Gender and Music in Shakespeare

The relationship between music and female characters in the Shakespearean canon has attracted much exciting discussion in recent years. This chapter starts with an overview of gendered designs of musical episodes in Shakespearean plays and the corresponding gendered responses within the playtexts. Textual interpretation of ‘male music’ and ‘female music’, informed by conventional early modern context, yields seemingly clear-cut expectations of and attitudes towards musical performance on Shakespeare’s stage; however, modern stage productions have complicated and, at times, subverted the dichotomy. Dramaturgical reading of musical episodes in selected plays offers us an opportunity to understand gender relativity and performativity in Shakespearean characters.