The following Essay is the outcome of curiosity—curiosity to know with what sort of stage-music and musical effect the Elizabethan dramatists produced their plays. It is an endeavour to do with the musical stage-directions what has already been done with those relating to other matters, namely, to collect them, and to force them to show their own conclusions. It endeavours to show what kinds of music were used during a play, and when and how the music was performed. Shakespeare's plays in First Folio and Quartos are the chief source of illustration, and other plays have been used as mines only that the ore extracted might illustrate the setting of a Shakespearian play. It concludes by attempting to estimate critically the artistic worth of music to the stage.

It may be objected that all this is purely antiquarian in its aim; but even if it were, it must not be assumed that all antiquarian research is of the dry-as-dust sort. It is highly important to obtain a clear idea of the conditions under which Elizabethan plays were produced, both for the light it throws upon the action of certain scenes, and also in order to clear away the old and false notions about the simplicity of the Elizabethan stage.