Shakespeare’s Musical Imagery 9781472555397, 9781847064950

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For Rebecca, Alex and Katie

‘Such harmony is in immortal souls’

Preface and acknowledgements

This book does not aim to be comprehensive. It does not scrutinize every occurrence of music in Shakespeare’s plays and poems. It is not a reference book. Rather it sets out to discuss aspects of certain principal thematics in Shakespeare’s musical imagery. In that sense, it is a handy companion to a variety of secondary criticism ranging from Naylor’s early survey (1896), Richmond Noble’s observations on song (1923), through Long (1955), Sternfeld (1967), Seng (1967) to more recent, selective studies such as Irene Naef (1976) and Lindley (2006). Discussion of frequently investigated topics such as Ophelia’s ‘mad’ songs, Autolycus’ ballads, or practical music in The Tempest is largely omitted since others have had sufficient to say already. There is no review of secondary literature. Instead, I cite modern books and articles extensively in context. Musical terms are often not defined nor are references always explained. To this end, readers should consult Music in Shakespeare: A Dictionary (Wilson and Calore, 2005). Scholarly books owe their creation and completion to the interaction of the author with a large number of people from differing backgrounds both academic and personal. I would like to acknowledge the involvement of individuals who have both contributed directly (for example by reading chapters) and indirectly (in conversation at one time or another). These include Janet Clare, Sandra Clark, Philip Crispin, Bryan Gooch, Andy Gurr, Peter Holland, Peter Holman, Ros King, David Lindley, Tom McAlindon, Richard Meek, Pam Waddington Muse, John Pitcher, Tiffany Stern, Stanley Wells, Stephen Wilson. The University of Hull permitted study leave so I owe a debt of gratitude to my colleagues in my department, in particular the Head of Department, Alastair Borthwick. The writing up of the book coincided with a British Academy research project grant



Preface and acknowledgements ix

which enabled me to pursue a parallel project on references to music in Shakespeare, for which I am grateful. I am particularly grateful to my colleague, Michael Fletcher, for all the technical help he has given towards completing the manuscript. I should also like to thank my commissioning editor, Colleen Coalter, and staff at Continuum for their help and support. Department of Drama and Music University of Hull

Shakespeare text and abbreviations

The text used for the plays and poems is The Norton Shakespeare, Second Edition (2008) based on the Oxford Edition of the Complete Works (1986, 2005). All quotations are taken from this complete edition unless otherwise stated. Shakespeare’s works Ado Much Ado About Nothing Ant The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra AWW All’s Well that Ends Well AYLI As You Like It Cor The Tragedy of Coriolanus Cym Cymbeline, King of Britain Ed3 The Reign of King Edward III Errors The Comedy of Errors Ham The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 1H4 The History of Henry the Fourth 2H4 The Second Part of Henry the Fourth H5 The Life of Henry the Fifth 1H6 The First Part of Henry the Sixth 2H6 The First Part of the Contention of the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster 3H6 The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York and the Good King Henry the Sixth H8 All Is True (Henry VIII) JC The Tragedy of Julius Caesar KJ The Life and Death of King John LC A Lover’s Complaint LLL Love’s Labour’s Lost Lear The Tragedy of King Lear Luc The Rape of Lucrece



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Mac The Tragedy of Macbeth MM Measure for Measure MND A Midsummer Night’s Dream MV  The Comical History of the Merchant of Venice, or Otherwise Called the Jew of Venice MWW The Merry Wives of Windsor Oth The Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice Per Pericles, Prince of Tyre PhT The Phoenix and Turtle PP The Passionate Pilgrim R2 The Tragedy of King Richard the Second R3 The Tragedy of King Richard the Third RJ The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet Shrew The Taming of the Shrew Son The Sonnets Temp The Tempest TGV The Two Gentlemen of Verona Tim The Life of Timon of Athens Titus Titus Andronicus TN Twelfth Night, or What You Will TNK The Two Noble Kinsmen Tro Troilus and Cressida Venus Venus and Adonis WT The Winter’s Tale

Introduction ‘Music to hear’: The scope of Shakespeare’s musical imagery

Musical imagery adorns every play1 and a significant number of poems by Shakespeare.2 It is used most extensively in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, most intensively in The Tempest and Twelfth Night, and most sparingly in The Comedy of Errors, Measure for Measure and The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Among the poems, 15 Sonnets, The Rape of Lucrece, Venus and Adonis, The Phoenix and Turtle and one poem from The Passionate Pilgrim exploit musical allusions and references. Many plays, especially As You Like It, The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew and Love’s Labour’s Lost, employ musical imagery at regular intervals throughout. Others, notably The Winter’s Tale and Measure for Measure, include music in a highly selective manner, while several others, including Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing, rich in music, exclude music from a central act. In sum, there are over 2,000 references to music and nearly 400 musical terms in Shakespeare’s works.3 Musical imagery in Hamlet ranges from symbolic instrumental cues for trumpets and drums, the significance of the recorder, ‘harmony’ and discord, songs including references to birdsong in act 1, Ophelia’s ‘mad’ songs in act 4 and scattered citations of ballads, to sad dirges and requiems. The Tempest investigates the affective power of music while Twelfth Night deals with ‘moody’ music. The half-dozen or so references to music in The Comedy of Errors, Measure for Measure and Julius Caesar are indeed comparatively few when compared to Shakespeare’s general usage, but are nonetheless rich and incisive. The references in Measure for Measure are confined exclusively to act 4. Except for two inconsequential appearances, musical references are

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absent from the first three acts of The Winter’s Tale, coinciding with the structural division of the play. A number of groupings or thematics help categorize Shakespeare’s musical imagery. Principal among these are concord/discord, the agreeableness or otherwise of musical sounds, and metonyms for the state of human relationships between individuals and in the context of worldly being. This musical metaphor can embody perceived pleasantness versus disagreeableness or harshness, ‘jarring’ sounds. Or it can involve tuning – something of an obsession among Elizabethan lutenists and viol players, as it still is today – the ‘true concord of welltuned sounds’ (Sonnet 8, line 5) or the ‘concord of sweet sounds’ (MV 5.1.83). Other words used are ‘accord’ and ‘concent/consent’, the former, Chambers (Dictionary, 1728) suggests, derived ‘from the French Corde, a String, or Cord; on account of the agreeable Union between the Sounds of two strings struck at the same time’. This meaning is found in Elizabethan literature; Shakespeare employs ‘accord’ in the context of Hortensio’s (the lute teacher) music lesson: Gam-ut I am, the ground of all accord. (Shrew 3.1.71) ‘Consent’ occurs only twice in a musical sense in the Shakespeare canon. In addition to Romeo and Juliet (1.2.17) where the term is coupled with ‘accord’, it is employed tellingly in Henry V when Exeter emphasizes the importance of harmony in authority, For government, though high and low and lower, Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, Congreeing in a full and natural close, Like music. (1.2.180–3) The social divisions, though separated, must come together in accord and conclude in cadential harmony, as in polyphonic music. In opposition to concord is discord, the aural manifestation of unpleasant sounds often caused by untuned strings, as Ulysses protests: Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark what discord follows. (Tro 1.3.109–10)



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If instruments play or humans sing out of tune then not only is their music discordant but discord will ensue. The concord of several sounds or parts results in ‘harmony’; both a theory and concept fundamental to Elizabethan musical philosophy, an adjunct to the doctrine of sympathy. Ortiz (2005: 66) observes that in ‘Renaissance England, “sympathy” denotes both a correspondence of feeling between people, objects, or astral bodies, of which “musical” sympathy (the observable concord between musical instruments) was often seen as the purest example’. He notes that ‘the primary source for musical sympathy in the early modern period is Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia (1533)’4 and refers to Gouk in his assertion that ‘although the doctrine of musical sympathy could be used as a “rich source of metaphors for representing other hidden phenomena which could neither be seen nor easily put into words”, musical sympathy was taken as evidence that a very real, mutual influence regularly occurred, even if it was not always perceptible’.5 The concord of sounds was emblematic of celestial and worldly harmony, of ‘musica’, Boethius’ musica mundana, humana and instrumentalis. The first is the ‘music of the spheres’, which is ‘an Harmonie, caused by the motion of the Starres, and violence of the Spheres … for it must needs be that a sound be made of the very wheeling of the Orbes’,6 a sound not audible to mere humans. The second concerns the music or ‘harmony’ of the human world, the relationship of physical being with the spiritual, the ‘soul’ of man, the state of wellbeing, of internal and external equilibrium. Instrumentalis interprets the philosophy of creating actual music, the theory of acoustics and composing. The musician both thinks about music in a worldly context and is conversant with the technicalities of how music is made. This is explained, according to Boethius, by the mathematical rationale of the intervals of music and the Pythagorean theory of the relationships between the pitches of notes, the octave, fifth, fourth, etc. These philosophies, conventional and outlived in Elizabethan times, especially the first two, find expression most famously in Lorenzo’s explication of the ‘concord of sweet sounds’ (MV 5.1).7 Associated with but separately identifiable from the philosophies of Renaissance music is the symbolism attached to both the playing

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of certain musical instruments and the iconography of those instruments themselves. Shakespeare identifies specific instruments from both art and popular music. His preferred instrument is the lute, symbolically the most iconographic of Renaissance instruments and despite the difficulty in playing it well, the most pervasive of art-music instruments in Elizabethan society, certainly to 1600. Shakespeare reveals a detailed understanding of the structure of the instrument, especially with regard to stringing, and its performative attributes, which suggests a knowledge beyond mere passing or observational acquaintance. Did Shakespeare play the lute? An intriguing possibility. His knowledge of the viol is less intimate and precise. References are sparse, surprisingly so given the ubiquitous presence of the viol in both courtly (professional) and domestic (amateur) music after 1600. Likewise, the virginal receives scant attention by Shakespeare despite its importance to English music during the period. On the other hand, Shakespeare makes incisive use of the simple recorder, notably in Hamlet. Instruments of popular or country music, especially pipe and tabor, bagpipes and fiddles, but interestingly not the cittern given its popularity among contemporary playwrights, feature in both comedies and tragedies. Shakespeare uses instruments such as trumpets, drums, cornetts, hoboys and horns, which during the seventeenth century became associated with art music, in their contemporary role as military or civil signalling instruments. Loud instruments of war pervade both the cues and symbolic references in the plays; clearly the Elizabethans liked noise in their playhouses. It has been argued that characters and situations can be identified by differing trumpet signals, and differential use of trumpet and drum. How consistent Shakespeare is with this throughout the plays is open to question; and whether there is any real importance to the various employments of trumpets, cornetts, hautboys, etc. at differing moments can be overstated. But there is no doubt that Shakespeare exploited the signification of the trumpet when needed. As aural signifiers, its generic calls – flourish, tucket, sennet – are employed to articulate entries and exits, and in the case of certain histories plot the structural patterning of scenes. Military drums conventionally accompany marches and represent the infantry, as opposed



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to the cavalry trumpet. That cornetts replaced trumpets in the indoor theatres may have more to do with acoustic considerations than symbolic associations. As with cornetts, cues for hoboys, found only in the Folio, often substitute for trumpets. In Titus Andronicus, for example, the banquet episode in 5.3 in which Tamora eats the flesh of her children ‘baked in [a] pie’ is introduced by ‘Hoboyes’ in the Folio. In Q1 (1594), Q2 (1600) and Q3 (1611), trumpets are specified. Hoboys also accompany banquets in Timon of Athens (1.2) and All is True (Henry VIII ) (1.4). When trumpets, hoboys and cornetts occur together in a play, as they do in All is True (Henry VIII ), there may be some signification of noble rank or origin. No such subtlety is connected with ‘winding’ or blowing horns, generally mentioned or used in outdoor hunting scenes.8 In contrast with the instruments of war are the unmistakeable instruments of peace, in particular the pipe and tabor, bagpipes and a selection of stringed instruments. With the first, it is the drum symbol which is most impactful since in its military context the drum is the essential connotative instrument, more so than even the trumpet, so that its substitute in a different situation is more marked. Bagpipes, like pipes and tabors and fiddles, most often accompanied rustic scenes, especially dances and dancing. Such leisure activity, in contrast to noble and manly war, is not seemingly espoused by Shakespeare, in keeping with the mood of his times. Dances and dancing occur symbolically in all Shakespeare’s play genres. As with instruments, so with dances he contrasts the ‘dance of war’ with rustic, social dancing and popular, spontaneous dancing with courtly, stylistic measures. These divisions between spontaneous and ‘called for’ are also marked in Shakespeare’s use of song. Many commentators suggest they correspond to the distinctions between popular and art songs in Shakespeare. The opportunity to provide adult singer-actors in the role of professional entertainers (Shakespeare’s clowns and dull fools) with mimetic art songs is not missed. Often the function of the song is affirmed by the presence of an accompaniment, lute, tabor, viol, etc. When the stage direction in Hamlet (Q1 1603) has Ophelia enter ‘playing on a lute, and her haire down singing’ (G4v) whilst she is supposed to be uttering a version of a popular song a problem arises. Is she actually supposed to be playing the lute as an

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accompaniment to her singing or is her carrying it merely a symbolic gesture? Whatever the explanation, subsequent early printed texts of the play (Q2 1604/5 and F 1623) omit reference to the lute. In many cases, popular songs are alluded to, not performed. Sternfeld (1967: 300–10) lists well over 300 lyrics, although a significant number of those are not separately identifiable in Shakespeare but are oblique and cross-references. The large number of differing references testifies to the fact Shakespeare does not invoke one particular song many times. Even the most often cited songs of his day, including ‘Greensleeves’, ‘Fortune my Foe’, ‘Bonny Sweet Robin’, make only a few appearances. The most popular tune, ‘Packington’s Pound’, does not receive individual attention although Duffin (2004) sets it to several ballads. Art songs, most famously in The Tempest, relate generically to ayres or lute songs for voice alone with simple accompaniment as opposed to the consort songs for voice and viols in the choirboy plays and polyphonic madrigals in Italian dramas. The only reference to what was the most widespread genre in sixteenth-century Europe, the madrigal, in vogue in England in printed collections from 1588 well into the seventeenth century, occurs in The Merry Wives of Windsor when Sir Hugh Evans sings misremembered lines from the ballad, ‘The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’: To shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sings madrigals. (3.1.13–14) Sir Hugh’s lines come from the second and third stanzas of the poem, ‘Come live with me and be my love’, attributed to Christopher Marlowe. The context in Marlowe’s song is pastoral, a common topos in the madrigal. In Shakespeare, it is the lament, ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion’, the opening of (metrical) Psalm 137, to which Sir Hugh refers after he has repeated his citation of melodious madrigalian birds. The mixed reference reflects Sir Hugh’s agitated and melancholic state. Music and emotion is a recurrent theme in Shakespeare’s imagery, for the most part connected with sadness, pseudo-piety and melancholy. Conventional emotional words such as ‘sigh’,



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‘mournful’, ‘doleful’, and terms such as ‘dirge’ and ‘requiem’ connect with corresponding musical expressivity. Melancholy is the most insistently and self-indulgent ‘moody’ music of all Elizabethan emotions. As a mental and spiritual condition it can refer to what we might call depression or more specifically, to love-sickness for which music might provide a suitable antidote or further complication. For Orsino, music neither quickens nor relieves his appetite for ‘love’. In his self-pitying mood he makes the mistake of calling for doleful music which he then commands to cease: If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die. That strain again, it had a dying fall. (TN 1.1.1–4) The affect of music is thus unpredictable. In relation to lovesickness, as Linda Austern determines, ‘music was thus understood to be the flame to light the fire or to ignite the hope of reciprocal passion, as well as the cooling draught of purgation and distraction’.9 In relation to despair, King Richard finds no solace in music: This music mads me. Let it sound no more, For though it have holp madmen to their wits, In me it seems it will make wise men mad. (R2 5.5.61–3) The music of Richard’s life is now discordant. There can be no recourse to former harmony. The affective power of music to cure and to calm was elemental in Renaissance musical philosophy. Shakespeare conventionally endows certain characters with harmonizing roles. Deriving from Classical mythology, Apollo, Orpheus, Hermione and even Ariel assume symbolic roles invoking ancient precedents. Ariel’s Classical ancestry is less certain but his harmonizing powers are more developed and modern than any other figure in Shakespeare. Orpheus is the most symbolically prominent among the musical figures of antiquity. Shakespeare identifies his affective role in several

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occurrences while overlooking specifically Arion and Amphion. Apollo is the ‘poetical god of music’ and, having invented the lyre, is usually depicted in Renaissance iconography holding a stringed instrument such as a lute, harp or viol. In emblematic contrast to the unrefined wind music of Pan, representing disorder and strife, the more sophisticated stringed music of Apollo emboldens order, sobriety and control.10 Musical affect emanating from concord and harmony can be explained in Renaissance theory, the principles of consonance and dissonance. Shakespeare exploits this knowledge precisely in a number of instances. He also has recourse to other aspects of Renaissance theory and pedagogy. Hortensio’s lute lesson in The Taming of the Shrew (3.1), for example, depends on an intimate knowledge of the theory of the gamut and contemporary procedures in learning to play an instrument. As a term, ‘degree’ can only be understood properly in the context of Renaissance scalic and mensural theory. The music symbolism in Ulysses’ first great speech in Troilus and Cressida (1.3) explicating degree, while capable of nuanced meanings, can best be explained with reference to contemporary theory, in turn suggesting a specialist knowledge by Shakespeare.

