Sounding otherness in early modern drama and travel: uncanny vibrations in the english archive jenni
Sounding
Otherness in Early Modern Drama and Travel: Uncanny Vibrations in the English Archive Jennifer Linhart Wood
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Sounding Otherness in Early Modern Drama and Travel
Uncanny Vibrations in the English Archive
jennifer linhart wood
New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800
Series Editors
Ann Rosalind Jones
Department of Comparative Literature
Smith College
Northampton, MA, USA
Jyotsna G. Singh Michigan State University East Lansing, MI, USA
Mihoko Suzuki Department of English University of Miami Coral Gables, FL, USA
This series, now published by Palgrave Macmillan, presents studies of early modern contacts and exchanges among the states, polities, cultures, religions, and entrepreneurial organizations of Europe; Asia, including the Levant and East India/Indies; Africa; and the Americas. Books in New Transculturalisms will continue to investigate diverse figures, such as travelers, merchants, cultural inventors—explorers, mapmakers, artists, craftsmen, and writers—as they operated in political, mercantile, sexual, affective, and linguistic economies. We encourage authors to reflect on their own methodologies in relation to issues and theories relevant to the study of transculturalism, translation, and transnationalism.
More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15712
Jennifer Linhart Wood
Sounding Otherness in Early Modern Drama and Travel
Uncanny Vibrations in the English Archive
Jennifer Linhart Wood
St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Saint Mary’s City, MD, USA
The Folger Shakespeare Library Washington, DC, USA
New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800
ISBN 978-3-030-12223-2 ISBN 978-3-030-12224-9 (eBook)
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For Marilyn Linhart Kinsey and Edwin Reese Kinsey, Elizabeth Linhart Mielke and Thomas Christopher Mielke, and Bryan Joshua Talenfeld
Acknowledgments
In writing this book, I have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of generosity from those who have variously fostered my ideas, broadened my horizons, developed my thinking, and provided their steadfast support. I realize that I am beyond fortunate to have so many people in my life who have reached out to share their knowledge, expertise, guidance, and wisdom with me throughout the course of this project. I hope that those acknowledged can hear their own voices resonating in these pages. This project has been shaped by the intellectual communities in which it has developed through the years. It should probably come as little surprise to anyone reading even a few pages of my work that I navigate the world largely through sounds: one of the immense joys of writing this book was that it allowed me to “re-hear” the voices of so many people who influenced my thinking, and whose voices continue to echo throughout the ideas expressed herein. Some of my earliest forays into the intersections between literature and music occurred during my time at the University of Miami: I’d like to thank Pamela Hammons, David Glimp, Tom Goodmann, Kathryn Freeman, Catherine Judd, Tassie Gwilliam, Frank Stringfellow, Brenna Munro, Frank Palmeri, Anthony Barthelemy, Robert Casillo, John Paul Russo, Allison Johnson, and Pat Saunders for encouraging me to trace this rich interdisciplinary vein and having faith in my ability to do so even before I did. At the George Washington University, the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute was an extreme catalyst for this project in its developmental stages; I appreciate the sincere investment in each other’s scholarship and the generative intellectual community extended to me by Tara Goshal Wallace, Marshall Alcorn, Antonio
Lopez, Alexa Alice Joubin, Jennifer James, Katherine Z. Keller, Ayanna Thompson, Ashley Denham Busse, M. Gabrielle Bychowski, Shyama Rajendran, Haylie Swenson, and especially Jonathan Hsy. Special thanks to Jeffrey Jerome Cohen for organizing the extraordinary and magical experience of singing “Full Fathom Five” with our students. This book would not be what it is without the hours of discussion Natalie Deibel, Nedda Mehdizadeh, and Jessica Roberts Frazier shared with me about this project during its embryonic stages. Thank you, Jess, for the years of friendship and conversations that I have enjoyed and benefited from immensely.
I am deeply grateful for the opportunities that the Shakespeare Association of America had afforded me, especially for the chance to present my work at the inaugural Next Gen Plen session, and to share the stage with other early career scholars. The wide network of colleagues whom I have the privilege to call my friends include Anya Riehl Bertolet, Alastair Bellany, Liza Blake, Claire M.L. Bourne, Urvashi Chakravarty, Ambereen Dadabhoy, Nandini Das, Leslie Dunn, Laura Estill, Carla Della Gatta, Musa Gurnis, Sharon Harris, Diana Henderson, Heather Miyano Kopelson, Katie Larson, Laury Magnus, Kate McKinley, Madhavi Menon, Vin Nardizzi, Joe Ortiz, James Siemon, Maria Shmygol, Rebecca Totaro, Scott Trudell, Will West, Amanda Eubanks Winkler, and Daniel Yabut: I thank you all for your inspired—and inspiring—work, and for sharing ideas that have enriched my thinking about literature, music, and intercultural approaches. Special thanks are due to Tara Schupner Congdon, who influenced my approach to the multisensory ways in which sound functions; Sarah Williams for sharing her brilliant ideas, immense knowledge, and vibrant friendship with me; and Linda Austern for her intellectual generosity from the first day we met, and for her encouragement of my work at the juncture of musicology and literature. I’m grateful also to my colleagues and friends at the 2018 NABMSA conference, who championed me through the final stages of this project: Jane Daphne Hatter, Samantha Bassler, Rachel M. Bani, Lidia Chang, K. Dawn Grapes, and Stacey Jocoy.
I would like to thank those people with whom I work at the Folger Shakespeare Library who have wholeheartedly supported my intellectual pursuits, especially Owen Williams, Melissa Cook, Sophie Byvik, Rachel Dankert, Emily Wahl, Erin Wuebbens, Gabrielle Linnell, Camille Seerattan, LuEllen DeHaven, Rosalind Larry, Madeleine Torres, Melanie Leung, Kristen Sieck, Meghan Carrafano, Nataly Cruz-Castillo, Meredith Deeley,
Rachel Hammer, Elisa Tersigni, Jack Bouchard, Terrill Tiggle, Quintin Peterson, LaTanya Gant, Alonzo Macon, Sumorry Alpha, Charles Crews, Helen Rowe, D Vida Mack, Ann Swann, Matt Bogen, Luis Sato, Yvonne Davis, Stacey Redick, Jeffrey Zanghi, and Michael Witmore. Special thanks to Andrea Byrd for her continual support and celebration from the moment I received the contract, Jeremy Lopez for his kind words of encouragement right when I needed to hear them, and Abbie Weinberg for being the ideal office-mate, immense resource, and wonderful friend— I have treasured sharing an office and intellectual space with you for so many years.
I am deeply appreciative of my colleagues at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, in particular Ben Click, Jerry Gabriel, Karen Anderson, Colby Nelson, Jeff Coleman, Brian O’Sullivan, Bruce Wilson, Katie Guy, and Shelby Reynolds, all of whom from the very start have welcomed me into their intellectual community with open arms, and most especially Jennifer Cognard-Black, Christine Wooley, Beth Charlebois, Crystal Brandt, and my dear friend, Robin Bates. This project has also benefited from the kind suggestions and words of support from Bruce R. Smith, Wes Folkerth, Christopher Marsh, Amrita Sen, Douglas Bruster, Sir Brian Vickers, Richard Knowles, J. Leeds Barroll, Paul Werstine, Nick Moschovakis, Gavin Hollis, Douglas Lanier, Richard Wilson, Rebecca Bushnell, Kenneth Gross, F. Elizabeth Hart, Katherine Eggert, Kevin Curran, Steve Urkowitz, and Tobias Gregory. My delightful, thought-provoking, and downright fun Shakespeare Study Group (affectionately known as my “Shakespeare Ladies”) have been a constant source of intellectual pleasure for me. Eileen Mason, Carol Kranowitz, Julia Berry, Mary Talley Garcia, Maureen Miller, Anne Maher, Helen Kanovsky, Marcie Solomon, Ellen Teller, Eileen Ivey Sirota, Jo Reed, Cathy Shaw, Katherine Woodall, Carol Cumming, Kathy Ruckman, and Margee Hazen, I want to thank you all for reminding me of the joy that comes from immersing ourselves in Shakespeare’s language, living and thinking deeply in the plays, and enjoying a glass of wine together. I also appreciate the warm reception and wonderful conversations from the Chevy Chase Library Group, and am especially grateful for Emily Menchal for inviting me to talk about Shakespeare with you all. I would be remiss if I did not thank all of the talented students it has been my privilege to know and work with through the years, as your voices have influenced my thinking and made this book all the richer for it.
