Music in Shakespeare’s Plays Music in Shakespeare’s Plays Author Trevor Knorr Author Kate McPherson Supervising Editor Kate McPherson Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Trevor Knorr and Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

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Music Onstage

Music was widely used in early modern plays, including those by William Shakespeare, with most plays featuring at least moments of instrumental and vocal music. Physically, theatres of the age also gave important space to music: most had a special musicians’ gallery above the stage, which mimicked the galleries of most great halls in noble houses.

Sometimes music was played on the stage by actors or by professional musicians employed by the playing company, such as when musicians appear before the Capulet’s home on the night before Juliet’s ill-fated wedding to Paris in Romeo and Juliet. Music or song could be used to indicate unspoken messages to the audience, as when Ophelia’s singing in Hamlet indicates a psychological breakdown, or as Cassio uses music in Othello in an attempt to ingratiate himself with Othello.

Theatre impresario Philip Henslowe, who operated the Rose theatre, records a number of instruments owned by the company in his Diary: Item, iiiEarly modern writers usually used lower-case letters i and j to make Roman numerals. Here, iii means three. trumpets and a drum, and a treble viol, a bass viol, a bandoreA bandore was an instrument rather like a bass guitar, a cithernA cittern was an early form of the guitar

Characters in Shakespeare’s plays frequently quote from songs, sing songs as part of a performance, or play musical instruments. Major characters—apart from fools—seldom sing, however, except as an indicator of madness or feigned madness. An important exception is Desdemona, who sings to Emilia a Song of Willow that she learned from Barbary, her mother’s maid.

Music and the Mood

Music sets a mood in early modern plays across many genres. Music on the lute, recorder, or viol was seen as courtly and refined. References to the lute are common in Shakespeare’s plays, likely indicating its widespread use by actors and musicians. Richard III mentions it in his chilling opening soliloquy as a part of his scorn for romantic love. In The Taming of the Shrew, part of Bianca’s education as a young gentlewoman includes lessons on the lute, which go comically awry as an indication of her headstrong temper. Her disguised suitor Hortensio attempts to teach her the lute and enters with it broken over his head in Act 2.

Oboes (called hautboys) yielded a more eerie or mysterious sound. In Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, an unusually specific stage direction in Act 4 notes Music of the hautboys is heard under the stage as soldiers hold a watch outside Antony’s camp the night before a battle. Hautboys were descended from an older instrument, the shawm, which resembles a bagpipe in its sound. In Francis Beaumont’s play The Knight of the Burning Pestle, the boorish Citizen scorns the recorders that provide refined music. The Citizen calls for the band of shawms (and the musicians that play them) from the neighbouring Southwark district.

The trumpet, drum, and fife conveyed warlike sentiments or introduced royalty. Trumpet blasts called sennets, a kind of fanfare played on a brass instrument, frequently sounded in the plays to announce the arrival of kings or other noblemen. Demetrius asks in Titus Andronicus, Why do the emperor’s trumpets flourish thus? (4.2.49), showing the importance of music as a signal of rank.

Musicals?

Of the many songs Shakespeare embedded in his plays, only a few have surviving tunes (or settings; those tunes that have survived illustrate the variety and melodic inventiveness of the music of the period. While all early modern plays featured some music, none were set continuously or largely with a score in the background. However, both Shakespeare’s 1601 comedy Twelfth Night and the 1611 The Winter’s Tale, which was written more for an indoor theatre like the Blackfriars than for the outdoor environment at the Globe, feature an unusual number of songs.

In Twelfth Night, the fool Feste delights in music and is employed as an entertainer both in the household of the Countess Olivia as well as in the court of Duke Orsino. His flexible talents allow him to ask Olivia’s kinsman Sir Toby what sort of music he would prefer, either something about love or a song of good life. He sings five songs in the play, including O Mistress Mine, Come Away Death, and The Wind and the Rain. The music that accompanies the lyrics for O Mistress Mine appeared in Thomas Morley’s First Book of Consort Lessons (1599), just two years before the first known performance of Twelfth Night.

In The Winter’s Tale, the rogue Autolycus is a ballad-seller. These roving musicians/street vendors were common in cities but also roamed in market squares of towns across England. They sold inexpensive versions of popular ballads and sang them aloud as advertising. Autolycus sings several songs, with the titles As Daffodils Begin to Peer, Jog On, Jog On, and Lawn as White as Driven Snow.

Shakespeare’s plays feature a few moments where characters discuss music. The most noteworthy example comes at the end of The Merchant of Venice when Jessica remarks that she is never merry when she hears sweet music (5.1.77). Her new husband Lorenzo responds with a long speech on music, explaining that while her response to music may be due to a special virtue of attentiveness in her, for the most part people who cannot be moved by music are not to be trusted: Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

Ending with a Dance

It’s common for many comedies that include scenes of weddings, such as Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It, to end with the characters engaging in a dance. These dances must have featured music, although the tunes are now largely lost.

In a tradition that surprises many viewers in the 21st century, early modern tragedies and histories also ended with a jig or jigg. This blending of music, dance, and comedy was led by the skilled clowns who performed with most early modern playing companies. Actors such as Richard Tarlton and Will Kempe filled this role in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men when Shakespeare was a member of that company. They used popular melodies of the day and instruments such as the fiddle or cittern to accompany the piece. Today at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, the company regularly employs this rousing way of ending a performance.

Key Print Sources Barclay, Bill, and David Lindley. Shakespeare, Music, and Performance. Cambridge University Press, 2017. Clegg, Roger. When the Play Ends, You Shall Have a Dance of All Treads: Danced Endings in Shakespeare’s Plays. The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance. Ed. Lynsey McCulloch and Brandon Shaw. Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 83–106. Duffin, Ross. Shakespeare’s Songbook. Norton, 2004. Larson, Katherine R. The Matter of Song in Early Modern Song: Texts in and of the Air. Oxford University Press, 2019. Lindley, David. Shakespeare And Music. The Arden Shakespeare, 2006. Smith, Simon. Musical Response in the Early Modern Playhouse, 1603–1625. Cambridge University Press, 2017. Wilson, Christopher R. and Mervyn Cooke. The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music. Oxford University Press, 2022.
Key Online Sources English Broadside Ballad Archive. Dir. Patricia Fumerton. https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2026. Owens, Jessie Ann, ed. Noyses, Sounds, and Sweet Aires: Music in Early Modern England. Folgerpedia. The Folger Shakespeare Library, 2006. https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Noyses,_Sounds,_and_Sweet_Aires:_Music_in_Early_Modern_England. Accessed 10 Feb. 2026. Springfels, Mary. Music in Shakespeare’s Plays. Encyclopædia Britannica. 10 Nov. 2005. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Music-in-Shakespeares-Plays-1369568. Accessed 10 Feb. 2026.