Chapter Twenty-Six

Sound Trumpets

Alisha Huber

A production of All’s Well that Ends Well. The actors are trying to get a handle on 3.5. “How do I know that the Duke’s army is coming?” asks the one playing the Widow.

“I don’t know,” the director snaps. “You see them over the horizon, house left. Now let’s take it from the top again.”

The actors tackle the text and again the actor playing the Widow calls a halt. “Why do I say ‘Hark you, they come this way,’ in line 36? Why not ‘Look!’?”

The director breaks his pencil. “Because Shakespeare wrote it that way. Can we just do the scene?”

Helen interrupts. “What’s a tucket?”

“A what?”

“A tucket. At the top of the scene, it says, ‘A tucket afar off.’”

The director thumbs through his playtext. “My note says that a tucket is ‘a series of trumpet notes.’ We don’t have a trumpeter, though, so we’re cutting that.”

“But didn’t Shakespeare write it for a reason?” Helen persists.

“We’ve only got fifteen until break,” notes the stage manager. “Can we please just get this done?”

This scene repeats itself in rehearsal halls all over the world. Theater practitioners do not know what to do with Shakespeare’s indication of a trumpet signal, so they ignore it. They are short on time and short on resources. Annotators include helpful explanations about seventeenth-century laws, currency, and bawdy slang, but rarely have anything useful to say about auditory signals. Shakespeare includes these signals to provide information, though, and ignoring them is a disservice to the audience.

In an era without electricity—no spotlights, no crossfades, no blue-gelled “night”—theaters communicated to an audience. In an age without spectacles for nearsighted patrons, theaters created spectacle. When standing-room-only crowds jostled for sightlines and pillars blocked an observer’s view for minutes at a time, when the sun could blind watchers, and when guttering candles cast as much shadow as light, theaters entertained. In the face of conditions that Elizabethan actors considered ordinary, but which modern ones can hardly imagine, the theaters asked their paying customer to be as much audience as spectator. Original practices theater companies and academic theater historians have explored how the plays would have looked—how did the King’s Men use stage position and costuming to communicate relationships and social rank? Did the doors open on or off the stage, or were there doors at all? How does blocking change when the audience is all around? This focus on only one sense, that of sight, is both anachronistic and short-sighted. Scholars and artists are so interested in the way the plays looked, in the spectacle of them, because they are used to seeing plays. Shakespeare’s contemporaries referred to seeing plays, true, but just as often to hearing them. Hamlet says, “We’ll hear a play tomorrow.”1 There has been some fine work in this area—in particular, David Crystal’s experiments with original pronunciation at Shakespeare’s Globe2—but it has not gone far enough. Of all the theaters attempting “original practices” staging, only the reconstructed Globe has given sound the attention it deserves.

In the early modern period, the English relationship with sound was noteworthy. Paul Hentzner, who visited London in 1598, wrote that the English were “vastly fond of great noises that fill the ear, such as the firing of cannon and the ringing of bells.”3 Playwrights used the sounds Londoners were familiar with in their daily lives to evoke a certain response from their auditors. The use of sound was “an appeal to the immediate experiences of the audience.”4 Sound is an evocative sense. It can transport the hearer to any time or place he associates with it. A familiar song can make a listener live her first romance all over again; the sounds of battle can shoot fear and excitement into the heart of a long-retired soldier. Shakespeare and the other playwrights of his time knew this and used it to create entire worlds on their empty stages, using offstage bugles and hounds to create a hunt, sheets of rattling tin to simulate a storm.

Shakespeare scholars and original practices theaters that ignore the early modern fascination with sound are missing an important component of the Elizabethan worldview. Almost all the sounds that appear in the plays have a real-life counterpart, from the pancake bell in Shoemaker’s Holiday5 to the post horn in Henry VI, Part 3.6 They are the interweaving tissue that connects the world inside the theater to the world outside of it.

Among the most recognizable sounds in early modern London was the trumpet. Trumpets, in the real, everyday world as well as in the theater, directed battles and announced noblemen. Their sound constantly gave information to their hearers. Early modern theaters used trumpet signaling, which their audiences would have decoded as automatically as modern city dwellers understand an angry car horn, to pull their stories forward and keep their audiences informed.