To Gillian Thompson, Frank Tirado, and my fellow Friday-morning yogis, thank you for the decade we have spent together, the movement
and music we have experienced together. Hearing/feeling the music of a wide range of different cultures during our practice definitely crystallized so many of the ideas that made their way into this book. I must thank Ken Whiting of Vizcaya Museum and Gardens for allowing me inside the museum’s organ: this project would not sound the way it does without that singular experience. For sharing their observations about the kettledrum’s vibrations at Blackfrairs, I would like to thank Ralph Alan Cohen, Allison Glenzer, Sarah B. T. Thiel, Holly Pickett, Claire Kimball, Alexander Sovronsky, Stephanie Hodge, Adrienne Johnson, Eric Johnson, Meaghan Brown, and Mike Poston. Beverly Straube from the Voorhees Archaearium at Jamestown has freely shared her knowledge of New World Indian bells in their collection with me; Anastasia, an historical interpreter at the Jamestown Settlement Museum, was generous enough to gift me one of her jingle bells (listen for it in the “Hell’s Bells” chapter). Out of sheer kindness, both Chris Goodwin of the Lute Society and Barbara Heller of the Werner Forman Archive helped me solve some last-minute research puzzles, which was immensely appreciated. Marvin Richardson patiently answered my questions about Native American Indian music and performance, and I am grateful to him, Brenda, and everyone else at that particular gathering for being so open to my queries and for allowing me to partake in such beautiful music and dancing. Father John and Linda Ball, thank you for sharing perspective, the kindest words of encouragement, and such lovely dinners with me along the way, all of which provided me much-needed nourishment in every conceivable form. I am immensely grateful to my close friends who have been wonderful sounding boards helping this project take shape: Melissa Zulueta, Jaime Martin, Jamie Lang, Katie Grover, Debbie Aud-Bakley, Sharon Teachout, Darlene Cucinotta, Debi Didra, Tyler Didra, Arthur and Betty Joanne Scott, Tony and Bozena Pait, and Joe Storey.
To list the names of all the talented people with whom I have performed music over the course of this project would constitute a book in itself; however, I would especially like to thank Karen Lowry, Barbara Svenson, Diana Beall, Nathan Beall, Larry MacCurtain, John Giusti, John LeRoy, Robert Hayes, Jim and Joanna Macauley, Eileen and Chris Rios, Thomas Sleeper, Barry Hemphill, Pepper Choplin, Ellen Bertelsen, Carol Howard, Val Kund, Sharon Evans, Rick Hayes, Jean Quinn, Rachael Meador, Logan Tarwater, Kim Boenig, Liam Sebreny, Michael Miller, Nadesh Nahnyama, Jeanette Warren, Jake DeWerth-Jaffe, Amanda Hastings, Rachel Steelman, Katie St. Laurent, Renae Rhode, M. K. Meyers, Byron Dickerson, J. W. Ruth,
Alan Baker, Michael Casey, Joshua Ajanaku, Walter and Lauren Beaudwin, Marjorie Bachman, Gerrie and Tom McClary, Merilou Bell, and Dave and Debby Showalter: you all allow me to experience the magic that is music, to live what I theorize. Two exceptional musicians allowed me to include their work in this project: David Anthony Lewis and Fred Musengo. David, who is immensely talented in so many ways, plays the kettledrums that I discuss in the chapter “‘Drums Rumble Within’: Embodied Experiences of Temples in the East and on the London Stage.” Rex Coombs engineered the sound recording of “Full Fathom Five” and his expertise and kindness made the (always uncanny) recording session experience a thoroughly enjoyable and productive one; Tom Szynborski expertly optimized this recording for YouTube. To my wonderful, accomplished, and dear friend, Fred Musengo, thank you for accompanying me on guitar for “Full Fathom Five”: this recording would certainly not be nearly as meaningful—or as good—without your beautiful playing. Fred and the lovely Julia Musengo, thank you both for your friendship and encouragement throughout the book’s composition, and for Julia’s delicious culinary events that have kept me well-fed during the process.
I could not have asked for more wonderful series editors: Mihoko Suzuki, Jyotsna Singh, Ann Rosalind Jones, thank you for your indefatigable support of this project and superb guidance, as well as inspiring this work through your own scholarship. I thank Jyotsna for inviting me to be a part of this exciting series, and Ann for her supportive words about my project. I thank Mihoko for her enthusiasm, her support of my interest in literature and music early in my academic ventures, and for helping me realize the completion of this book. Thanks are also due to the anonymous readers who expanded the book’s compass through their generous and insightful recommendations, and especially to the second reader for your excitement about this monograph. The whole team at Palgrave has made this process an absolutely delightful experience, particularly Megan Laddusaw and Christine Pardue: I want you to know how much I value your enthusiasm, patience, and kind words along the road to publication—a journey made all the smoother from your expert navigation.
My family has provided me with immeasurable encouragement—and requisite levity—throughout. Lynne and Bill Bracker, Ted, Veronica, and London, thank you for being so much fun, and for your long-standing interest in and support of my scholarly pursuits. Adrienne Wilson and Austin Trask, thank you for our adventures at the speakeasy and for asking such thoughtful questions about my work. Robert, Gina, and Rachel
Wilson, thank you for your presence in my life, and for sharing years of music and conversations with me. Lorraine and Gerry Berlin, Deborah Talenfeld, and Mitch and Tammy Talenfeld, thank you all for your support and interest in my work, and especially for listening. Special thanks are due to my brother, Christopher Mielke, for the discussions, laughs, and lunch dates that we enjoyed while researching at the Library of Congress together.
Jonathan Gil Harris, my words cannot express my appreciation for the profound influence you have had on my work and on this book. From our very first meeting, you alerted me to this magnificent sonic archive, ignited this project, and championed my scholarship. You once said that one of your own books would not be what it is without my efforts and I have been looking forward to the completion of this book to echo your sentiments back to you: thank you for helping me make this book what it is. Gail Kern Paster, your “adoption” of me and unflagging support of my scholarship is the stuff of dreams; at every turn, at every stage, you have been there cheering for me—figuratively and literally—and you have provided me with such reflective wisdom and insight, as well as wonderful discussions about the intellectual and performance history of music. Holly Dugan, you are a model example of what a scholar, teacher, feminist, and good person should be. The whole field of sensory studies came alive for me while studying with you and reading your own brilliant work; your scholarly and personal investment in me made all the difference. Don Philbrick and Emily Russell, I could not have invented better, more supportive friends if I tried; Emily, your friendship, love, and brilliance is a constant source of delight for me, and every interaction with you makes my heart sing. I cannot thank you enough for our years of conversation that have strengthened this project, your thoughtful comments on my work, and your presence in my life. I have also had the benefit of writing this book with the company of three wonderful pets, Daisy, Willow, and Holly, who have probably spent more time sitting with me while I worked on this on this project than anyone; I owe them a debt of gratitude for their endearing and sustaining companionship. This book is dedicated to Marilyn and Edwin Kinsey; Elizabeth and Thomas Mielke; and Bryan Talenfeld. You all have encouraged me in whatever I have pursued, shared amazing music with me, and I owe my success in anything to your belief in me. Thanks, Grandma, for imparting to me the love of music and literature, and to you and Grandpa for your always-present love and affirmation. Mom, thank you for your support at every level and stage of this project—
from being an expert listener, to reading drafts, to cheering me onward— and for being the very best Mom and friend to me through it all. Dad, thank you for always being there for me, for always having an encouraging (or better yet, funny) word for me, and for teaching me to perceive the world differently through the remarkable way you live your life. Bryan, I truly could not have achieved this without your love, patience, and support. I am thankful to God for all the positive people, forces, and energy to complete this book, and, especially, that you are in my life. You all have shown, and continue to show me, that love works in very much the same way that I conceptualize sound: as waves that rock us to our very core, bring us together, and transform us. You each have made me who I am and this book exists because of you.
I am grateful for the opportunity to include some of my work published or presented in earlier forms in this book. A summer seminar at the Newberry Library on “Music and Travel: 1500–1800” allowed me to analyze the musical notation Jean de Léry included in his writing, which is discussed in the first two main chapters of this book. Thank you to Carla Zecher for leading that group, the participants who made the intellectual exchange so rich through our interdisciplinary discussions, and most especially, thanks to the wonderful Bill McCarthy, who is greatly missed but imparted so much goodness into this world before he left it. To Daniel J. Vitkus and the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, thank you for the exceedingly helpful suggestions on the essay, “An Organ’s Metamorphosis: Thomas Dallam’s Sonic Transformations in the Ottoman Empire,” which has metamorphosed again and appears in an expanded form in this book. Portions of “‘Something Rich and Strange’: Global Listening and The Tempest” were presented at the 2015 Shakespeare Association of America’s Next Gen Plen and later appeared in Shakespeare Studies; thank you to Diana Henderson and Jim Siemon for sharing such incisive editorial suggestions, and for permission to rework and amplify that publication here.
