‘What’s in a name?’

Abstract

Abstract The eighteenth century saw the birth of modern Shakespeare, and what we might call ‘Shakespearean music’. By the end of the century, Shakespeare’s works reached a much wider audience thanks to the availability of cheap single editions of the plays, which themselves formed a small but significant portion of the performed repertoire. On the public stages there were revivals of all but one of the plays, moving from the heavily adapted forms of the Restoration to the ‘written by Shakespear’ versions of the 1740s. These plays often interpolated songs from other Shakespeare plays, sometimes creating performance traditions that lasted well into the next century. Plays also generated new songs, which although wholly inauthentic in the modern sense formed an essential part of how Shakespeare’s works were understood and perceived at the time. Despite an increased appetite for unaltered Shakespeare, eighteenth-century audiences were largely unconcerned with who wrote the songs. Moreover, distinguishing between original and interloping songs would have been impossible for an audience member without detailed knowledge of the play or reference to a printed edition. Through an examination of a range of media and cultural spheres this chapter seeks to answer two central questions: (1) how was Shakespeare authorially represented in printed songs and song collections? And (2) and what did it mean for eighteenth-century audiences and readers?