Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

ously acquired Q of 1597; I suggest merely that the whole play deserves re-study in the light of the facts I have here presented. For if this Quarto text is an actor's inperfect version, there is some reason to suppose that Mr. Pollard may have to revise his strictures about the "good" and "bad" Quartos of Shakespeare's plays.108

The University of Chicago.

108 See notes 11, 20, 25, and, more recently, the following: "In other

cases, as in Richard III, they ["the producers of the Folio"] relied on a manuscript which they believed (in the case of Richard III wrongly) to be of higher authority. But the 'good' quartos have been recovered, thanks to the enthusiasm of collectors, and as regards most of these fourteen plays for which we have a double text our position is exceptionally good." (The Foundations of Shakespeare's Text, British Academy Shakespeare Lecture, April 23, 1923, p. 8.)

EXTRANEOUS SONG IN ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AFTER

THE ADVENT OF SHAKESPEARE

BY LOUIS B. WRIGHT

Song in drama, particularly in Elizabethan drama, has been of late a much discussed topic.1 In another study 2 I shall seek to show the extraneous nature of much of the song in the drama before Shakespeare. In the present discussion I wish to call attention to the practice of using song for extraneous diversion in the drama from the time when Shakespeare became a playwright of consequence until the closing of the theatres in 1642.

Although Shakespeare could be equalled among his contemporaries only by Jonson in the skill with which he combined sheer entertainment with dramatic effect, he never loses sight of the purely entertaining value of song on the stage; hence worshipping critics who believe in the absolute dramatic value of all the songs in Shakespeare's plays find themselves hard pressed to interpret some of the lyrics and particularly some of the clown songs. Occasionally Shakespeare's songs are so slightly related to the action and dramatic needs of the plays in which they occur that they are essentially mere extraneous diversions. Perhaps later producers in their instincts to leave out certain songs from acting versions, a practice which Mr. Richmond Noble inveighs against, were dramatically surer than aesthetic critics of the written plays. In the light of contemporary theatrical demands and practice in Shakespeare's day, it seems futile to contend that all of Shakespeare's,

1 Reed, Edward Bliss, Songs from the British Drama, New Haven, 1925; Noble, Richmond, Shakespeare's Use of Song, Oxford, 1923.

"Comic Song as Extraneous Entertainment in the Pre-Shakespearean Drama" forthcoming in Philological Quarterly.

* Professor Reed, op. cit., p. 352, goes so far as to say that Shakespeare "did little to enlarge the range of song in the drama." But if Shakespeare did not increase the range of song in the drama, he did increase its dramatic effectiveness, and he helped to establish the song as a popular device for attaining dramatic effects. In this again he proves himself rather a popularizer than an innovator, for song had occasionally been used for dramatic effect before him. Shakespeare's insistence upon dramatic purpose does not prevent his lapsing at times into the use of song for extraneous entertainment.

4

or all of any other dramatist's songs, had a definite structural value. In the drama which preceded Shakespeare, song was a recognized and popular device for entertaining spectators at plays. It made little difference whether the songs contributed directly to the atmosphere or action of the plays; they were provided, among other bits of entertainment, to amuse audiences who cared little about the structure or congruity of plays so long as they were amused. It is incompatible with common sense that Shakespeare, a practical writer for the stage and a keen business man, should have sacrificed entirely the old conventions of extraneous theatrical amusement, even though he may have recognized the artistic blemishes inherent in them and may have applied his talents toward reconciling old forms of entertainment with his sense of dramatic propriety. A careful presentation of all the songs in Shakespeare from the point of view of the practical Elizabethan playwright, a . task beyond the scope of the present discussion, would show that many of the songs, frequently explained on grounds of subtle foreshadowing, atmosphere, or characterization, are chiefly nothing more than diverting entertainments. Undoubtedly Shakespeare

was skillful in weaving together much incongruous matter into a unified whole, but his commentators have been more skillful in 'supplying subtle reasons for simple incidents.

The comic epilogue songs in Love's Labor's Lost, necessitating a return of the clowns to the stage, certainly left the audience laughing, but the relation between the songs and the preceding play is slight. The separation of the Princess from the King and his courtiers had made sufficiently easy the clearing of the stage. The comic implications of the "Cuckoo Song" are such as to produce laughter, but how they "sustain, even in the end, the laughing character of the comedy," as Mr. Noble maintains, I fail to see.

Mr. Noble, op. cit., insists on the absolute dramatic propriety of all the songs in Shakespeare's plays.

Professor John Robert Moore, "Songs in Shakespeare," University of Wisconsin Shakespeare Studies (1916), 78-102, likewise declares that "there are in Shakespeare no songs devoid of dramatic function."

