"Strike up the drum": The Use of Music in the Boyd History Cycle

Abstract

This article discusses Michael Boyd's 2008 staging of Shakespeare's history cycle at the RSC, exploring the ways in which music was used and how it consistently connected, confirmed, and subverted the action on stage. Boyd's production - only the third UK staging of the eight-play cycle in the last fifty years - used music, both diegetic and exegetic, with an unprecedented degree of complexity and sophistication: as a narrative instrument to draw connections between the individual plays, an inflection of other creative choices such as doubling and use of props, and a means of commentating on the onstage action and characters. By drawing on personal observations based on four or more viewings of each individual play and three viewings of the cycle as a whole, along with interviews with cast and creative, critical reviews, literature, rehearsal drafts, production notes and the production's musical score, the article seeks to establish music's pivotal role in the conveyance of meaning throughout the eight plays. It addresses Boyd's decision to stage the plays both in order of the narrative and in the order of composition, focusing on the latter and, in doing so, identifies newly distinguishable interconnecting elements between the plays that are underpinned by their specially-composed musical score. In departing from scholarship that has focused primarily on the diegetic use of music in Shakespeare's plays, the article ultimately concentrates on the production's exegetic score, examining its role in complicating and adding layers of meaning to the individual plays and the cycle as a whole.