Maddalena Pennacchia

In their collection of essays entitled "Speaking Pictures. The Visual/Verbal Nexus of Dramatic Performance", the editors (Virginia Mason Vaughan et als), introduce Philip Sidney’s definition of poetry as ‘speaking pictures’ like a perfect way of describing the exclusive power of drama to merge verbal and visual signs. Listening and seeing were and are synergic actions which theatre-goers perform all the time in order to immerse in the fictive world of the play. In this respect, however, the actors themselves, when on stage, can be considered as an embodiment of such a ‘visual/verbal nexus’; and there is more: they can even turn into ‘singing pictures’ when they have to perform a song as it often happens in Shakespeare’s plays. Notwithstanding the presence of many songs in the macrotext, however, the use and effect of singing in Shakespeare’s plays has for a long time attracted less academic interest. Words set to music, however, develop an enhanced emotional and persuasive power, as Thomas Campion himself wrote in 1614: “Happy is hee whose words can move,/ Yet sweet Notes help perswasion./ Mixe your words with Musicke then,/ That they the more may enter.” In my talk I will share some current thoughts on my new research field about the use of songs in Shakespeare’s plays with a specific reference to The Tempest and Ariel’s capacity to conjure up vivid images with the aid of music, that is depicting with sung words.