Sources and comparators for Shakespeare’s musical imagery Shakespeare’s consistent and extensive use of musical imagery possibly suggests a level of expertise and knowledge of music more sophisticated than mere passing acquaintance. Compared to his sources and predecessors, he develops imagery beyond simple recollection. In Romeo and Juliet, for example, a short passage from one source, Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet (1562): Now is the parentes myrth quite changed into mone, And now to sorrow is retornde the joy of every one. And now the wedding weedes for mourning weedes they change, And Hymene into a Dyrge, alas it seemeth straunge. (2507–10)11



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is musically developed into: Capulet: All things that we ordained festival Turn from their office to black funeral. Our instruments to melancholy bells, Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast, Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change (RJ 4.4.111–15) In Lyly’s Endimion, Tellus’ ‘there is no sweeter musicke to the miserable then dispayre’ (3.3.11–12) and Geron’s reflective sorrow, shortly after, as his ‘cheefest solace’, according to R. Warwick Bond,12 are ‘repeated’ by Shakespeare in Richard II, Constance, and Alonso: Eumenides: Father, your sad musique beeing tuned on the same key that my harde fortune is, hath so melted my minde, that I wish to hang at your mouthes ende till my life end. Geron: These tunes, Gentlemen, have I beene accusttomed with these fiftie Winters, having no other house to shrowde my selfe but the broade heavens. (3.4.1-6) Harmony (concord and discord) and the affective power of music also find precedent in Lyly. ‘Nature’s’ handmaids in The Woman in the Moone are ‘Concord’ and ‘Discord’ and the Utopian Shepherd, Stesias declares, For I have heard that Musick is a meane, To calme the rage of melancholy moode. (1.1.223–4)13 In Loves Metamorphosis, tuning and (lute) strings, references recurrent in Shakespeare, are pondered in the amorous exchange between Silvestris and Niobe:14 Sil: My Lute, though it have many strings, maketh a sweete consent; and a Ladies heart, though it harbour many fancies, should embrace but one love.

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Niobe: The strings of my heart are tuned in a contrarie keye to your Lute, and make as sweete harmonie in discords, as yours in concord. Sil: Why, what strings are in Ladies hearts? Not the base. Niobe: There is no base string in a womans heart. Sil: The meane? Niobe: There was never meane in womans heart. Sil: The treble? Niobe: Yea, the treble double and treble; and so are all my heartstrings. Farewell! When Julia, disguised as a page-boy, tells the Host that Proteus ‘plays false’ (that is, ‘out of tune’), having just sung a lute/love song extolling Silvia,15 she exploits a pun on lute/heart strings: Host: How, out of tune on the strings? Julia: Not so, but yet so false that he grieves my very heart-strings. Host: You have a quick ear. Julia: Ay, I would I were deaf. It makes me have a slow heart. Host: I perceive you delight not in music. Julia: Not a whit when it jars so. Host: Hark what fine change is in the music. Julia: Ay, that ‘change’ is the spite. Host: You would have them always play but one thing? Julia: I would always have one play but one thing. (TGV 4.2.57–66) Out-of-tune instruments (lutes), strings and puns on bass/base, and jarring treble all colour Hortensio’s defensive altercation with Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew (3.1). The image of several (lute) strings sounding in harmony is found in Sonnet 8. A trawl through large collections of contemporary lyric sources reveals how Shakespeare shared an extensive commonality of musical imagery. Birdsong, for example, is a frequently recurring allusion in Elizabethan songbook texts. The nocturnal habits of nightingales, dawn risings of larks, deceptive cuckoos and ominous screech owls, among many, are references exploited by



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Shakespeare. Specific, musically informed references are replicated in varying contexts. Performing descants on a ground, an attribute associated with professional or at least accomplished music-making, is a metaphor Shakespeare knowingly repeats for example in The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, For on that ground I’ll build a holy descant. (3.7.49) having already referred to Richard’s disfigurement as something to enlarge upon: Why, I in this weak piping time of peace Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity. (1.1.24–27) In Titus Andronicus, Aaron warns Chiron and Demetrius not to quarrel over Lavinia lest the ensuing discord – effectively descanting on their common ground – displeases Tamora: Young lords, beware; and should the Empress know This discord’s ground, the music would not please. (2.1.69–70) Performing embellishments or variations on a theme or ground was a preferred procedure among Elizabethan lutenists and virginalists. That those embellishments could distract from the theme was also expected, as the lover in Corkine’s The Second Booke of Ayres (1612), no. 17 ‘We yet agree, but shall be straightways out’, admits, Yet one the ground must be, which you shall prove Can bear all parts that descant on my love. (5–6) Or it could intensify the theme (of love) as King Edward expresses to Lodowick, in a musically rich dialogue, his ‘violent passion’ for the Countess of Salisbury:

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Ah what a world of descant, makes my soul Upon this voluntary ground of love. (Ed3 Scene 3, 121–2) involving a double musical pun on ‘voluntary ground’. Among other prevalent musical imageries sharing common currency are references to instruments and their players, particularly lutes, fiddles, pipes and trumpets. There are no terms unique to Shakespeare but there are a few, such as tucket and sennet, which although comparatively scarce occur more frequently than in contemporary writers’ work. Statistical evidence does not reveal the developed manner of Shakespeare’s use of musical imagery, although the quantity of ‘allusive’ references in pre-1602 comedies, according to Waldo and Herbert,16 is characteristic. The significantly fewer number of references in plays by possible collaborators confirms this feature of Shakespeare’s style. Waldo and Herbert tabulate references in plays by Marlowe, Greene, Lodge and Greene, Lodge, and Chapman dividing occurrences into ‘denotative’ and ‘allusive’. The first, they identify ‘if it literally and merely names something musical or asserts that something musical happens’; the second, ‘if it not only speaks about music but because of word-play or figure of speech or any species of association suggests some meaning beyond what is merely denoted’ (p. 186). Allusion is ‘more complex’ than denotation. In turn, allusion can be categorized as ‘simple’ or ‘complex’ and it is the latter, Waldo and Herbert argue, which ‘sets Shakespeare apart’. ‘Simple’ allusion occurs ‘when the word in question alludes to not more than one single thing beyond whatever it merely denotes. For example, when at the sound of music the Lord in the Induction [The Taming of the Shrew] says to Sly, “Hark! Apollo plays”, the mythological allusion is simple’.17 ‘Complex allusion’ occurs when ‘a word calls upon two or more objects of association’ and, according to Waldo and Herbert, is especially favoured by Shakespeare. ‘Complexity’ is determined when references involve compound allusions or contribute to the dramatic structure of a play. Waldo and Herbert cite The Merchant of Venice and investigate The Taming of the Shrew. If Waldo and Herbert’s basic premise is applicable, that Shakespeare’s musical imagery is characterized by ‘complex allusion’, then selected



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lines from the non-canonical The Reign of King Edward III (1596) may be illustrative. In his Introduction to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) Edward III, Roger Warren argues that it is not surprising that a play which shows the use of poetic language to further a dishonest love-suit should have verbal links with Love’s Labour’s Lost and Shakespeare’s Sonnets, both much concerned with the appropriate ways for lovers to express truthfully what they feel.18 Musical imagery is part of that poetic language and one passage in particular is characteristic of Shakespeare’s complexity. King Edward invites Lodowick to ‘encouch his words’ in lyric poetry: Then if thou be a poet move thou so, And be enriched by thy sovereign’s love: For if the touch of sweet concordant strings Could force attendance in the ears of hell, How much more shall the strains of poets’ wit Beguile and ravish soft and human minds! (Ed3 Scene 3, 73–9) The ‘concord of well-tuned sounds’ is a persuasive image in Sonnet 8 and to do with ‘harmony’ recurs variously in Shakespeare’s works. To ‘touch … strings’ means to play an instrument and the reference to ‘ravish’ strongly suggests the instrument is a lute. Shakespeare’s use of these musical images both separately and together involves, as in The Tragedy of King Richard the Second (1.3) or The Taming of the Shrew (3.1), complex allusion. Waldo and Herbert concentrate on the ‘complexity’ of musical imagery in the plays of the 1590s, as far as dates can be relied upon. Some scholars argue that the post-1600 plays reveal ‘a new level of achievement and difficulty’ in their theatrical language or dramatic verse. Frank Kermode argues the pivotal play was Hamlet and the poem ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’.19 In his Shakespeare’s Language (2000), Kermode prefers to keep Twelfth Night in the earlier-than-1600 Part One, because it belongs among the early comedies, albeit the most profound. He acknowledges a

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chronological proximity with ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’ and the ‘word-obsessed’ plays Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida. Kermode, however, does not discuss Shakespeare’s use of musical imagery. In some senses, Twelfth Night is the pivotal play, exploiting comedic mistaken identity recalling The Comedy of Errors but furthering incisive political and social satire. In The Comedy of Errors, musical imagery is used sparingly though it mixes denotative and allusive references. In Twelfth Night, musical imagery is pervasive and more often complex, more assured than in earlier comedies. This developmental confidence is manifest in the more extensive structural role music and imagery assume in the later plays, notably Othello, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale culminating in the last collaborative plays, All is True (Henry VIII ) and especially The Two Noble Kinsmen which contains the most musical imagery.

Chapter 1

‘By the sweet power of music’: Consonance and harmony

It is not possible to be certain why, in early modern culture, musical consonances (concords) were pleasing and dissonances (discords) were unpleasing or, to put it another way, consonances were ‘sweet’, dissonances were ‘harsh’. But there can be no doubt that psychological implications in the use of both the terms as language and their audible application carried aesthetic preferences relating to an emotional response.20 In his translation of Andreas Ornithoparcus’ Musice active micrologus (1517), John Dowland writes: Consonance (which otherwise we call Concordance) is the agreeing of two unlike Voyces placed together: Or is (as Tinctor writeth) the mixture of divers Sounds, sweetly pleasing the eares. Or according to Stapulensis lib.3 it is the mixture of an high, and lowe sound, coming to the eares sweetly, and uniformely. (Micrologus, 1609, p. 79) In the anonymous The Pathway to Musicke (1596), the author attempts, in keeping with several contemporary English treatises, to differentiate between consonance and dissonance in aesthetic comparators, namely that concords were ‘sweetly sounding unto the eare’ whereas dissonances were sounds ‘naturally offending unto the eare’ (p. [39]). Thomas Morley, the most significant of the late sixteenth-century English theorists, regarded concord as ‘a mixt sound compact of divers voices, entring with delight in the eare, and is eyther perfect or unperfect’ (A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, 1597, p. 70). Discord, Morley sees

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as the antonym to concord with its corresponding characteristics: ‘it is a mixt sound compact of divers sounds naturallie offending the eare, and therefore commonlie excluded from musicke’ (p. 71). Several writers, including the author of The Pathway to Musicke and Thomas Morley, attempted to define consonance and dissonance. Those definitions depended essentially on the theory of Gioseffo Zarlino presented in his Istitutioni harmoniche (1558) which, in turn, owed its origins to Pythagoras and his theory of mathematical ratios for identifying musical intervals.21 The Pythagorean consonances were identified as the octave, the fifth and the fourth. Zarlino extended the theory of consonance to include thirds and sixths by incorporating the senario (the first six numbers of the numerical ratios). Consequently, major and minor thirds and the major sixth became theorized as acceptable consonances even though, in practice, they had been used by composers since the middle of the fifteenth century. By the end of the sixteenth century, the senario began to be replaced by other physical identifiers. Sound, it was argued, comprised a variety of vibrations and interacting pulses. This resulted in the ‘coincidence theory’ of consonance; that is, the most sympathetic vibrations produced consonance. The most consonant interval was therefore the octave, followed by the fifth, the fourth and then the thirds. In practice, this did not differ from the senario; in theory, the fourth was still classified as a consonance whereas in practice it was a dissonance.22 The concordance of intervals was codified according to coincidence of periods of vibration by Giovanni Battista Benedetti in his Diversarum Speculationum Mathematicarum et Physicorum Liber of 1585. Later theorists tended to move away from mathematical definitions to empirical observations for identifying the properties of consonances, one of the most important of which was pleasingness. According to Palisca, this ‘separation of the subjective and objective qualities of intervals has characterised modern thought since that time’.23 And yet an aesthetic application of ‘pleasingness’ raises more doubts than it resolves. Who is to say what is pleasing? Shakespeare, as we hope to suggest, purports that the ‘beauty’ of musical expression is in the eye (or rather the ear) of the beholder.



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Commentators agree that there are two psychoacoustic factors concerning our understanding and reception of consonance (and therefore dissonance): ‘Sensory consonance’ refers to the immediate perceptual impression of a sound as being pleasant or unpleasant; it may be judged for sounds presented in isolation (without a musical context) and by people without musical training. ‘Musical consonance’ is related to judgements of the pleasantness or unpleasantness of sounds presented in a musical context; it depends strongly on musical experience and training, as well as on sensory consonance. These two aspects of consonance are difficult to separate, and in many situations judgements of consonance depend on an interaction of sensory processes and musical experience.24 The significance of sensory factors will vary from one cultural environment to another, depending on musical experience and expectation. The audience at an early production of a Shakespeare play would have a commonality of auditory experience which could relate to what Shakespeare meant by consonance and dissonance.25 In considering the imaginative power of music’s words, this chapter will focus on one aspect of perhaps the most recurrent feature of Shakespeare’s music imagery, that is ‘harmony’, in particular concordance or consonance. It will suggest, therefore, that Shakespeare’s references to musical terms, concepts and ideas are a way of explaining his characters’ emotional states and reactions, and notions of harmony and discord in a wider vocabulary. The concordant power of music finds revelation in recurring references and themes in Shakespeare. One of the most common yet sometimes evasive is the term ‘sweet music’ (or ‘sweet melody’, ‘sweet air’, ‘sweet sound’, ‘sweet harmony’).26 On a sensory level, ‘sweet’ can be translated into modern parlance as ‘pleasant’, as in The Tempest ‘sounds and sweet airs, that give delight’ (3.2.131). But in a number of instances a more specific musical explanation can be applied which gives the term extra meaning.27

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Shakespeare invariably invokes the affective power of music. Hence ‘sweet music’ gives delight or pleasure, depending of course on circumstances. But on a more influential level it leads to concord or ‘harmony’. In some cases, particularly in the pre-1600 plays, this is engendered by the ‘music of the spheres’.28 The neo-Platonic theories, Elizabethans argued, were transmitted through the five books relating to the philosophy of music, the De Institutione Musica (printed in 1491–92) by the sixth-century Roman philosopher and mathematician, Boëthius. In practice, various writers reinterpreted the theory through Western, notably Christianized, vantage points to such an extent that in the late sixteenth century the theory began to lose its potency. Following Copernicus, earth-centric theory is questioned and celestial harmony is made to work astrologically. The first category of speculative music, Musica Mundana, as Boëthius termed it, was part of the cosmic order of the heavens, with the stars and planets in allegorical ‘harmony’ or concordant music. How music contributed to the motion of the spheres is discussed in Dowland’s translation of Ornithoparcus: When God … had devised to make this world moveable, it was necessary, that he should governe it by some active and mooving power, for no bodies but those which have a soul, can move themselves … Now that motion … is not without sound: for it must needs be that a sound be made of the very wheeling of the Orbes … The like sayd Boëtius, how can this quick-moving frame of the world whirle about with a dumb and silent motion? From this turning of the heaven, there cannot be removed a certain order of Harmonie. And nature will … that extremities must need sound deepe on the one side, & sharp on the other. (Micrologus, 1609, p. 1) Put more simply, as the anonymous madrigal lyric observes: Music divine, proceeding from above, Whose sacred subject oftentimes is love, In this appears her heavenly harmony,



Consonance and harmony 19 Where tuneful concords sweetly do agree (Tomkins, Songs, 1622, no. 24)

In The Merchant of Venice, ‘Soft stillness and the night/Become the touches [i.e. sounds]29 of sweet harmony.’ This ‘harmony’ is the ‘music of the spheres’ and cannot be ‘heard’ by mere mortals, as Lorenzo intimates:30 Such harmony is in immortal souls, But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. (MV 5.1.62–4) Consequently, it is necessary to ‘awake’ Portia with actual (performed) music: ‘With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear/And draw her home with music’ (5.1.66). The combination of sweet music and heavenly music is alluded to, ironically, in The Taming of the Shrew. The Lord commands his huntsmen to: Carry him [Christopher Sly] gently to my fairest chamber, And hang it round with all my wanton pictures. Balm his foul head in warm distilled waters, And burn sweet wood to make the lodging sweet. Procure me music ready when he wakes To make a dulcet and a heavenly sound. (Ind. 1.42–7) The allusion to sweet and celestial musics alerts the audience to the deception being played on the poor tinker. He is being led to believe that he has achieved a marital and social status beyond his dreams. Music acts as a sort of affective trigger, part of the con-trick practised on Christopher Sly. Is there also a metatheatrical interaction between what happens to Sly and what happens to the theatre audience, especially given the intensity of arts (music, theatrical performance, poetry, description of visual art, etc.) in Induction 2? Does music help to seduce, distract and bamboozle on various levels of receptivity?