5

Noble, op. cit., p. 34. In addition to the reason cited above, the author thinks these epilogue songs are functional because they are needed to clear the stage. The fact that several actors are called back on the stage after a graceful provision is made for clearing the stage in the farewells of the

Laughter followed the song, but it was in a different tone from that of the comedy. Surely Mr. Noble does not mean that laughter produced by any device would sustain the "laughing character of the comedy"? In similar fashion, the epilogue song by Feste in Twelfth Night is thoroughly extraneous; it merely serves as a comic after-piece by the clown and has no relation to the play itself. Some of the other clown songs in the play are only slenderly functional, if at all."

That Balthasar's song in Leonato's garden, Act 2, Sc. 3 of Much Ado About Nothing, was intended as a bit of entertainment by a talented vocalist in the company, one Jack Wilson, seems certain from the stage directions in the First Folio in which Wilson is mentioned by name; Creizenach points out that the words of praise for Balthasar's talents from the other characters were intended as a personal compliment to Wilson."

8

Comic diversion and clownery which have little organic relation to the play are furnished in Act 2, Sc. 2 of The Tempest by the singing of Stephano and Caliban. Professor John Robert Moore holds that Stephano's singing is for the purpose of delineating his character and foreshadowing Caliban's reaction to his influence. Such a statement presupposes that Shakespeare had a deeper meaning in the scene than mere entertainment and that it was necessary to delineate Stephano's character. The more sensible view seems to be, if one maintains the point of view of the contemporary playwright, that the scene is mere clownery, and that the songs of both Stephano and Caliban are clown songs thrown in to help out the

King and his party and the Princess hardly argues the necessity of this device for that purpose.

Even Mr. Noble admits that the epilogue song in Twelfth Night is entertaining nonsense, but he attempts to give it a functional value by asserting that "the wise nonsense contained in this ditty serves as a commentary on the events of the play, and is a fitting corollary to the first song, "O mistress mine" (op. cit., p. 85). Wherein the commentary lay for the Elizabethan audience, it is difficult to see.

Creizenach, Wilhelm, The English Drama in the Age of Shakespeare, London and Philadelphia, 1916, p. 393. Mr. Noble ignores Creizenach's theory regarding the complimentary speeches to Wilson. He asserts that the song is a "genuine dramatic song" without making clear precisely what dramatic function it has.

Loc. cit.

general comic effect. Mr. Moore also sees in the drinking songs of Falstaff and Sir Toby only freedom from "powerful overtones of dramatic significance," yet surely these are just as truly for the purposes of characterization as the singing of Stephano and Caliban. The chief purpose of the songs, however, is simply that of comic

entertainment.

In The Winter's Tale, Autolycus is a clown and only a clown. His performances are pure clownery; his songs are merely extraneous clown songs with no dramatic value outside the clown scenes which are themselves extraneous.10

The prevalence of song in As You Like It is no doubt due in part to pastoral convention, but in all probablity there were especially good voices available in the company at the time Shakespeare wrote the play. The songs of the two pages near the end of Act 5, Sc. 3 seem, however, to be more for the sake of entertainment than for any other reason.11

The public of Shakespeare's day had inherited a love of song and a taste for vocal music in play performances. Owing to the increase in the number of song books and the art of singing the public appetite for vocal music was daily increasing. Shakespeare in his plays gave the public what it wanted. If he could make the song serve a definite dramatic purpose, all the better; if not, the song

• Mr. Noble, op. cit., p. 103, holds that Caliban's song ending,

66

''Ban, 'Ban, Ca-Caliban,

Has a new master-Get a new man,"

represents Shakespeare's rendering of music characteristic of aboriginal savages: "It is highly improbable that Shakespeare had knowledge of the music of man in a primitive state, but it is evident he had observed the impromptu musical efforts of young untrained boys, who like savages make a chorus by emphasizing and repeating parts of a name, and with an instinct unerring in its judgment he thought fit to invest Caliban's ebullition of defiance with the same peculiarity."

66

10 Noble, op. cit., p. 94. It seems to be pushing the subtlety of song too far to say, as Mr. Noble does, that from these songs we are led to suspect that, when the Clown enters, he is to be shorn some way or other," or that the songs are "used as soliloquy."

11 Ibid., p. 76. Mr. Noble concedes the extraneous nature of the song but insists that it was "to serve the same dramatic ends, as did the other songs in the comedy, namely to act as scenery." It is unnecessary to point out the danger of the temptation to ascribe to every passage containing a descriptive phrase the use of supplying the place of painted scenery.

« VorigeDoorgaan »