The first section of Sound looks at theories of sound as part of a canonical Western tradition. It examines what key thinkers have had to say about sound in the theatre, as well as how we think this might have been experienced in performance. Starting with the earliest drama of ancient Greece, this section describes ideas about sound in the context of the period, with particular attention to places of production (such as the theatre at Epidaurus and Shakespeare’s Globe) and to relevant sonic practices (such as music, sound effects and textual cues).
This account of ‘classical sound’ is not a survey of dramatic theory or of sound design; rather, it discusses the theatres of ancient Greece and early modern England in order to think about how theatres have employed sound at particular historical moments and how theorists, both contemporary to these periods and since, have understood the matter of their sound production. Two case studies, on Aristophanes’ The Frogs and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, explore how sound features work in their respective periods as well as take up how the plays’ soundscapes have been adapted for later audiences.
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