Department of English presents John Edwards – Music in Shakespeare’s late plays

7 March 2023

1:00pm – 2:00pm

Location: Vari Hall 1020

The spectacle of court masques was being translated for the public stage in the time of Shakespeare’s late plays, and a big part of that was the instruments, the dance, and the new heroic style of song which emphasized sort of ‘heightened declamation’, where composers wrote out the rhythms and pitches of the extravagant speeches in notation. John Edwards discusses the songs of The Tempest, Othello, Winter’s Tale and others.