list of figures
Introduction: Soundings
Fig. 1 Jacob Cats, “Quid non sentir amor XLII,” in Proteus ofte Minnebeelden Verandert in Sinnebellden (Rotterdam: Bij Pieter van Waesberge, 1627), 254. By kind permission of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University 29
Rattling Soundscapes of Witch Drama and the New World
Fig. 1 Theodor de Bry’s engraving XVIII, “Their danses which they use att their hyghe feastes” from Thomas Harriot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (London, 1590). Call# STC 12786. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library 82
Fig. 2 Theodor de Bry, [Grands Voyages, America pt. 2.], Brevis narratio eorvm qvae in Florida Americae provicia Gallis acciderunt, secunda in illam nauigatione, duce Renato de Laudoniere … anno MDLXIIII. Qvae est secvnda pars Americae (Wecheli, [1609]). By kind permission of the Newberry Library. VAULT Ayer 110 .B9 1590a pt. 2, 118–119 83
Fig. 3 Detail featuring a Jew’s Harp from Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II: De Organographia, Theatrum Instrumentorum seu Sciagraphia (1620), Plate XXII. By kind permission of The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford. Douce P 710 87
Fig. 4 Three different types of gourd rattles (numbered “8,” “9,” and “10”) are visible in Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II: De Organographia, Theatrum Instrumentorum seu Sciagraphia (1620), Plate XXXI. By kind permission of The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford. Douce P 710 96
Hell’s Bells: Delight in Transatlantic Jinglings
Fig. 1 Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II: De Organographia, Theatrum Instrumentorum seu Sciagraphia (1620), Plate XXII. Crotal bells, detail. By kind permission of The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford. Douce P 710
Fig. 2 Detail from “David and the Fool” showing the Fool holding a bauble with bells on it in the Breviary of John the Fearless (France [Paris], between 1413 and 1419). By kind permission of The British Library Board. Harley 2897, f. 42v
Fig. 3 Title page of William Kemp’s Kemps Nine Daies Wonder. Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich featuring Kemp wearing bell garters (London, 1600). Photo Bodleian Libraries. 4o L 62 (12) Art., titlepage (sig. Ai recto)
Fig. 4 Frontispiece of Theodor de Bry’s [America Part 4] America.Sive, Insignis & admiranda historia de reperta primùm Occidentali India à Christophoro Columbo anno M.CCCCXCII (Americae, pars qvarta) depicting what appear to be bell garters on the New World Indian bodies. ([Frankfurt], 1594). By kind permission of the Newberry Library. VAULT Ayer 11.b9 1590 v.4
Fig. 5 Theodor de Bry, German edition of America, Part 12, Zwölffter Theil der Newen Welt (Frankfurt, 1623). From the Kraus Collection of Sir Francis Drake at the Library of Congress. G159. B8 pt. 7b Drake Coll, sig. biiiiv
104
136
145
146
147
Fig. 6 This plate from Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II: De Organographia, Theatrum Instrumentorum seu Sciagraphia (1620), Plate XXXI, features “Exotic Instruments”; the bell garter is numbered “7” and a rattle-cone garter is numbered “6.” This image also features a Tupinamba rattle (“10”) that Praetorius identifies as “Indianische.” By kind permission of The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford. Douce P 710 150
An Organ’s Metamorphosis: Thomas Dallam’s Sonic Transformations in the Ottoman Empire
Fig. 1 Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II: De Organographia, Theatrum Instrumentorum seu Sciagraphia (1620), Plate XXXVIII. Various Organ Pipes. By kind permission of The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford. Douce P 710 178
Fig. 2 Although not a representation of the Dallam organ, this image of a Renaissance organ provides a correlative example of the ornate appearance of the instrument. Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II: De Organographia, Theatrum Instrumentorum seu Sciagraphia (1620), Plate II. Organ. By kind permission of The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford. Douce P 710
“Drums Rumble Within”: Embodied Experiences of Temples in the East and on the London Stage
183
Fig. 1 The kettledrum, with the copper kettle, animal skin membrane, tension pegs, and mallets, is pictured at the top of this image (labeled “1”), while the side or snare drum is featured in the bottom (labeled “Z” or “2”). Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II: De Organographia, Theatrum Instrumentorum seu Sciagraphia (1620), Plate XXIII. By kind permission of The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford. Douce P 710 234
“Something Rich and Strange”: Global Listening and The Tempest
Fig. 1 Musical score for “Full Fathom Five,” John Wilson, attributed to Robert Johnson. John Playford collection of music to the Tempest (ca. 1605–1667), fol. 11r. Call#: Folger MS V.a.411. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library 306
list of Qr codes
Introduction: Soundings
QR Code 1 Eastern Chimes 40
Rattling Soundscapes of Witch Drama and the New World
QR Code 1 Jew’s Harp 88
QR Code 2 Rattle/Maraca 91
Hell’s Bells: Delight in Transatlantic Jinglings
QR Code 1 Jingling bell 106
An Organ’s Metamorphosis: Thomas Dallam’s Sonic Transformations in the Ottoman Empire
QR Code 1 Organ 185
“Drums Rumble Within”: Embodied Experiences of Temples in the East and on the London Stage
QR Code 1 Kettledrum 235
“Something Rich and Strange”: Global Listening and The Tempest
QR Code 1 “Full Fathom Five” 307
Please use a QR Code scanner, available as a free smartphone app, or the camera functionality on your smartphone, to scan the QR Codes in this book, which will link to sound clips of the resonant instruments I discuss. You are welcome also to visit my YouTube channel directly to access these soundbytes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYXGsAW3bw7el9MvgUOy5JA.
Introduction: Soundings
A stranger shipwrecked on Pentapolis requests that a musical instrument be brought to him, so that he may bide the evening in greater comfort:
Only for instant solace pleasure me
With some delightful instrument, with which, And with my former practice, I intend
To pass away the tediousness of night … (8a.2–5)1
The music he produces is remarkably hybrid: it couples the tones of a “delightful instrument” foreign to him (though somehow familiar enough that he is able to play upon it) with elements from his “former practice” of music that he learned in his homeland. His playing not only allows him to “pass away the tediousness of night” in “solace,” but the nocturne also
1 References to Pericles are from The Norton Shakespeare, second edition, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, et al. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008). In this case, the editors have chosen to follow the episodic scene breaks; this scene corresponds to the conclusion of Act 2 in other editions. These lines are a reconstruction based on the correlative passage in George Wilkins’s The Painfull Adventures of Pericles (London, 1608, 513); in the following scene, Simonides thanks Pericles for his music. Because music was integral to theatrical performance, it would have been unlikely that Simonides mentions the “delightful pleasing harmony” without the audience hearing it in production, even though the scene is absent in the quarto; as Suzanne Gossett describes it in the Arden edition 3rd series (London: Methuen Drama, 2004), 1, Pericles “presents a uniquely damaged text and is the only one of the so-called ‘bad quartos’ that does not exist in another better version.”
resounds throughout the palace, its tones audible to the other inhabitants. In the morning, the King tells this “stranger knight,”
I am beholden to you
For your sweet music this last night. My ears, I do protest, were never better fed With such delightful pleasing harmony. (9.14, 23–26)
The King’s experience of the “delightful pleasing harmony” created by this unusual “sweet music” blending the familiar and the foreign echoes the stranger’s desires and expectations of the music’s effects as engendering “pleasure.” Ultimately, these musical sounds generate “pleasure” and “delight” in both the performer and the hearer.
This “stranger knight” is Pericles, the eponymous hero of William Shakespeare’s and George Wilkins’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre, one of the most popular plays of the early seventeenth century.2 This musical episode in Pericles is one among countless examples that demonstrate sound’s significance to cross-cultural encounters in early modern drama and travel writing. In contact zones of foreign lands and in the sonic laboratory of the early modern theater, sounds impact bodies present at sonic events, calibrating them to the same frequencies through vibration and forming networks of connection among them. Additionally, sounds incite reactions in individual listeners, as demonstrated by Pericles and King Simonides, and—whether described in painful or pleasurable terms—these sounds of
2 Although Ben Jonson dismissed the play as a “mouldy tale” in his Ode (To Himself), Gossett and Walter Cohen assert that Pericles “was one of the most popular plays of its time.” Walter Cohen, Pericles, in The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, et al. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008), 2723; Gossett, Pericles, 2. Furthermore, while it is likely that this episode was staged in the early modern theater, its presence in The Painfull Adventures, though not in the Pericles quarto, indicates at the very least the importance of sound to cross-cultural encounters represented in the early modern cultural imagination. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 558, also suspect that Pericles’s musical performance is a lost scene, as a corresponding moment is present in Pericles’s sources (Wilkins’s Painfull Adventures, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, and Lawrence Twine’s prose Patterne of Painefull Adventures). They also observe that the quarto “is void of sound effects, so its omission of the song itself is not surprising,” arguing that Simonides’ compliments to Pericles “are more plausibly interpreted as referring to an episode shown on stage.” Please refer also to William Lyons’s “Theatre Bands and Their Music in Shakespeare’s London” in Shakespeare, Music and Performance, ed. Bill Barclay and David Lindley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 14–28, especially his discussion of the professional companies’ “actor-musicians” on 21–24.
