More than “Noise”: Music as Pacemaker in As You Like It

Abstract

ABSTRACTMusic in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It has often been described as accessory and irrelevant to the plot, as if it could be extracted without harm to the play. This, however, underestimates the power of music to function as pacemaker in early modern drama. An examination of the placement of the songs in As You Like It shows music’s essential role in controlling the dramatic movement, and offers ways of creating communal performances between actors and audience. Music thus governs the structure of the play, as well as its tone and the experience of it. An exploration of music on the Elizabethan stage sets up the discussion of each song in the play through its musical kind, textual history, and agency at the specific moment of the pastoral plot. Songs allow intertextual allusions, points of rest, and creation of fellow feeling between audience members and actors that are intrinsic to both plot and experience of Shakespeare’s drama. Rather than accessory, music in As You Like it, it will become clear, assumes another power to effect change both in its play-world, as well as in ours then and now.