Tag Archives: culture

Elizabethan Song in Shakespeare

Music was a flourishing affair in Renaissance England

Music was a flourishing affair in Renaissance England

Merry and mirthful songs repeatedly caper through “As You Like It”, with blithe, bucolic lyrics that suggest what the modern ear can no longer hear. Whatever melodies, tones, and textures Shakespeare envisioned have mostly evaporated under the sweep of time, and an unaided imagination tends to flop short in grasping the succinct levity of these songs. The thumping, pounding rhythms of modern pop and rap music are a poor mental substitute for whatever non-textual effects Shakespeare desired in his musical insertions, and so the task of replaying Shakespeare is not an immediately easy one.

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