For lovers of music and poetry the legendary figure of Orpheus probably suggests a romantic ideal. But for the Renaissance he is essentially a political figure. Mythographers interpreted the Orpheus story as an allegory of the birth of civilization because they recognized in the arts in which Orpheus excelled an instrument of social control so powerful that with it you could, as one writer put it, 'winne Cities and whole Countries'. Dealing with plays, poems, songs and the iconography of musical instruments, Robin Headlam Wells re-examines the myth, central to the Orpheus story, of the transforming power of music and poetry. Elizabethan Mythologies, first published in 1994, contains numerous illustrations from the period and will be of interest to scholars and students of Renaissance poetry, drama and music, and of the history of ideas.

Writers of the English Renaissance, like their European contemporaries, frequently reflect on the phenomenon of exile—an experience that forces the individual to establish a new personal identity in an alien environment. Although there has been much commentary on this phenomenon as represented in English Renaissance literature, there has been nothing written at length about its counterpart, namely, internal exile: marginalization, or estrangement, within the homeland. This volume considers internal exile as a simultaneously twofold experience. It studies estrangement from one’s society and, correlatively, from one’s normative sense of self. In doing so, it focuses initially on the sonnet sequences by Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare (which is to say, the problematics of romance); then it examines the verse satires of Donne, Hall, and Marston (likewise, the problematics of anti-romance). This book argues that the authors of these major texts create mythologies—via the myths of (and accumulated mythographies about) Cupid, satyrs, and Proteus—through which to reflect on the doubleness of exile within one’s own community. These mythologies, at times accompanied by theologies, of alienation suggest that internal exile is a fluid and complex experience demanding multifarious reinterpretation of the incongruously expatriate self. The monograph thus establishes a new framework for understanding texts at once diverse yet central to the Elizabethan literary achievement.

Elizabeth I is one of England's most admired and celebrated rulers. She is also one of its most iconic: her image is familiar from paintings, film and television. This wide-ranging interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the origins and development of the image and myths that came to surround the Virgin Queen. The essays question the prevailing assumptions about the mythic Elizabeth and challenge the view that she was unambiguously celebrated in the literature and portraiture of the early modern era. They explain how the most familiar myths surrounding the queen developed from the concerns of her contemporaries and yet continue to reverberate today. Published to mark the 400th anniversary of the queen's death, this volume will appeal to all those with an interest in the historiography of Elizabeth's reign and Elizabethan, and Jacobean, poets, dramatists and artists.

Presents critical essays which discuss the writers and literary works of the Elizabethan era, and includes a chronology of the cultural, political, and literary events of the period.

The first fifty volumes of this yearbook of Shakespeare studies are being reissued in paperback.

Shakespeare is the national poet of many nations besides his own, though a peculiarly subversive one in both east and west. This volume contains a score of essays by scholars from Britain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Poland, Romania, Spain, Ukraine and the USA, written to show how the momentous changes of 1989 were mirrored in the way Shakespeare has been interpreted and produced. The collection offers a valuable record of what Shakespeare has meant in the modern world and some pointers to what he may mean in the future.

With an A-Z of over 300 entries, Music in Shakespeare is the most comprehensive study of all the musical terms found in Shakespeare's complete works. It includes a definition of each musical term in its historical and theoretical context, and explores the diverse extent of musical imagery across the full range of Shakespeare's dramatic and poetic work, as well as analysing the usage of instruments and sound effects on the Shakespearean stage. This is a comprehensive reference guide for scholars and students with interests in the thematic and allegorical relevance of music in Shakespeare, and the history of performance. Identifying all musical terms found in the Shakespeare canon, it will also be of use to the growing number of directors and actors concerned with recovering the staging conditions of the early modern theatre.

A multidisciplinary study of the uses of music and the portrayal of characters with mental disorder in seventeenth-century English opera and theater. In the seventeenth century, harmonious sounds were thought to represent the well-ordered body of the obedient subject, and, by extension, the well-ordered state; conversely, discordant, unpleasant music represented both those who caused disorder (murderers, drunkards, witches, traitors) and those who suffered from bodily disorders (melancholics, madmen, and madwomen). While these theoretical correspondences seem straightforward, in theatrical practice the musical portrayals of disorderly characters were multivalent and often ambiguous. O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note focuses on the various ways that theatrical music represented disorderly subjects—those who presented either a direct or metaphorical threat to the health of the English kingdom in seventeenth -century England. Using theater music to examine narratives of social history, Winkler demonstrates how music reinscribed and often resisted conservative, political, religious, gender, and social ideologies. “In a world centered on notions of order and harmony, witchcraft, melancholia, and madness inhabit the margins of society. However, in this impressive and wide-ranging study, Amanda Eubanks Winkler skillfully relocates this trinity of disorder close to the center of our understanding of seventeenth-century English theater. Musically insightful, historically illuminating, and interpretatively rich, O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note will amply reward scholars of music and theater alike.” —Steven Plank, Oberlin College “Winkler has crafted an extraordinarily useful and well-informed study that fills significant gaps in the existing musicological and theatrical scholarship on this period. With its interpretive subtlety, its approachable style, and its detailed exploration of a wide range of examples—from little-known stage works to such staples of the genre as Hamlet, The Duchess of Malfi, and Dido and Aeneas—this engaging book will be of interest to any scholar or non-specialist seeking to understand the seventeenth-century’s fascination with, and ambivalence toward, portrayals of witchcraft and madness on the theatrical stage.” —Dr. Andrew Walkling, Department of History, SUNY Binghamton “Seventeenth-century England provides an outstanding backdrop for this study, which focuses on theatrical characters generally associated with mental disorder. . . . Opera scholars should find this work helpful, and specialists in gender studies will gain much from Winkler’s discussion of stereotypes, role reversals, pathological diagnoses, and so on. . . . Recommended.” —Choice

The first book-length study in any language dedicated specifically to lute, guitar, and vihuela.