Tradition and experimentation in the work of Thomas D'Urfey

• Main Author: McCann, Patricia Elaine Rosemary
• Published: Queen's University Belfast 2016
• Subjects: 822
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.707540

Thomas D’Urfey (1653-1723) was one of the most prolific playwrights of the Restoration and early eighteenth century. His vast repertory and the range of publications, plays, song-books and poems attributed to the playwright demonstrate the potential extent of scholarship on Thomas D’Urfey, both dramaturgical and musical. His involvement in the music and lyrics, and his collaborative efforts with some of the most famous composers of the day, reveal the extent to which D’Urfey used music to enhance his drama. This thesis considers elements of tradition and experimentation in the work of Thomas D’Urfey and examines the ways in which D’Urfey adopts and adapts established characteristics, in music, theatre and song. Chapter One examines D’Urfey’s use of the court masque within his own dramatic works. I explore the ways in which D’Urfey looked to earlier English court music and dramatic productions, and adapted these to suit his own style and the changing tastes of the Restoration and early eighteenth-century audience. Chapter Two looks at the rise of Italian opera in England, and D’Urfey’s variable approach to the presence of the foreign entertainment on the London stage. Chapter Three begins to address the lack of scholarship concerning D’Urfey’s songs. Focusing on his pastoral songs, I discuss the ways in which D’Urfey’s songs contain certain tropes and characteristics of the traditional pastoral mode and the English pastoral tradition, as well as how D’Urfey established his own style of pastoral, that involved scenery and characters he hoped would be more familiar to his English audience.