Abstract
THE name of Richard Ligon is almost forgotten, and the island of Barbados is unfamiliar to most of us, yet by a quirk of time and space they coincide to shed some light on a practice in early Shakespearean stage production that is quite obscure. Although it has been long obvious that a large amount of non-vocal music was performed during the pre-Restoration productions of Shakespeare's plays, not a single instrumental score has come to light. Settings for some of his dramatic songs, for example Where the Bee Sucks and Full Fathom Five which Robert Johnson wrote for The Tempest, have survived, but there is only circumstantial evidence that this music was actually used on the stage. What has been missing is a statement by a spectator that he heard a specific piece of music played in a specific scene of a Shakespeare play, to which is added the notation of the music heard by the reporter. While this ideal statement has not fully appeared, a partial statement is provided by Richard Ligon, and the piece of music to which he probably referred is supplied by a MS attributed to John Dowland.
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