If Music be the Food of Love: Music in Shakespeare’s Plays

Speaker:  Sarah Huebsch Schilling, music historian and performer 

Music was central to the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest, has so much music that Robert Johnson may well be considered Shakespeare's co-author. Blackfriars and The Globe Theatre had unique pit orchestras, involving six instruments: flute, treble viol or violin, bass viol, lute, bandora, and cittern. Along with singing and other instruments, this English consort helped to tell Shakespeare’s stories, moving the audience to laugh, cry, love, and hate. We’ll explore how music was used in Shakespeare’s plays when they were first performed at the turn of the seventeenth century.

This will be a virtual lecture via Zoom.