been written on the background of Elizabethan music against
which Shakespeare's plays appear, but their focus of interest is not
upon the way he used the music. A number of scholarly articles
such as those by Richmond Noble and Edmund H. Fellowes have
treated the subject, but these are concerned with isolated problems
and do not constitute a survey of the phenomena. Only one book,
so far as I know, contains a serious and sustained study of Shake-
speare's use of music, and it omits a consideration of the purely
instrumental music in the plays. This book is Richmond Noble's
Shakespeare's Use of Song. It is possible that research has been
handicapped by complete lack of musical scores which can be
assigned to the plays of Shakespeare. This lack is indeed a serious
one, but much can still be learned from a careful assessment of the
available evidence.

The procedure followed is necessarily complex. I first made an
intensive study of the text and stage directions of the Shakespeare
plays in the versions described above, and an evaluation and in-
terpretation of the interior evidence found. This part of the study,
in itself, was inadequate for a clear presentation of the use and
performance of the music. I therefore turned to plays contempo-
raneous with Shakespeare in order to determine from their stage
directions and dialogue what could at this point be learned about
the habits and conventions governing the use of music in the Eliza-
bethan theaters. The next step involved an examination of con-
temporary accounts of the drama and music of the times as found
in early records, in reliable reprints of relevant documents and
texts, and in quotations from writers of the period found in sec-
ondary studies of both subjects. Finally, I assessed the conclusions
reached by authors of secondary studies and in editorial comments
concerning the use of music by Shakespeare and contemporary
dramatists.

Of the materials thus considered, the contemporary accounts
and the interior evidence from the plays are the most important.
An explanation of the treatment of this material is therefore per-
tinent.

If we wish to discover how music was performed in Elizabethan

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