Shirley Bell, Sheffield Hallam University

Music is one of the most powerful tools through which films and TV programmes affect us. We might hear a sad melody that brings us to tears, a creepy tune that gives us goosebumps, or a funny song that compels us to laugh.

This effect is not limited to the silver and small screen. In his plays, William Shakespeare used music in a multitude of ways to delight, amuse, relax, confuse and frighten his audiences – and so did many of his contemporaries.

In my new book, Music and Emotion on the Caroline Stage, I demonstrate how emotions were controlled, provoked and directed through music in the early modern theatre. Specifically, in the Caroline period (1625-1649), during the reign of Charles I.

The most memorable instance of supernatural music in Shakespeare is the rhythmic chanting of “double, double toil and trouble” by the three witches in Macbeth. The witches’ rhythmical conjuring of apparitions in this play gave contemporary audiences an impression of what seeing “real” witches might have been like and the potential harm that they could do, provoking a fear response.

Although not everyone in the early modern period believed in witches, accusations of witchcraft were taken seriously by the authorities. There were several witch trials conducted in England. The most notable were in Pendle, Lancashire, including the 1612 case in which ten of the 16 people accused of being witches were executed.

Another case from 1634 was dramatised by Richard Brome and Thomas Heywood in their comedy, The Late Lancashire Witches. In this play, music is used in several ways to unsettle the audience. At one point church bells ring backwards (a known distress signal in the period) and witch characters sabotage singers and cause musicians to play their instruments out of tune.

Early modern audiences largely believed that music was connected to the celestial and that it had power over the body and the soul.

Harmonious music had a spiritual significance and was associated with God and heaven. Out of tune and discordant sound disrupted that harmony and was linked to the devil and supernatural activity.

Melancholy music

Turning to music was also an effective way for characters to express feelings of love-sickness and grief on the stage; something that is still widely recognisable today.

Ophelia famously sings snippets of sorrowful songs and bawdy ballads in Shakespeare’s Hamlet after her father’s death, and Desdemona sings the mournful song of willow in Othello when her husband falsely accuses her of infidelity. This tradition continued into the Caroline period. The title character of Richard Brome’s play The Northern Lass (1629) communicates her lovesickness by singing.

It is important to note that all female characters were played by men or boys in public theatres until the beginning of the Restoration period in 1660.

While it was acceptable for female characters to sing about their feelings onstage, if a male character appeared singing during the Caroline period, he was derided as effeminate or mad. For example, in Brome’s play, The Court Beggar (1653), the courtier, Ferdinand, is referred to as “mad” by the other characters on several occasions when he sings. If they wanted to sing, men frequently called for musicians or a servant figure to sing on their behalf.

This happens in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline in which the suitor, Cloten, hires musicians to serenade the princess, Imogen for him. It was also acceptable for other lower-class male characters to sing onstage, like shepherds. The text of Ben Jonson’s unfinished 1635 play, The Sad Shepherd, reveals that Eglamour, the sad shepherd of the title, is grieving after hearing that his beloved Earine has drowned. His friend and fellow shepherd, Karolin, comforts him with a song.

Calming music

Music was also recognised as having many other healing properties in the early modern period. It could calm people in distress and distract people from pain. There were even theories that music could bring people back from the dead.

Shakespeare was particularly fond of music’s ability to revive and resurrect. In The Winter’s Tale, a statue of the queen, Hermione, is brought to life when music is played. In Pericles, the physician, Cerimon, calls for music to revive the princess, Thaisa, when she is unconscious.

While alchemical philosophy claimed to provide “evidence” for music’s ability to resurrect the dead, it is also possible that people only believed in this theory to give them comfort from grief while knowing it was not true.

Many modern performances of The Winter’s Tale and Pericles have framed the action so that the “revived” characters are not actually dead and the music just so happens to coincide with the moment they reveal that they were alive. This seems to be what would have happened in The Sad Shepherd if it was finished.

These plays were written and performed over 400 years ago, but we are still attuned to the emotional powers of music today. Many of us listen to sad songs when we are heartbroken or grieving to bring us comfort, happy songs to give us energy and motivation and calming songs to reduce our stresses.

We listen to music so often and the different songs we listen to change our moods so often that sometimes we don’t even realise it is happening. It is no wonder that Shakespeare and his contemporaries were so fascinated by music’s seemingly otherworldly powers.

Shirley Bell, Associate Lecturer in English Literature, Sheffield Hallam University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.