INTRODUCTION: SOUNDINGS
other cultures experienced in travel and staged in the theater stimulated transformations in their audiences. Pericles’s performance and its effects epitomize the various forms of “sounding otherness” that resonate throughout early modern drama and travel writing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as I explore them in this monograph. One way that Pericles sounds otherness is through experimentation with foreign sounds in theatrical performance. Renaissance stage convention dictated that a string instrument was brought to Pericles for his musical enjoyment; while the Renaissance actor likely performed upon a lute, a correlative moment from John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (c.1386–1393)—one of the sources for Pericles—depicts the Pericles figure playing a harp. By playing the “delightful instrument,” Pericles sounds an otherness that is initially foreign to his own ears; he produces musical sounds of Pentapolis on a “Pentapolitan” instrument.3 Performance of the exotic through music in Renaissance stage entertainments was not uncommon. For example, the musical notation for Ben Jonson’s “From the Famous Peak of Derby” featured in Gypsies Metamorphosed and attributed to Robert Johnson, records shifting metrical patterns, unexpected tonal leaps, and harmonic progressions that would have sounded unusual to Renaissance English ears; any or all of these sonic tactics employed to sound otherness could have also been performed during this scene in Pericles. 4
Pericles’s performance on the instrument indicates another valence of “sounding otherness”: the vibratory power of sound created through voice and/or sounding objects. In plucking or strumming the strings, soundwaves course throughout the body of the instrument; these soundwaves also pass through Pericles’s Tyrian body, which is in turn moved by Pentapolitan vibrations.5 These vibrations have a broad impact, not
3 Pentapolis and Tyre (as well as Tarsus) are all somewhat confused in this play, both spatially and temporally. Tyre is part of modern-day Lebanon, and while Pentapolis is part of Cyrenaica in the Eastern region of modern Libya, it is located in “our country of Greece” in the play (5.100). While these locations were all part of the Ottoman Empire during Shakespeare’s day, they are presented in the play as quite culturally different, indicated by King Simonides addressing Pericles as a “stranger knight.”
4 The composition survives as “The Gipsies Song” in John Playford’s Musical Companion (London, 1673), where it is attributed to Robert Johnson (88–89).
5 While this is a dramatic performance, Penelope Gouk’s obser vation in Music, Science, and Natural Magic in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 268, about the influence of outside cultures upon English music is relevant here: “While the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century is seen as a Golden Age of English music, the role that foreign musicians and instrument-makers played in this development, as well as instruments and music books imported from overseas, should not be overlooked.”
J. L. WOOD
only surging through and reflecting off of Pericles’s body, the walls of his room, and the air of Pentapolis, but also reaching King Simonides in his nearby chamber, where the music stirs his passions to the point that the King deems Pericles “music’s master” (9.28). These vibrations also make contact with the theater audience as they are attuned to the same frequency when Pericles sounds otherness in the staged location of Pentapolis. As I argue, vibratory soundwaves form sonic networks and unleash what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari term “molecular becomings”: the term “molecular” implies a multiplicity of generative connections through affinities, while “molar” identity, by contrast, Deleuze and Guattari define as a segmented and often invariant individuality.6 Becomings are processes of change and movement that occur as elements—objects, human and animal bodies, environments—in an assemblage ar e drawn into contact with other elements and move together in the same direction. Such processes are epitomized by vibratory sound and its transformative effects. The sounds of otherness are experienced, sometimes even sensed or haptically perceived, as vibrations that calibrate the molecules of various actors into a network formed on and by the same frequency.
While the vibrations of the Pentapolitan instrument Pericles plays sound Pentapolitan otherness, the instrument and its music are also transformed in the process, for Pericles’s performance upon it is culturally inflected. Pericles sounds the otherness of his native Tyre through the foreign tunes he plays upon an instrument endemic to Pentapolis. His fingers move the strings so that they experience Tyrian vibrations of his “former practice” of music. This blending of sounds that are both familiar and foreign creates what I call the “sonic uncanny.” The sonic uncanny locates Sigmund Freud’s concept of the uncanny—the odd experience that something is alien and yet strangely familiar—in the realm of sound instead of sight, and is another important aspect of “sounding otherness.” The distinction between familiar and foreign becomes blurred as the soundwave vibrates throughout subjects and objects, internal and external, and what Freud describes in his essay “The Uncanny” as heimlich (homely) and unheimlich (un-homely). As I explain in further detail below, sounds continually access the uncanny within us through the vibratory energy that attunes us to the same wavelength.
6 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 233–309.
INTRODUCTION: SOUNDINGS
In addition to sounding the otherness of foreign spaces, demonstrating the vibratory power of sound, and performing the sonic uncanny, Pericles also engages the dual archives of theater and travel narratives I explore here. More than any other Shakespeare play, Pericles capitalizes on the relationship between travel literature and theatrical performance; although certainly a play, it is a play that desperately attempts to be a travel narrative, and the shipwrecked Pericles ventures through several distinct Mediterranean locales. Mary Louise Pratt’s useful term “contact zone” is applicable to foreign spaces of cultural contact recounted in travel literature of the period, as well as to theatrical moments—like those in Pericles—where otherness is also performed and sounded.7 Sound is a prominent feature of cross-cultural contact in both early modern drama and travel literature. In the narratives, sounds of other cultures variously frighten, disorient, and delight English and European visitors; even as the sounds of otherness are sometimes ethnographically inscribed, the writers’ bodies are overtaken by and calibrated to these foreign sounds.
The resonant early modern theater functioned as a sonic laboratory that simulated experiences of sounding otherness described in the travel accounts.8 This is not to say that the relationship between the theater and travel narratives was one in which the narratives were diligently consulted and replicated by theater practitioners; rather, the early modern stage functioned as a laboratory for testing assumptions about otherness and its plethora of sounds.9 Theaters and travel narratives informed each other of sonic
7 Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession (New York: MLA, 1991), 33–40.
8 The theatrical sonic laboratory, however, was not an entirely controlled, or controllable, space: London theaters had to contend with the repeated eruption of London’s city noise. Sounds or other special effects could also malfunction.
9 The precise workings of the sonic laboratory of the theater have been debated; Mary Chan, Music in the Theatre of Ben Jonson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 37, outlines a definite relationship between the public theater (compared with a private theater like Blackfriars) and the music performed there: “the older, more traditional, perhaps more conservative use of music which may have retained longer in the public theatres draws the musical performance into the dramatic illusion: that is, the play creates an illusory world on stage which is complete in itself.” Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 242, contends with this point, arguing that “Sound in early modern theater is important not so much for what it is as for what it signifies. What audiences actually heard in the theater and what they imagined they hear may not have always been the same thing.” The accuracy of the sounded representations of reality notwithstanding, the otherness that is sounded on stage through musical or sound effects is a deliberate attempt to enact difference, and sound was an immensely useful tool with which to create atmosphere.
J. L. WOOD
practices in bi-directional ways, borrowing from each other’s repertoires.10 As I discuss, jingle bells rang on the English stage, across the English countryside, and throughout the New World; maracas were shaken at Whitehall Palace and in Brazil; the Dallam organ was heard at both King’s College, London, and at the Sultan’s palace in Istanbul; and the drum thundered in India and in the staging of temple spaces at the Rose Theatre.
The theater itself is a palimpsested and uncanny arena in which strange cultures are sounded; at the same time, it is also a domestic and familiar English space.11 While a relatively safe location to sound otherness (especially compared to moments of sounding otherness in foreign lands that sometimes resulted in captivity or death), the theater nonetheless transforms bodies through soundwave contact. Pericles demonstrates how sounding otherness in the theater can approximate the sonic uncanny, inciting transformations and becomings. The eponymous role in Pericles was likely performed by an English actor who could have sounded his character’s otherness by deliberately altering his musical performance. The instrument he played could have been unusual, or even a familiar instrument upon which he played a foreign-sounding tune, like Johnson’s “From the Famous Peak of Derby,” or that he played in a manner contrary to conventional performance. In this way, the actor sounds otherness by moving his body in new directions that could approximate sounds of foreign otherness; these sounds, in turn, calibrated the audience to this new frequency of experimental otherness.12 Both stage productions and travel narratives consider sound a propagator of otherness that can be physically experienced as much in the theater as in a foreign land.
10 Theater and travel narrative are the sites of what Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991), 7, calls an “uneasy marriage” between representation and reality; the reality of the theater experience is predicated on its ability to engage in various representations, and the representations are what we encounter in descriptions of the realities (real or imagined) presented by writers of travel narratives.
11 As Gavin Hollis similarly observes in The Absence of America: The London Stage, 1576–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 22, “Yet even the most geographically specific of plays repeatedly reminds its audiences of its location in a London playhouse. Early modern drama oscillates between presence and absence, bringing onto the stage what is clearly not there by means of words, bodies, and things that are there.”
12 Consult Imagining the Audience in Early Modern Drama, 1558–1642, ed. Jennifer A. Low and Nova Myhill (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Jeremy Lopez’s Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
INTRODUCTION: SOUNDINGS
As I describe in further detail below, “sounding otherness” is a multivalent phrase. It suggests an otherness that resounds in the body of the hearer; the attempt to interpret, gloss, and codify the alien; and the act of producing sounds of otherness. All three senses of “sounding otherness” are resonant in Pericles and throughout early modern travel and dramatic literatures. In this study, the soundwave will shake up and trouble the presumed clear-cut boundary divisions between familiar and foreign, self and other, travel narrative and theater. It even undoes a neat distinction between the senses; as Simonides synesthetically describes it, his ears “were never better fed / With such delightful pleasing harmony,” echoing Duke Orsino’s gastronomic appreciation of music as “the food of love” in Twelfth Night (1.1.1).13 And, as I explain in my discussion of The Tempest, sound is linked also with the smell of loud and noisome squibs, and as already proposed, vibratory touch. Understanding the soundwave as producing multisensory effects in sonic networks affords sound a broader impact than has been conventionally acknowledged. As soundwaves vibrate, they generate transformations by and through sounding otherness.
