Blending theatre history and sensory studies, this book recaptures the sound of early modern drama from 1576 to 1625 and exposes the considerable noise of its performance. Acknowledging the intangibility of sound as a subject, this work also offers new theatrical vocabulary in order to describe the distinct kinds of sound heard on the early modern stage and to identify sound’s effect on the playgoers who hear it.
This book shows that the sounds of the early modern stage do not only signify but are also significant. Sound are weighted with meaning, offering a complex system of allusions. Playwrights such as Jonson and Shakespeare developed increasingly experimental soundscapes, from the storms of King Lear (1605) and Pericles (1607) to the explosive laboratory of The Alchemist (1610). Yet, sound is dependent on the subjectivity of listeners; this book is conscious of the complex relationship between sound as made and sound as heard. Sound effects should not resound from scene to scene without examination, any more than a pun can be reshaped in dialogue without acknowledgement of its shifting connotations. This book listens to sound as a rhetorical device, able to penetrate the ears and persuade the mind, to influence and to affect.
