«I will play the swan and die in music». Shakespeare and Lope de Vega faced with tragic theatrical music

Abstract

Early Modern European drama integrated vocal music as one of its basic ingredients. However, songs were not easy to fit in some genres and largely appear problematized both in the context of Elizabethan tragedy and the most serious scenes within the tragicomic comedia nueva. To demonstrate this poetic-musical relationship, I analyse popular songs and dialogues about music that Lope gives to his characters during climactic moments and, similarly, I propose to explain the vocal music in Shakespeare’s tragedies. In fact, compositional patterns that are repeated in both playwrights come out and show two dramatic strategies in tune, which is proved with concrete examples, especially from El caballero de Olmedo and Othello.

Keywords

• Lope de Vega
• Shakespeare
• «El caballero de Olmedo»
• «Othello»
• music
• tragedy.