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The theory of consonance pervading divine music is paradoxically necessary in Duke Senior’s disparaging observation in As You Like It: First Lord: My lord, he is but even now gone hence. Here was he merry, hearing of a song. Duke Senior: If he, compact31 of jars, grow musical We shall have shortly discord in the spheres. Discordant cacophony is commonly associated in early modern English poetry and drama with the Malcontent, be it Shakespeare’s Jaques or Marston’s Malevole. As Lorenzo confirmed (MV 5.1), the human that does not reflect the harmony of the spheres has no harmony or sweet music in himself. This is in essence Boëthius’ second category, musica humana: the ‘harmony’ in worldy beings. Boëthius refers to it as ‘temperament’, that ‘which unites the incorporeal activity of the reason with the body … as it were a tempering of high and low sounds into a single consonance’.32 The concept of diverse concords devolving into one is articulated in Dowland’s translation of Ornithoparcus’ description of Humane Musick: The Concordance of divers elements in one compound, by which the spirituall nature is ioyned with the body, and the reasonable part is coupled in concord with the unreasonable, which proceedes from the uniting of the body and the soule. For that amitie, by which the body is ioyned unto the soule, is not tyed with bodily hands, but vertuall, caused by the proportion of humours. For what (saith Caelius) makes the powers of the soul so sundry and disagreeing to conspire oftentimes each with other? Who reconciles the Elements of the body? What other power doth so[l]der and glue that spirituall strength, which is indued with an intellect to a mortall and earthly frame, than that Musicke which every man that descends into himselfe finds in himselfe? Hence it is, that we loath and abhorre discords, and are delighted when we heare harmonicall concords, because we know there is in our selves the like concord. (Micrologus, 1609, p. 1)



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This is effectively an explanation of the aesthetic of the ‘concord of sweet sounds’. If the philosophy of the harmonizing power of sweet music derived ultimately from classical antiquity, then individual personifications of that theory in early modern literature also owe their origins to classical authors. One such is the Orpheus myth.33 In All is True (Henry VIII ), ‘Orpheus’ is invoked by Queen Katherine when she commands her lady attendant to ‘take thy lute’ because her ‘soul grows sad with troubles./Sing, and disperse ‘em if thou canst’ (3.1.1–2). It is not the performance of the song but its language which has the most symbolic impact, as the last lines affirm: In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief of heart Fall asleep, or hearing die. (3.1.12–14) Katherine attempts to call upon the soothing power of ‘sweet’ music. In The Merchant of Venice, Jessica exclaims irrationally that she is ‘never merry’ when she hears ‘sweet music’ (5.1.68). Lorenzo explains that she is agitated and that she should succumb to the calming power of Orphic music.34 The power of ‘sweet music’ to calm unruly elements in heaven and on earth is articulated in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as Oberon recounts: My gentle puck, come hither. Thou rememb’rest Since once I sat upon a promontory And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath That the rude sea grew civil at her song And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid’s music? (2.1.148-–54) The mermaid’s (sweet) song, clearly, has supernatural powers as it does in The Comedy of Errors.35

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O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note To drown me in thy sister’s flood of tears. Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote. (3.2.45–7) Conversely, the person who is not sensitive to ‘sweet music’, who is not given to rationality and calm, as Shakespeare asserts will suffer, and in turn hurt others: The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. (MV 5.1.82–4) Cassius is a man without sweet music and therefore prone to evil and mistrust. Caesar observes to Antony that Cassius: Loves no plays … he hears no music ( JC 1.2.204–5), consequently, Such men as he be never at heart’s ease Whiles they behold a greater than themselves, And therefore are they very dangerous. ( JC 1.2.209–12) Just as the man without music is susceptible to wickedness, so a life devoid of ‘music’ is unfulfilled and empty. Nowhere is this metaphor more powerfully evoked than in Richard II’s poignant recollection of his own situation whilst imprisoned in Pomfret castle: Music do I hear. Ha; ha; keep time! How sour sweet music is When time is broke and no proportion kept. So is it in the music of men’s lives. And here have I the daitiness of ear To check time broke in a disordered string. (R2 5.5.41–6) The conflation of and contradiction between heard music and imagined music here is intense. Although the stage direction ‘Musick’



Consonance and harmony 23

(music plays 5.5.41) occurs in all five quartos and in the folio, its significance is far from clear and its execution problematic. Should it even be there? The metaphor is in the language of Richard’s soliloquy, not in its aural accompaniment, and yet imagined and real music have to relate if music plays. Is the music Richard hears ‘sour’ or discordant? Or do we alone hear ‘sweet’ music? In other words, is Shakespeare asking us to consider, perhaps even on some imaginative level ‘hear’, the discord between sweet music being played and Richard’s disordered self? Is Shakespeare exploiting a correspondence/dissonance between the imagined and actual music and (perhaps paradoxically) using sweet music to depict Richard’s broken identity? Sweet music can turn sour depending on an individual’s perception. At the beginning of Twelfth Night, after all, Orsino actually hears ‘pleasing’ music, but then commands it to stop: ‘’tis not so sweet now as it was before’ (1.1.8). Has the music itself stopped sounding ‘sweet’, or is it that it no longer sounds ‘sweet’ to Orsino, because his mood has turned sour? Richard’s statement is surely quietly rhetorical. Most commentators assume that music actually sounds but do not agree on its function or type. Charles Forker (Arden 3 edn, London, 2002) accepts Mahood’s theory that the loyal groom performs the music. F. W. Sternfeld, Music in Shakespearean Tragedy (1967), suggests the ‘soft music of a consort of strings’ (p. 201) as suitable background music. Andrew Gurr (New Cambridge edn, 1984) proposes soft wind and string music. David Lindley argues that Richard’s ‘anguished meditation is interrupted by the sound of music … [which] perhaps should be expertly played, for though in many ways Richard’s reflections on the failure of the music of his own life to keep time represent a descant upon familiar ideas about the relationship of musical and human harmony, on time and madness, the scene is given its emotional intensity precisely through the presence of actual music in the ears of the audience’ (2006, p. 123). Richard refers to psychological music, imagined music not actual music. As G. Wilson Knight eloquently argued, Richard’s ‘thought-voyage’ concluded in music: Starting from religious perplexity, developing through agnostic pain and stoic acceptance to a serene faith in death’s essential goodness, it finally … fades into music, is lost in music, those

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melodies which express more than the mind may speak in words, music which is the utterance of a consciousness understanding the ineffable, and drawing the veil which hides that unity distorted by our conventional dualism of ‘life’ and ‘death’.36 The timeless music of Richard’s life becomes ontological time, real time, as the king reflects on time past, his wasted time, in the present: But for the concord of my state and time Had not an ear to hear my true time broke. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me, For now hath time made me his [i.e. Bolingbroke’s] numb’ring clock. (5.5.47–50) The music of Richard’s inner being is discordant with his present state, and like Hamlet and Lear, drives him to distraction: This music mads me. Let it sound no more, For though it have holp madmen to their wits, In me it seems it will make wise men mad. (5.5.61–3). At this point, in most editions, editors insert the stage direction ‘music ceases’. But it is the music only Richard ‘hears’ in his mind and which we must conceptualize which ceases. While the relationship between ‘sweet music’ and time is metaphorical in Richard’s soliloquy, time and proportion can explain in practice some of the theory behind the usage of the term. Contemporaneous meanings of ‘sweet music’ vary from non-technical aesthetic explanations – the sound of ‘sweet music’ gives delight – to more musically technical involving counterpoint and the concord of sweet thirds.37 One explication is to be deciphered in Henry Peacham’s emblem, ‘Tantó dulcius’ (So much sweeter).38 The accompanying poem contains the essence of the image of ‘sweet music’ and is worth citing: The mortall strifes that often doe befall, Twixt loving Bretheren, or the private frend,



Consonance and harmony 25 Doe prove (we say) the deadliest of all: Yet if compos’d by concord, in the end They relish sweeter, by how much the more, The jarres were harsh, and discordant before. How oft hereof the Image I admire, In thee sweete Musick, natures chast delight, The banquets frend, and Ladie of the quire; Phisition to the melancholy spright: Mild nurse of pietie, ill vices foe; Our passions Queene, and Soule of all below.

‘Sweet music’ dictates that in practice concord resolves discord according to the rules of Renaissance counterpoint. Peacham gives a simple example where two voices exist in consonant thirds (or their compounds). Intervening discords between the two voices are resolved following Renaissance voice-leading conventions and rhythmical proportion. The word set is, unsurprisingly, ‘Dolcimente’:

A more extensive example of the ‘concord of sweet thirds’ is to be found in Thomas Morley’s canzonet for two voices, ‘Sweet nymph, come to thy lover’ (The First Booke of Canzonets, 1595) where, except for cadential figures, the whole song is written in consonant thirds and octaves. The subject matter also accords with the Elizabethan ethos of ‘sweet music’, that is, consonant (and its corollary, dissonant) love between two people as evinced by Sidney’s sonnet, ‘O faire, o sweet, when I do looke on thee’, in particular the second stanza:

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O faire, O sweete, when I do looke on thee, In whom all joyes so well agree, Heart and soule do sing in me. Just accord all musike makes; In thee just accord excelleth, Where each part in such peace dwelleth, One of other beautie takes. Since then truth to all minds telleth, That in thee lives harmonie, Heart and soule do sing in me. (Certain Sonnets, no. 7) Whether or not Shakespeare knew the theory behind ‘sweet music’ cannot be proved. But if, as King Richard correctly observes, rhythm and proportion are not kept, then discord cannot be resolved, the music jars and is no longer ‘sweet’. The ‘sweet music’ theory supports the musical imagery in Sonnet 8. Only when two (separate) parts are resolved into one (unison) can harmony prevail. If one part remains dissonant or out-of-tune, then there will be no sweetness or concord. At one point in the sonnet, Shakespeare enrols the image of the lute – without specifically saying so. His metaphor depends on the manner of stringing a lute: each course, except for the lowest or bass, has two strings tuned in unison. If one string is even slightly out-of-tune the sound will be unpleasant or ‘sour’. Shakespeare observes: Mark how one string, sweet husband to another, Strikes each in each by mutual ordering. (9–10) Unless the youth of the sonnet ‘one pleasing note do sing’ with another, he will remain sad and unfulfilled. Sweet music, in this case, will not prove ‘phisition to the melancholy spright’. This musical metaphor finds resonance in Edward III: For if the touch of sweet concordant strings Could force attendance in the ears of hell, How much more shall the strains of poets’ wit Beguile and ravish soft and human minds. (Scene 3, 76-9)39



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Ophelia’s agony over Hamlet’s seeming loss of reason and affection is confounded when she realises that his sweet music is discordant, ‘Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh’ (3.1.157). The ‘honey of his music’ that she had once tasted has now become bitter. Ominously, Othello’s murderous act is ‘out of tune’ when he discovers that, having been told that Cassio is still alive, he has managed only to destroy one part of the adulterous relationship:40 ‘Then murder’s out of tune./And sweet revenge grows harsh’ (5.2.124–5). Jealousy has turned the ‘sweet music’ of Othello and Desdemona into revenge. That sweetness, continuing the musical metaphor, becomes harshness. It is significant that ‘tuning’ is also an interconnected theme in Othello. Music is not sweet when the instruments that play it are ‘out-of-tune’. It was Iago’s intent to destroy Othello and Desdemona’s marital bliss by untuning their music: O, you are well tuned now, But I’ll set down the pegs that make this music. (2.1.197–8)41 Not only does Shakespeare employ the ‘out-of-tune’ metaphor, he also gives a technical explanation of how to untune a lute or viol. Interestingly, Shakespeare’s reference to using the tuning pegs to untune an instrument is particularly apt in this context. Tuning pegs are normally used to bring the strings of an instrument to their relative in-tune state. It would be perverse of a player to use them to put his/her instrument out of tune. It is possible that the same ‘tuning’ metaphor is used when Cordelia pleads that her father will awake from his mental sickness: O you kind gods, Cure this great breach in his abused nature! The untuned and jarring senses, O, wind up Of this child-changed father. (Lear 4.7.14–17) In contrast to Iago, who wishes destruction, Cordelia begs for a cure by ‘winding up’ the (lute/viol) strings to bring them into tune.42

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The connection between ‘jarring’ and discord and concord and ‘sweetness’ is a musical theme that pervades Shakespeare’s plays and poems. In All’s Well that Ends Well, Helen expresses her doubts about Bertram’s sexual integrity in an oxymoronic passage, typical of Renaissance love poetry, involving the musical metaphor: His humble ambition, proud humility, His jarring concord and his discord dulcet. (1.1.158–9) Here, as in the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew (cited above), Shakespeare substitutes ‘dulcet’ for ‘sweet’. The allusion to the concept of Concordia discors as musical metaphor is unmistakeable.43 According to the philosophy of the ancient Greek theory, for example Herakleitos’ ‘harmonia of contrary tensions’, conflict (in Nature) will produce harmony in the world, continuous tension will result in resolute consonance. Differing bird songs is a recurrent ‘harmonic’ (or discordant) musical topos in Shakespeare. Usually, the various birds sing sweetly but in some cases there is an ironic, even ominous meaning to their song. The impact of their song depends on circumstances – especially the time of day – and the emotional state of those who hear, as Portia remarks to Nerissa in her anxious condition. Music sounds ‘much sweeter than by day’ (MV 5.1.99), just as: The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark When neither is attended, and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many things by season seasoned are To their right praise and true perfection. (MV 5.1.101–7) Music plays during this moonlit scene. It serves as both a meta-theatrical device, to calm Jessica’s anxious state, as Lorenzo recounts, the Orphic ‘sweet power of music’; as a cue to Portia’s return; and as an aural accompaniment to Portia’s observations on the comparative response to stimuli, that ‘night’ music is more evocative for lovers.



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The symbolic binary opposites of the lark and the nightingale (day versus night) are exploited by Shakespeare in several instances. In Romeo and Juliet, the impending dawn and what it signifies for Romeo (his banishment to Verona) is signalled by the reference to the lark. Juliet insists that night has not passed and that she still has a little more time with Romeo: Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fear-full hollow of thine ear. (3.5.1–3) Romeo confirms the awful reality of the situation: It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale. (3.5.6–7) Having accepted her disappointment, Juliet accuses the lark of symbolizing a destructive influence because its song is no longer sweet: Hie hence, be gone, away. It is the lark that sings so out of tune, Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps. Some say the lark makes sweet division; This doth not so, for she divideth us. (3.5.26–30) Even though the lark reputedly sings sweetly – indeed is a virtuoso singer: ‘makes sweet division’, because her song signals the parting of the lovers, it becomes discordant. The juxtaposition of ‘sweet’ and ‘discord’ as musical opposites is typically exploited here by Shakespeare. The same metaphor (nightingale/night and [lark]/day) is employed in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, although the lark is not specifically mentioned. Valentine affirms that if he cannot be with Silvia, life is not worth living. He muses: What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by – Unless it be to think that she is by,

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And feed upon the shadow of perfection. Except I be by Silvia in the night There is no music in the nightingale. Unless I look on Silvia in the day There is no day for me to look upon. (3.1.175–81) ‘Sweet music’ as a metaphor for love and carnal lust is exploited intensely in Troilus and Cressida 3.1. ‘Sweet’ is used insistently 19 times in a scene of 148 lines, significantly to describe Helen as ‘sweet Queen’, and once by Pandarus, returning the ironic compliment, ‘honey-sweet Queen’(3.1.132). Central to the scene is Pandarus’ explicitly bawdy song of love, ‘Love, love, nothing but love’ (3.1.105–16). The scene is announced in consort music and ends with a trumpet signal, ‘a retreat’, whose military suggestiveness Paris stubbornly tries to ignore in his ‘love’ for Helen: Sweet above thought, I love thee! (3.1.148) That ‘music in parts’ (3.1.17) is ‘love music’ (3.1.23) for those that love music, as Paris’ Servant reminds Pandarus, who in turn reassures Paris that the ‘broken music’ of the mixed consort is good ‘whole’ music full of ‘harmony’ or sweetness as the context demands. The opposition between domestic music, the sweet music of love, and military music, the music of honour and valour, the music the princely leaders should obey rather than the seductive music of corruption, is a symbolic polarity in the play. The ‘sweet music’ of Helen and Paris corrupts the expectant young love of Troilus and Cressida. In the next scene, when Pandarus eventually manages to unite Cressida with Troilus, Troilus’ mood is expressed in musical terms depending on word-playing ‘relish’ and ‘sweetness’. A ‘relish’ in (Elizabethan) music, particularly the lute and keyboard repertoire, is a figurative ornament used to embellish a melody to intensify the effect of certain notes. Troilus self-observes: I am giddy. Expectation whirls me round. Th’imaginary relish is so sweet That it enchants my sense. (Tro 3.2.16–18)



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He worries that when he does actually encounter Cressida, his love will be sour or ‘un-sweet’ turning from joy to destruction: Death, I fear me, Swooning destruction, or some joy too fine, Too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness For the capacity of my ruder powers. (3.2.20–3) Having declared their true love, they signify it, like Desdemona and Othello, with a kiss, expressing their musical harmony about which both are sceptical, as Troilus remarks in the presence of Pandarus, whose lecherous song still echoes in the audience’s ears: And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence. (3.2.123) Romantic love, Shakespeare suggests,44 cannot prevail in a society corrupted by dishonesty and betrayal. ‘Sweet’ music becomes sickly ‘honey-sweet’. ******* As with most of Shakespeare’s musical imagery, a knowledge and understanding of contemporary practice and theory are implicit in our reception of his musical references. Many commentators and editors seek to situate Shakespeare’s metaphors and allusions in their theoretical contexts.45 Consequently there has been extensive discussion about Shakespeare’s ‘music of the spheres’, his Ovidian ‘Orpheus’, the neo-Platonic ethos of music, and much more. ‘Music in Shakespeare’ studies have been concerned with the performed songs, instrumental cues, musical theory and philosophy, the significance of instruments, and the use of popular music. The extent to which Shakespeare invited his audience and readers to imagine the sound of music has not received so much critical investigation.46 Central to this would be an extensive study of Shakespeare’s use of ‘consonance’ and ‘dissonance’ and their signification. Using aural as opposed to visual imagery was becoming an issue in the Elizabethan theatre. Acknowledging this trend in the

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theatre-going experience at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Ben Jonson writes, Would you were come to heare, not see a Play. Though we his Actors must provide for those, Who are our guests here, in the way of showes, The maker hath not so; he’ld have you wise, Much rather by your eares, then by your eyes. (Staple of News, 1612, Prologue) No doubt with the influence of courtly masques in mind, Jonson questions the pre-eminence of the ‘painter’ over the ‘poet’, the impact of the visual on the aural. As Andrew Gurr observes, ‘poetry was losing to shows on the public stages. Spectators were triumphing over hearers’.47 While scenery and costumes were yet to become a distinguishing element of the early modern theatre,48 the influence of visual spectacle, notably dumb shows and the masque, were apparent, witness Timon of Athens, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest in Shakespeare alone. At the beginning of the non-canonical Timon of Athens, the ‘painter’ aims to put the ‘poet’ down not only by claiming his verse is ‘common’ but also because it needs depicting through another medium: A thousand moral paintings I can show That shall demonstrate these quick blows of Fortune’s More pregnantly than words. Yet you do well To show Lord Timon that mean eyes have seen The foot above the head. (1.1.91–5) Their sycophantic reappearance towards the end of the play makes it clear the poet’s (and painter’s) art is not that of the expressive artist, portraying in words innermost feelings and ideas, but rather mouthing an outward corollary to what does not exist: Poet: I am rapt, and cannot cover The monstrous bulk of this ingratitude With any size of words.



