'Poor senseless Bess, clothed in her rags and folly': Early modern women, madness and song in seventeenth-century England.
MacKinnon, Dolly (2001) 'Poor senseless Bess, clothed in her rags and folly': Early modern women, madness and song in seventeenth-century England. Parergon, 18(3), pp. 119-151.
Much has been written on the state of early modern women's lives. Much has been written about madness, and much has been written about English music. But rarely are these three elements considered together. This article discusses the intersection of these three areas in the social context of seventeenth-century London, by focusing on a song by Henry Purcell (1659-1695) entitled 'Bess of Bedlam', and also known as 'From silent shades' published in 1683. 'Bess' was the first mad song composed by Purcell and was not written for a specific theatre work, as was the case with his later commissioned songs. My aim is to show how this particular song, as well as the ballad/poem ' Mad maudlin' from which it drew inspiration, reflects contemporary societal attitudes, which readily linked women and madness.
Impact and interest:
Citation counts are sourced monthly from and citation databases.
These databases contain citations from different subsets of available publications and different time periods and thus the citation count from each is usually different. Some works are not in either database and no count is displayed. Scopus includes citations from articles published in 1996 onwards, and Web of Science® generally from 1980 onwards.
Citations counts from theindexing service can be viewed at the linked Google Scholar™ search.
Full-text downloads displays the total number of times this work’s files (e.g., a PDF) have been downloaded from QUT ePrints as well as the number of downloads in the previous 365 days. The count includes downloads for all files if a work has more than one.
|Item Type:||Journal Article|
|Additional Information:||Parergon is the journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. See web site for more information.|
|Keywords:||Early modern England, Women, Henry Purcell, Songs, History Mental illness, Madness, Sex, Sex role, Theatre, Bess of Bedlam, Restoration London|
|Subjects:||Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification > STUDIES IN CREATIVE ARTS AND WRITING (190000) > PERFORMING ARTS AND CREATIVE WRITING (190400) > Performing Arts and Creative Writing not elsewhere classified (190499)
Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification > LANGUAGES COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE (200000) > CULTURAL STUDIES (200200)
Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification > HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY (210000) > HISTORICAL STUDIES (210300) > British History (210305)
|Divisions:||Current > QUT Faculties and Divisions > Creative Industries Faculty|
|Deposited On:||02 Jul 2004|
|Last Modified:||09 Jun 2010 12:21|
Repository Staff Only: item control page