Sounding and otherneSS
A drummer applying for a position in the service of Queen Elizabeth announces his credentials: “I can sownde the english, allmaigne, flemishe, frenche, Pyemount, highe Allmaigne, Gascoigne, Spanishe” as well as the “emperor’s” march.14 The drummer’s claim of mastery over a diverse repertoire of rudiments suggests that these specific rhythmic patterns are recognizable for their sonic representations of, or associations with, diverse places. Using his drumsticks and drum, the drummer performs cultural otherness; his ability to “sownde” implies both production and experience of noise. Not only can he represent other cultures through sound, the drummer colonizes noise with sense; as he suggests, the “sound” of each country he enumerates is distinct and recognizable from the others he represents.
13 Unless otherwise noted, Shakespeare quotations are from The Norton Shakespeare, third edition, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et al. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2016).
14 John M. Ward, “Points of Departure,” Harvard Library Bulletin 2.4 (1991): 9–16.
J. L. WOOD
My reading of the drummer’s statement demonstrates how “sound” has different but interrelated meanings. The term “sounding” is itself polysemous and its multiple valences resonate throughout this project. As opposed to “sound,” which is a named and knowable object often distinguished from a subject, “sounding” is a process.15 It is a vibrational action that undoes the boundaries between a listening subject and a soundproducing object or other, between sensor and sensation.16 “Sounding” as vibration indicates an otherness that sounds with uncanny force, for its vibrations are both foreign, or—in Freudian terms—unheimlich, to the body, at the same time they resonate deep within the body, and are conceptualized as familiar, or heimlich. Sounding functions like becoming does according to actor-network theory, especially as both are active, mobile processes that are continually renewable.17 Sounding literally moves selves and others through vibratory soundwaves. As David Bissell observes, “Vibrations are becomings that undermine stable forms and identities.”18
At the same time, “sounding” can refer also to the act of or attempt at sense-making. According to Wes Folkerth, this is the meaning Shakespeare most often utilizes: “when Shakespeare uses the word sound, it is almost always as a verb or an adjective, only rarely as a noun.”19 Shakespeare’s
15 Nina Sun Eidsheim, Sensing Sound: Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), 16, posits that we “see” sound “as bounded and knowable, with a distinct beginning and end.”
16 Julian Henriques, Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques & Ways of Knowing (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), 11, discusses the gerund “sounding”: “the central idea is propagation, as with the periodic disturbances of sound waves through a medium. The longitudinal waves of sound, as with the transverse ones of light, need to be continually propagated…. The verb sounding, as distinct from the noun sound, emphasises such activity. Sounding always requires kinetic movement.”
17 Although technically predating actor-network theor y, Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 232–309, describe the process of becoming. Bruno Latour’s discussion of “performativity” in Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) echoes the concept of becoming.
18 David Bissell, “Vibrating materialities: mobility-body-technology relations,” Area 42 (2010): 479–486, 481.
19 Wes Folkerth, The Sound of Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 2002), 25. In fact, the first definition of sound given in the OED denotes “health.” Although the OED makes a firm distinction in etymology between “to sound” as to play a musical instrument and “to sound” as to fathom the depths, the punning relationship between the two words was extant by the sixteenth century in England (though not in German or other Romance languages). The OED traces the etymology of sound—as referring to auditory sensation—as deriving from the Anglo-Norman soun, Old French son, which comes from the Latin sonum (“sound,” n.3);
INTRODUCTION: SOUNDINGS
Hamlet deploys this sense of sounding when he exclaims to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, “you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass” (3.2.339–340).20 Hamlet’s usage is similar to the way that travelers like Christopher Columbus use “sounding,” as meaning to “fathom the depths” by tactilely “feeling out” the bottom of the seascape.21 In As You Like It, Rosalind likewise employs “sounding” in this way: “that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love! But it cannot be sounded: my affection hath an unknown bottom” (4.1.179–181). Sounding as an attempt to make sense is characterized in Shakespearean instances by spatial relationships, for Hamlet’s “compass” suggests both the navigational instrument and his musical range; Rosalind’s use of the word “fathom” in conjunction with “sounded” indicates the act of measuring that space. And yet, Rosalind’s “affection” is not measurable or quantifiable—as she states, it “cannot be sounded.” Sometimes noise cannot be colonized with sense, despite our efforts at making meaning; noise, after all, “is technically sound that does not have a regular wave pattern.”22 “Sounding” (like Freud’s “unheimlich”) gestures toward a possibility that is almost opposite from the process of interpreting meaning, for “sounding” is also the vibrant acoustic activity that destabilizes or disrupts logos-insistent or meaning-making ventures. This latter mode of sounding—producing noise—is often recorded in the travel archive as vocal and instrumental noises that the travelers are not always able to colonize with meaning. “Sounding” is thus both a movement that renders subject/object relations indeterminate, and it is a project of sense-making.23
the derivation of “to sound” in the sense of “fathoming the depths” evolved from the Old French sonder (Spanish sondar, Portuguese sondar) (“sound,” v. 2 2.a).
20 Patricia Parker, “Shakespeare’s Sound Government: Sound Defects, Polyglot Sounds, and Sounding Out,” Oral Tradition 24.2 (2009): 359–372, 360, outlines Shakespeare’s use of “sound” and its multiple valences, including the suggestion of “wholeness” or health, and also its homophonic counterpart “swoon’d.”
21 J. M. Cohen, Christopher Columbus: The Four Voyages (London: Penguin Books, 1969), 74.
22 Mary Thomas Crane, Shakespeare’s Brain: Reading with Cognitive Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 206.
23 Sound studies is a rapidly growing interdisciplinar y field of inquiry. Notable studies consulted include R. Murray Schafer’s The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (1977); Douglas Kahn’s Noise, Water, Meat (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999); Michael Bull’s Sounding Out the City (New York: Berg Publishers, 2000); Mark M. Smith’s Hearing History: A Reader (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004); JeanFrancois Augoyard and Henry Torgue’s The Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005); Michael Bull’s Sound Moves (New York:
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Phallusia, mammillata 97
Pholaden 144
Pholas dactylus 144
Phronima sedentaria 83
Phyllosomae 64
Physa fontinalis 42
Physophora hydrostatica 180
Pijlinktvisch 107
Pijltongigen 128
Pinna nobilis 139
Pisa tetraödon 78
Piscicola geometra 9
Pisidium amnicum 15
Pissebed, zoetwater 54
Plaatkieuwigen 15
Planaria gonocephala 33
Planaria torva 33
Planorbis corneum 40
Planorbis vortex 32
Platschelpen 92
Platwormen 8, 33
Plooikwal, zachte 183
Plooislak 126
Pluimdrager, vijver 18
Plumatella fungosa 5
Plumatella repens 5
Poelslak, begroeide 51
Poelslak, gewone 41
Poelslak, moeras 51
Poelslak, oorvormige 51
Polia crucigera 93
Polycelis nigra 39
Poolsche muts 124
Poriënkoraal, gelobd 194
Porites furcatus 194
Porseleinslak, getijgerde 123
Posthorentje 41
Pterotrachea coronata 115
Puntkoralen 187
Purperslak 128
Purpura lapillus 128
Pyrosoma atlanticum 83, 98
Rankpootigen 54
Retepora cellulosa 99
Reuzenpoliep 107