There are over 250 calls for trumpets in early modern stage directions. Their primary purpose is telling the story of a battle taking place offstage. Trumpet signaling is an interesting device in that it provides both narrative and verisimilitude. It is quite rare in Shakespeare’s plays that a stage direction indicates simply “sound trumpets” or “flourish,” as is the case in All’s Well that Ends Well upon the exit of the King of France.7 It is far more common that he specifies a particular signal, like an alarum, a tucket, or a retreat. This is an indication that Shakespeare wished to convey information with instrumental signaling. Very few theaters, even original practices ones, bother with consistent or informational musical signaling. This is a disservice to their audiences, who miss out on both atmosphere and critical details, like the rallies and reversals of a battle.

Warring armies have used musical instruments to pass information through their ranks for thousands of years. The ancient Persians used drums to direct their cavalry as early as 500 BCE.8 The information conveyed by music was not secret—secret information would have traveled by courier across the field. Both sides recognized a retreat when they heard one. Military signals must have been similar and yet distinct across national lines. One anecdote in Paul Jorgensen’s Shakespeare’s Military World describes a French chevalier who escaped a surprise night attack. He heard a Spanish alarum—behind his own lines. He recognized both the signal and the fact that his own army was not playing it.9

Although actual armies had a large vocabulary of signals, dictating troop movements as specific as “form the square,”10 early modern playhouses only used the most basic ones. These included the “alarum,” which tells the soldiers that the enemy is coming, rallies the troops, or indicates that, while a battle is going well, it is not over yet; “peal,” a joyful sound indicating victory; “parley,” a request for negotiation from the losing general to the victor; “advance”; and “retreat.” Each call was different and specific. If modern theaters do not cut these signals entirely, they choose a generic flourish and leave it at that. The King’s Men would never have done that—the calls conveyed as much information about troop movements and the reversals of battle to the audience as any word or action onstage.

In addition to presenting information about the onstage action, trumpets could help create offstage reality. Shakespeare’s most outstanding and effective use of auditory signaling is evident in his depiction of battles. His stage directions often call for a musical signal from backstage, accompanied by onstage characters’ reactions to the unseen events. In Antony and Cleopatra, rather than flooding the theater to stage a naval battle, Shakespeare simply specifies “the noise of a sea-fight.”11 Instruments created battle scenes on a limited budget. Instead of armies of computer-generated soldiers, early modern theaters used a handful of trumpets and drums to create the thrill of battle.

The trumpet calls used in battle scenes were likely authentic, because playing real calls is easier than inventing false ones. Each trumpet signal carried a wealth of information for the early modern audience member, who could determine—simply from a musical signal—the direction, distance, national affiliation, and success or failure of unseen armies.

The choice of instrument tells one a great deal about what kind of battle is going on in the imaginary world behind the frons scenae. Trumpets historically signaled cavalry or naval battles, while drums directed infantry.12 In theater use, particularly in battles that involve both infantry and cavalry, the stage directions sometimes indicate both trumpet and drums. Because of the specific use of each instrument, some calls, like “mount horses,” are unique to the trumpet. Most calls, however, could be performed on either instrument. An audience would not have needed to hear a trample of hooves or wind tearing at canvas sails to imagine a battle. The instrument—trumpet or drum—told them all they needed to know.

Instruments told an audience of the army’s position as well. Stage directions might call for trumpets “afar off” or close at hand. In the Shakespeare’s Globe reconstruction, musicians achieve these effects by moving around the theater, playing in the tiring-house stairwells and the galleries as well as the musician’s rooms. Claire Van Campen, formerly the music director at Shakespeare’s Globe, says she is unsure that using the space this way is inauthentic. It is, as she notes, quite practical.13

Scenes that use these kinds of auditory signals to advance the plot are myriad. They appear in Edward II, Henry V, and Antony and Cleopatra, to name only a few. One excellent example is in Julius Caesar, act 5, scene 5, where Brutus and his men are fleeing before Octavius’s approaching troops. Brutus knows that his army is going to lose, and he is trying to convince his men to kill him. Each time he hears an alarum—that would be a rally for Octavius’s army—he becomes more determined. The alarums tell the story of Octavius’s army coming closer. The first is listed as a “low alarum,” and the subsequent directions simply call for “alarum.”14 The army sounds like it is coming closer as the sound becomes louder. The actor playing Brutus can respond to his impending doom by letting each alarum raise the stakes in his situation. The scene ends with one final alarum from Octavius’s side, followed by a retreat from Brutus’s. An audience could understand, from hearing the battle signals, why Brutus is so certain that his cause is lost.

