Music and Gender in English Renaissance Drama

This book examines the theatrical functions of music in the context of non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama, discussing dramaturgical meanings of music and its association with gender, love, and erotomania in Renaissance plays. The negotiation between the dichotomous qualities of the heavenly and the demonic finds extensive application in recent studies of music in early modern English plays. However, while ideological dualities identified in music in traditional Renaissance thinking may seem unequivocal, various musical representations of characters and situations in early modern drama would prove otherwise. Wong, building upon the conventional model of binarism, explores how playwrights at the time created their musical characters and scenarios according to the received cultural use and perception of music, and simultaneously experimented with the multivalent meanings and significance embodied in theatrical music. This book offers a survey of how non-Shakespearean female and male characters participated and interacted in musical activities both inside and outside the contemporary societal decorum, their behaviors varying in degrees of conformity and subversion. It broadens our understanding of the general theatrical representation of music, or musical dramaturgy, as well as complicates the current discussion of musical portrayal and construction of gender in English Renaissance drama.