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Etudes Anglaises - N4/2014: Text and Music in Early Modern England

Etudes Anglaises - N4/2014: Text and Music in Early Modern England

Paperback

Series: Etudes Anglaises, Book 4

Literary Criticism

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ISBN10: 2252039299
ISBN13: 9782252039298
Publisher: Klincksieck
Published: Feb 20 2015
Pages: 128
Language: French
Natalie ROULON Music and Gender in All's Well That Ends Well

All's Well That Ends Well may not be the most musical of Shakespeare's works, but the music performed or referred to in the play is important in that it contributes to constructing the strict gender divide which prevailed in the society whose tensions this problem comedy reflects. Masculine music is martial, self-centred, and tends to reveal the principal male characters' anxieties about feminine desire. Although the female characters are not presented as musicians, in many productions they are accompanied by soft stringed instruments when they appear onstage. Helen is associated with music in male discourse and is cast as the play's main, albeit paradoxical, harmonising figure. Whereas the King of France's male physicians have failed to restore his health, Helen successfully devises a musical cure for him and is therefore granted her request to choose Bertram for her husband. However, in spite of the immense power Shakespeare has endowed her with, this Orphic woman comes up against a patriarchal structure which leaves limited scope for female agency and gender reversal, hence the lingering doubts, even once the play has ended, as to her ability to attain unalloyed marital bliss.

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Literary Criticism