Consonance and harmony 33 Timon: Let it go naked; men may see’t the better. You that are honest, by being what you are Make them best seen and known. (5.1.61–6)

The relevance of the poet’s message to the ‘audience’ may at best be ambiguous. As Inga-Stina Ewbank argues, the presentation poem in the opening scene would at best make a scenario for a masque. The whole abortive quarrel between Poet and Painter may seem more relevant as an anticipation of the Ben Jonson – Inigo Jones controversy than as an entry-point into a discussion of words versus ‘show’ in Shakespeare. For everyone knows that the dichotomy between what is said and what is shown on stage in a Shakespeare play is an unreal one; and that verbal and visual unity is a characteristic of Shakespearian drama.49 Such disingenuous poetic navel gazing may not be particularly apt for a discussion of hearing words in Shakespeare but it does posit the dilemma faced by the theatre ‘audience’ today, an audience inevitably affected by television and film, on how to receive or perceive Shakespearean theatre. When London’s new Globe theatre opened in 1997, The Times critic, Benedict Nightingale, among others, drew attention to issues of Shakespearean theatricality, notably the debate about the importance of verbal and visual signifiers. The Globe, he said, ‘presents a special challenge both to directors, who may have to think harder about blocking than is usual nowadays, and to audiences, who must learn to listen more acutely to words that do, after all, themselves paint everything from morning haze to night-time tempests’.50 Until recently, the Globe provided an experiential contrast with the RST in Stratford, with its cinematic approach to presenting Shakespeare.51 That Shakespeare and his contemporaries placed their trust in the power and immediacy of words has been observed by many eminent modern critics. M. C. Bradbrook noted that the essential structure of Elizabethan drama lies not in the narrative or the characters but in the words. The greatest poets are also the

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greatest dramatists. Through their unique interest in word play and word patterns of all kinds the Elizabethans were especially fitted to build their drama on words.52 Anne Barton, in citing Bradbrook, argued that modern playwrights and critics ‘stand today at an opposite extreme from the Elizabethans with respect to the trust we are willing to place in words’.53 With specific reference to Shakespeare, she asserts that, The plays … do indeed stand as the most complete testimony there has ever been to the efficacy of language, to what words can make. They deny and refute the reductivist attitude towards language and the imagination later promulgated by Hobbes, an attitude from which much modern thinking derives.54 Barton was interested in the ‘relationship between words and deeds, between speech and silence, and with the adequacy (or otherwise) of verbal formulation to the events and emotions upon which it operates’, recognizing, as Shakespeare did, that there were strictures in the use of language.55 This book is not concerned with reading the words of a play, the musical terms and references as they occur, but rather with the impact made on the sensory imagination when we know what a musical phrase or expression means and intends. This is dependent on hearing a play either in the theatre or imaginatively on the page. As Northrop Frye observed, this ‘brings us close to the oral tradition [of Shakespeare’s plays], with its shifting and kaleidoscopic variants, its migrating themes and motifs, its tolerance of interpolation, its detachment from the printed ideal of an established text’.56 Or, as Shakespeare expressively put it, O learn to read what silent love hath writ; To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit. (Son 23, 13–14) Words must try but are unable to express the poet’s emotion. It is beholden to the perceiver (the reader) to imagine beyond the limits of language. It is no coincidence that this sonnet begins from



Consonance and harmony 35

the position of ‘an unperfect actor on the stage/Who with his fear is put besides his part’. On the one hand, words express meaning; on the other they are only the starting point for the auditory imagination. Consequently, as Shakespeare urges: let us, ciphers to this great account, On your imaginary forces work. (H5 Prologue 17–18)

Chapter 2

‘And doleful dumps the mind oppress’: Passionate words

From the fifteenth century onwards, and probably earlier, there is ample evidence to suggest that melodic and harmonic elements of Western music elicited an emotional response in listeners, ranging from joy to sadness. The association of differing emotions with various kinds of music, rhythms and harmonies, the affective power of music, derives from Classical antiquity, famously Plato and Aristotle. In observing the ‘emotional’ qualities associated with certain ‘harmonies’ or tones, Plato differentiates between ‘intense and dirge-like’ harmonies and ‘soft, relaxed and convivial’ harmonies.57 Aristotle seems to agree about the affective power of music, based he argues on empirical evidence: in the nature of the mere harmonies there are differences, so that people when hearing them are affected differently and have not the same feelings in regard to each of them, but listen to some in a more mournful and restrained state, for instance the harmony called Mixolydian, and to others in a softer state of mind, for instance the relaxed harmonies, but in a midway state and with the greatest composure to another, as the Dorian alone of harmonies seems to act, while the Phrygian makes men enthusiastic.58 This aesthetic symbolism is further identified with differing instruments, genres and poetic forms. The binary correlations, minor/ major, sad/happy are inherent in these classical observations. Ever since a C minor chord on the word ‘Miserere’ interrupted the essentially major-key polyphonic flow in Dufay’s late Marian



Passionate words 37

motet, ‘Ave Regina Coelorum’ (?1463), minor tonality has become associated with sadness and self-reflective emotions. Why this should be so has never been uniformly explained. Modern musicologists, notably Herzog in the 1930s and Sachs and Gustav Reese in the 1940s, have suggested the minor mode is a deviation from the major primordial norm of Western culture. In his new book on Adrian Willaert (1490–1562), Timothy McKinney proposes that, according to the blurb, ‘“major” and “minor” no longer signified merely the larger and smaller of a pair of like-numbered intervals; rather, they became categories of sonic character, the members of which are related by a shared sounding property of “majorness” and “minorness” that could be manipulated for expressive purposes’.59 Leonard B. Meyer attempts to articulate the emotional significance of minor tonality, in a historical context arguably going back to the Renaissance: The minor mode is not only associated with intense feeling in general but with the delineation of sadness, suffering, and anguish in particular. This association, which … is also connected with chromaticism in general, appears to arise out of two different though related facts: (1) States of calm contentment and gentle joy are taken to be the normal human emotional states and are hence associated with the more normative musical progressions, i.e., the diatonic melodies of the major mode and the regular progressions of major harmony. Anguish, misery, and other extreme states of affectivity are deviants and become associated with the more forceful departures of chromaticism and its modal representative, i.e., the minor mode. (2) Marked or complex chromatic motions common in the minor mode – melodic lines which move conjunctly by semitones or disjunctly by unusual skips and uncommon harmonic progressions – have tended to be accompanied by tempi which were slower than those which accompanied more diatonic music. This was, of course, particularly true of the earlier use of chromaticism during the Renaissance and the baroque period.60 Linear chromaticism as opposed to chordal juxtaposition in late Renaissance music identified stylized sadness, that is ‘melancholy’.

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In Elizabethan England, this is particularly evidenced in the music of John Daniel, John Dowland and Thomas Weelkes. The opening of the second part of Daniel’s lute ayre, ‘Can doleful notes to measur’d accents set/Express unmeasur’d griefs which time forget?’ exemplifies Elizabethan chromatic expressivity in the figure below.

All of Dowland’s ‘melancholic’ ayres, the majority of which are in his Second Booke of Songs or Ayres (1600), and sad pavans61 exploit minor key harmonies and melodic chromaticism. Weelkes brought new emotional expressiveness to English music in madrigals such as ‘Cease sorrowes now’ (Madrigals to 3, 4, 5 & 6 Voyces, 1597) with its extreme pathos and deliberate chromaticism.62 His ‘O care thou wilt dispatch mee’ (Madrigals of 5 and 6 Parts, 1600), a ‘kind of tragic ballett where the juxtaposition of sharply contrasting musical material matches the daring combination of opposing imagery in the poems of Weelkes’ contemporary, John Donne’,63 represents the culmination of emotive expressivity in ‘sad’ music. Morley attempts to rationalize ‘grave’ and ‘merry’ expressivity in music by articulating how a composer should respond both to the overall mood of a poem and to the localized emotion of certain words:



Passionate words 39 It followeth to shew you how to dispose your musicke according to the nature of the words which you are therein to expresse, as whatsoever matter it be which you have in hand, such a kind of musicke must you frame to it. You must therefore if you have a grave matter, applie a grave kinde of musicke to it; if a merrie subject you must make your musicke also merrie. For it will be a great absurditie to use a sad harmonie to a merrie matter, or a merrie harmonie to a sad lamentable, or tragicall dittie.64

He goes on to be more specific about the differences between expressive ‘harmonies’: You must then when you would expresse any word signifying hardnesse, crueltie, bitternesse, and other such like, make the harmonie like unto it, that is, somwhat harsh and hard but yet so that it offend not. Likewise, when any of your words shall expresse complaint, dolor, repentance, sighs, teares, and such like, let your harmonie be sad and doleful, so that if you would have your musicke signifie hardnes, cruelty or other such affects, you must cause the partes proceede in their motions without the halfe note, that is, you must cause them proceed by whole notes, sharpe thirdes, sharpe sixes and such like … but when you would expresse a lamentable passion, then must you use motions proceeding by halfe notes. Flat thirdes and flat sixes, which of their nature are sweet, speciallie being taken in the true tune and natural aire with discretion and judgement.65 In other words, Morley advises the use of major thirds and sixths, without chromaticism (‘half notes’) for ‘hardness’ and ‘cruelty’; for a ‘lamentable passion’, especially melancholy, minor thirds and sixths plus chromaticism are preferred. He then effectively differentiates between major and minor ‘motions’ or tonalities for expressing various emotions: But those cordes so taken as I have saide before are not the sole and onely cause of expressing those passions, but also the

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motions which the parts make in singinng do greatly helpe, which motions are either naturall or accidental. The naturall motions … be more masculine causing in the song more virilitie then those accidental cordes … that is, tonic major progressions, which be in deede accidentall, and make the song as it were more effeminate & languishing then the other motions which make the song rude and sounding: so that those naturall motions may serve to expresse those effectes of crueltie, tyrannie, bitternesse, and such others, and those accidentall motions may fitlie expresse the passions of griefe, weeping, sighes, sorrowes, sobbes, and such like.66 Perhaps confusingly, he then goes on to use the same word ‘motions’ to mean tempi for setting contrasted emotions: Also, if the subject be light, you must cause your musicke go in motions, which carrie with them a celeritie or quicknesse of time, as minimes, crotchets, and quavers: if it be lamentable, the note[s] must goe in slow and heavie motions, as semibreves, breves and such like.67 Morley concludes that this responsive music, reflecting the emotion of thoughts and words, is commonplace and found ‘everywhere in the works of the good musician’. It is reasonable to suppose poets envisaged a normative response to emotional words associated with music, such as doleful, mournful, sighing, woeful, pity and others. Sixteenth-century composers exploited the emotional possibilities of passages in which the word ‘sigh’ appeared to such an extent that it became a distinctive rhetorical gesture. In the Italian madrigal it is often found together with words for weeping, tears, sadness and piety characterized by evocative dissonant harmony and articulated by short off-beat silences (quasi exhalations), as in Willaert’s ‘I vidi in terra’ (Musica Nova, 1559, no. 17) at the words ‘lagrimar … et sospirando dir parole’. The ‘sigh’ topos was imported into English music in the late sixteenth century, as Morley recounts:



Passionate words 41 when you would expresse sighes, you may use the crotchet or minime rest at the most, but a longer then a minime rest you may not use, because it will rather seeme a breth taking then a sigh, an example wherof you may see in a very good song of Stephano Venturi to five voices68 upon this dittie quell’aura che spirando a Paur a [sic] mia? for coming to the word sospiri (that is sighes) he giveth it such a natural grace by breaking a minime into a crotchet rest and a crotchet.69

Given the opportunity, English madrigal and song composers followed the Italian model and incorporated the sequential ‘sigh’ rest at the appropriate moment, as in Dowland’s famous parodical ayre, ‘Flow my tears’: Never may my woes be relieved, Since pity is fled, And tears, and sighs, and groans my weary days Of all joys have deprived.70 Or perhaps more expressively in his ‘Come again sweet love’ at the words ‘I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die’.71 The emotional response to sadness in music is encapsulated in the second stanza of Dowland’s ayre ‘I saw my lady weep’,72 neatly alluding to the ‘sigh’ rest or silence: Sorrow was there made fair, And passion wise, tears a delightful thing, Silence beyond all speech a wisdom rare, She made her sighs to sing, And all things with so sweet a sadness move, As made my heart at once both grieve and love. A love-sick (musical) sigh is part of Armado’s tactic in wooing Jaquenetta, as Moth adizes: Sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the throat as if you swallowed love with singing love. (LLL 3.1.10–11)

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The silence or rest that comes between the sigh (notes) is part of the musical allusion in Dromio of Syracuse’s response to Antipholus’ (of Syracuse) questioning: the man, sir, that when gentlemen are tired gives them a sob and ’rests them: he, sir, that takes pity on decayed men(Errors 4.3.22–4) The ‘sob’ is both a rest and a sorrow or sigh, affirmed by the puns on ‘rests’ and ‘pity’ that follow. In King Lear, the haunting sigh of mad Tom is devil’s music to Edmund’s ears, as he plots against Edgar. He ends his short soliloquy as Edgar enters: and pat he comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy. My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o’ Bedlam. O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! Fa, sol, la, mi. (Lear 1.2.123–5) The sigh divides, both musically and politically, as Edmund intends, and may even be suggested by the notes Edmund exhales at the end of his lines. Some commentators (e.g. Norton, 2008: 2503) argue that the last two, ‘la’ to ‘mi’ form a tritone or augmented fourth between B natural and F natural73 and represent ‘the devil in music’.

It could also be argued the two notes in question are mad Tom’s ‘sigh’. Death and the sorrow of self reflection are encapsulated in ‘doleful’ music. Prince Henry comments on the impending death of his father, King John, in musical terms: ‘Tis strange that death should sing. I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan, Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,



Passionate words 43 And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings His soul and body to their lasting rest. (KJ 5.6.20–4)

The musical characteristic of King John’s ‘doleful hymn’, his swan song, can be likened to a pavan in the second part of John Dowland’s Lachrimae (1604), entitled ‘Semper Douland semper Dolens’, that is slow, solemn, minor-key music. The term ‘doleful’ is used to reinforce the emotional sadness of other terms. In the musically ‘woeful’ episode prefiguring the tragic ending of Romeo and Juliet, the clown Peter freely cites the first stanza of ‘When griping grief the heart doth wound’ from The Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576): When griping grief the heart doth wound, And doleful dumps the mind oppress, Then music with her silver sound – … With speedy help doth lend redress. (RJ 4.4.148–50, 62–3)74 Music for Peter’s song survives in two sources, reported by Sternfeld (1967: 119–22). The manuscript keyboard collection known as The Mulliner Book (c.1550–85) provides an untexted melody/accompaniment version.75 The so-called Brogyntyn lute book has the ‘accompaniment’ only with the encrypted title, ‘where gripinge griefe the har[t]e woulde’.76 The ‘sad’ music in both versions, which is essentially the same but in different keys, is slow and minor key, amply supporting the emotional connotations of ‘griping grief’ and ‘doleful dumps’. It is not certain what was intended by ‘dump’ in early modern English music. In his seminal article, John Ward argues that it was a kind of ‘deploracion’ or ‘tombeau’, in other words commemorative funeral music or lamentation.77 This meaning seems to be confirmed by the occurrence of ‘deploring dump’ in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (3.2). In order to win his lady, Silvia, ahead of his rival Valentine, Proteus recommends Thurio ply her with ‘wailful sonnets’ and emotional music: After your dire-lamenting elegies, Visit by night your lady’s chamber-window

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With some sweet consort. To their instruments Tune a deploring dump.78 The night’s dead silence Will well become such sweet-complaining grievance. This, or else nothing, will inherit her. (3.2.81–6) Through his melancholic music, Thurio hopes to communicate his love for Silvia. In song, Balthasar urges the ladies, ever deceived by fickle men, to ‘sigh no more’ and to ‘sing no more/Of dumps so dull and heavy’ (Ado 2.3.64–5). The reference to serious, sad music in such an antithetical situation enforces the tone of the emotional words, ‘sighing’ and ‘singing dumps’. Similarly, in the musical interlude cited above in Romeo and Juliet (4.4), Peter asks the musicians to play ‘some merry dump’ to alleviate his heart’s woe. The musicians refuse since there is no such thing as a merry dump. Like the dump, the dirge has funereal connotations. Specifically, it was a vernacular ‘song’ or lament used to accompany the funeral or burial procession and was characteristically a doleful, march-like piece. Untexted instrumental dirges or ‘dead marches’ conventionally concluded certain Elizabethan tragedies; for example, Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (1602) and the mock funeral march at the end of his Antonio and Mellida (1602). The burial scene at the end of Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy (1594) includes a dirge. Shakespeare’s Hamlet closes with a dead march, as does Coriolanus when the dead body of Martius is borne away and Aufidius’ rage turns to sorrow, accompanied by the ‘mournful drum’. When Capulet discovers the apparent death of his daughter, Juliet, on what should have been her wedding day, betrothed to Paris, he invokes several musical metaphors to represent his emotional transformation from joy to sadness: All things that we ordained festival, Turn from their office to black funeral. Our instruments to melancholy bells, Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast, Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change. (RJ 4.4.111–15)



Passionate words 45

Ceremonial or wedding hymns are here exchanged for mournful funeral songs, corresponding to the general usage of the term ‘dirge’. The entry of Arviragus bearing the seemingly dead Innogen/ Fidele in his arms in act 4 of Cymbeline signals a burial scene whose emotion is heightened by the inclusion of a dirge, ‘Fear no more the heat o’th’ sun’ (4.2.259), performed as a dialogue by Cymbeline’s sons, Arviragus and Guiderius. In the First Folio, the dirge is prefaced by ‘song’. Many modern critics and editors, however, argue that the dirge is spoken rather than sung, taking their cue from the Wild Boys’ exchange a few lines earlier: Arviragus: Be’t so, And let us, Polydore, though now our voices Have got the mannish crack, sing him to th’ground As once our mother; use like note and words, Save that ‘Euriphile’ must be ‘Fidele’. Guiderius: Cadwal,79 I cannot sing. I’ll weep, and word it with thee, For notes of sorrow out of tune are worse Than priests and fanes that lie. Arviragus: We’ll speak it then. (4.2.235–43) Some see this as a pragmatic interpolation responding to a theatrical exigency, that is at least one of the boy’s voices in an early production had broken and that he was unable to hold his pitch or tune.80 Others suggest the spoken dirge was intentional and not the result of casting problems. Simonds81 cites G. K. Hunter82 who refers to comparable spoken dirges in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy and Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge. In the latter, Antonio, Pandulpho and Alberto agree to recite the dirge rather than sing it because Pandulpho’s voice is ‘cracked’: Ant.: Wilt sing a dirge, boy? Pan.: No; no song: ‘twill be vile out of tune. Alb.: Indeed he’s hoarse; the poor boy’s voice is crack’d. Pan.: Why, coz, why should it not be hoarse and crack’d,

