The Singing 'Vice': Music and Mischief in Early English Drama

Abstract

Over the last half-century, scholars have extensively studied and debated the use and function of instrumental and vocal music in the English mystery plays, 3 but music in the secular English interlude drama has yet to receive similar treatment. 4 This is not without good reason: the subject of music in the interludes is fraught with ambiguity and uncertainty. Although the extant interludes contain many indications of song in the form of references, snatches, cues, stage directions, and even full song texts, very little scored music has been preserved in either manuscript or print. 5 Richard Rastall's observation with regard to music in early English religious drama might also be made of music in the interludes: 'the surviving written music is only a fraction of that actually required in performance'. 6 To be sure, absent musical scores and elided stage directions present special problems for the researcher. Thus, very sensibly, discussions of music in secular interlude drama have tended to limit themselves to those rare play texts that contain significant music in score, such as John Rastell's The Four Elements and Ulpian Fulwell's Like Will to Like. 7 As Richard Rastall further notes, since documentation is quite scarce 'informed guesswork is the only way forward' in discussions of music in early English drama, 'although the word "informed" is one that needs to be stressed'. 8 Suzanne Westfall observes that 'entertainments in great households were almost always occasional, ephemeral and frequently nontextual due to their multi-mediality. Consequently, they are extremely difficult to recover without some documentation such as visual representation, musical score, or some description of movement and dance'. 9 Amidst non-textuality and the resulting shortage of extant scores to serve as documentation of musical activity, even the most restrained speculative approach still leads to the conclusion that music and musicians were crucial