Abstract
Anderson examines the portrayal and use of echo in a broad range of theatrical and court drama, including The Maydes Metamorphosis and The Arraignment of Paris, showing how echo is used as an oracular voice, a comic foil and a structural principle, primarily in pastoral settings. This chapter focuses at length on the 1601 Quarto of Ben Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels in which Echo appears as a character on stage. This chapter explores Echo’s use of song and its relationship to Neoplatonic models of music’s spiritual and ethical functions, showing that Jonson both invokes and satirises Renaissance theories of music’s power in the service of his broader understanding of the ways reality and art interact.
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Anderson, S.L. (2018). Echo and Drama: Cynthia’s Revels (1601). 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_3
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