Songs lost and found: Katherine Philips's Pompey's Ghost

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Electronic versions

Documents

  • ML-2021-109_Proof_hi

    Accepted author manuscript, 2.24 MB, PDF document

    Embargo ends: 28/05/24

DOI

First staged at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin in 1663, Katherine Philips’s Pompey was the first play by a woman to be performed on the British stage. It was also pathbreaking in its use of entr’acte songs, which Philips newly added. This essay explores the complex afterlife of one song from the play, popularly known as Pompey’s Ghost. It was her most widely disseminated text, though it largely circulated anonymously or attributed to other authors. Between 1663 and 1806 the song was set to music at least five times. One late seventeenth-century setting became popular in New England and was known there into the nineteenth century. By the late eighteenth century, through another setting, the song became known as Scottish. The tune to which Pompey’s Ghost was sung in Scotland had been thought lost but can now be identified, restoring more of the song’s complex reception history and significance.

Keywords

  • Katherine Philips, Robert Burns, Geminiani, Henry Purcell, Commonplace books, Manuscript dissemination, Book culture, Cultural history, music
Original languageEnglish
Article numbergcac015
Pages (from-to)591-629
JournalMusic and Letters
Volume103
Issue number4
Early online date28 May 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 Nov 2022
View graph of relations