#35 Hi Effeteposer: Thanks for the lead on Robert Johnson. I will check out the sheet music.
For the audiences attending Elizabethan plays, music wasn't as important as seeing "action" and hearing witty lines.
To help set the mood or a timeframe for a scene in classical theater, the Chorus would appear:
"Behold and witness the fortunes and misfortunes of two great families in Spain, each undone by their own hand in time of plague and war."
In today's film and theater this is done by music.
The Elizabethan actors of the Globe Theater and other playhouses were all accomplished acrobats and fencers, as well as melee weapon combatants. Stage battles had to look realistic to the audience. Any one of them was more dangerous than any common conscripted foot soldier of the English Army. In fact, playwright Ben Jonson relished going to war and participating in brawls or duels.
Theater special effects were superbly done and audiences would see limbs flying off and blood splattering everywhere.
This is the sanguinary world of theater that Shakespeare entered. What the brilliant wordsmith did in his 52 years was "educate" the London audience. The English people evolved from being entertained by bloody battles and gory amputations (Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, Henry IV, Richard III, to the ultimate The Tempest, his last play where there are no deaths or violence. Shakespeare's swan song takes place all in one day, like classical Greek theater.
In between his early and latter plays, the Bard of Avon used slang, wit, ciphers, and veiled barbs at the monarchy or the Privy Council, to make his audiences laugh.
In Hamlet Act III, Scene II during a royal feast, lovelorn Ophelia turns to the Prince of Denmark to casually say "You are merry, my lord." The London audience roared in laughter because what she really said in slang was "I see your enormous --------."
Thanks again, EP.
