Considering mad songs and laments by Louis Grabu, Francis Forcer, and
Henry Purcell, this paper identifies the three ways that composers
negotiated the presentation of lovesick, "effeminate" men. First,
the character's emotions could be ventriloquized through a boy--a
less perfect, more "feminine" male. Second, a male character who
sang a lament or a mad song could be musically and textually depicted
as effeminate, through the use of musical conventions long associated
with effeminacy in English music and by English musical theorists.
In this manner, potentially subversive characterizations were bracketed
within the category of effeminacy, allowing male audience members
to distance themselves from the emasculated men onstage. Finally,
male characters were often cured of "erotic melancholy;" unlike their
female counterparts, they rarely paid for their improper behavior with
their lives.
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