Overview

Winner of the Claude V. Palisca Award of the American Musicological Society Shakespeare lovers have long lamented that so few songs in his plays survive with original music; of about sixty song lyrics, only a handful have come down to us with musical settings. For over 150 years, scholars have aspired—without success—to fill that gap. In Shakespeare's Songbook, Ross W. Duffin does just that. Eight years in the making, Shakespeare's Songbook is a meticulously researched collection of 155 songs—ballads and narratives, drinking songs, love songs, and rounds—that appear in, are quoted in, or alluded to in Shakespeare's plays. Drawing substantially on the unmatched resources of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Duffin brings complete lyrics (many newly recovered) and music notation together for the first time, and in the process sheds new light on Shakespeare's dramatic art. With performances by leading early-music singers and instrumentalists, the accompanying audio CD brings the songbook to life. Shakespeare's Songbook is the perfect gift for lovers of Shakespeare and an invaluable reference for singers, actors, directors, and scholars.

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9780393058895

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Reviews

A wonderfully concise and informative guide to the songs and ballads. . . . The first complete collection. -- Times Literary Supplement

Duffin gratefully acknowledges the work of his scholarly predecessors, but he surpasses them in his aspiration to bring together all the Shakespearean passages that incorporate or refer to songs and to give us the melodies that go with them...Music is bound by nature a time-bound art-it falls into abatement even in a minute-but this marvellous collection preserves some of its moments and meanings for as long as we want. Tom Deveson, Around the Globe, Issue 29, Spring 2005

Author Information

Ross W. Duffin, the Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve University, is the author of the award-winning Shakespeare's Songbook. He lives in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

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