Shakespeare's Songbook

Rating:
Summary: Great sourcebook--with a grain of salt
Review: Ross Duffin and Stephen Orgel have 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 and Orgel have, at the same time, cast their net too widely and too narrowly. They have 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. The authors generously acknowledge these facts in each individual case. But they use 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.

Also, 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.

Also, the authors were 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. And at least once, they 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 they begin 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.)

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

Rating:
Summary: Great sourcebook--with a grain of salt
Review: Ross Duffin and Stephen Orgel have 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 and Orgel have, at the same time, cast their net too widely and too narrowly. They have 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. The authors generously acknowledge these facts in each individual case. But they use 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.

Also, 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.

Also, the authors were 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. And at least once, they 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 they begin 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.)

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