Catherine A. Henze
How Music Matters: Some Songs of Robert Johnson in the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher.
Volume 34.1, Spring 2000

The plays of Francis Beaumont and/or John Fletcher contain a great deal of music, and much of it is known to have been composed by Robert Johnson, lutenist for The King’s Men, Shakespeare’s acting company. What is noteworthy is not that Johnson wrote this music—something already known, although marginally recognized. Rather, evidence points to Johnson’s intentionally composing music for the particular plays in which they occur, knowing the details of the dramas as he did so. This paper examines three of Johnson’s songs in depth, “Away delights, goe seeke some other dwelling” from Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Captain;”Care charminge sleep” from Fletcher’s Valentinian; and “Tell me (deerest) what is love?” from Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and concludes that information conveyed by the music of the songs, as interpreted from a Renaissance viewpoint, is crucial to understanding the plays. As such, the paper necessarily contains background about Renaissance songs, as well as an explanation of the perceived ideological importance of music that, according to Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino, “by its nature, both spiritual and material … at once seizes and claims as its own, man in his entirety.” The methodology is one of a close reading of the ayres combined with a close reading of the literature for new, interdisciplinary interpretations. For all three of the songs, the actual music provides important motivations for characters’ subsequent actions, in dramas often criticized as “disjunctive.” Previously, the deeply determinative role of music in the plays has not been recognized by critics nor has Robert Johnson been singled out as an important contributor.

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