Music in English Renaissance Drama

John H. Long, John H. Long

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813186344
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire anglaise

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.

THE MUSIC FOR THE LYRICS
IN EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY
ENGLISH DRAMA: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF
THE PRIMARY SOURCES

Vincent Duckles

It is dangerous to claim complete coverage for any bibliographical study, but an attempt to make a comprehensive survey of the musical settings for the Jacobean-Caroline drama must inevitably fall short of its objective. We are still in the process of recovering the work of those musicians who collaborated with Ben Jonson, with Beaumont and Fletcher, with Richard Brome, or with Sir William Davenant. Only within recent years has the music of the early English theater attracted the kind of attention that scholars have long devoted to the texts. The study of Shakespeare music is in a class by itself. Here, at least, there is a well-established tradition of scholarship, but it is safe to say that the problems related to Shakespeare’s use of music will continue to stimulate research for a long time to come.

Incomplete as the present listing may be, I think its users will be impressed by the quantity of music that has survived in the manuscripts and early printed sources. Most of these settings have been observed in one connection or another as the byproducts of literary or musical investigations. A substantial number of them are available in modern editions of assorted qualities, but no attempt has yet been made to bring all the information together from the widely scattered sources. This compilation is offered as an attempt to treat the music of early English drama as a body of materials worthy of study in its own right. It is not intended to suggest that song can be disassociated from the larger context of the theater, but it may serve to correct an emphasis that has been weighted almost entirely in the direction of literature.

In one respect this bibliography is incomplete by design. It is concerned solely with the musical settings of texts and does not take into account the comparatively small number of dances, “symphonies,” and other instrumental pieces that have been identified as belonging with certain masques or plays.

Song found its way into seventeenth-century English drama from two avenues: (1) it was lifted bodily from the repertory of traditional melody with which all playgoers of the time were familiar; or (2) it was composed for a specific dramatic occasion by one of the musicians associated with the playhouse. The pursuit of one or another of these paths has led scholars into rather widely separated territories. Men such as Edward F. Rimbault, William Chappell, or Frank Kidson explored the popular vein. Their work has culminated in the authoritative study by Claude M. Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and its Music (1966), to which frequent reference will be made in the following pages. The deliberately composed song has attracted much attention in recent years in the work of John P. Cutts, MacDonald Emslie, and Ian Spink. Both categories of song are treated in this bibliography, the chief criterion for inclusion being that the setting is a product of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries. The texts all derive from the plays, but it would be a mistake to claim that the settings they prompted were all utilized in the original productions, or even in revivals. Just as a preexisting song could be adapted for playhouse use, so a dramatic lyric could gain currency as a good singable text and be set by a musician who had no direct connection with the stage. The precise relationship between these settings and the plays from which they were derived could be the subject of extended and detailed study. The purpose of this bibliography is simply to direct the student to the primary sources and the modern editions of musical settings based on the Jacobean-Caroline drama, a period from about 1603 to 1642.

Specialists in the English theater will note that these dates correspond to the chronological limits adopted by William R. Bowden in his work on The English Dramatic Lyric, 1603-1642 (1951). The Appendix to Bowden’s study, which lists most of the identifiable songs from the drama of the period, has, in fact, provided the basic framework for the present bibliography. Bowden, unfortunately, makes no mention of musical sources. His survey is further restricted by the fact that he excludes treatment of the English masque, and the use of song in Shakespearean drama. There are recent studies that make up for this deficiency, at least in part. Andrew J. Sabol has edited most of the surviving songs from the masques in his Songs and Dances for the Stuart Masque (1959); John H. Long has directed his attention to the use of music in Shakespeare’s comedies, and F. W. Sternfeld has devoted himself to Music in Shakespearean Tragedy (1963). A vast amount of information on Shakespeare song has been assembled by Peter J. Seng in The Vocal Songs in the Plays of Shakespeare: A Critical History (1967). Two other indispensable tools should be mentioned: Alfred Harbage’s Annals of English Drama, 975-1700 (Philadelphia, 1940) has provided the authority for the dates of first performances of the masques and plays, and English Song-Books, 1651-1702 (London, 1940) by Cyrus L. Day and Eleanore B. Murrie, is a sure guide to the dramatic songs that appear in the printed collections of the second half of the seventeenth century. Finally, no student of the music of English drama can fail to acknowledge a debt to John P. Cutts, who has made the contents of many of the major manuscript sources more readily accessible in a series of detailed descriptions and inventories published over the past fifteen years. Some indication of the scope of his work is given in connection with the list of sources that follows. Cutts’ inventories, although some details could be called into question, furnish a standard numbering system by means of which the songs can be located in their respective manuscripts.

MANUSCRIPT SOURCES AND RELATED STUDIES

A useful listing of the “Sources of English Song, 1620-1660,” with commentary, has been compiled by Ian Spink in Miscellanea Musicologica, Adelaide Studies in Musicology, I (1966), 117-138. In the list below only those studies are cited that treat the source under consideration comprehensively.

Birmingham, City Reference Library

MS 57,316. A fragment containing settings from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum

MS 52.D (the “John Bull MS”). The last portion of this source contains a collection of songs before 1630.

Cambridge, King’s College Library

MS KC.1. A parch...