All the world’s a stage

Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

The Merchant of Venice, Act 5

Shakespeare’s plays use songs and dances extensively, and the texts are full of musical references and imagery. Our programme brings together a sequence of music with Shakespearean connections. It includes settings of the lyrics, from Shakespeare’s day – Thomas Morley’s ‘O Mistress Mine’ and ‘It was a Lover and his Lass’ - to the mid-18th century – Thomas Arne’s ‘Come Away, Death’ and ‘Come Unto these Yellow Sands’, and an enchanting setting of ‘Orpheus with his Lute’ by Thomas Chilcot.

Instrumental music includes a suite from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen (an adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Matthew Locke’s remarkably vivid ‘Curtain Tune’ for Thomas Shadwell’s 1674 adaptation of The Tempest.

We begin and end with dances written by Charles Dibdin (the composer of ‘Tom Bowling’) for the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-on-Avon in 1769 (during which not one authentic line of Shakespeare was heard!).

Actor Peter Kenny joins the musicians for the speeches and dialogue that put the music into its dramatic context.

To arrange a performance of ‘All the World’s a Stage’
call 0115 922 6651 or email