Singing Simpkin and Other Bawdy Jigs: Musical Comedy on the Shakespearean Stage: Scripts, Music and Context (Exeter Performance Studies) - Softcover

Clegg, Roger; Skeaping, Lucie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0859898784 ISBN 13: 9780859898782

Publisher: University of Exeter Press, 2014

Synopsis

A popular crowd pleaser from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, the dramatic jig was a short, comic, bawdy musical-drama that included elements of dance, slapstick, and disguise. For the first time in four hundred years, the lyrics and music notation for nine jigs from this period are presented, as well as an appendix for dance instruction. With Singing Simpkin and Other Bawdy Jigs,the authors provide a comprehensive account of a genre that was highly popular in its day, and demonstrates the influence of jigs on other forms of theater in Shakespearean England.   

About this title

About the Author

Roger Clegg is senior lecturer in drama studies at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.  Lucie Skeaping presents The Early Music Show each week on BBC Radio 3. She is a writer, musician, performer, and broadcaster.  

Review

“A thoroughly researched and densely documented volume.” (Stanley Wells Times Literary Supplement)

"Singing Simpkin will be valued by musicologists, theatre or performance historians, seekers after the aesthetics of Shakespearean drama, cultural historians, and many others including (hopefully) current-day theatrical practitioners aiming to re-animate historical modes of playing." (Shakespeare)

"Roger Clegg and Lucie Skeaping’s wonderful collection of nine English jigs . . . is an exemplary exercise in collaboration. . . . This is an excellent piece of research and a valuable resource." (Neil Rhodes Scottish Journal of Performance)

"What happens when you follows a Shakespearean tragedy, or even a romantic comedy, with a bawdy musical farce laced with bouts of vigorous dancing? . . . Thanks to the authors of this excellent volume, for the first time in several hundred years, there is ready access to the information needed to mount a production of this kind." (Gillian Spraggs Comedy Studies)

“This excellent book offers a history of the genre, nine examples of English dramatic jigs from the period, and useful information on how to perform them.” (Early Music America)

“This engaging edition allows one to imagine how these dramatic afterpieces might have functioned both on stage, an in Early modern society more generally.” (Theatre Notebook)

"A very valuable addition to the study of early modern dramatic literature." (Catherine A. Henze Comparative Drama)

"Anyone with an interest in early modern drama and popular culture will find much to enjoy here and will welcome this nicely produced edition." (David Atkinson Folklore)

“Singing Simpkin combines scholarly analysis with performer-friendly versions of nine stage jigs from Shakespeare’s time to the Restoration. The book presents and appraises textual and musical evidence relating to the stage jig with exemplary thoroughness; the detail enhances our knowledge of stage performance generally during that period. Much more than a historical survey, the book acts as a manual for recreating performances of the nine jig texts it contains, in terms of dramatic staging, music, and dance. It will be an exciting publication for all theatre historians of the period.” (Jeremy Barlow, author of A Dance Through Time)

“As a blueprint and guide for the creation or re-creation of the stage jig, the book is invaluable.” (Bill Tuck Historical Dance)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Exeter Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0859898784
• ISBN 13: 9780859898782
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352