Customer Reviews

Shakespeare's Songbook

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Ross Duffin has performed a mighty feat--coming up with pre-composed music for all the Shakespeare lyrics--including some never before published. This is a wonderful resource and a great starting point for anyone who wants to understand the musical references in Shakespeare's plays, and also for anyone who wants to use period music for actual productions.

That said, there are many traps for the unwary. Duffin has, at the same time, cast his net too widely and too narrowly. He has taken the reasonable step of starting by looking for printed ballads with similar verse patterns to Shakespeare lyrics and then finding which of those ballad tunes that seems to fit the Shakespeare verse the best. This can make for anomalies, however: so often, the best fit is either "Robin Goodfellow," also known as "Dulcina," or "Goddesses." This in spite of the fact that both these tunes seem to originate rather late for the purpose: the first surviving example of "Dulcina," and also the first written record of its existence, dates from 1615, five years after Shakespeare retired from the theather, and "Goddesses" dates from 1650 or thereabouts. Duffin generously acknowledge these facts in each individual case. But he uses both these tunes far too often in the collection as a whole, given their tenuous existence in Shakespeare's own day. Some other suggested tunes also seem to date from much later.

The idea that most of these verses would have been sung to ballad tunes also seems far too simplistic, given what we know of the variety of theatrical songs in general that survive from this period, songs such as the anonymous "Have you seen but the white lily grow," as well as the works of Robert Johnson and theatrical viol consort songs such as "The dark is my delight." It seems extremely unlikely, for example, that several lines before singing Robert Johnson's setting of "Full fathom five" at the opening of _The Tempest_, that Ariel would have sung "Come unto these yellow sands" to a ballad tune instead of to another song by Robert Johnson that happens not to survive. Or that "Full fathom five" would be used three different times in one play, never mind that it's hard to imagine that a character who is enough of a lowlife to sing "The captain, the swabber, the boatswain and I" would even know such a refined and sophisticated melody to to which to set it. My personal suggestions would be "Heigh ho the cramp" for "I shall no more to sea" and "Sellenger's Round" for "The captain, the swabber. . ."

Duffin was occasionally guilty of picking tunes that fit the words awkwardly at best, such as "While you here do snoring lie" from _The Tempest_ to "The Hunt is Up," or using primarily instrumental tunes such as "Nutmings and Ginger," which contain awkward rhythms for singing English, creating word patterns that resembl neither pre-composed vocal music nore surviving folk song. And at least once, he failed to read the stage directions closely, which resulted in actually ommitting text from the song--in this case, Caliban's song in _The Tempest_, which he begins with the words "No more dams I'll lay for fish." According to the stage directions, the song actually begins with the line, "Farewell, master, farewell, farewell." With the first line restored, the song fits very well to another tune known as "Night piece, or "The Shaking of the Sheets." (For anyone interested to hunt up this one, see _The British Broadside Ballad and its Music_ by Claude M. Simpson or _Old English Popular Music_ by William Chappell.) Granted, the first line is not italicised in the First Folio, but neither is the first line of the "Farewell, dear heart" sequence from _Tweltfh Night_, which is obviously meant to be sung, since it is the first line of the tune that the drunkards use for their banter.

Also, Duffin suggests "Where griping griefs" as a tune for a couple of songs aside from the original in _Romeo and Juliet_, but offers no written-out accompaniment, which renders the tune impractical. It contains leaps of a dminished octave, which would be rather awkward for actors who haven't had extensive musical training (or even many singers who have) to manage alone.

To sum up, the authors have definitely opened the book on the subject of Shakespeare's music--but they haven't closed it.

It is with pleasure that I recommend Ross Duffin's Shakespeare's Songbook. Foregrounding the musical allusions in Shakespeare's plays, Duffin asks us to radically re-conceive our understanding of the Elizabethan experience of attending plays. By demonstrating how Shakespeare at times cites, at other times extracts the popular music of his time, Duffin makes a compelling case for Shakespearean plays as multimedia events. While we think of a play as a series of acts comprised solely of spoken dialogue, Duffin shows us how Shakespeare uses musical excerpts and allusions to ballads and other "pop music" of his day in order to amplify his meaning. Duffin's findings suggest that the Elizabethan experience of going to a play would be akin to our experience of watching a film like Moulin Rouge, which cuts and pastes our pop music into a narrative. (Except, of course, that Shakespeare did it so much better!) Part of what makes this book so amazing is that Duffin has reconstructed tunes and songs to which Shakespeare only alludes! The companion CD allows us to get a taste of what the music would have sounded like--performed, I might add, on period instruments!

I do want to clarify something mentioned in the previous review. The writer ends by noting, "the authors have definitely opened the book on the subject of Shakespeare's music." Perhaps this is a typo, but there are no authors (plural). Ross Duffin is the author. Perhaps the reviewer doesn't understand that someone (in this case, Stephen Orgel) could write the foreword for a book without being its author. At any rate, clarification is in order.

This book has changed how I think about and teach Shakespeare. I hope that directors and actors take it up, so that they can return at least some of the music to Shakespeare's plays.

If you like Shakespeare and if you want to discover the music he was supposed to insert .... Go

Purchased for an English Theatre teacher, and she loved it. Beautiful book presentation with CD.

Bought this book, for the play "The Tempest" I am a actor and need songs for the play. The book is perfect for what I was looking for.