1st Edition

Music and Gender in English Renaissance Drama

By Katrine Wong Copyright 2013
    232 Pages 18 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    248 Pages 18 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    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  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

    Biography

    Katrine K. Wong is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Macau.

     

    'Wong’s depth of knowledge about Renaissance musicological and literary contexts, her careful analysis of music, her focus on song in a large body of less studied plays, and her consistent investigation of the functions of music from multiple perspectives with a willingness to explore multiple interpretations make Music and Gender in English Renaissance Drama a particularly valuable addition to the study of Renaissance literature.' - Catherine A. Henze, Renaissance Quarterly