This book shows that the sounds of the early modern stage do not only signify but are also significant. Sounds are weighted with meaning, offering a complex system of allusions. Playwrights such as Jonson and Shakespeare developed increasingly experimental soundscapes, from the storms of King Lear (1605) and Pericles (1607) to the explosive laboratory of The Alchemist (1610). Yet, sound is dependent on the subjectivity of listeners; this book is conscious of the complex relationship between sound as made and sound as heard. Sound effects should not resound from scene to scene without examination, any more than a pun can be reshaped in dialogue without acknowledgement of its shifting connotations. This book listens to sound as a rhetorical device, able to penetrate the ears and persuade the mind, to influence and to affect.
Price: £85.00
Pages: 248
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Series: Revels Plays Companion Library
Publication Date:
27 June 2023
ISBN: 9781526159182
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
LITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance, Theatre studies, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 17th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Drama, Literary studies: plays and playwrights, Literature: history and criticism
'“Listen. Follow the Noise.” So begins Laura Jayne Wright’s landmark study of theatrical sound (1). Do so with Wright as your guide, and you will be rewarded with a startlingly fresh perspective on the importance of sound in the early modern playhouse.'
Shakespeare Bulletin
'If you have not previously given much thought to sonic effects in early modern plays, reading this book will ensure that you do so in the future; it will open your ears and your imagination to meanings and ambiguities you did not hear before. It will make you a better audience, in the true sense of the word.'
Shakespeare Quarterly
Introduction: Follow the noise
1 Soundgrams on stage: sonic allusions and commonplace sounds
2 Hearing the night: nocturnal scenes and unsound effects
3 The head and the (play)house: bodies and sound in Ben Jonson
4 'Unheard’ and ‘untold’: the promise of sound in Shakespeare
Conclusion
Conclusion
