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Leslie Thomson, Sound Effects: Hearing the Early Modern Stage. By Laura Jayne Wright, Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 76, Issue 1, Spring 2025, Pages 79–81, https://doi.org/10.1093/sq/quaf006
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Laura Jayne Wright’s Sound Effects: Hearing the Early Modern Stage fits well into the Revels Plays Companion Library, which aims “to publish work that will enable students of early modern drama to examine the achievements of dramatists from a broader perspective, while supporting the work of editors through the development of contextual knowledge and new theoretical frameworks” (i). In particular, this book “offers new methodologies for retracing sound, and explores both performance technology and sensory perception through the sounds of the stage” (1). Covering the period from 1576 to 1625, Wright’s study “draws together early modern sounds which echo from play to play, sounds which are split from sight, and sounds conjured only in the imagination” (2). The device, Wright asserts, “was a fundamental part of the theatrical experience and must therefore be heard attentively, as a vital unit of meaning on the early modern stage” (2). Through a series of close analyses, she teaches us to attend not just to sounds but their effects. That said, this book is dense with ideas and examples, making it virtually impossible to summarize adequately. What follows merely skims the surface.