Reuzenschelp 137
Reuzenschorsspons 201
Rhizostoma pulmo 168
Rhynchonella, papegaai-snavelige 100
Rhynchonella, psittacea 100
Ribkwallen 169
Rijenvoet, koninklijke 155
Rijstkorrel 127
Ringkreeften 81
Ringwormen 8, 45, 85
Rissoa costata 121
Rissoa, geribde 121
Rivierfijnschaal 15
Rivierhorenschaal 32
Rivierkreeft 27
Riviermossel 15
Rivierparelmossel 31
Rivier-zoetwaterspons 31
Roeislakken 116
Rogkreeft 56
Rondmondslak 130
Roofborstelwormen 89
Rugpootkrabben 69
Sabella gracilis 86
Sabella, sierlijke 86
Salpa maxima 99
Salpe, tonvormige 99
Salpen 95, 98
Scalaria preciosa 126
Schaaldieren 3, 27, 68, 73
Schaalhoren, gewone 109
Schaamkrab 68
Scheepsboot 108
Schelpdieren 10, 131
Schelpkokerworm 87
Schermkwallen 168, 183, 184
Schijfhoren, gewone 40
Schijfhorenslak 32
Schijfzwempoliep 182
Schildkrab 70
Schipperkreeft 83
Schorskoralen 191
Schroefslak, gevlekte 129
Scrobicularia piperata 142
Scyllarus latus 67
Sepia officinalis 106
Serpula contortuplicata 86
Serpula, gewrongen 86
Sertularia argentea 185
Sertularia pumila 185
Sint Jacobsmantel 135
Siphonophoren 180
Sipunculus nudus 95
Slakegel, tweeoogige 10
Slakken 16
Slangenkop 123
Slangster, witte 163
Slangsterren 162, 163
Sleutelgathoren, Grieksche 129
Slibworm, broze 38
Sluierslak 113
Smaltongigen 126
Snijder 177
Snoerworm, gegroefde 93
Snoerworm, sierlijke 93
Solen ensis 144
Solen vagina 144
Sphaerechinus granularis 152
Spirographis Spalanzaniï 86
Spondylus gaederopus 136
Spongilla lacustris 25
Sponsen 25, 197
Sprinkhaankreeft 71
Spuitworm, naakte 95
Squilla mantis 71
Steekmossel 139
Steenboorders 144
Steendadel 140
Steenkoralen 191, 194
Steensponsen 199, 201
Stekelhoren 110
Stekelhuidigen 149
Stekelkrab 77
Stekelpurperslak 110
Stekelslangster, broze 163
Sterkoraal 195
Sterreslak, knobbelige 114
Sterworm, groene 94
Steurkrab 66
Stichopus regalis 155
Stormhoed 124
Strandgaper 143
Strandkrab 75
Strandschelp 142
Strandspringer 82
Strandvloo 82
Strombus gigas 123
Strombus pes pelecani 122
Stroommossel 60
Struikkoraal 194
Suberites massa 200
Succinea 40
Sycones capillosum 199
Sympodium coralloïdes 193
Synapta inhaerens 156
Talitrus locusta 81
Tandhorenkoraal, kleine 185
Tandhorenkoraal, zilverwitte 185
Teerlingkwal 169
Tellina virgata 142
Tepelhoren 121
Terebella nebulosa 87
Terebra maculata 129
Terebratula vitrea 100
Teredo navalis 145
Tethys leporina 113
Tiara pileata 184
Tonslak 111, 124
Torenslak, schroefvormige 121
Trekmossel 15
Tridacna gigas 137
Trilworm, bruine 33
Tritonium lotorium 124
Tritonium variegatum 125
Tritonshoren 124
Trompethoren 125
Tubularia larynx 186
Turbo pica 130
Turritella terebra 121
Tweespierigen 138
Uitsnijdingsslak 130
Unio margaritifera 31
Unio pictorum 50
Valvata piscinalis 18
Vedertongigen 125
Veeloog, zwarte 39
Velella spirans 182
Venusgordel 171
Venusschelp, echte 143
Venusschelp, maagdelijke 142
Venus virginea 142
Verfmossel 50
Vermetus gigas 110
Vijvermossel 14
Vingerschelp 144
Vinpootigen 116
Vioa celata 200
Vischegel 9
Vlakpootigen 109, 119
Vleugelslakken 122
Vlookreeften 3
Voluta scapha 126
Voorkieuwigen 109, 119
Vorticella 36
Vuurkoraal 187
Vuurlijven 83, 95, 98
Waaierkoraal 192
Waaiertongigen 129
Walvischaas 116
Walvisch-vleugelslak 116
Wasbloem, vliezige 176
Waschspons 199
Waterkanspons 201
Waterspin 45
Wenteltrap 126
Wolkrab 70
Wormslak 110
Wulk 128
Zakpijpen 96
Zandgarnaal 64
Zandschelp, eetbare 141
Zandschelpen 141
Zandspringer 81
Zandworm 90
Zee-anemone, gegroefde 175
Zee-anemonen 173
Zee-anjelier 176
Zeeappel, groote 152
Zee-augurk, klimmende 156
Zee-augurken 153
Zeebeurs 156
Zeebeurzen 153
Zeeduizendpoot 90
Zeeëgel, eetbare 152
Zeeëgels 151
Zeegarnaal 64
Zeehaas 112
Zeeklit, hartvormige 153
Zeekomkommer, buisvormige 154
Zeekomkommers 153
Zeekrab, gewone 75, 76
Zeekreeft 59
Zeekurk 193
Zeekwal, lichtende 168
Zeeleliën 157
Zeelong 168
Zeemuis, fluweelen 89
Zeenereïs 90
Zeeoor, knobbelige 111
Zeepaddestoel 168
Zeepen, lichtende 192
Zeepier 90
Zeepok 55
Zeepoliep 107
Zeeroos, gewone 176
Zeerozen 176
Zeerups 89
Zeeslakken 109
Zeespin, groote 77
Zeester, breedvoetige 162
Zeester, IJszee 162
Zeesterren 161
Zeetand 117
Zeetulp 55
Zeeveder, lichtende 192
Zeevlinders 116
Zeevloo 81
Zee-zwemslakken 115
Zoetwatergarnaal 5
Zoetwater-pissebed 44
Zoetwaterpoliepen 20
Zoetwaterspons, gewone 25
Zoetwaterspons, rivier- 26
Zonne-zee-anemone 177
Zwaardscheede 144
VOORWOORD.
De fraaie platen van Dr. Aug. Schleyer: „Aus der Tiefen der Gewässer” geven zulk een uitmuntend beeld van de lagere dierenwereld uit het water, dat ik niet geaarzeld heb, aan het verzoek van den uitgever te voldoen, om daarbij een verklarenden tekst in onze taal te schrijven.
Het bleek echter noodig, om van de oorspronkelijke beschrijving, die niet veel meer is dan een eenvoudige, vrij dorre opsomming van de uiterlijke kenmerken der, nummersgewijs behandelde, dieren, geheel en al af te zien. Ik heb daarom een geheel nieuwen, aanzienlijk uitgebreiden tekst voor het werk samengesteld, in de overtuiging, dat deze moest beantwoorden aan het doel: voorlichting van den oningewijde omtrent het verband en de onderlinge betrekkingen der verschillende diervormen en omtrent hun doen en laten in het levenselement, waar zij zich ophouden.
Tot dat doel, en tot het verkrijgen van een meer samenhangend geheel, heb ik ook, in korte trekken, het een en ander medegedeeld over de organisatie der hoofdgroepen, waartoe de afgebeelde soorten behooren, zoodat een beter inzicht verkregen wordt in de algemeene eigenschappen en de onderlinge verwantschap der behandelde soorten.
En dan heb ik mij beijverd om, waar dit slechts mogelijk was, losse schetsen, in algemeen verstaanbaren en bevattelijken vorm, te leveren, met belangwekkende opmerkingen over de levenswijze, over nut en schade enz., vooral met het oog op Nederland. Daardoor hoop ik, dat het werk voor velen niet slechts een nuttige, doch ook een aangename handleiding zal zijn, bij het bezichtigen der fraaie afbeeldingen op de platen en bij het waarnemen der dieren zelf in het aquarium of in de natuur.
DE SCHRIJVER.
INLEIDING.
De natuur is onuitputtelijk in hare wonderen. Allerwegen heeft zij die met kwistige hand verspreid, zoowel op en in den duisteren aardbodem als in de blauwe lucht, in de koele wateren van beek of rivier en in de onpeilbare diepten der zee.
En in die wateren was moeder natuur zeker wel het vrijgevigst in het uitstrooien van hare gaven. Beelden van ongeëvenaarde schoonheid, oneindig wisselende vormen, van den zeldzaamsten en avontuurlijksten aard, treffen ons oog bij het beschouwen van die dierenwereld, zoowel in haar rijke verscheidenheid in de kalme binnenwateren, als in haar fabelachtige pracht in de woelende en kokende golven van den oceaan.
Fantastische tooneelen van een onafgebroken kamp op leven en dood, van een onverbiddelijken strijd om het bestaan, doch ook liefelijke tafereeltjes van innige vriendschap en onbaatzuchtige samenwerking, ontmoeten wij in menigte, hetzij wij, in onze verbeelding, afdalen in de duizelingwekkende afgronden der zee, of den blik laten dwalen over den stillen waterplas, het zacht murmelende beekje of den bruisenden stroom. Alles is daar vol van het krachtigste en vruchtbaarste dierlijke leven, een oneindige afwisseling van worden en vergaan, een onophoudelijk komen en gaan van geslachten en soorten, in de bontste verscheidenheid.
Vooral merkwaardig is echter de onnoemelijke rijkdom aan vormen, die de ongewervelde en lagere dieren in die waterwereld ten toon spreiden, vormen en tafereelen, die nu eens onze aandacht boeien door het bekoorlijke en liefelijke, dan weer onze belangstelling wekken door het avontuurlijke en zeldzame. En daarom willen wij ons—met terzijdestelling van de visschen en hoogere dieren hier slechts bepalen tot die lagere levende wezens en den lezer in de volgende bladzijden de interessante vormen van deze dierenwereld uit het water, in eenige losse schetsen, zonder veel geleerden omhaal van woorden, voor den geest roepen.
Wij willen onzen ontdekkingstocht in het water ondernemen, gewapend met een goeden voorraad geduld en opmerkzaamheid. Daar wij echter voor den lezer een veilige gids hopen te zijn in die diepten der wateren, zoo volge hij ons vol moed en onvervaard: een rijke schat van wetenschappelijk genot zal onze moeite loonen.
PLAAT I.
EENIGE ZOETWATERBEWONERS.
