Elizabeth I took the throne of England after a period of considerable unrest. As Suzanne Lord writes, "She inherited a confused, frightened, dispirited nation" (xxi). Under her rule, the nation's culture went through a golden age, especially in the emergence of its greatest playwright, William Shakespeare. An important component of all of his plays was music.
Music was everywhere during Shakespeare's time. It was an important part of the culture, the church, and daily life, as well as the theatre. Michael Best reports:
Shakespeare would have heard in the Court and in the houses of the educated the sophisticated madrigals and instrumental music of Thomas Morley; in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's he would have heard the masses of William Byrd, and around the streets of London he would have heard ageless folk music: the street cries, the ballads, the love songs (1).
Access to music was divided somewhat by class. However, the music available primarily to the upper classes would have been heard by players and servants at court, as well, who would have shared it in more low-class settings.
Because theatre crossed many boundaries, Shakespeare and his actors would have known about the various kinds of music being heard in different places. Part of Queen Elizabeth's work at healing the nation was to encourage the sharing of music. The theatre was an ideal way for some of the more sophisticated compositions to be brought to wider audiences. Suzanne Lord writes, "The nobility joined the middle class in its passion for going to the theater" (41). The classes might sit apart, but they shared in appreciating the music being performed.
It was common to include extra entertainment, especially in an evening devoted to a tragedy or a drama. Lord describes these interludes, "Rather than put the entire audience in a depressed mood, w
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