Shakespeare in the Round: Harmonic Logic of the Globe

Sophia Richardson, Oberlin College

Location

Science Center, A254

Document Type

Presentation

Start Date

4-24-2015 4:00 PM

End Date

4-24-2015 5:30 PM

Abstract

Today, we might go “see” a play. Shakespeare’s contemporaries, however, went to “hear” them. Using historically grounded modes of understanding harmony as a governing principle of instrumental music and the cosmos itself, I perform close readings of The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream to show how music surfaces not only in interludes and songs, but also in the structures of dialogues, plots, and player-audience interaction. Teasing out the musical logic that informs Renaissance theatrical composition, we find ourselves surrounded by—and partaking in—the “music of the spheres.”

Notes

Session 3, Panel 17 - From Whence the Word: Studies of Sound and Etymology
Moderator: Marcelo Vinces, Director of Center for Learning, Education and Research in the Sciences (CLEAR)

Major

Comparative Literature; English; German

Advisor(s)

Jed Deppman, Comparative Literature
Wendy Hyman, English
Elizabeth Hamilton, German

Project Mentor(s)

Wendy Hyman, English
Steven Plank, Musicology

April 2015

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Apr 24th, 4:00 PM Apr 24th, 5:30 PM

Shakespeare in the Round: Harmonic Logic of the Globe

Science Center, A254

Today, we might go “see” a play. Shakespeare’s contemporaries, however, went to “hear” them. Using historically grounded modes of understanding harmony as a governing principle of instrumental music and the cosmos itself, I perform close readings of The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream to show how music surfaces not only in interludes and songs, but also in the structures of dialogues, plots, and player-audience interaction. Teasing out the musical logic that informs Renaissance theatrical composition, we find ourselves surrounded by—and partaking in—the “music of the spheres.”