Did Shakespeare like music

Answer 1

Shakespeare wrote many song lyrics and inserted them into many of his plays, particularly the comedies.

Here are some of the more famous ones:

"Who is Sylvia?" (The Two Gentlemen of Verona)

"Tell me Where is Fancy Bred?" (The Merchant of Venice)

"Sigh no more, ladies" (Much Ado About Nothing)

"Under the Greenwood Tree" (As You Like It)

"Blow, Blow, thou winter Wind" (As You Like It)

"Full Fathom Five" (The Tempest)

"It Was a Lover and his Lass" (As You Like It)

"Come Away, come away, death" (Twelfth Night)

"O mistress mine! Where are you roaming?" (Twelfth Night)

"When I was and a tiny little boy" (Twelfth Night)

The last one was reprised in King Lear. Another famous song from a tragedy is "Willow" from Othello.

They sometimes did because it used to create a mood for people to enjoy the play. They used instrumental music also, as at the beginning of Twelfth Night where Orsino says "If music be the food of love, play on" or in Merchant of Venice when Jessica says "I am never merry when I hear sweet music".

Answer 2

Yes he did
Shakespeare wrote lyrics to a number of different songs which he included in his plays. He also had characters who were fond of music, such as Orsino in Twelfth Night. But we have no record of his personal likes and dislikes at all so we cannot tell if he enjoyed music or not.

Answer 3

Possibly, depending on how you define "musical". Of course Shakespeare did not write modern musicals any more than he wrote modern plays, since these forms had not yet been developed. He did not even write masques, which some playwrights of his time like Middleton did. Masques were really the musicals of the period, being described as "music and dancing, singing and acting, within an elaborate stage design". Masques were spectacles, not heavy on plot or character, but a feast for the eyes and ears.

Nevertheless, many of Shakespeare's plays, especially the comedies, have a lot of musical performance integrated into the script. As You Like It features the songs "It was a lover and his lass", "Under the Greenwood Tree", "Blow, Blow thou Winter Wind", "Come, Sweet Audrey", and "Who Killed the Deer?" That is a lot of songs for a play that is not a musical. There is even a character, Amiens, whose sole purpose is to sing the songs. Twelfth Night is also heavy on musical content.

Answer 4

Songs appear in almost all of Shakespeare's plays, although rather less in the histories, and rather more in the comedies.

The songs can set a mood (like Desdemona's Willow Song in Othello or the mourning song in Cymbeline), describe a character (like Ophelia's songs in her mad scenes), fill a space (like the song "Where is fancy bred" from Merchant of Venice), make a joke (like the huntsman's song in As You Like It), move the action along (like the fairies' lullaby in Midsummer Night's Dream) or just be enjoyable (like "Who is Sylvia?" from Two Gentlemen of Verona).

Instrumental music also plays a part, particularly in marking the entrance of a royal person.

Answer 5

Yes. The people in Shakespeare's plays most often speak a kind of poetry called blank verse, which is unrhymed iambic pentameter. Sometimes it rhymes too. Sometimes they speak in extremely formal poetry called sonnets. Even when they are not speaking in a strict rhythm, their lines contain poetic devices like similes and metaphors much more often that we are used to hearing in ordinary conversation. It is this fact which makes it difficult for some people to understand what the people in Shakespeare's plays are saying.

Answer 6

For the same reason Gilbert and Sullivan, Lerner and Lowe, and Rogers and Hammerstein did. People enjoy a bit of a song in a play. So much so that it is thought that Shakespeare's Macbeth was rewritten as a musical, probably by Thomas Middleton, since it's got one of his lyrics in it, so there could be more song-and-dance numbers with the witches. It is this weird version which has come down to us.

Answer 7

Yes, since they were first performed, although the music and sound effects have changed a bit over the years. Clues as to the music and sound effects can be found in the stage directions. For example, The Tempest begins with the stage direction "A tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard." The thunder was apparently made in Shakespeare's day by rolling a cannon ball or two around the roof. It was a cannon fired off as a sound effect which caused the fire which burned down the first Globe. As for music, most of the plays include songs to be sung (As You Like It is particularly rich in these) as well as incidental music. Mention is made of people playing lutes (Taming of the Shrew, First Q Hamlet), recorders (Hamlet), oboes (eight plays, particularly Henry VIII), Trumpets (practically all of them), and Drums (often with the Trumpets).

Answer 8

Music was indeed used during the plays of William Shakespeare. In Elizabethan times, music was used to tell stories, and this was part of the plays.

Answer 9

no but his sonnets have turned into songs