Shakespeare: Twelfth Night (TN-34)

The most recent contribution to the study of the place of music and dance in this play, in David Lindley’s Shakespeare and music (LS 199-218), providing a detailed analysis, in particular of the role of Feste as a singer. Thurston Dart characterised this as ‘a play bathed in music’, a Court spectacle employing the Corporation Band of the City of London in elaborate, subtle and ‘expensive’ music (in volume between six and eight players), and Peter Thomson writes ‘the play is animated by music from the overture and Orsino’s opening speech to the concluding dance and song (English Renaissance Theatre, 1955, p. 185). John Stevens (SM32-3) summarises the contrasting musical extremes: the Court, with its professional *broken consort and knock-about tavern music: bawdy ballads, catches and snatches of popular songs.

Note PS (ed. by M. M. Mahood, 1968) pp 193-205: ‘The Songs, transcribed and edited with the assistance of F.W. Sternfeld.’ NA (ed. by J. M. Lothian and T. W. Craik, 1975) App. II pp. 181-8 has the tunes of the songs and catches with the words underlayed. In CM286-408 Andrew Charlton offers 41 pieces of Elizabethan music effective as entr’actes or incidental music for use in the plays of which half may be used in this single play. He also uses this play as an example of the choice of music he would find appropriate as bridging between scenes, these being noted below. Brissenden discusses the dances in the play (BR56-61). A chapter by D. J. Palmer ‘The role of music in Twelfth Night’ is included in John Hollander ‘Twelfth Night: a case book’ (Macmillan, 1972), pp. 98-111. W. H. Auden considered ‘taken by themselves the songs are the most beautiful Shakespeare ever wrote…but in the context in which he places them, they sound shocking’ (ALd 520-2).

The Director’s Shakespeare approaches to Twelfth Night, ed. by Michael Billington 1990, pp. 68-72 treats of ‘Songs and the singer: Fitting the music to the mood.’ Van den Borren suggests that all the songs be sung unaccompanied (V69). NOHM iv 819 notes that the extant text may have been revised by 1606, by which time Shakespeare’s company had acquired as a regular member, Robert Armin, ‘an adult clown equally adept both at acting and singing.’ (cf Leslie Hotson Shakespeare’s motley, 1952). MM12 notes that an ‘overture’ is implied and that no brass is used during the play. A chapter entitled ‘The role of music in Twelfth Night’ by John Hollander is to be found in Twelfth Night, a casebook, ed. by D. J. Palmer. Macmillan (1972), pp. 98-111.

GPc vii 27 considers the 5 Act structure was not authentic, see 352 and 360 below for his suggested breaks. Winifred Maynard discusses the clown’s songs (ME198-204), noting how, to Feste, ‘song is as natural a mode of expression as nimble speech’ (ME 199). Further comment on the music will be found in Leslie Hotson The First night of Twelfth Night, 1954, pp 180-1 and 201-2. Auden remarks that ‘one has a sense, and nowhere more strongly than in the songs, of there being inverted commas around the “fun”’ (AL152).

The Globe Theatre has recorded a programme of music for broken *consort, in The Food of Love employing variously, recorder, shawms, curtal and lute, in connection with the 400^th anniversary production of the play (discography under recent survey Sf) related to Morley’s Consort Lessons published in 1599. The recording featured among the named composers, Morley, Dowland, Holborne, Byrd, Lauder, Playford, Ferrabosco II, Alison, Cornish, Simpson and Woodcock.

Peter Holman ventures to suggest an actual date, 1597, for the introduction of the mixed instrumental consort provided by the waits bands onto the stage and that 1619 ‘may mark the moment when they abandoned it in favour of ensembles with two violins’ (HV138). Manifold draws attention to the absolute quality of the music in Act 1 sc. 1 and Act II sc. 4 which is ‘pure, without the slightest element of signalling in it’ (MM 101)