This book re-examines early modern musical culture to suggest how music shapes meaning in plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

The author examines the secular music of the late Renaissance period primarily through families of varying importance.

A study of the meaning of Shakespeare's musical imagery in his plays and poems.

Robert Fludd (1574-1637) is well known among historians of science and philosophy for his intriguing work, The Metaphysical, Physical and Technical History of both Major and Minor Worlds, in which music plays an important role in his system of neoplatonic correspondences: the harmony of the universe (macrocosm) as well as the harmony of man (microcosm). 'The Temple of Music' (1617-18) is one section of this work, and deals with music theory, practice and organology. Many musicologists today have dismissed his musical ideas as conservative and outmoded or mainly based on fantasy; only the chapters on instruments have received some attention. However, reading Fludd's work on music theory and practice in the context of his own time and comparing it with other contemporary treatises, it is apparent that much of it contains highly original ideas and cannot be considered old fashioned or conservative. It is evident that Fludd's music philosophy influenced and provoked contemporary natural philosophers such as Marin Mersenne and Johannes Kepler. Less well known is the fact that Fludd's music theory reveals aspects of the development of new concepts that appear to reflect contemporary writers on music such as John Coprario and Thomas Campion. Before now, 'The Temple of Music' has not been easily accessible or available, and the fact that Fludd wrote in Latin has also been prohibitive. This critical edition provides the original Latin, an English translation and essential illustrations. The book will therefore be a useful tool for understanding the position of English music theory around 1600.

English comedy from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth century abounds in song lyrics, but most of the original tunes were thought to have been lost--until now. By deducing that playwrights borrowed melodies from songs they already knew, Ross W. Duffin has used the existing English repertory of songs, both popular and composed, to reconstruct hundreds of songs from more than a hundred plays and other stage entertainments. Thanks to Duffin's incredible breakthrough, these plays have been rendered performable with period music for the first time in five hundred years. Some Other Note not only brings these songs back from the dead, but tells a thrilling tale of the investigations that unraveled these centuries-old mysteries.