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When all the strings of nature’s symphony Are crack’d and jar? Why should his voice keep tune, When there’s no music in the breast of man? I’ll say an honest antic rhyme I have: Help me, good sorrow-mates, to give him grave. (4.2) The spoken dirge, Hunter contends, was regarded by contemporary dramatists to be ‘more sincere’ than the sung version.83 Simonds disagrees that ‘sincerity’ has much to do with the reason the dirge is spoken. She proposes, perhaps subjectively, that there is an emotional cause: The mourners in all three instances are emotionally suffering from grief, a passion that will crack their voices and spoil or untune the comforting effect of a ritual song addressed to the deceased. The dirge, as an attempt to return harmony to nature and to human souls after life’s most traumatic event, must not be out of tune in any way. Passion or emotion is forbidden during an Orphic rite of resignation to the death of natural beauty whose essence still remains alive in the intellectual world.84 Simonds’ approach may hold true for adults overcome by grief but is not convincing when applied to adolescent youths. David Lindley is persuaded by Martin Butler’s theory that the excusatory lines ‘are consonant with the play’s emphasis on the adolescent state of the two princes … Arviragus … is prepared to sing although his voice has broken, and is persuaded not to by his brother. There is some suggestion, then, that Guiderius, with his sensitivity to ‘wench-like words’, and the self-consciousness of the adolescent elder brother, fears that he would render himself effeminate or childish by singing, and needs to mark a decisive transition from their boyish past by refusing now to sing as they once did over their dead mother’.85 Whether the dirge is spoken or sung, the solemnity of its verse and emotional intensity of its utterance are not lost on its audience. As Lindley suggests, ‘to sing the words might actually to be to ameliorate their bleakness. Whether spoken or sung, however, the ritual quality of the verse, generated by its sombre



Passionate words 47

repetitions, is central to the effect of the moment’.86 Certainly, in the modern theatre there is scope for intense atmospheric mood music accompanying the recitation of the dirge, acknowledging perhaps Shakespeare’s point that under normal circumstances the dirge should be sung. Sounds evoking sadness at death or impending death are signalled by tower bells and their method of ringing. Lucrece’s despair and sense of hopelessness driving her to suicide finds resonance in bell imagery: Here feelingly she weeps Troy’s painted woes; For sorrow, like a heavy hanging bell Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; Then little strength rings out the doleful knell. (Luc 1492–5) The knell is the sounding of a deep or heavy bell rung slowly at regular intervals to announce death. Consequently, Lucrece’s ‘doleful knell’ aptly signifies her impending fate, alluded to unequivocally a little later in the poem with reference to her ‘dirge’: And now this pale swan in her wat’ry nest Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending. (Luc 1611–12) The swan, in all its magnificence sings but once, at the end of its life.87 Lucrece’s sadness can only find reconciliation in death. Such are the sentiments of the dying Queen, Katherine of Aragon, though her despair does not lead to suicide. The Queen asks her gentleman usher to: Cause the musicians play me that sad note I named my knell, whilst I sit meditating On that celestial harmony I go to. (H8 4.2.78–80) ‘Sad and solemn music’ plays, according to the stage direction (H8 4.2.80), as Katherine sleeps and encounters the ‘vision’ of the six spirits of death. The heard music of life (musica instrumentalis)

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prefigures the heavenly music (musica mundana) only the soul hears after death.88 Music and singing sad songs at the approach of death produce highly emotional states in both protagonists and audience. This is surely what happens when Desdemona sings the ‘willow song’ (Oth 4.3.38–54), although commentators vary in extremis in their interpretation of its dramatic function. Some argue that the song is a ‘kind of psycho-analytical therapy … what [Desdemona] cannot say she sings … revealing more of her subconscious awareness than any spoken words could indicate’.89 Others suggest her singing does not fulfil such a complex purpose, but rather serves to ‘release and give vent to the painful tension that has been aroused, by the outflowing of a pathos that comes like the release of tears after some terrible sorrow’.90 Lindley (2006: 150–1) argues that the song acts as ‘a brief hiatus in the terrible inevitability of the prosecution of Othello’s rage’ and should be ‘heard’ in relation to the earlier music in the play so that the ‘mutual music of love turns into the solo lament of Desdemona singing a lyric of desertion’. Eamon Grennan purports there is both a localized and a larger-scale emotional significance to the effect of Desdemona’s singing: What moves us most … is the rise and fall of voices engaged in intimate conversation; the brief, beautiful pause in the center of action the song makes; the reassuring world of ordinary objects alluded to; the mounting intensity of Emilia’s radical defense of wives; the dying fall of Desdemona’s concluding prayer. Understood, heard in this way, the scene composes both a ‘theatrical’ and a ‘dramatic’ interlude suggesting peace and freedom, within the clamorous procession of violent acts and urgent voices.91 For the distinction between ‘theatre’ and ‘drama’, Grennan depends on Keir Elam who offers ‘the complex of phenomena associated with the performer-audience transaction’ for ‘theatre’, and ‘the network of factors relating to the represented fiction’ for ‘drama’.92 Clearly, ‘theatre’ is especially applicable when it comes to performed song and its intended effect. Were the song to have no



Passionate words 49

more than a ‘dramatic’ existence, its emotional consequence would be entirely changed. The situation with the 1622 Quarto tends to support this. Here the ‘Willow’ song is omitted and although this version is never ‘performed’, cutting the scene removes ‘one of the most dramatically compelling scenes in Shakespeare’93 and lessens the impact of the tragedy as it reaches its climactic conclusion.

Chapter 3

‘A delightful measure or a dance’: Dance music

Dancing and allusions to dance in Shakespeare have customarily involved notions of concord and harmony, as expressed essentially in two literary sources of the period, Elyot’s The Boke Named the Governour (1531) and Sir John Davies’ 131 stanza poem, ‘Orchestra Or a Poeme of Dauncing’ (1596).94 Elyot presumes that, In every daunse, of a moste auncient custome, there daunseth to gether a man and a woman, holding eche other by the hande or the arme, whiche betokeneth concorde … Wherfore, whan we beholde a man and a woman daunsinge to gether, let us suppose there to be a concorde of all the saide qualities, beinge ioyned to gether. (fol. 82v–3). Concord was signified not only in the unity of bodily movement, conjoined by hand or arm, but also in the harmony of the dance with its rhythmical measure, its music. Unity was thought to derive from the cosmic dance, the ‘rhythmic movement of all things in relation to one another’,95 expounded in humanist philosophy, as Elyot recalls: The interpretours of Plato do thinke that the wonderfull and incomprehensible ordre of the celestiall bodies, I meane sterres and planettes, and their motions harmonicall, gave to them that intentifly, and by the deepe serche of raison beholde their coursis, in the sondrye diversities of nombre and tyme, a fourme of imitation of a semblable motion, whiche they called daunsinge or saltation. (fol. 77v–8)



Dance music 51

That dancing, with its derivation from celestial order and harmony, was good for soul and body was promoted by Renaissance humanists advocating the Pythagorean primacy of number.96 Because number (‘measure’) and design (‘steps’) delineate its form, dance was thought to engender harmony and order. According to Sir John Davies, dance originated when natural order displaced primeval discord: Dauncing (bright Lady) then began to be, When the first seedes whereof the world did spring, The Fire, Ayre, Earth and Water did agree, By Loves perswasion, Natures mighty King, To leave their first disordred combating; And in a daunce such measure to observe, As all the world their motion should preserve. (stanza 17)97 Having identified the cosmic dance, Davies goes on to extol the benefits of concordant dance: Loe this is Dauncings true nobilitie. Dauncing the child of Musick and of Love, Dauncing it selfe both love and harmony, Where all agree, and all in order move; Dauncing the Art that all Arts doe approve: The faire Caracter of the worlds consent, The heav’ns true figure, and th’earths ornament. (stanza 96)98 In effect, this is an apology for courtly, social dancing and does not necessarily embrace popular dance. Skiles Howard argues that in Shakespeare’s theatre, dancing ‘was a metonym of the interactions and circulations in the society it reflected and generated. Courtly dancing reinscribed hierarchy through codified movement and popular dancing celebrated affinity with traditional motions’.99 In drawing a distinction between choreographed and rehearsed courtly dance, accompanied by instrumental music, and improvised outdoor popular song and dance, Howard proposes that the bergomask of the ‘rude mechanicals’ decentres the ‘cosmic’ dance

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of Oberon and Titania, in the context of ‘the cultural opposition associated with dancing in the play, [since] the dance of Titania and Oberon articulates the subordination of popular culture to a patriarchal elite’.100 The dance of Oberon and Titania is not so much a manifestation of reconciliation as an explication of the ‘conditions upon which concord is achieved’, as Howard suggests.101 If dancing ‘betokeneth concorde’ then the music of the dance auralizes its harmony, and love symbolizes unity. Consequently, according to Christianized Pythagorean philosophy, the dance ‘betokeneth’ the creation of life, or as Davies intimates in Orchestra, through Antinous’ attentions on Penelope, This wondrous miracle did Love devise, For Dauncing is Loves proper exercise. (stanza 18)102 When young lovers join together in the dance, harmony and unity begets matrimony and new life. Elyot declared, It is diligently to be noted that the associatinge of man and woman in daunsing, they both observinge one nombre and tyme in their mevynges, was nat begonne without a speciall consideration, as well for the necessarye coniunction of those two persones, as for the intimation of sondry vertues, whiche be by them represented. And for as moche as by the association of a man and a woman in daunsinge may be signified matrimonie. (fol. 82) In Romeo and Juliet, the star-crossed lovers, as Philip McGuire reminds us, ‘first exchange words, hands, and lips against the backdrop of the dancing’ (1.5),103 the first occurrence of practical dancing in Shakespeare’s plays.104 Although the dance does not betoken concord but rather serves to image the play’s pervasive irony. McGuire suggests that the various dances in Romeo and Juliet, far from bringing unity signify disunity: ‘the dancing which is the occasion of the lovers’ meeting accentuates the fact that the other pairings which emerge during the play do not moderate extremes



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but intensify them’.105 The outcome is that whereas the lovers meet in dance they end motionless, paired in the ultimate dance. The dancing in Romeo and Juliet occurs comparatively early in the play, prefiguring the symbolic irony of what is to come. The seeming concord and harmony of dance are dissolved in the discord and ruin that develop during the unfolding tragedy. This scheme recurs in other plays. According to Brissenden (1981: 75), the pattern, established in Romeo and Juliet, is elaborated in Macbeth by the occult significance of the number three; in Antony and Cleopatra a drunken dance is the nexus of plot relationships and a symbol for a falling world, and in Timon of Athens a masque of Amazons reflects on the hero’s present generosity and his future disenchantment. The figurative dissolution of the harmony of the dance into discord is developed in the last plays, notably Pericles and The Winter’s Tale. In the first reference to dance in Pericles, music and dance combine in opposition to their norm to figure disharmony and disruption. When the Prince of Tyre, Pericles, unravels the mystery of the riddle that would have won him the beautiful daughter of King Antiochus, he reveals the incestuous relationship between father and daughter. Brissenden (1981: 77) suggests Pericles’ reaction ‘resounding with cosmic implications’ recalls Robert Fludd’s divine monochord in his Utriusque cosmi majoris scilicet … technica historia (Oppenheim, 1617–19), vol. 1 p. 90,106 when he says, You’re a fair viol, and your sense the strings Who, fingered to make man his lawful music, Would draw heav’n down and all the gods to hearken, But, being played upon before your time, Hell only danceth at so harsh a chime. (Scene 1.124–8) This depiction of the princess, according to Brissenden (1981: 77), ‘pictures monstrous disharmony, pointedly opposing music’s affinity with heaven and the whole frame of order to the discord

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of hell’. Fludd describes his illustration as: ‘We set forth here quite precisely the monochord of the universe with its proportions, consonances, and intervals; and we show that its motive force is extra-mundane.’107 The four elements, starting with earth, are at the base/bass of the gamut, comprising the 15 ‘chorda’ or intervals of Morley’s ‘Systema harmonicum’ in the ‘diatonic mode’.108 Above them are the seven planets, starting with the Moon and ascending to Saturn, with the Sun in the middle. At the top are the three regions of heaven. The right hand of God stretches out from a cloud to turn the tuning peg, an image recalled in Othello when Iago threatens to destroy the musical harmony of Desdemona and Othello. Dance and music combine eventually in Pericles to restore order out of chaos, when in the penultimate scene (Scene 21) Marina is reunited with her father, Pericles, having awoken him in song and together embraced in celestial music, the music of the spheres in cosmic dance. In The Winter’s Tale, dance and music act as both images of disharmony and ultimately harmony. In the first musicless part of the play, the figurative dance of Leontes’ emotions results in the disharmony of king and kingdom. It is only the summer warmth of Polixenes’ Kingdom of Bohemia that dispels the winter chill of Leontes’ Sicilia through song and dance, when the wife of the Old Shepherd ‘welcomed all, served all,/Would sing her song and dance her turn’ (4.4.57–8), as Perdita should do now. The first dance at the rustic feast in 4.4 is of shepherds and shepherdesses, led by Florizel and Perdita in proclamation of the purity of their love. An old English ‘country dance’ symbolically and literally unites the two lovers. Brissenden (1981: 89) suggests a ring dance, a ‘brawl’. With reference to the well-known engraving, ‘Court and Country Dancers’ by Theodore de Bry (1561–1623),109 the juxtaposition of the patriarchal formality of the courtly dance with the companionable spontaneity of the country dance aptly represents the court versus country situation at this point. The entry of the seedy pedlar, announced by the excitable servant, ‘modulates the tone of the scene’, as Brissenden puts it,110 ‘from the innocence of rustic revelry to the crude coarseness of the songs of Autolycus’. Shortly after, the dance of the twelve countrymen, ‘three carters,



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three shepherds, three neatherds [dairymen], and three swineherds that have made themselves all men of hair’ (4.4.311–13) symbolizes and brings disorder. That the herdsmen are costumed as satyrs conventionally confirms that role, as in contemporary masques and entertainments. In Ben Jonson’s masque, Oberon, The Fairy Prince, performed at court on 1 January 1611, the antimasque of unruly satyrs prefigures the order and authority of the main masque, brought by Prince Henry, who played the ‘fairie king Oberon’.111 In Shakespeare’s play, the wild satyrs with their ‘gallimaufry of gambols’ disrupt order and in their acrobatic dance symbolize the emotional disunity brought by Polixenes. In a reversal of the masque convention,112 where the person of highest authority imposes union and harmony, here the king manages to upset those around him and denounces Florizel, thereby alienating Perdita. It is only his father’s music, Florizel confides in Camillo, that will restore order and harmony: It is my father’s music To speak your deeds, not little of his care To have them recompensed as thought on. (4.4.506–8) As in The Tempest, music rather than dance brings final reconciliation and harmony. No specific kind can be identified with the satyrs’ dance in The Winter’s Tale. Nor should it be. This is a one-off, grotesque dance characterized by stop-starts and balletic leaps. In many instances in Shakespeare’s plays, named dances can be assigned to specific references. Brissenden (1981: 135–6) offers a list of suggested dances for the plays as a ‘basis for choreographers and directors’. These include coranto, brawl (branle), pavan, galliard and carole (song and circle dance) among a number of Elizabethan dances.113 That the characteristics of these dances were known to contemporary audiences is attested to by cryptic references such as the density of occurrences in one scene (1.3) in Twelfth Night. In it, Sir Toby facetiously quizzes Sir Andrew about his supposed accomplishments in courtly dancing. After vainly boasting he delights ‘in masques and revels sometimes altogether’ (1.3.94–5), Sir Toby asks

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Sir Andrew ‘What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight?’ (1.3.100). The ‘foolish knight’ replies ‘Faith, I can cut a caper.’ (1.3.101) and continuing the dance theme, ‘I think I have the back-trick simply as strong as any man in Illyria’ (1.3.103–4). Why then, Sir Toby enquires, does Sir Andrew hide his talents under a bushel: Why dost thou not go to church in a galliard, and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig. I would not so much as make water but in a cinquepace. What dost thou mean? Is it a world to hide virtues in? I did think by the excellent constitution of thy leg it was formed under the star of a galliard … Let me see thee caper. Ha, higher! (1.3.107–12, 118–19) Shakespeare cites these dances advisedly since each have distinctive rhythms and steps. Sir John Davies describes the galliard as a ‘swift and wandring daunce … With passages uncertain to and fro’ and comments that it is a ‘gallant dance, that lively doth bewray/A spirit and a virtue Masculine’.114 This lively, triple-time dance involving quick crossing and stepping on alternate feet (‘grues’)115 and a high leap (‘saut majeur’) was best suited to young and nimble practitioners. Sir Toby’s irony would not be lost on a contemporary audience. It is compounded when Sir Andrew claims, moreover, he can perform the energetic caper, a dance step comprising a leap and a crossing of the feet while in the air. The caper was one of various ‘tricks’ a skilled young man could perform to demonstrate his prowess. Another was the ‘back-trick’ at which Sir Andrew of course excelled. In addition to irony, bawdy puns come thick and fast. If a quick dance is unsuited for going to church then an even livelier one is more incongruous for the return. The coranto was an exceptional dance, characterized by ‘traversing and running’ and some sliding within a triple metre. Sir John Davies draws attention to its principal features: What shall I name those currant travases, That on a triple Dactyle foote doe run Close by the ground with slyding passages, Wherein that Dauncer greatest prayse hath won



Dance music 57 Which with best order can all orders shun: For every where he wantonly must range, And turne, and wind, with unexpected change. (stanza 69)116

Another lively dance is the jig which Morley (1597: 181) includes as one of ‘many other kindes of daunces’ after his descriptions of courtly pavans, galliards, almains, branles, etc. Anything more unsuited to walking is this dance with its popular associations and variable rhythms. The ‘cinquepace’ (cinque pas) were the five dance steps of the galliard and tordion. According to Arbeau, they comprised four movements (hops and kicks on alternate feet) and the ‘cadence’ (a leap and rest or ‘dying fall’). Seemingly, Sir Andrew’s act of urinating is elegantly choreographed. The scene ends with Sir Andrew, prompted by Sir Toby, trying to cut a caper. Differences in pace and step characteristics define the references to dance in the passage in Much Ado About Nothing when Beatrice advises Hero about the pros and cons of love and marriage: For hear me, Hero, wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace. The first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig – and full as fantastical; the wedding mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry. And then comes repentance, and with his bad legs falls into the cinquepace faster and faster till he sink into his grave. (2.1.60–6) Why Shakespeare should specify the ‘Scotch’ jig is not clear. Baskervill suggests it was ‘especially spectacular’117 as Florio implies when he described it as ‘full of leapings’.118 It does not seem to have had a clearly identifiable form, but as Morley (1597: 182) warns it did have a predetermined fixed form rather than an improvised free pattern: I dare boldly affirme, that looke which is hee who thinketh himselfe the best descanter of all his neighbors, enioyne him to make but a scottish Iygge, he will grossely erre in the true nature and qualitie of it.

