This chapter demonstrates how music was used as both a representation of and a treatment for ‘madness’ onstage. It focuses specifically on male madness and explores feelings of lovesickness in Brome’s The Court Beggar, the experience of grief in Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd, and the theme of obsession in Brome’s The Antipodes, arguing that displays of mad singing in men on the early modern stage were often intimately connected to sexual frustration and aggression. The first section explores how lovesickness and sexual frustration were expressed through song and dance. The second section considers how song was used to express grief as a response to the death of a loved one. The final section illustrates how a contemporary understanding about the health benefits of listening to music shapes the way characters are shown to recover from illness by listening to music on the stage.

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Performing Madness: Lovesickness, Grief, and Obsession on the Stage

  • Shirley Bell

摘要

This chapter demonstrates how music was used as both a representation of and a treatment for ‘madness’ onstage. It focuses specifically on male madness and explores feelings of lovesickness in Brome’s The Court Beggar, the experience of grief in Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd, and the theme of obsession in Brome’s The Antipodes, arguing that displays of mad singing in men on the early modern stage were often intimately connected to sexual frustration and aggression. The first section explores how lovesickness and sexual frustration were expressed through song and dance. The second section considers how song was used to express grief as a response to the death of a loved one. The final section illustrates how a contemporary understanding about the health benefits of listening to music shapes the way characters are shown to recover from illness by listening to music on the stage.