Onze ontdekkingsreis voert ons voorloopig nog slechts in het zoetwater en het tooneel van dezen eersten watertocht verplaatst ons te midden van vlookreeften, mosdiertjes, vischegels, mossels en slakken, een bedrijvig leven, vol afwisseling. Welke vreemdsoortige, veelpootige, kleine monstertjes zwemmen daar, links boven in fig. 1 en 8, zoo vroolijk in hun element rond? Het zijn een paar exemplaren van de vlookreeft (Gammarus pulex), dus, in elk geval, een lid van het gilde der
KREEFTEN
en familielid en bloedverwant van onzen veelbeminden tafelvriend, den kreeft, zij het dan ook slechts een verre neef. De laatste is een reus tegenover ons dwergje van hoogstens 1 à 2 centimeters lengte en in zijn organisatie is deze vrij wat eenvoudiger en bescheidener. Maar toch komt de vlookreeft, in beginsel, met de hoogere kreeften overeen, die allen tot de hoofdgroep der gelede dieren behooren en, als zoodanig, niet slechts een in leden verdeeld lichaam, doch ook gelede pooten bezitten. Alle gelede dieren, waartoe, behalve de kreeften, ook nog de welbekende insekten, spinnen en duizendpooten behooren, zijn in hoofdzaak op dezelfde leest geschoeid. De leden van het lichaam zijn verdeeld over drie hoofdafdeelingen: kop, borst en achterlijf, doch bij de spinnen en kreeften zijn de beide eerste weer vergroeid tot één samenhangend kopborststuk. Juist onze vlookreeft vormt echter een uitzondering op dezen regel: alle leden van de borst zijn hier vrij, hetgeen natuurlijk aan de bewegingen van dezen levendigen acrobaat zeer ten goede komt.
Verder missen alle gelede dieren het inwendige geraamte der gewervelde dieren, doch als vergoeding daarvoor hebben zij, voor het bevestigen der organen en spieren, een huidskelet, dat is: de huid is gevormd uit een buitengewoon vaste en harde, hoornachtige stof: chitine. Ook bezitten de gelede dieren niet de hersenen en het ruggemerg, waarin gij, waarde lezer, als pronkjuweel der schepping, u moogt verheugen. Hier is het centrale zenuwstelsel, dat alle bewegingen en handelingen regelt, veel eenvoudiger van maaksel en bestaat slechts uit een reeks van kleine, door zenuwstrengen verbonden, zenuwmassa’s: de zenuwknoopen, in elk lid van het lichaam één, aan de buikzijde gelegen, behalve de voorste, die boven in den kop ligt en eenigszins de rol vervult van onze hersenen.
Terwijl nu echter de insekten slechts 3 paar, de spinnen 4 paar pooten hebben en de duizendpooten zich op een buitengewoon groot aantal ledematen—zij het ook nog ver van de duizend!— kunnen beroemen, bezitten de kreeften toch, in elk geval, ook verscheidene paren pooten en ons kleine vlookreeftje is, in dit opzicht, vooral niet misdeeld, zooals wij in fig. 1 en 8 kunnen zien. Behalve 3 paren zwempooten aan het achterlijf, heeft het diertje nog 7 paren borstpooten, die niet tot zwemmen, doch tot kruipen en springen dienen en, behalve aan het voorste paar, zijn aan de basis van deze pooten kleine, bladachtige aanhangsels bevestigd, die, als kieuwen, voor de water-ademhaling dienen, zooals zij bij alle kreeften, doch op andere plaatsen van het lichaam, gevonden worden.
Verder hebben alle kreeften twee paar gelede sprieten of voelers, die zeer lang zijn en uitstekende organen zijn, om in hun waterwereld het terrein te verkennen. Zij zijn ook in het bezit van twee uitstekende samengestelde oogen, om goed uit te zien in de omgeving en die daartoe bij de meesten nog op steeltjes bevestigd zijn, hoewel zij bij de vlookreeft ongesteeld zijn. De voortplanting geschiedt door eieren, die bij de vlookreeft in taschjes aan de borstpooten der wijfjes bewaard worden, tot de jongen uitkomen. Hoe echter bij zulke eenvoudige wezentjes reeds de moederliefde ontwikkeld is, blijkt wel daaruit, dat het kleine grut, in zijn eerste levensdagen, steeds in de buurt van mama blijft en, bij het minste
gevaar, telkens weer naar haar terug snelt, zooals de kiekens naar de hen. De gevaren, die ook de ouden dreigen, zijn trouwens vele, want zij dienen tot voedsel voor allerlei visschen.
Met de vloo heeft onze vlookreeft natuurlijk niets uit te staan, behalve dat hij ook een volleerde vér-springer is en naar die vlooachtige springsport wordt hij genoemd. De dieren zijn inderdaad buitengewoon behendig en vlug in hun bewegingen. Terwijl zij in rust, met gekromden rug, meestal onder steenen of waterplanten liggen, daar zij zeer lichtschuw zijn, stuiven zij, bij het minste onraad, bliksemsnel naar alle kanten uiteen, om weer andere donkere schuilhoeken op te zoeken, waar zij voornamelijk leven van bladeren, die in het water gevallen zijn. Zij zwemmen zeer snel, op zijde liggend, en springen uiterst snel vooruit, tusschen allerlei waterplanten door, waarbij zij van de drie achterste, naar boven gerichte, paren borstpooten (zie fig. 8), als springpooten gebruik maken. Een onzer bekende vroegere dierkundigen maakte, naar aanleiding daarvan, de volgende, meer oprechte dan vleiende opmerking: „door zijn gekromden rug en de snelle manier, waarop het vooruitkomt, levert het ons een treffend beeld van den hoveling.”
Wegens een zekere uiterlijke overeenkomst met de garnaal, wordt de vlookreeft ook wel zoetwatergarnaal genoemd. Hij komt in ons land, in slooten, beken en poelen, allerwegen in menigte voor.
Zeer eenvoudig van bouw zijn de mosdiertjes (Bryozoa), waarvan wij in fig. 2 en 15 de sponsachtige en de kruipende kuifcelpoliep (Plumatella fungosa en Pl. repens) afgebeeld zien. Voor den natuuronderzoeker is dit een lastige familie, waarover de geleerden elkaar reeds sinds lang danig in de haren gezeten hebben, niet wetende, waaronder men ze moest rangschikken. Nu eens hier, dan daar onder dak gebracht, als ware „dakloozen”, heeft men ze reeds tot de poliepen, tot de wormen en tot de weekdieren gerekend, en onder deze laatste hoofdgroep hebben zij ten slotte voor goed een onderkomen gevonden, hoewel men niet kan ontkennen, dat zij ook daar nog een weinig met hun figuur verlegen zijn.
De reden hiervan zal duidelijk worden, als wij de diertjes eens wat nader gaan onderzoeken. Uiterlijk zien wij, dat zij zich, als een soort
van schorslaag of in den vorm van mos, over hun onderlaag uitbreiden, waartoe hun allerlei voorwerpen: houtwerk, dat in het water ligt, schelpen, steenen, in het water hangende takken enz. welkom zijn en zij gelijken dan op sponsachtige (fig. 2) of vertakte massa’s (fig. 15), die echter kolonies of stokken van een groot aantal, met elkaar verbonden, diertjes voorstellen. En daarom scheen er vroeger werkelijk wel iets voor te zeggen, om ze tot de poliepen of koraaldieren te rekenen. In meer belangrijke kenmerken komen zij echter meer met de weekdieren overeen.
Fig A Stok van een mosdiertje Vergroot
De diertjes zelf zijn zeer klein, hoogstens 1 à 2 millim., en wij dienen ze dus, om nader kennis te maken, een weinig bij vergrooting te bekijken. De kolonie doet zich dan ongeveer voor, zooals hiernaast in fig. A. Wij zien hier, dat een aantal der diertjes in een vliezige, harde of vertakte cel besloten zijn, waaruit zij zich, evenals poliepen, naar buiten kunnen uitstrekken en er zich weer in terugtrekken. Evenals de poliepen, hebben zij om den mond een krans van vangarmen, die hol zijn en met de lichaamsholte in verband staan en die, door hun beweging, het water voor de ademhaling en de daarin aanwezige kleine waterdiertjes, die voor voedsel dienen, naar den mond roeien. Deze voert in een slokdarm, waaraan zich een maag en darmkanaal aansluiten, welks uitloozingsbuis dicht bij den mond uitkomt. En dit is juist de reden, dat men de mosdiertjes niet meer tot de poliepen, doch tot de weekdieren rekent, daar de poliepen geen afzonderlijk darmkanaal bezitten. Hart en bloedvaten ontbreken, evenals alle zintuigen; alleen is er, bij den slokdarm, één enkele zenuwknoop, die
zenuwdraden afgeeft naar den darm en de vangarmen. Want deze laatste zijn met zeer gevoelige wimpers bezet en dienen tevens als voeldraden.