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Richard Farnaby’s ‘Nobodyes Gigge’ (FWVB II, pp. 162–5) may represent the musical style with its basic 2 + 2 phrase (strain) structure and simple binary rhythm (‘Scots measure’). If the ‘Scotch jig’ is the ‘Countrey Daunce’ of love then the ‘measure’ is the stately dance of civility and marriage. Sir John Davies places the Measures after the wild country dances or rounds and alludes to its characteristics: But after these, as men more civill grew He did more grave and solemne measures frame, With such faire order and proportion trew And correspondence every way the same, That no fault finding eye did ever blame: For every eye was moved at the sight With sober wondering, and with sweet delight. (stanza 65)119 The occurrence in Much Ado About Nothing is one of the few, possibly only two,120 cases when Shakespeare intends a specific rather than a generic meaning for ‘measure’, dependent on musico-choreographical characteristics.121 Robert Mullally states that the ‘measures’ as a species ‘were a late 16th-century derivation’ of the fifteenth-century French social basse danse.122 This may account for Shakespeare’s description of the dances as ‘full of … ancientry’, or it may be an allusion to ‘The Old Measures’, a term cited in a description of the revels Gesta Graiorum mounted at Court by Gray’s Inn in 1594/95: Then His Highness called for the Master of the Revels, and willed him to pass the time in Dancing: So his Gentlemen-Pensioners and Attendants, very gallantly appointed, in thirty Couples, danced the Old Measures, and their Galliards, and other kind of Dances, revelling until it was very late123 and found in contemporary manuscript collections referring to the most significant Elizabethan set of measures consisting of eight dances, comprising four pavan types and four almain types.124 While each of the dances was distinguished by musical and choreographical detail all were ‘stately’ and comparatively slow.



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The faster galliard tempo of the cinquepace contrasts with the measure but does not match the jig. Harry Berger proposes that, In Beatrice’s formula, marriage, the afterlife of the wedding, is renamed repentance, and its tempo is divided into the two mutually intensifying rhythms suggested by placing [Sir] Toby’s pronunciation [‘sink-a-pace’] in tandem with Beatrice’s description: on the one hand, the decelerating sink-a-pace of the yoke of boredom, the long dull anticlimax to the fantastical jig and stately measure; on the other hand, the frenetic reaction in which the penitent tries ever more desperately and vainly to escape back into jigtime, tries to make himself giddy with acceleration and spin himself into forgetfulness.125 The bad-legged dancer’s perspective is male, doomed to dance away his life in an unhappy and frustrating marriage until death do them part. Use of ‘measure’ as a synonym for ‘dance’ is exploited extensively in the Muscovite masque towards the end of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Punning on ‘measure’ as distance and dance, the King of Navarre attempts in vain to woo the Princess of France. The King, unaware he is not addressing the Princess but a masked Rosaline, tries to impress: Say to her we have measured many miles To tread a measure with her on this grass. (5.2.183–4) In response to Rosaline’s disparaging and elusive tone – ‘My face is but a moon, and clouded, too’ (5.2.202) – the King asks that he be granted at least a part of a dance with the Princess: Then in our measure do but vouchsafe one change. (5.2.208) As well as a pun on the moon’s phases, ‘change’ here as in contemporary plays referring to ‘measures’, according to Mullally, indicates the figure or section of a dance with its variety of directional movement, a feature Sir John Davies notes when he says of the measures that they are ‘So full of change and rare varieties’.126

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This is the sense in Queen Katherine’s ‘vision’ in All Is True (Henry VIII) when the ‘six personages clad in white robes … dance; and at certain changes, the first two hold a spare garland over her head at which the other four make reverent curtsies’ (4.2.82.SD). Rosaline bids music play but does not grant the King his or her ‘changes’, either of the moon or of the measures. This may be a justifiable instance when music underscores the dialogue of the play. Rosaline’s line is an instruction to the musicians who accompany the blackamoors to begin their music. When Rosaline does take hands as in dance, it is to curtsy and end the dance. Because the ladies know the deceit behind the lords’ masks, the ‘dance’ acts as a mockery to reality, to order, and prepares for the solemnity of what is to follow and which concludes the play. The masque of Russians in Love’s Labour’s Lost inverts the sexual norm of the Jacobean type which emphasized decorum in a patriarchal society. As Lindley (2006: 130) puts it, It is precisely symptomatic of female agency and control that the ladies refuse to participate in a courtly dance which, according to Elyot, would confirm their subordination. Masque episodes in Shakespeare’s plays observe some of the conventions and practices of the courtly masque and entertainment as portrayed in music, dance and spectacle, but also act as an allusion to masque rather than behave as masques in themselves. Because of their topicality it may be that these episodes varied between productions of the play, either as insertions or alterations.127 The masque in Love’s Labour’s Lost features ‘blackamoors’ (black Africans) both to enhance the exotic element and whose inclusion ‘glances at racial subjugation’.128 Their presence may recall an earlier entertainment done at court or at one of the Inns of Court. Shakespeare’s play dates from sometime before 1598, the date of the first surviving quarto (an earlier one is lost). Similar symbolism recurs in Ben Jonson’s Masque of Blackness of 1605. The masque printed in the Folio The Tempest may not be the original. Tiffany Stern argues that the surviving masque does not ‘sit comfortably in the text’ because the ‘dissimilarity between what Prospero asks to



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happen, and what then does happen, implies that the performance prepared for by the play is different from the one now found in it’.129 Whatever the original, commentators suggest that ‘details of Shakespeare’s masque may derive’ from Ben Jonson’s Hymenaei (1605).130 In addition to specifying costumes and setting, masque scenes sometimes identify accompanying instruments. In Timon of Athens, ‘Enter a masque of Ladies [as] Amazons, with lutes in their hands, dancing and playing’ (1.2.123.SD). The accompaniment to the masque dances, or more likely their conclusion, is also specified: ‘The Lords rise from table with much adoring of Timon; and to show their loves each singles out an Amazon, and all dance, men with women, a lofty strain or two to the hautboys, and cease’ (1.2.137.SD). Bowed string instruments, referred to variously as viols, violins and fiddles, customarily accompanied social dancing. Fiddles are also identified in country dancing contexts. Although music for dances is frequently found in lute and cittern sources, plucked stringed instruments were rarely used to accompany English dances. Lutes were normally employed for Italian court dances. As Mullally notes, Shakespeare seems to have had in mind an Italian dance for Richard, Duke of Gloucester when he capers ‘to the lascivious pleasing of a lute’.131 There is evidence to suggest wind instruments were used for dances in early modern plays. Stage directions for ‘flutes’ in Marston, The Dutch Courtezan 2.1., cornetts in Dekker, Blurt, Master Constable 2.2. and ‘hobaies’ in Wilmot et al, The Tragedy of Tancred and Gismund, 3, according to Mullally attest to this practice.132 With Shakespeare, dance is inextricably linked with images and the concept of harmony, beit when dance is explicitly invoked as it is extensively in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or implicitly as it is in Love’s Labour’s Lost where no actual dancing takes place. In all the play genres dancing and allusions to dance convey local and structural meaning. As Brissenden (1981: 110) concludes ‘allusions to dance, the idea of dancing and the dance itself essentially form part of the dramatic texture of the plays, adding to characterization, illuminating the theme of order and contributing to the structure’.

Chapter 4

‘Braying trumpets and loud churlish drums’: The music of war

In his opening chapter of Shakespeare’s Military World, Paul Jorgensen argues that Shakespeare embraced the ‘Renaissance concept of war as a musical harmony’,133 most frequently ‘warres sad harmony’.134 War, according to Renaissance poets and philosophers, was a ‘harmoniously ordered institution in which armies move as in a dance’.135 In his ‘apology’ for dancing, his poem Orchestra (1596), Sir John Davies articulates war as an expression of dance: For after Townes and Kingdomes founded were, Betweene great States arose well-ordered war, Wherein most perfect measure doth appeare Whether their well-set ranks respected are In Quadrant forme or Semicircular: Or else the March, when all the troups advaunce And to the Drum in gallant order daunce. (stanza 87)136 The corollary of this, Jorgensen suggests, is that it was ‘an easy step from the notion of warfare as a musically guided dance to the more imaginative perception that it was itself a music’.137 In extolling the king’s mastery of ‘arts’, Canterbury reminds Ely that when it comes to war, List his discourse of war, and you shall hear A fearful battle rendered you in music. (H5 1.1.44–5) Exactly what that ‘music’ or ‘musical discourse’ was, orchestrated by specific instruments both visually and aurally, is not straight-



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forward. The music of war or ‘clamor of battle’ is alluded to widely in Renaissance literature and finds expression in Shakespeare. In King John, the newly-wed Blanche begs her husband not to wage war on her uncle: Upon thy wedding day? Against the blood that thou hast married? What, shall our feast be kept with slaughtered men? Shall braying trumpets and loud churlish drums, Clamours of hell, be measures to our pomp? (3.1.226–30) The ‘musical’ instruments of war, trumpets and drums, are identified as the ‘clamours of hell’ because they are associated with death and destruction. Blanche asks if the dance of war must also be the ‘measures’ of their marital festivities. The association of the clamorous instruments of war and death is found elsewhere, for example when Macduff exhorts Malcolm, Siward and their army to engage in battle with Macbeth: Make all our trumpets speak, give them all breath, Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death. (Mac 5.6.9–10) King Richard threatens to silence the chidings and bitter words of Queen Margaret, Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York with the clamorous noise of war: A flourish, trumpets! Strike alarums, drums! Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women Rail on the Lord’s anointed. Strike, I say! Either be patient and entreat me fair, Or with the clamorous report of war Thus will I drown your exclamations. (R3 4.4.149–54) Both the figurative and actual ‘music’ of war articulates the occurrences of martial scenes and events. The noisy rhetoric of the Bastard Falconbridge almost outdoes his challenge to the Dauphin:

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Dauphin: We will attend to neither, – Strike up the drums, and let the tongue of war Plead for our interest and our being here. Bastard: Indeed your drums, being beaten, will cry out; And so shall you, being beaten. Do but start An echo with the clamour of thy drum, And even at hand a drum is ready braced That shall reverberate all as loud as thine. Sound but another, and another shall As loud as thine rattle the welkin’s ear, And mock the deep-mouthed thunder. (KJ 5.2.163–73) The great ‘noise’ of war, especially exciting to audiences in the outdoor theatres,138 included not only the mainstream instruments – trumpets, drums, fife – but also ordnance and the exceptional sounds of nature, thunder and lightning and violent tempests. Petruccio asserts that the ‘wild din of a woman’s tongue’ could not distract him since he has experienced the noise-scape of battle: Have I not heard the sea, puffed up with winds, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field, And heaven’s artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in a pitched battle heard Loud ‘larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets’ clang? (Shrew 1.2.196–201) Othello’s music pivots from the pomp and circumstance of war to personal strife (‘discord’) and destruction, as he bids: Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content, Farewell the plumed troops and the big wars That makes ambition virtue! O, farewell, Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, th’ ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!



The music of war 65 And O, you mortal engines whose rude throats Th’immortal Jove’s dread clamours counterfeit (Oth 3.3.353–61)

The ‘mortal engines’ of war – the ordnance – are drowned by the noise of thunderclaps. Othello retreats from the ‘music of war’, the controlling harmony with which he is familiar, to the inner music of the self, emotional music which is unpredictable and reactive. The noise of ordnance and thunder of the heavens are elemental in Shakespeare’s stylized ‘music of war’. In Henry the Fifth (3.3) the siege of Harfleur is not only orchestrated by the actual sounds of trumpets and drums, the noise of ordnance and the terrified besieged citizens also colour that ‘musical’ texture. The ‘music of war’ constitutes a symbolic opposite to the ‘music of peace’ when Shakespeare investigates peace as an alternative to war. In Othello, the Moor bids farewell to the symbols of war without mentioning their opposites. In Richard III, the Duke specifies the antithetical symbols, the two musics: Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruised arms hung up for monuments, Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front, And now – instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries – He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. (1.1.5–13) Shakespeare’s dismissive tone of peace is consistent with contemporaneous anxieties about privileging ‘peace’ (indolence) above ‘war’ (positive action). As Nick de Somogyi points out: the soliloquy which opens [Richard III] apes a convention of soldierly admonition to the complacences of peace which was to find dramatic example in A Larum to London. Riche had sensed his own Allarme to England (1578) falling on deaf ears, and the preface to his next work, His Farewell to Militarie Profession (1581),

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repeated the ‘slender estimation’ (B ii v) and ‘small recompence’ (B iii v) bestowed on soldiers … it begins where Richard III does. ‘I see now it is lesse painfull to followe a Fiddle in a gentlewomans chamber … then to marche after a Drumme in the feeld’ (A ii r); ‘if you will followe myne advise … laie aside your weapons, hang up your armours by the walles, and learne an other while … to Pipe, to Feddle, to Syng, to Daunce, to lye, to forge, to flatter’ (B iii v).139 When Volumnia advises her son, Coriolanus, to adopt a peaceful approach to appeasing the plebeians rather than his customary warlike aggression, Coriolanus grudgingly replies, Well, I must do’t. Away, my disposition; and possess me Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turned, Which choired with my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch or the virgin voice That babies lull asleep. (Cor 3.2.110–15) Claudio’s love for Hero is met with disdain by Benedick in oppositional imagery: I have known when there was no music with/him but the drum and the fife, and now had he rather hear the/tabor and the pipe. (Ado 2.3.12–14) Here, typically, Shakespeare rehearses his stance on war. The former soldier falling in love and turning his back on war is folly and subject to scorn. The lure of domestic comforts and marital affection in contrast to masculine soldierly exploits is impressed by Glendwˆr upon Mortimer in richly musical terms towards the end of 3.1 in The History of Henry the Fourth (1H4) as Lady Percy tries to dissuade Hotspur from his military activity. Gabriel Egan notes that ‘in Shakespeare, opposition to military prowess usually comes from men too cowardly to fight, such as John Oldcastle/Falstaff in the Henry IV plays and Parolles in All’s Well that Ends Well. Since



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pacifism is unpopular, these characters also hypocritically extol their military prowess in over-compensation for their cowardice.’140 In All’s Well that Ends Well, he argues that Shakespeare not only disparages ‘peace/love’, he also discourses on ‘the perversion of values inherent in soldiering as an end in itself’,141 taking his cue from Robin Headlam Wells142 who ‘argued that in 1608 Shakespeare entered the public debate about the social danger of heroic values with Coriolanus which specifically engaged with the cult of chivalry surrounding young Prince Henry in order to denounce it’.143 Egan proposes that Shakespeare’s ‘interest in what soldiers do when they are not soldiering’144 finds precedent in John Lyly’s Campaspe (1584): Hephestion: Is the warlike sound of drum and trump turned to the soft noise of lyre and lute, the neighing of barbed steeds, whose loudness filled the air with terror and whose breaths dimmed the sun with smoke, converted to delicate tunes and amorous glances? (2.2.40–5)145 Unlike Shakespeare, according to Egan, Lyly ‘offers a counterargument. In a remarkable scene in Campaspe [5.3.5–25] two ordinary soldiers, Milectus and Phrygius, come to agree with the courtesan Laïs that peace is better than war’.146 Lyly concludes: Instead of alarums you shall have dances, for hot battles with fierce men gentle skirmishes with fair women … you cannot conceive the pleasure of peace unless you despise the rudeness of war. (5.3.23–5) For Shakespeare, it is Coriolanus’ reneging on his promise to his mother that extols the preference of masculine aggression to childish reconciliation: I will not do’t, Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth, And by my body’s action teach my mind A most inherent baseness. (Cor 3.2.120–4)

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If war signifies masculinity for Shakespeare, then the soundscape of his ‘music of war’, according to Smith, represents that image: ‘The voice parts in Richard III are scored overwhelmingly in the male register; the sound effects – flourishes, trumpets, sennets, drums, alarums – are all assaultive’.147 He cites 4.4 as an epitome of ‘this aural design’ and concludes that the play is dominated by the bass clef of adult male voices and the noise of flourishes and loud battle. In this scene it is eventually the drum, orchestrating Richard’s ‘march on’, that silences ‘these tell-tale women’. This accords with Jorgensen’s remark that the ‘drum, rather curiously in view of modern standards, was a more precise as well as a more connotative military instrument than the trumpet’.148 When Bertram is appointed general of the cavalry to the Duke of Florence, he pronounces his dedication to war in opposition to the distractions of peace: This very day, Great Mars, I put myself into thy file. Make me but like my thoughts, and I shall prove A lover of thy drum, hater of love. (AWW 3.3.8–11) The regimental drum was ‘second only to its colors as an emblem of honor and tradition’.149 The ‘instrument of honour’ becomes Paroles’ ‘instrument of dishonour’ when he loses the drum and affects deep melancholy (AWW 3.6).150 The entry of drum and colours as both visual and aural signifiers is exploited most succinctly in Folio King Lear, obviating twentieth-century directors’ and editors’ obsession with augmentation of Shakespeare’s stage directions. The cues for drum[mer] or ‘drum and colour [bearer]’ to enter accompanying ‘soldiers’ acts as an ‘effective theatrical metonymy’ in the build-up to a battle.151 The opening salvoes of the conflict between the French and British armies are effectively fired at the beginning of 4.4 when the stage direction instructs, ‘Enter, with drum and colors, Cordelia, Doctor, and soldiers’. Shortly after, a messenger informs Cordelia that the ‘British powers are marching hitherward’ (Lear 4.4.22). The tension mounts in 4.6 as Edgar responds to the ‘drum afar off’.152



