Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra (A&C-8)

(CM16: 120 cues); see especially S81-7, 93. SM36: ‘The brazen din of trumpets’ is a characteristic of the play. Under the direction of Peter Hall, with Dominic Muldowney’s settings, the instruments called for in the Egyptian Court were two Egyptian trumpets, bombard (with its bagpipe sound, this is an alto shawm), an oud (Arabic lute) and a narrow fiddle, the rebec, of Medieval English origin, and hand drums. For the ‘grotesque bacchanale’ on Pompey’s galley in II vii, Muldowney wrote for two trumpets, violin, tambourine, crumhorn and zitar (French medieval instrument with long frets) (Tirzah Lowen Peter Hall directs Antony and Cleopatra. London, Methuen, 1990 p. 115-6: LT references below).

B249: Octavius, Antony, Cleopatra and Pompey preceded by florid, trumpet flourishes, each being differentiated in character. Lowen also suggests that Pompey should be heralded by trumpets and triple drums. It is noted that Plutarch adds to the flutes played on Cleopatra’s barge to which Shakespeare alludes in II ii 200, ‘howboys, citterns and viols’ (after the translation by Sir Thomas North as quoted in T.J.B. Spencer ‘Shakespeare’s Plutarch’ 1964, p. 201). A member of the cast is described as, ‘The Boy, who sings’. The stage directions specify oboes in Act IV scene iii, while notwithstanding the allusions to music performance at the beginning of Act II sc v, no stage directions interject the text here.