musical training, monarchs acquire much more than simply musical techniques, including a discerning eye on issues of patronage, power, and display of wealth. The hierarchical heavenly imagery and the Orphic effect therein are allusions to conventional ideas of order and harmony.

Boethius’s idea that the same piece of music can result in different effects in different listeners finds echo in Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Minde. Wright takes a less defined stance than many others of his time. He writes about different interactive perceptions of any musical episode:

divers consorts stirre up in the heart, divers sorts of joyes, and divers sorts of sadnesse or paine: the which as men are affected, may be diversely applyed: Let a good and a godly man heare musicke, and he will lift up his heart to heaven: let a bad man heare the same, and hee will convert it to lust.… True it is, that one kinde of musicke may be more apt to one passion then another.¹⁷

He is aware of the two distinct types of reactions music can arouse in a hearer’s soul, the sublimating and the corrupting, depending on the individual mindset of the perceiver. Mulcaster also declares that “Mans faulte makes the thing seeme filthie.”¹⁸ He moralizes that if we behave ourselves and think honest thoughts, “Musick will not harme thee” and “it wel serve thee to good purpose.”¹⁹ Similar reasoning is found in The Praise of Music, which asserts that it is not at all the fault of music if one is found to be moved to effeminate or wanton thoughts by music, because music “it selfe is good: but [the fault is] in the corrupt nature, and evil disposition of light persons, which of themselves are prone to wantonness.”²⁰ Some of Wright’s contemporaries, however, are not as impartial. Music to them is either good or bad; there is no intermediary stance. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations and Conventions
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. “A damnd divel, or an Angel?”: Music and Women
• 3. “Sing us a bawdy Song, and make’s merry”: Music and Men
• 4. “My heart is stolne out of my eare”: Music, Love, and Sex
• 5. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index