The music of war 69 Give me your hand. Far off, methinks. I hear the beaten drum. (Lear 4.6.279–80)

The reconciliation between Lear and Cordelia intervenes before the two armies are ready to engage at the beginning of the unbearably tragic final act of the play. ‘Enter, with drum and colors, Edmund, Regan, Gentleman, and soldiers’ (5.1.OSD) signals the arrival of the British forces. Not long after, the French appear: ‘Enter, with drum and colors, Albany, Goneril, and soldiers’ (5.1.17.SD). A little while later, Lear, Cordelia and their supporters make their appearance and depart: ‘Alarum within. Enter with drum and colors, Lear, Cordelia, and soldiers, over the stage; and exeunt’ (5.2.OSD). The battle is not fought on-stage. In a master-stroke of theatrical inventiveness, observing verbal representational and diegesis skills, Shakespeare lets us imagine it through the mind of the blind Gloucester, orchestrated by the ‘music of war’: ‘Alarum and retreat within. Re-enter Edgar’. Edgar then reports to his father what has happened: King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta’en. (Lear 5.2.6) At this point, ‘Enter, in conquest, with drum and colors, Edmund, Lear, Cordelia, prisoners; Captain, Soldiers, etc.’ (5.3.OSD). Thereafter, the heraldic trumpet replaces the drum of war until the final tragedy and the muffled drum accompanies the concluding dead march. One play in particular that arguably demonstrates vulgarity and weakness because it literally portrays violence and battle scenes as part of the drama on stage, rather than representing it skilfully in dialogue, is The First Part of Henry the Sixth.153 The result is that the ‘music of war’ plays a prominent role. Uniquely in the Shakespeare canon, a dead march opens the play, accompanying the funeral procession for King Henry V. Subsequently, the noise of military activity, flourishes, alarums, retreats, blowing of horns, striking of drums, a peal of ordnance and a parley, punctuate the scenes as the play unfolds. In one scene (3.7), Shakespeare depends on the distinction between rhythmical drum beats to signal the identity of the opposing armies marching:

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Here sound an English march. (3.7.30.SD) Followed two lines later by: [Here sound a] French march. (3.7.32.SD) Each stage direction is preceded by explanatory dialogue: Hark, by the sound of drum you may perceive Their powers [English troops] are marching unto Paris-ward (3.7.29–30) For the French, Now in the rearward comes the Duke [of Alençon] and his [troops] (3.7.33) There is no indication that English and French troops march across the stage; the economy of the stage directions should suffice in musicking Joan la Pucelle’s observations.154 Similar identity-by-drum signals punctuate observations made by certain characters in other plays. Fluellen knows his King is coming when he hears his drum (H5 3.6.79). Interestingly, it is the infantry drum and not the cavalry trumpet that identifies the English king. In a scene involving complicated stage activity (3H6 5.1), the mistaken identification of a drum signal leads to panic and defeat. Warwick hears a drum and presumes his support is approaching in the shape of the Duke of Clarence and his soldiers. In fact, as Somerville points out, the march cannot be Clarence since the drum sounds from the wrong direction. Warwick’s ‘unlooked-for friends’ turn out to be Edward and Richard’s hostile forces as a trumpet flourish announces their arrival at the city walls. If the rhythmical drum identifies the ‘music’ of the march, the brazen sonorities of the trumpet herald specifics of war and ceremony. That the Renaissance trumpet was the most essential ingredient, if not the most popular, among Elizabethan acting companies is suggested by the inventory of the stage properties,



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costumes and play-books of the Admirals Men, drawn up by Philip Henslowe in March 1598.155 Together with ‘a treble vial, a basse vial, a bandore, a sytteren’ are listed ‘iij trumpettes and a drum’.156 In the diary (‘7th of february 1599’), Henslowe records the purchase of two trumpets.157 What kind of trumpets they were is impossible to know, but given Renaissance practice they were most likely instruments of different sizes and therefore pitch.158 That they were indispensible in Shakespeare’s theatre is confirmed by the number of cues and references to trumpets – the most often cited instrument.159 The role of the trumpet in Shakespeare’s plays as both iconic prop and aural intensifier has been discussed widely and diversely by modern commentators. It is generally agreed that trumpets functioned as specific entry and exit signifiers, especially for royalty and high-ranking military officers, and as specific sounds for conflict and military action. To what extent a special trumpet signal identified an individual is difficult to ascertain. Lines such as ‘The trumpets show the Emperor is at hand’ (Titus 5.3.16) and ‘The Moor – I know his trumpet’ (Oth 2.1.177), ‘Hark. You know by their trumpets’ (AWW 3.5.8), ‘Hark, the Duke’s trumpets’ (Lear 2.1.80), immediately following trumpet cues confirm the general assertion that characters of rank are announced by trumpets. How effectively an audience would recognize specific signals such as a sennet or tucket as opposed to the more general flourish is uncertain. From what little evidence survives, we know that the sarasinetta – the probable precursor of the sennet – was distinct from other signals.160 It was rhythmically more elaborate and exploited the harmonic possibilities of the natural trumpet a little more than the single note flourish. It was used to announce the presence of a person of the highest nobility. Bendinelli’s Fanfare Sarasinetta, for example, was written for the coronation ceremony of the Venetian Doge, Marino Grimani, in 1595. If no king or emperor was available then a sennet could accompany a prince or victorious military general. Clearly, a hierarchy of trumpet signals existed and most commentators believe Shakespeare used that knowledge to effective advantage. No references to sennets occur in the dialogue of the plays, but there is a number of stage direc-

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tions notably in the histories and tragedies. Frances Shirley argues that King Lear’s standing is reflected in the trumpet signals he is accorded. At the first entry of Lear and his retinue, a sennet is sounded (Lear 1.1.31). According to Shirley, It is sounded for the old King’s only entrance as the ruler of England. After he has divided his country between Goneril and Regan, he leaves with only a flourish. Later in the play, hunting horns announce his approach. The change in fanfare goes handin-hand with the diminishing respect accorded to the old man by his two daughters.161 Could an audience have recognized this? Notwithstanding, its application adds a sophisticated musical dimension to the diminishing status of the old king and the unfolding tragedy. With regard to the exceptional status of the sennet, Shirley suggests that this signal can also work as ‘an ironic reminder’, for example, ‘of a weak monarch’s inability to rule despite his outward display of power’, as in the Henry VI plays.162 When Macbeth first enters ‘as King’ accompanied by Lady Macbeth ‘as Queen’, the sennet sounded (Mac 3.1.10.SD) could operate on both a literal and ironic level, the latter reminding us of the usurping nature of Macbeth’s position, especially as King Duncan’s entry and exit in 1.4 had been signalled by no more than a flourish. Ironic sennets may also be intended in Folio Henry V. Having secured the betrothal of Princess Catherine, a sennet sounds at the end of the last scene as King Harry, accompanied by the French and English court, leaves in optimistic spirits: ‘And may our oaths well kept and prosp’rous be’ (5.2.346). This significant and glorious moment, orchestrated as it were by the sennet, will be eclipsed by what is to befall England under the reign of Harry’s successor, the young Henry VI, as the Chorus reminds us in the epilogue sonnet: Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crowned king Of France and England, did this king succeed, Whose state so many had the managing That they lost France and made his England bleed. (Epilogue 9–12)



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It could be argued that trumpet signals are used ironically in one of the so-called ‘dark comedies’, namely Troilus and Cressida, glossing as it were the morally corrupt and disingenuous themes of the play.163 Trumpets are conventionally called for to confirm the status of ceremony or the significance of military action. From the outset of the play, trumpet signals do not function on a conventional basis but seem to reinforce the satire. Troilus silences the first trumpet alarum, which should have called him to arms, in order to continue his amorous imaginings of Cressida: Peace, you ungracious clamours! Peace, rude sounds! (1.1.85) A second alarum accompanies the arrival of Aeneas, who chides Troilus for not having taken up arms. Only after a third alarum does Troilus consent to do anything and join battle. A sennet at the opening of 1.3 announces the entry of the Greek military elite. That it is a dysfunctional corps is made plain in Ulysses’ famous speech about hierarchy, exploiting musical imagery at crucial points.164 The opening sennet loses its sincerity. A trumpet signal again heralds the appearance of Aeneas to deliver Hector’s ultimatum to Agamemnon and the Greeks. In case he is not being taken seriously, Aeneas invokes trumpet imagery repeatedly in his challenge to Agamemnon: Nor I from Troy come not to whisper him. I bring a trumpet to awake his ear. (1.3.247–8) Agamemnon is scathing: Speak frankly as the wind. It is not Agamemnon’s sleeping hour. That thou shalt know, Trojan, he is awake, He tells thee so himself. (1.3.250–3) Aeneas responds disparagingly: Trumpet, blow loud.

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Send thy brass voice through all these lazy tents, And every Greek of mettle let him know What Troy means fairly shall be spoke aloud. (1.3.253–6) immediately after which the trumpet sounds. Instead of action, both sides are marked by their indolence and decadent ways. Apparently, no trumpet ‘’twixt our [Greek] tents and Troy … will call some knight to arms’ (2.1.118–19) who is brave enough to fight. Inactivity and delay are reintroduced when Hector’s trumpet reminds Aeneas and Paris they should already be ‘in the field’, having spent too much time attending the departure of Cressida, Troilus and Diomedes (4.5.138–42). Ajax fares little better. Instead of summoning Hector to the fray, his trumpet, ironically, announces Cressida and Diomedes. Chivalric military activity is replaced by flirtatious exchanges between Cressida and the Greek commanders. Cressida teases the cuckold Menelaus and ridicules Ulysses who reacts to her jibes, ‘her wanton spirits’ and ‘encounters so glib of tongue’ (4.6.57, 59). The ‘ironic’ trumpet, heralding moral decay and hedonistic indulgence, is supplanted by the trumpet of war as a flourish signals the approach of the Trojans and Hector and Ajax engage in combat. At this point the trumpet sounds for the last time. More than any other contemporary, Shakespeare uses the ‘tucket’ as a specific trumpet signal.165 There were two kinds of tucket, one used as a cavalry signal, the other as an occasional trumpet blast announcing a royal or noble person or high-ranking military figure. As a cavalry signal, the tucket or march was one of a series which the ‘soldier’ of the ‘horse-troop’ needed to know.166 The unique occurrence of the term as a cavalry signal is found in a French context, in Henry V.167 When the Constable rouses his French comrades to the fight before the Battle of Agincourt, he urges, Then let the trumpets sound The tucket sonance and the note to mount, For our approach shall so much dare the field That England shall couch down in fear and yield. (4.2.34–7)



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Jorgensen observes that here Shakespeare ‘curiously reversed the second and third signals listed by Markham: Mounte Cavallo and Tucquet’, although he does not mention that the Duke of Bourbon had already given the order to mount at the beginning of the scene.168 As an occasional signal, the tucket is used to identify individuals in special situations. In Folio Henry V (absent in Q1, 1600),169 a tucket announces the entry of the French Herald, Montjoy (3.6.103.SD), when he comes before the English king to offer him reparatory terms in lieu of what the French regard as his inevitable defeat. When Montjoy enters again (4.7.57.SD) after the French defeat, there is no tucket. This may be deliberate. The absence of the prioritizing tucket could indicate the changed situation of the French after their unexpected and massive defeat. Gloucester’s remark that the French Herald’s ‘eyes are humbler than they used to be’ (4.7.59) confirms this notion. To insert a trumpet signal at this moment, as some editors and critics urge, is to miss the point. Irony is surely not implicit here, as Frances Shirley (1963: 82) intends: ‘we should hear it [Montjoy’s tucket] again … We would know it by this time and have an instant to wonder if the Frenchman still dares to ask for ransom.’ In Folio The Merchant of Venice, a tucket announces the impending arrival of Portia’s husband, Bassanio (5.1.120.SD).170 Just as in Troilus and Cressida where the martial music of trumpets contrasts with the soft music of love (3.1), so here a trumpet interrupts the sweet harmonious music of love and romance, the moonlight whisperings of Lorenzo and Jessica, acting as both an indicative cue – the arrival of Bassanio – and structural pivot, moving the play into the conciliatory denouement. Similarly, in Folio King Lear, stage directions for ‘tucket within’, played behind the tiring-house wall to give the effect of a distant call, announce the arrival of the Duke of Cornwall (2.1.79.SD) and a little later, Goneril (2.4.176.SD).171 Tuckets for important persons are employed in other ‘military’ contexts. In All’s Well that Ends Well, a distant tucket (3.5.OSD) signals the fatal encounter between the Sienese and Florentine Dukes, as reported by an ‘old widow of Florence’. In Timon of Athens, a ‘tucket within’ (1.2.106.SD) prefigures the arrival of ‘certain ladies’ who come to perform the ‘masque of Amazons’.172

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Specific employment of trumpets in other ‘musics of war’ relate to alarums. In Shakespeare, drums normally signal alarums, but occasionally trumpets and even bells are involved, in which case they are specified as in Folio The Second Part of Henry VI: Sound trumpets, alarum to the combatants. (2.3.94.SD)173 Later in the same play, Warwick attempts to call Clifford to arms: Now, when the angry trumpet sounds alarum, And dead men’s cries do fill the empty air Clifford I say, come forth and fight with me. (5.3.3–5) The unusual use of the trumpet here (and therefore in subsequent alarums through the scene) prefigures the vivid trumpet metaphor when the Young Clifford, on seeing his dead father killed by York,174 summons retribution of the Last Judgement: O, let the vile world end, And the premised flames of the last day Knit earth and heaven together. Now let the general trumpet blow his blast. (5.3.40–3) The biblical precept is unmistakeable (1 Corinthians 15.52).175 As Nick de Somogyi purports, From defining war as a divinely sanctioned duty, Clifford’s personal grief impels a raise in the stakes to an absolute view of the ‘premised Flames’ of Apocalypse, specifically at odds with the ‘frozen bosomes of our part’ [5.3.35]. Selfless, instrumental moderation dissolves and in its place flares the ‘flaming wrath’ [5.3.55] of private animosity.176 The metaphorical trumpet does indeed ‘punctuate the radical shift in moral gear’.177 This whole scene, indeed whole play, with its forceful alarums seems to confirm Jorgensen’s contention that the alarum ‘in particular, was characteristically used with deliberate concern for its emotional value’.178



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If the use of trumpets intensifies the emotional impact of certain alarums, then the use of the bell has a similar focal impact. After the discovery of the murder of Duncan, Macduff tries to rouse the king’s sons and Banquo: Awake, awake! Ring the alarum bell. Murder and treason! Banquo and Donalbain, Malcolm, awake! (Mac 2.3.70–3) The alarum bell rings and lady Macbeth enters, likening the signal to ‘a hideous trumpet [that] calls to parley’ (Mac 2.3.78). The same image is used towards the end of the play when Macbeth acknowledges the dreadful reality of the revenge about to be inflicted on him: Ring the alarum bell. Blow wind, come wrack. (Mac 5.5.49) The two occurrences of the alarum bell contrast vividly with the preponderance of trumpets, ‘clamorous harbingers of blood and death’ (Mac 5.6.10), drums, cries and shrieks and other ‘musics of war’ in this noisy play. In similar portentous vein is the French General’s attempt to warn Talbot of impending destruction: Hark, hark, the Dauphin’s drum, a warning bell, Sings heavy music to thy timorous soul, And mine shall ring thy dire departure out. (1H6 4.2.39–41) Here both the alarum bell and the knell that ‘summons to heaven or to hell’ colour Shakespeare’s preferred instrument for the alarum, the drum. When coupled with the alarum, the sounding of the ‘retreat’, usually by trumpets, was capable of representing aurally entire battle scenes, obviating extensive dialogue and visual signifiers. Following the build-up of the music of war in preceding scenes, the stage directions in Folio Richard III, ‘Alarum. Enter Richard and Richmond. They fight. Richard is slain. Retreat and flourish. Enter Richmond and Derby, with divers other lords’ (5.8.OSD), neatly observing the precepts of classical drama, represents the

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Battle of Bosworth and subsequent victory salute to Henry, Earl of Richmond, acknowledging his royal ascendency. In King John, the music of war similarly punctuates the progress of the Battle of Angiers, from the falling-out of King John and the French King Philip at the end of 3.1 to the conclusion of the battle at 3.3.OSD: ‘Alarum; excursions; retreat. Enter John, Eleanor, Arthur, Bastard, Hubert, lords’, all within 12 lines of the play. Talbot’s frustrating encounter with Joan la Pucelle before Orléans is articulated by alarums and retreat (1H6 1.7). Usually, however, the retreat signals the end of military conflict and victory for one side or the other as in The History of Henry the Fourth (1H4 5.4) when Prince Harry, having killed Hotspur, remarks to Falstaff that ‘the day is our’ (1H4 5.4.152) after he has heard the trumpet sound the retreat. If it is not certain that Elizabethan audiences could always identify particular trumpet signals, such as the comparatively new tucket and sennet, Lindley (2006: 116) argues, taking his cue from Jorgensen, that with the ‘retreat’ it is ‘highly likely that this signal for battle to cease was one that Shakespeare’s audience recognized’. Jorgensen (1956: 25–6) deals with ‘drum commands for infantry’ and suggests that ‘Londoners could readily become familiar with the uses of the drum for the march, and particularly with the prominence of this instrument in the basic drills’ at Mile End where ‘citizen soldiers drilled on holidays’. That Shakespeare was familiar with this training and pageant ground is confirmed in The Second Part of Henry the Fourth when Shallow vividly recalls to Falstaff his memory of artillery drill to drums: I remember at Mile-End Green, when I lay at Clement’s Inn … there was a little quiver fellow, and a would manage you his piece thus, and a would about and about, and come you in and come you in. ‘Ra-ta-ta!’ would a say; ‘Bounce!’ would a say; and away again would a go; and again would a come. (2H4 3.2.256–61) Notwithstanding, if the example of the ‘retreat’ in William Byrd’s famous keyboard piece, The Battell,179 is representative then it is distinctive and easily memorable. Essentially a four-note descending arpeggio repeats slowly at first and then speeds up, metonymically representing the retreat.



