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Conventions of Song in Restoration Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert Gale Noyes
Robert Gale Noyes*
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Extract

From the time of the miracle cycles and the morality plays songs have been used for the embellishment of English tragedy. As the drama developed, lyrics in plays came to have functional as well as decorative or merely divertive significance, until with Shakespeare their dramatic values acquired subtlety, and songs became an integral part of the technique of comedy and tragedy. The rôle of song in the plays of Shakespeare's predecessors and contemporaries to 1642, and especially in those of Shakespeare himself, has been analyzed with great detail, but there has been no account of the projection of songs into the drama of the Restoration, when with neo-classic emphasis on regularity and a body of tragedies essentially classical in form, one might expect altered usage of previously established conventions or even an astringent use of song itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 1938 , pp. 162 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1938

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References

1 1933); E. J. Dent, “Shakespeare and Music,” A Companion to Shakespeare Studies, edd. H. Granville-Barker and G. B. Harrison (New York, 1934), pp. 137–161; Willard Thorp, Songs from the Restoration Theater (Princeton, 1934); A. J. Walker, Popular Songs and Broadside Ballads in the English Drama, 1559–1642, unpublished Harvard dissertation (1934); R. G. Noyes, “Contemporary Musical Settings of the Songs in Restoration Drama,” ELH, i (1934), 325–344; “Songs from Restoration Drama in Contemporary and Eighteenth-Century Poetical Miscellanies,” Ibid., iii (1936), 291–316; Lu Emily Pearson, “Isolable Lyrics of the Mystery Plays,” Ibid., in (1936), 228–252; R. G. Noyes and Roy Lamson, Jr., “Broadside-Ballad Versions of the Songs in Restoration Drama,” Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, xix (1937), 199–218; R. G. Noyes, “Contemporary Musical Settings of the Songs in Restoration Dramatic Operas,” Ibid., xx (1928), 99–121.

2 Some of the best tragedies, however, have no songs: All for Love, Aureng-Zebe, The Mourning Bride, Venice Preserved.

3 Phœton; or, The Fatal Divorce, 1698, sig. B3v.

4 iii, 1. Compare the epilogue to Dryden and Lee's (Edipus, 1679:

Yet as weak States each others pow'r assure,

Weak Poets by Conjunction are secure.

Their Treat is what your Pallats relish most,

Charm! Song! and Show! a Murder and a Ghost!

and the prologue to George Powell's Bonduca, 1696:

Nay we are bringing

Machines, Scenes, Opera's, Musick, Dancing, Singing:

Translated from the Chiller, Bleaker Strand,

To your Sweet Covent-Garden's Warmer Land.

5 “Prelude,” sig. A2v.

6 Unacted tragedies have been omitted from the discussion.

7 “Still-music” was music played on the recorder.

8 Additional songs used to open scenes will be indicated in subsequent references.

9 For discussion of inter-act music see W. J. Lawrence, The Elizabethan Playhouse, 1st series, pp. 75 ff. Music between the acts dates from the beginning of English drama. For inter-act songs in Restoration comedy see Nahum Tate, Cuckolds-Haven, 1685, ii–iii; George Powell, The Cornish Comedy, 1696, ii–iii, iii–iv.

10 Ed. 1667, sig. Fff2r. See P. W. Souers, The Matchless Orinda (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), pp. 180 ff.; Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus, 1729, p. 106.

11 See Theodosius; or, The Force of Love …. With the Musick betwixt the Acts, 1680. The song “Ah cruel bloody fate” seems to have been sung early in Act v rather than after Act iv. It is given within the act in the texts.

12 See the analysis of its dramatic function in Noble, Shakespeare's Use of Song, pp. 44–48.

13 For songs at banquets in contemporary comedy see for example Anon., The Counterfeit Bridegroom, 1677, ii.l; Thomas Dilke, TheCitylady, 1697, iii.1; J. Harris, The City Bride, 1696, i.1; Peter Motteux, Love's a Jest, 1696, ii; Thomas Otway, The Soldier's Fortune, 1681, v [2]; Edward Ravenscroft, King °ar and Alfreda, 1677, iii.1; Thomas Shadwell, The Woman-Captain, 1680, iv.

