Shakespeare's Songbook, Early Music Festival

"Shakespeare's works are teeming with musical allusions and quotations. Some of them provide subtle information, some are just meant to provoke a laugh. And so a list of popular songs of his time can be compiled from Shakespeare's plays: “Shakespeare's Songbook”. The early music folk ensemble The Playfords used this source, arranged parts of it and will improvise freely from it. There will be singing and instrumental music, as it was customary in the days of the Bard from Stratford-upon-Avon.

Everyone meets in St. Bartlmä - just like in the Globe Theatre back then: from the tragic heroines Ophelia and Desdemona from “Hamlet” and “Othello” respectively, to Prince Don Pedro's singing servant Balthazar in “Much Ado About Nothing” and the jester “Feste” from “Twelfth Night”. From thigh-slapping jokes for the common people to witty allusions for the distinguished upper classes: they all find a hearing here."