Abstracts
Abstract
In The Merry Wives of Windsor, there is a humorous sound-based musical moment in act 3, scene 1 that no longer resonates with contemporary audiences; the sounds evoked in the text and intended for performance on the stage have become obsolete. This article begins by investigating the original sounds and meanings of the sonic moment in the play, exploring what they would have sounded like and what they meant to an Elizabethan audience. It then turns to three twentieth- and twenty-first-century productions that have contended with this outdated sonic moment in funny, memorable, and very different ways, asking how new productions can harness new sounds to capture old meanings.
Keywords:
- William Shakespeare,
- The Merry Wives of Windsor,
- English Metrical Psalms,
- The Whole Book of Psalms,
- Christopher Marlowe
Résumé
Dans The Merry Wives of Windsor, l’acte 3, scène 1, contient un passage musico-sonore à caractère humoristique qui a perdu toute résonance auprès des spectateurs contemporains. Les sons évoqués dans le texte et destinés à être exécutés sur scène sont aujourd’hui obsolètes. Cet article analyse d’abord les sons originaux et les significations dont ils sont porteurs, en examinant la manière dont ils auraient été entendus et interprétés par un public élisabéthain. Il se penche ensuite sur trois productions du XXe et du XXIe siècle qui ont traité ce passage sonore désuet de manières amusantes, mémorables et tout à fait distinctes, afin de comprendre comment de nouvelles productions peuvent exploiter de nouveaux sons pour restituer d’anciennes significations.
Appendices
Bibliography
- Chappell, William. Popular Music of the Olden Time: A Collection of Ancient Songs, Ballads and Dances Tunes, Illustrative of the National Music of England. Vol. 1. London: Cramer, Beale and Chappell, 1859.
- Cimolino, Anthony, dir. The Merry Wives of Windsor, by William Shakespeare. Stratford, ON: Stratford Festival, 2020. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350894761.
- Corkine, William. The Second Booke of Ayres Some, to Sing and Play to the Base-Violl Alone: Others, to Be Sung to the Lute and Base Violl. With New Corantoes, Pauins, Almaines; as also Diuers New Descants Upon Old Grounds, Set to the Lyra-Violl. London, 1612.
- Duguid, Timothy. Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice: English “Singing Psalms” and Scottish “Psalm Buiks,” c. 1549–1640. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014.
- Englands Helicon. London: Printed by John Roberts for John Flasket, 1600.
- Forsythe, R. S. “The Passionate Shepherd; and English Poetry.” PMLA 40, no. 3 (September 1925): 692–742. https://doi.org/10.2307/457566.
- Green, Ian. Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208600.001.0001.
- Hamlin, Hannibal. Psalm Culture and Early Modern Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
- Harper, Sally. Music in Welsh Culture before 1650: A Study of the Principal Sources. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315090825.
- Jones, David Hugh, dir. The Merry Wives of Windsor, by William Shakespeare. London: BBC Worldwide, 1982. https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/the-merry-wives-of-windsor.
- Kugel, James. In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.
- Laird, Fiona, dir. The Merry Wives of Windsor, by William Shakespeare. Stratford-upon-Avon: Royal Shakespeare Company, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350999091.
- Luscombe, Christopher, dir. The Merry Wives of Windsor, by William Shakespeare. London: Shakespeare’s Globe on Screen, 2008–15. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350997516.
- Marsh, Christopher. Music and Society in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
- “A most excellent Ditty of the / Louers promises to his beloued.” London: Printed by the Assignes of Thomas Symcock, 1619–29. https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/30141/image.
- The Passionate Pilgrime By W. Shakespeare. London: Printed by T. Judson for William Jaggard, 1599.
- Quitslund, Beth. The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315237435.
- Quitslund, Beth, and Nicholas Temperley, eds. The Whole Book of Psalms Collected into English Metre by Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins, and Others: A Critical Edition of the Texts and Tunes. 2 vols. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018.
- Robinson, Hastings, ed. Zurich Letters 1558–1579: Comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others, with Some of the Helvetian Reformers, during the Early Part of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1842.
- Shakespeare, William. 1 Henry IV. In The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus, 1177–1254. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.
- Shakespeare, William. The Merry Wives of Windsor. In The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus, 1255–1320. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.
- Shakespeare, William. The Merry Wives of Windsor. In The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by G. Blakemore Evans, 286–326. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.
- Simpson, Claude M. The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1966.
- Sternfeld, Frederick W., and Mary Joiner Chan. “Come Live with Me and Be My Love.” Comparative Literature 22, no. 2 (Spring 1970): 173–87. https://doi.org/10.2307/1769760.
- Sternhold, Thomas, and John Hopkins. The Whole Book of Psalmes, Collected into Englysh Metre by T. Starnhold, I. Hopkins & Others. London: John Day, 1562.
- Temperley, Nicholas. Music of the English Parish Church. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
- The Whole Booke of Psalmes: With Their Wonted Tunes, as They Are Sung in Churches, Composed into Foure Partes. Edited by Thomas East. London, 1594.
- Willis, Jonathan. Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England: Discourses, Sites and Identities. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315572031.
- Willis, Susan. The BBC Plays: Making the Televised Canon. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
- Wylde, Jacqueline. “Moving Graces: Forms of Religious Persuasion in Early Modern English Drama.” PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2018.