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Sound and Precedent in Elizabethan Progress Entertainments

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Book cover Echo and Meaning on Early Modern English Stages

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Abstract

This chapter examines the way echo was used in progress entertainments staged for Queen Elizabeth, focusing in particular on the hospitality staged at Elvetham (1591) and Kenilworth (1575). Anderson demonstrates the patterns of repetition that can be traced through these events. In particular, the use of echo as a performance device at Kenilworth is repeated or referenced in several later entertainments, including Bisham (1592), and adapted into a musical device at Elvetham. This chapter explores the ways sounds, musical ensembles and musical genres heard at prior events are revisited, revised and re-heard in different locations and contexts, developing an acoustics of courtly entertainments in which the signs of musical sophistication are also political assertions.

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  1. Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

    Susan L. Anderson

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Correspondence to Susan L. Anderson .

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Anderson, S.L. (2018). Sound and Precedent in Elizabethan Progress Entertainments. In: Echo and Meaning on Early Modern English Stages. Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67970-9_2

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