Phyllis Hartnoll postulates that trumpet signals “were probably extemporized” and, therefore, had no specific meaning.15 Alan Dessen and Leslie Thomson counter that “theatrical fanfares were likely the same patterned sounds as those used in the real world and probably varied little from play to play.”16 Theater historians who do not believe that the signals had any concrete meaning for Shakespeare’s audience might well argue that the fact that a character invariably tells the audience what the signal means immediately after they have heard it is evidence that the audience was unfamiliar with these signals. This argument would be a valid one, except that there are only one or two instances in extant plays of the period in which a clock tolls without a character reporting the time immediately.17 Londoners of Shakespeare’s day surely knew what the tolling of a clock meant, and yet the scripts define these sounds as consistently as they define trumpet calls. Characters explain military signals a good deal less than they remark on the hour.

While the battle signals might seem obscure to modern audiences, Londoners in Shakespeare’s time would have heard them, even if they never went to war. On holidays, London’s citizen soldiers drilled at Mile End, on the northeast side of the city. Shakespeare himself was familiar with these drills; Shallow, in Henry IV, Part 2, discusses the exciting times he remembers at “Mile-End Green.”18 Many audience members would have been familiar with the trumpet calls at Mile End. Even those who did not participate in drills could have gone to watch. Those who had not been to Mile End would have, after a few visits to the playhouses, become accustomed to the trumpet signaling, just as modern film audiences become attuned to the music that warns of approaching sharks or ax murderers. If a theater used a very specific set of signals consistently, it would only be a matter of time before its audience recognized them.

One of the great difficulties of studying military signals in the early modern theater is that no one at the time wrote them down. Military musicians learned the signals by rote. Military musicians would not have needed or used sheet music for the short and memorable signals they needed to play. There are no surviving records of music written specifically for the theater. The theaters used legitimate naval and military musicians for their productions. They would have used authentic military signals, because otherwise they would have had to extemporize.

Piecing together the music used for battles in Shakespeare’s theaters is a challenge. Operas of the time are entirely pastoral and offer no hints of battle music. William Byrd’s My Ladye Neville’s Booke has a few supposedly military moments, but the book is full of music for the virginal, and any relationship to actual battle sounds is purely conjectural.

Another puzzle is how the signals managed to be distinct and yet recognizable from one army to another. Think about the similarities and differences as being like those between waltzes—a waltz sounds like a waltz and yet is different from all other waltzes. Likewise, a retreat would sound like a retreat, but perhaps with a certain national flavor.

Period sources do reveal some details about the variations between marches. In Henry VI, Part 1, the stage directions indicate a distinct “English march,” followed shortly by a “French march.”19 No one knows exactly what the differences between these two would have been, but sources offer some clues. First of all, they were definitely different. The French march seems to have been slow—Dekker, in Seven Deadly Sinnes of London, talks about a man moving as slowly “as if hee trodde a French March.”20 Dekker also reports that, for James’s coronation, musicians played a Danish march in honor of Queen Anne. They sounded it “sprightly & actiuely,”21 so it must have been a fairly up-tempo piece. The only English march extant from the period is in fact a very old one, which Prince Henry revived and published in 1610.

In addition to telling the story of an unseen battle, trumpets provided the audience with information about the characters who were coming and going. Trumpet flourishes announced the entrances of kings, nobles, and military leaders. King James I tried to capitalize on these flourishes, decreeing that all playhouses had to get his permission to use them. Once they received the royal permission, they had to pay twelve pence—with the exception of “his servants,” the King’s Men.22

James’s possessiveness over trumpet flourishes might not have been purely entrepreneurial. Some trumpet calls were personal, something one’s family owned. Noble families or individuals had proprietary “tuckets.”23 A tucket was “a sort of heraldic badge in sound.”24 Just as twenty-first-century people can identify commercial jingles, seventeenth-century people would have recognized the tune that indicated a certain family.

Shakespeare used tuckets frequently in his plays. In The Merchant of Venice, Lorenzo tells Portia, “Your husband is at hand. I hear his trumpet.”25 Iago similarly identifies “the Moor” by his trumpet.26 Unlike modern audiences, who often find these moments odd, and modern theater companies, which generally cut them, early modern audiences would have known exactly what the characters meant. Tuckets help an audience remember whose court they are watching. They help organize the complicated and sometimes obscure politics in auditors’ minds.