14 On this point of technique see Montague Summers, The Restoration Theatre (London, 1934), pp. 158–162; Allardyce Nicoll, “Doors and Curtains in Restoration Theatres,” MLR, xv (1920), 137–142, and W. J. Lawrence's reply, pp. 414–420.

15 Ravenscroft enlivened his tragedy still further with the masque of Ixion (iii.1), discussed below.

16 For example, Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, 1.2; Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy, i.2; A Wife for a Month, ii.6; The False One, iii.4; Cyril Tourneur, The Revenger's Tragedy, v.3; James Shirley, The Cardinal, iii.2; The Traitor, iii.2; John Ford, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, iv.1; Love's Sacrifice, iii.4. In the work of Beaumont and Fletcher the pastoral and the masque within the play were most deftly adjusted to the requirements of the play and the taste of the audience.

17 See particularly John Crowne, Calisto, 1675; Thomas Duffett, Beauties Triumph, 1676; Dr. John Blow, Venus and Adonis, ca. 1687; Anon., The Rape of Europa by Jupiter, 1694; John Oldmixon, Amintas, 1698.

18 Over two dozen comedies contained interpolated pastorals and masques.

19 Beaumont and Fletcher, Thierry and Theodoret, i.1.

20 Violence at the altar was popular. It occurs in Settle's Cambyses King of Persia (1671, v.3); as the false Smerdis is about to force Phedima to marry him, “two glorious Spirits descend in Clouds,” singing. After the song Smerdis is killed. In Lee's Theodosius (1680, v.4) Atticus the high priest (Bowman) sings at the marriage of Theodosius to Athenais, who has drunk a bowl of poison before the ceremony. In Gildon's Phœton; or, The Fatal Divorce (1698, v) as Phaeton is marrying Lybia, the deserted Althea sends a poisoned crown and robe which kill her rival. The grimmest use of the epithalamium is in Crowne's Thyestes (1681, v.l), where the erotic double entendre of the song “A lovely pair endowed by fate” augments the horror of the situation.

21 Sir Walter Scott and George Saintsbury, The Works of John Dryden (Edinburgh), iv (1883), 23–24.

22 The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. A. R. Shilleto (London, 1893), ii, 132 ff. “Musick . . . is a sovereign remedy against Despair and Melancholy, and will drive away the Devil himself.”

23 Pages 5–6. For a later view of the notion see Francis Lynch, The Independent Patriot; or, Musical Folly (London, 1737), ii.1, p. 21.

24 Charles Gildon, The Roman Bride's Revenge, 1697, i.2.

25 Thomas Otway, Alcibiades, 1675, v.l.

26 John Dennis, Rinaldo and Armida, 1699, iii.

27 John Caryl, The English Princess, 1677, iii.4. Compare Burton's Anatomy, ed. cit.,

ii, 134: “the mind, as some suppose, harmonically composed, is roused up at the tunes of musick.”

28 Compare George Powell's Alphonso King of Naples, 1691, iv.1, where after the song “Long time alas our mournful swains” is sung to divert the melancholy king, Alphonso exclaims:

No more; no more; cease all your Harmony,

It suits not with a Wretch so curst as I.

29 The song “Love's delights were past expressing,” given at the beginning of the play, was probably intended for iii [2].

30 Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (London, 1765), ii, 343.

31 See for example Anon., Mr. Turbulent, 1682, v; Sir William D'Avenant, The Rivals, 1668, iii, v; Thomas D'Urfey, The Comical History of Don Quixote, part ii, 1679, v.2; James Howard, All Mistaken; or, The Mad Couple, 1672, ii, v; George Powell, A Very Good Wife, 1693, ii.1.