Wednesday, March 6, 2013
You'll be humming it in the shower
I got a lot of feedback on my idea about Shakespeare as a musical so I decided to look a little further into that. When I told a friend about my idea he asked, "Well what play?" which I hadn't considered. Looking through everything I've read this semester, every play incorporates music in some way, but a Winter's Tale does so most prominently. In fact, most of the songs also connect with the theme of time in that they depict the seasons. Autolycus sings a song about daffodils and summertime at the beginning of the fourth act, and then at the end of the act begins a song with, "lawn as white as driven snow..."(4.4.220). I'm still not completely sure what I want to write on, but I found that correlation interesting. My roommate also suggested that I look at international productions of a Winter's Tale to see the different uses of music (Bollywood??)
Another thought: music is dictated by timing, as is iambic pentameter. So in that sense, music could be seen as another display of time's power.
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I gotta be honest: I love musical theater, but this topic doesn't really grab me.
ReplyDeleteThe way I'm reading it, it feels really broad--you primarily want to talk about music in Shakespeare, right? If you find a narrower topic, that could work much better; maybe something like talking specifically about the role of music in Shakespeare , possibly comparing and contrasting it to modern musical theater?
Something else that might be interesting: in King Lear, the fool sings a song with the refrain of "for the rain it raineth every day." I seem to recall that song was used in a different play as well (although I'm not sure which); perhaps you could compare those two instances?
It was "The Taming of the Shrew." Richard Burton actually sings that song while he's drunk in the film.
DeleteThe other play was Twelfth Night, I think, that used the song: "the rain it raineth every day," at least in the movie version. I like the idea of exploring Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale as an undercover musical. I agree with David, however, that you're definitely going to want to get more specific with your thesis, but I think that'll probably happen naturally as you continue researching about it.
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