Even if theater historians do not know exactly what the music was like, a casual reader will see the stage directions that demand it. They pepper the plays, from the repeated tuckets in All’s Well that Ends Well to the competing marches that accompany the warring armies in Henry VI, Part 3.27 Scholars can guess what kind of effect a given bit of music would have had on an audience, and practitioners can try to give a modern audience a similar experience. The one wrong choice is to pretend the sounds are not there. Either theaters must use sounds as similar as possible to the original ones—as Shakespeare’s Globe does—or they must chose specific sounds that will evoke the same reaction in a modern audience as the called-for sound would have in an Elizabethan one.

In the midst of a packed rehearsal schedule, it is hard to make the space for figuring out what to do about auditory signals. There are lots of choices to make—modern music or authentic? The specific instruments called for, or what one has available in the company? Working these details out can be a strain on an already complex process. It’s worthy of the effort, though. The auditory information that Shakespeare and his contemporaries call for fills in the world for the audience and adds depth and color to the play. Although it is probably impossible, due to the lack of physical evidence, to reconstruct the original signals, a theater could create a consistent, repeatable experience for its audience. The audience would learn to anticipate a particular character when they heard his tucket. Remember, before 1977, no one had ever heard Darth Vader’s theme. By the time The Empire Strikes Back hit theaters, only three years later, the filmmakers could rely on an audience that knew exactly what to expect when they heard that low brass. That theme serves the same purpose as a tucket—it orients an audience in the complex politics of the story. Audiences are educable. Theaters can teach them to recognize calls and thereby access the nearly subconscious way they interpret sound.

Here is some practical advice: First ask, “What information is this auditory signal giving the audience?” Then figure out how to convey the same information through sound. Consider using different instruments for each side in a war—maybe oboes for the French and drums for the English. Try to find music that will help to convey the meaning of the message. Find panicked music for an alarum, or self-important music for a tucket.

Consider getting ahead of the problem by creating a set of musical calls that a director can pull out and apply to any play. One does not need many—a retreat, alarum, parley, and tucket for each of two sides—good guys and bad, domestic and foreign—would suffice for most of the stage directions.

Be consistent through an entire play—or better, an entire season of plays. Educate the audience, just like Looney Tunes did when they were kids. They will catch on.

Notes

1. William Shakespeare, The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), Hamlet, 2.2.535.

2. David Crystal, Pronouncing Shakespeare: The Globe Experiment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

3. Paul Hentzner, A Journey into England, trans. anonymously, 1757, http://books.google.com/booksid=wGxsXPtYYp8C&dq=Paul+Hentzner&printsec=frontcover&source=an&hl=en&ei=HWySYzSBs3dtgfr0IHEBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA1,M1.

4. John H. Long, Shakespeare’s Use of Music: The Histories and the Tragedies (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1971), 263.

5. Thomas Dekker, Shoemaker’s Holiday, ed. R. L. Smallwood and Stanley Wells (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979).

6. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, in The Riverside Shakespeare, 3.3.160.

7. Shakespeare, All’s Well that Ends Well, in The Riverside Shakespeare, 1.2.77.

8. Christopher H. Sterling, Military Communications: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008), 307.

9. Paul Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956), 24–25.

10. Sterling, Military Communications, 307.

11. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, in The Riverside Shakespeare, 3.10.1.

12. Paul Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World, 21.

13. Claire Van Kampen, “Actor Interviews 2000,” Shakespeare’s Globe (London, 2001), http://www.shakespearesglobe.org/images/pagepictures/Actor%20Interviews%202000.pdf, 34.

14. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, in The Riverside Shakespeare, 5.5.

15. Phylllis Hartnoll, Shakespeare in Music (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966), 14.

16. Alan C. Dessen and Leslie Thomson, A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–1642 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 94.

17. W. J. Lawrence, Those Nut-Cracking Elizabethans (London: The Argonaut Press, 1935), 86.

18. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, in The Riverside Shakespeare, 3.2.279.

19. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1, in The Riverside Shakespeare, 3.3.30–33.

20. Thomas Dekker, The Seven Deadly Sinnes of London (London: E. A. for Nathaniel Butter, 1606), 58.

21. Thomas Dekker, The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker Now First Collected with Illustrative Notes and a Biography of the Author in Four Volumes (London: John Pearson, 1873), 1:295.

22. Long, Shakespeare’s Use of Music, 11.

23. Long, Shakespeare’s Use of Music, 14.

24. Hartnoll, Shakespeare in Music, 14.

25. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, in The Riverside Shakespeare, 5.1.121.

26. Shakespeare, Othello, in The Riverside Shakespeare, 2.1.177.

27. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, in The Riverside Shakespeare, 2.1.