Interessant is de ontwikkelings-geschiedenis van deze diertjes. Uit de platte wintereieren komt, dadelijk na het openspringen der harde schaal, een volkomen dier te voorschijn, dat, als het volwassen is, zich door knopvorming voortplant en uitgroeit tot een kolonie, zooals in fig. A. De zomereieren echter hebben een dunne schaal en daaruit ontwikkelt zich eerst een onvolkomen, van trilharen voorziene, larve, die het moederdier verlaat, door middel van de trilharen eenigen tijd vrij en lustig rondzwemt en zich dan ergens vastzet. Daarna ontstaan er, door knopvorming, binnen de larve twee jongen, die, om tot volwassen dieren uit te groeien, het inwendige van hun eigen moeder, de larve, verteren, om dan nog, tot overmaat van onbescheidenheid, de overgebleven, uitgekloven huid van de larve tot tijdelijke woonplaats in te richten. Men ziet: de natuur bewandelt soms zonderlinge wegen, om haar doel te bereiken.
De figuren 3, 6 en 7 brengen ons afbeeldingen van vischegels en bloedegels en verplaatsen ons weer in een andere, zeer talrijk bevolkte hoofdgroep van het dierenrijk: de wormen. Deze staan, in ’t algemeen, op een lageren ontwikkelingstrap dan de weekdieren en gelede dieren, maar zij zijn zoo buitengewoon talrijk in geslachten en soorten en vertoonen zulke uiteenloopende vormen, dat haar rangschikking aan de mannen der wetenschap vrij wat hoofdbrekens gekost heeft. Een ruwe verdeeling—voldoende voor ons doel— verkrijgt men, als men alle wormen op drie hoopen werpt. Op den éénen hoop liggen dan de platwormen, de minsten der broederen, met een plat, breed lichaam, zooals de lintworm; eenigszins hooger staan de rondwormen, met een lang uitgerekt rolrond lichaam, bijv. de draadwormen (trichine), de koordwormen enz. en op den derden hoop komen de
RINGWORMEN,
de triomf van den worm-stamboom, waartoe de aard- of regenwormen en de bloedzuigers, en dus ook de zuigwormen van onze plaat behooren, die reeds veel verder gevorderd zijn op den weg der ontwikkeling en zelfs eenigszins tot de gelede dieren naderen. Evenals deze hebben zij een, in leden of „ringen” verdeeld, lichaam, waarin ook de zenuwknoopen op dezelfde wijze gelegen zijn, als op bladz. 6 beschreven werd. Maar, er is één groot punt van verschil, dat haar reeds dadelijk tot een volkje van den tweeden rang stempelt: zij missen de gelede pooten. Hoogstens bezitten zij ongelede voetstompjes, met borstels omzet, die bij de beweging tot steun dienen. Doch de eigenlijke bewegingsorganen zelf zijn de dikke en krachtige spierlagen onder de huid, die, door haar samentrekking en uitzetting, het lichaam doen kronkelen en voortbewegen. De bloedzuigers en vischegels verplaatsen zich door die slangvormige kronkelingen ook door het water, waarbij zij zich ook kunnen steunen door de ééne der twee zuignappen, waarin het lichaam eindigt, namelijk door de achterste, terwijl in de voorste zuignap de slokdarm eindigt en daarin de mond gelegen is, want daarmede zuigt het dier zich aan zijn prooi vast, om er het bloed uit te zuigen. Daartoe is, bij den bloedzuiger, de mond voorzien van drie zeer fijn en scherp gezaagde „kaakplaten”, waarmede de wond gemaakt wordt, terwijl dit bij andere zuigwormen, zooals bij den vischegel van fig. 3, geschiedt door een krachtigen, spitsen, voor uitstulping vatbaren, snuit of slurf.
Daar deze dieren in de diepten van het water terdege moeten kunnen uitkijken, zijn de meesten van een groot aantal oogen voorzien; de gewone bloedzuiger heeft er niet minder dan 5 paren op en achter de voorste zuigschijf. De bloedsomloop der wormen geschiedt door gesloten vaten, doch voor de ademhaling zijn geen bepaalde organen aanwezig; zij is zeer primitief ingericht en geschiedt eenvoudig door uitwisseling der gassen door de weeke huid.
Wij zien op de plaat drie leden van dit bloeddorstige gilde. Fig. 3 stelt den vischegel (Piscicola geometra) voor, die een rolrond, rechtlijnig lichaam, van 3 tot 6 centim. lengte heeft, dat zich niet kan oprollen, terwijl de voorste zuignap duidelijk van het lichaam gescheiden is. De kleur is groen- of geelachtig grijs, met fijne
stippels en over den rug loopt een witte, breed gevederde band. Er zijn slechts 2 paren oogen op de voorste lichaamsringen. Deze dieren hechten zich vast aan visschen, om daaruit het bloed te zuigen en vooral de karper heeft de eer, daartoe de voorkeur te genieten, zoodat men ze in vischvijvers liefst niet ziet. De voortplanting geschiedt door kleine, geelroode eitjes of cocons, die op de huid van visschen of op waterplanten vastgekleefd worden.
Nummer twee van ons drietal is de gewone bloedegel (Nephelis vulgaris), fig. 6, die bruinachtig of vleeschkleurig is, met rijen van gele puntjes op den rug en een zeer lang en smal lichaam, dat zoo doorschijnend is, dat men, vooral bij jeugdige dieren, met een loupe duidelijk den bloedsomloop ziet. Er zijn slechts 4 paren oogen en de mond heeft geen kaakplaten, doch drie overlangsche plooien aan de keel, voor het zuigen. Men vindt dit dier in alle vijvers en plassen, die met riet begroeid zijn, want het heeft de dwaze gewoonte—voor zijn doel echter zeer praktisch!—om op zijn hoofd te gaan staan, door zich, met de achterste zuigschijf, aan de bladeren van waterplanten op te hangen en dan het voorste gedeelte van het lichaam voortdurend heen en weer te wiegelen, om het water naar zich toe te bewegen, zoowel voor de ademhaling, als voor den aanvoer van allerlei kleine waterdiertjes, wormen, kreeftjes enz., waarmede het zich voedt. De eieren worden aan waterplanten of steenen vastgekleefd. Het dier verlaat het water nooit; als dit in den zomer uitdroogt, tracht het zich zelven voor uitdrogen te bewaren, door zich met een vochtige slijmlaag te bedekken. Nog een derde soort van bloedegel, de twee-oogige slakegel of clepsine (Clepsine bioculata), in fig. 7, bovenaan rechts op de plaat, te vinden, heeft een zeer breed en plat, kort en naar voren versmald en onduidelijk geringd lichaam, dat opgerold kan worden en waarop, aan de voorzijde, slechts 2 oogen geplaatst zijn. De mond is niet van kaakplaten, doch van een uitstulpbaren slurf voorzien. Het dier hecht zich onder aan waterplanten of aan steenen vast. Aardig is het, hoezeer de jongen, in den letterlijken zin, aan hun moeder „gehecht” zijn, want zij hechten zich, met hun achterste zuignap, aan haar lichaam vast.
Thans keeren wij weer terug tot de weekdieren, die wij op bladz. 7 bij de mosdiertjes verlaten hebben, welke er echter slechts, uit nood gedwongen, een onderkomen vonden, zoodat wij van deze belangrijke diergroep, die in de waterwereld een hoofdrol speelt en ook voor den mensch van zooveel belang is, nog niet veel vernomen hebben. Die schade willen wij nu inhalen, door ons een oogenblik bezig te houden met een paar goede bekenden: de mossels en de slakken en in de eerste plaats met een paar voorbeelden uit de klasse der
SCHELPDIEREN of MOSSELS,
waarvan ons de plaat in de figuren 4, 11, 16 en in fig. 5 en 13 eenige duidelijke afbeeldingen geeft.
Al deze dieren zijn de naaste verwanten van onzen gewonen oester en mossel, en vooral met eerstgenoemden zal zeker menig fijnproever onder de lezers meermalen met genoegen kennis gemaakt hebben. De vraag is echter, of die kennismaking zich ooit verder dan tot het gehemelte van den verbruiker uitgestrekt heeft en als men hem, bij zijn oestermenu, besproeid met champagner, eens op den man af vroeg: „wat is nu eigenlijk een oester of een mossel voor een dier?”, dan zou hij, tien tegen één, het antwoord schuldig blijven of ze onder het artikel „visch” thuis brengen.
Maar een schelpdier is geen visch, want het bezit zelfs geen spoor van een inwendig geraamte, is dus niet eens een gewerveld dier, doch, even als bij de slak, is het geheele lichaam zeer week, men noemt ze dus „weekdieren”. Overigens is, bij een oestermaaltijd, het genoegen der kennismaking zeker niet wederkeerig en in geen geval aan de zijde van den oester, want dit goedige dier moet het zich, tegen wil en dank, laten welgevallen, dat men het levend en, om zoo te zeggen, „met huid en haar” opeet, zonder dat het ook zelfs maar van een schijn van protest kan doen blijken. Trouwens: voor het houden van diepzinnige bespiegelingen zijn oester en mossel allerminst in de wieg gelegd, want zij missen niet slechts de hersenen—er zijn in het lichaam slechts 3 zenuwknoopen, die zenuwen uitzenden naar de verschillende lichaamsdeelen—doch
