Department of English present John Edwards – Music of the Shakespearean stage in the Restoration period

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

4:00pm-5:00pm

Room SC 203

In a pub in 1667 the theatre impresario Tom Killigrew boasted to the diarist Samuel Pepys that ‘that the stage is now by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore.’ Along with improved furnishings and lighting, Restoration theatres boasted an orchestra of string players with ‘harpsicals and theorboes’ to accompany the songs of Humphrey, Purcell and others. John Edwards discusses these developments which culminate in the transformation of Midsummer Night’s Dream into a semi-opera.