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The loud noise of trumpets characteristic of the outdoor theatres was often replaced by the less brazen din of cornetts in the indoor theatres. The significantly increased number of stage directions for and references to cornetts in early seventeenth-century plays, performed in indoor theatres such as the Blackfriars, are testament to this trend. Shakespeare was no exception. Cues for cornetts appear only in Folio and not in earlier Quarto editions of the plays. To what extent the increased presence of cornetts was other than an acoustic consideration is difficult to ascertain. J. S. Manifold once asserted that, according to their usage in Coriolanus, cornetts ‘serve to distinguish minor dignitaries … trumpets distinguish royalty and major dignitaries’.180 In fact, that usage is not consistent either in Coriolanus or in other plays. Whilst Coriolanus is more usually announced by trumpets, his entry at 3.1 is signalled by cornetts. When he is ‘crowned’, Coriolanus’ entry [in state] is signalled by trumpets sounding a sennet; when he exits in state he is accompanied by cornetts. Royalty enter to cornetts in All is True (Henry VIII) and All’s Well that Ends Well. King Henry’s first entry in All is True is heralded by cornetts (1.2.OSD), in marked contrast to Cardinal Wolsey’s ‘Grand Entry’ earlier in 1.1, noticeably lacking an instrumental flourish. Shortly after the king’s entry, Queen Katherine enters accompanied by Norfolk and Suffolk but again not signalled by instruments. These three ‘Grand Entries’, John Draper observes, act as contrasts: ‘the first presents the pseudo-royalty of Wolsey; the second, the dormant but ascending royalty of Henry; and the third, the declining royalty of Katharine [sic], all expressed with symbolic pomp and gesture’.181 Draper omits to mention the cornetts. Interestingly perhaps, Wolsey’s subsequent entry in 1.4 is accompanied by hautboys, customarily used to usher in feasts and banquets,182 as here; but also used elsewhere to presage doom, as in Antony and Cleopatra (4.3). In All’s Well that Ends Well, the King of France’s first (grand) entry is marked by a ‘flourish of cornetts’ (1.2.OSD) and at 2.1. ‘Flourish cornetts. Enter the King with divers young lords taking leave for the Florentine war’, somewhat undermining Manifold’s assertion that only trumpets accompany royalty. Shakespeare’s ‘music of war’, perhaps more than any other imagery, combines aurality with metaphor more consistently and interactively in the plays. The sounds of trumpets, drums,

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bells, cornetts, hoboyes, ordnance, cries, etc. serve as metonymic indicators to both protagonists and audience in a way that is both essential and unmistakeable. In modern productions they offer scope for imaginative substitutes, the noises of present day aggression and calamity, sirens, car horns, explosions and amplified music.

Chapter 5

‘A rhyme is but a ballad’: Popular song

For long enough, Shakespeare has been revered as a classic of high-brow literature. That has not always been the case. In the early eighteenth century, according to Gillespie and Rhodes (2006: 2), ‘from a neoclassical point of view Shakespeare’s problem was that he remained too mired in the popular culture of his own age’. While recognizing his brilliance at emotional expressivity, commentators argued his work lacked sophistication and taste. Critics subsequently have sought to elevate Shakespeare’s art to establishment middle class following the benevolent revaluation of popular culture and art to sublime status. But it is clear that the Bard embraced popular culture of Elizabethan and Jacobean England to an extent that identified his work with that culture. Magpie-like, as Hansen (2010: 11) says, ‘this might cast Shakespeare as the original “sampler”’. A significant though not necessarily separate engagement with popular culture is Shakespeare’s use of so-called popular song.183 The identity of a song as popular is not always clear; Shakespeare’s integration of certain kinds of songs varies either according to dramatic context or the function of the song. Music and literary historians have instinctively categorized Western song from the late Medieval period to the present day as either art or popular song. Shakespeare does not observe these neat divisions. He introduces vocal songs into his plays as either prepared for or spontaneous, what Auden termed ‘called-for’ and ‘impromptu’, as Lindley notes.184 In addition, there is a large number of allusions to what must have been familiar contemporary, or near contemporary, ballads and folk songs as well as several ‘popular’ art songs.

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Discussion of popular song in Shakespeare, starting effectively with Thomas Percy’s ‘Ballads that Illustrate Shakespeare’ in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), Chappell’s ‘Illustrating Shakespeare’ in his Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859) and continuing into the twentieth century, notably Sternfeld (1967) and Seng (1967), and recently Duffin (2004) have been concerned with the music of the songs as much as anything. In Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture (Gillespie and Rhodes, 2006), Stuart Gillespie writes about selected songs from Love’s Labour’s Lost, Twelfth Night, Hamlet and Othello, and their relationship to contemporary popular culture. In his Shakespeare and Music (2006), David Lindley critically appraises ‘popular’ song and ballad as distinct from formal song in his chapter on song, embracing ‘two related categorizations – neither of them absolute, and neither without its problems’. ‘Popular song’ includes a wide variety of types such as folk, street songs and ballads. Folk songs and popular ballads are a non-notational kind, transmitted aurally among and between generations. Street songs and ballads can encompass folk songs but generally indicate printed street or broadside ballads, especially in demand in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.185 They represent the commercial arm of popular music and raise questions about production and intended audience, equivalent to some extent to debates about what motivates and defines popular music in modern culture. ‘Is modern popular music’, asks Hansen (2010: 26), ‘made by or made for “the people”, generated from mass populations or sold to them?’ He cites Richard Middleton186 who argues that, according to Hansen, ‘as a far from “pure” product of and response to the subjections generated by the economic and cultural “machinery” of modernity, popular music is “the voice of the people” and therefore “always plural, hybrid, compromised”’. In certain contexts, or perhaps more generally, this represents a challenge to the establishment, to authority. As a reflection on political, social and cultural tenets, as Hansen (2010: 26) puts it, ‘popular music past and present has been seen in terms of how it “supports or disrupts the dominant ideology”’. Popular music can both critique and challenge the other world to which it does not



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belong but which cannot ignore it. Autolycus’ ballads, for example, in the second half of The Winter’s Tale, work as both social identifier for actor and audience, and as cultural and political opposition to the court with its stilted mores and outward manifestations. Performed popular songs and dances in Shakespeare’s plays more often take on the role of ‘called-for’ music than snatches and allusions to well-known tunes and sources. In which case, a text citing all or part of the song is usually provided, not necessarily by Shakespeare. Allusions to songs generally refer only to a title or memorable words and are invariably popular songs. Retrieving the texts and music of these songs has been a fascination of antiquarian minds ranging from Percy (1765) to Duffin (2004). Naylor saw fit to identify a selection of ‘scraps of old songs’ which he regarded as ‘less known examples’ but did not attempt to present sources.187 His list is revelatory and comparatively wide ranging. Modern critics tend to be more exclusive and focused. Sternfeld, for example, in his first essay on popular songs in Shakespeare, comments on two songs from two plays (Henry V and Othello);188 Lindley (2006: 146–68) examines examples from five plays – 2 Henry IV, Othello, Hamlet, King Lear and The Winter’s Tale – in which the function of ballads is ‘particularly significant’ and popular song ‘figures prominently’. Spotting direct let alone oblique allusions to popular songs, Lindley (2006: 145) warns, has its pitfalls: the fact that many ballads have been lost means that we cannot always be sure whether what appears to be a citation or quotation of a popular song is not in fact an impromptu invention (or, conversely, be confident that we have not missed an allusion altogether). More important, the textual and musical malleability of ballads means that it is important not to treat recollections or citations of them in the same way as one might discuss the uses Shakespeare makes, for example, of references to stable classical texts. The intertextual dialogue is altogether less precise in the citation of a ballad text. Second, it is not always explicit whether ballad-fragments are intended to be sung or spoken.

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As an example Lindley (2006: 145) cites the exchange between Rosaline and Boyet in Love’s Labour’s Lost (4.1.121) which includes the words ‘Thou canst not hit it’ which commentators variously have interpreted as a reference to a dance tune,189 a popular song including sexual innuendo in ‘hit’,190 and a song to accompany a game or sport.191 Because no text survives, as Duffin (2004: 88) notes, the allusion, if there is one, is lost. Moreover, it is not possible to be certain, as the Norton editor seems to be, that Rosaline and Boyet sing, although impromptu singing at this point in the scene affords Rosaline an effective and indecorous exit signal. And if Boyet sings at this point, Biron’s disparaging remark later that ‘he can sing/A mean most meanly’ (5.2.327–8) has added resonance. Passing reference to isolated words has stirred some commentators to identify hidden allusions to ballads. Ross Duffin (2004: 19) delights in suggesting that Ophelia’s lines, Well, God’ield you. They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be (Ham 4.5.41–3) reveals her ‘in her distraction making a ridiculous pun on the ballad title “The Merry Miller’s Wooing of the Baker’s Daughter of Manchester,” playing on the homophones “wooing” and “whooing” (that is, courting and hooting respectively). The “wooing of the baker’s daughter” could be interpreted to mean that the baker’s daughter is making a “whooing” sound; therefore, she must be an owl.’ This theory replaces the conventional interpretation that Ophelia’s quotation refers to an ancient (Cornish) legend that ‘Christ turned a baker’s daughter into an owl because when he asked for food, she would give him only a small loaf’.192 Duffin (2004: 19) argues that since The Millers Daughter of Manchester (registered 2 March 1581) ‘is a song about a seduction, it adds a new wrinkle to Ophelia’s relationship with Hamlet as she freeassociates in her distracted state. Putting this ballad together with its tune, Nutmegs and Ginger, allows us to recover yet another previously unrecognized song that Shakespeare knew well enough to cite, however obscurely’. Duffin freely admits this association may



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be overly inventive; in any case there is no mention of ‘wooing’ in Ophelia’s lines. No such ambiguity surrounds the references to one of the most popular songs in Elizabethan times, namely ‘Greensleeves’,193 which in the modern age has come to auralize ‘olde England’.194 The ballad is named twice in The Merry Wives of Windsor. When Mistress Ford and Mistress Page discover they have been duped by Falstaff, the former comments ironically on his supposed constancy: I shall think the worse of fat men as long as I have an eye to make difference of men’s liking. And yet he would not swear, praised women’s modesty, and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof to all uncomeliness that I would have sworn his disposition would have gone to the truth of his words. But they do no more adhere and keep place together than the hundred and fifty psalms to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’. (2.1.49–55) What Mistress Ford means is clear enough: Falstaff’s words do not match his behaviour. There is, however, uncertainty about the reference to the psalms. The First Folio has ‘the hundred psalms’. The Oxford/Norton editors amend to the ‘correct’ figure (150), whereas others refer to the ‘hundredth psalm’. Naylor (1896: 75), for example, was at pains to show that ‘the “Hundredth Psalm” (All people that on earth do dwell) will only adhere and keep place with the tune of Green Sleeves to a certain extent’ and in devising a tune that will just about fit seems to miss the point. Surely the point is simply that the tune of a well-known love song is inappropriate for holy psalms. Attempting specificity is unhelpful. As Ward (1990: 182) attests, no two versions of ‘Greensleeves’ that survive from c. 1600 are the same. He observes that ‘like almost all Elizabethan popular music, the tune was multiform, circulated without constraints of print’. This was because Elizabethans ‘learnt [a ballad tune] from ballad-mongers, tavern fiddlers, whistling apprentices, copied it from a friend’s book of lute lessons; that is, picked it up in much the way those with an appreciation of the common muse acquired the musical ephemera of the day, casually’. Ward (1990: 182–3) remarks that the tune was easily memorable

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and that all ‘versions share an underlying tonal framework … in essence little more than an arpeggiated form of the romanesca’, to such an extent that in the seventeenth century the harmonic pattern alone could substitute for the ballad. Towards the end of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff has recourse to invoke the amatory associations of ‘Greensleeves’. In a misplaced attempt to ingratiate himself with Mistress Ford, Falstaff mentions the ballad among a list of love-inducing aids: Let the sky rain potatoes, let it thunder to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’, hail kissing-comfits, and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation. (5.5.16–19) Reference to the popular ballad confirms the errant knight’s approach to love-making is somewhat basic and unsophisticated. Given the popularity of ‘Greensleeves’ it is perhaps surprising it is mentioned only twice in Shakespeare. The most often cited ballad is ‘King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid’. Duffin (2004: 235–40) identifies five occurrences in four different plays ranging from explicit references in Love’s Labour’s Lost to an obscure one in Much Ado About Nothing. The ballad concerns a king ‘that did lover’s looks disdain’ but who falls for a piteous beggar maid whom his queen did make. Benedick’s avowal not to fall in love, Duffin (2004: 238) argues, links him with the ballad of King Cophetua in one particular passage with its reference to ‘blind Cupid’ which echoes the second stanza of the ballad as found in Richard Johnson’s A Crowne Garland Goulden of Roses (1612): I will live a bachelor … Prove that ever I lose more blood with love than I will get again with drinking, pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker’s pen and hang me up at the door of a brothel house for the sign of blind Cupid. (Ado 1.1.201, 204–7) The two references in Love’s Labour’s Lost allude to the patriarchal power of the king to overcome the uncertainties of the lowly maid and in love to wed her. In the first, Armado brags to his page, Mote



Popular song 87 Armado: Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar? Mote: The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since, but I think now ‘tis to be found; or if it were, it would neither serve for the writing nor the tune. Armado: I will have that subject newly writ o’er, that I may example my digression by some mighty precedent. Boy, I do love that country girl that I took in the park with the rational hind Costard. She deserves well. Mote [aside]: To be whipped – and yet a better love than my master. Armado: Sing, boy. My spirit grows heavy in love. Mote: And that’s the great marvel, loving a light wench. Armado: I say, sing. (1.2.99–111)

In the second, reference to the ballad is more detailed and, while less dismissive of the maid, is nonetheless patriarchal: Boyet [reads Armado’s letter]: The magnanimous and most illustrate King Cophetua set’s eye upon the penurious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon, and he it was that might rightly say ‘Veni, vidi, vici’, which to annothanize in the vulgar – O base and obscure vulgar! – videlicet ‘He came, see, and overcame’ … Who came? The King … To whom came he? To the beggar. What saw he? The beggar. Who overcame he? The beggar. The conclusion is victory. On whose side? The King’s. The captive is enriched. On whose side? The beggar’s. The catastrophe is a nuptial. (4.1.63–74) King Cophetua’s inability to be stirred by Cupid’s arrow is the allusion in Romeo and Juliet when Mercutio comments on Romeo’s seeming reluctance to be subjected to love: Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word, One nickname for her purblind son and heir, Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim When King Cophetua loved the beggar maid. – He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not. (2.1.11–15)

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In his artificially stilted exchange with Pistol, Falstaff addresses his co-humourist in disparaging terms after he has referred to the exotic promise of the ballad: Pistol: A foutre for the world and worldlings base! I speak of Africa and golden joys. Falstaff: O base Assyrian knight, what is thy news? Let King Cophetua know the truth thereof. (2H4 5.3 92–5) A knight of Assyria, according to popular Elizabethan beliefs, championed ‘an Asian empire … associated with pillage and robbery’.195 The ‘Song of a King and a Beggar’ opens, I read that once in Africa a prince that there did reign Who had to name, Cophetua, as poets they did fain.196 Justice Silence interrupts, humming ‘And Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John’ (2H4 5.3.96), a line referring to ‘three witty young men’ from the second stanza of the ballad ‘Robin Hood and the Jolly Pinder of Wakefield’.197 Despite its medieval ancestry, the story of Robin Hood is known as a subject for ballads only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There are two undeveloped allusions to Robin Hood in Shakespeare, the one just cited in The Second Part of Henry the Fourth and Falstaff’s quip on Bardolph’s complexion, ‘What say you, Scarlet and John?’ (MWW 1.1.144). One of the most famous tunes for ballads was ‘Packington’s Pound’. Claude Simpson (1966: 564) confirms Lamson’s finding that before 1700 the tune was the single most popular one associated with ballads, closely followed by ‘Fortune My Foe’. The earliest notated source is William Barley’s A New Booke of Tabliture, 1596 (II, sig. C4v) where it is called ‘Bockington’s Pound’. Shortly after, it occurs in virginal music sources and English and Continental instrumental music books. Surprisingly, there is no direct reference to the tune in Shakespeare’s plays, but it could be associated with (two of) Autolycus’ ballads in The Winter’s Tale (4.3 and 4.4) on account of its connection to ballads recounting ‘cruell



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robberies and lewde lyfe’ (‘A new ballade … of Phillip Collins alias Osburne’, 1597) and later petty thieves or ‘cutpurses’ as the refrain in Ben Jonson’s ballad to ‘Paggingtons Pound’ in his Bartholomew Fair, 1614 (3.5) indicates: Youth, youth, thou hadst better bin starv’d by thy Nurse, Then live to be hanged for cutting a purse. Two ballads in particular seem suitable candidates for versions of ‘Packington’s Pound’, namely Autolycus’ entry song in act 4, ‘Lawn as white as driven snow’ and his exit song, ‘Will you buy any tape?’ Both include the pedlar’s cry, ‘Come buy of me’ or ‘Will you buy’, refrains which occur in ballads set to ‘Packington’s Pound’ (and ‘From Hunger and Cold’) in later seventeenth-century sources. The popularity of the tune persuades Duffin to adapt it for three songs. ‘Packington’s Pound’, Duffin (2004: 66) argues, fits Hecate’s interpolated song ‘Black spirits and white’ in Folio Macbeth (4.1.44–5) to the ‘Tune of Damnation’. It can be applied to the song ‘Fie on sinful fantasy’ in Folio The Merry Wives of Windsor (5.5.50);198 and it works for the song ‘When daisies pied and violets blue’ at the end of Love’s Labour’s Lost (5.2.869).199 All Duffin’s suggestions are conjectural and summon little evidence to support his choices. According to several commentators,200 Falstaff’s retort to Mistress Ford’s rebuff, I see what thou wert if fortune, thy foe, were, with nature, thy friend. Come, thou canst not hide it (MWW 3.3.54–5) is an unequivocal reference to the second most popular tune for ballads before 1700, namely ‘Fortune My Foe’. The tune, Simpson (1966: 225) recounts, seemingly takes its title from the first line of ‘A sweet Sonnet, wherein the Lover exclaimeth against Fortune for the loss of his Ladies favour, almost past hope to get again, and in the end receives a comfortable answer, and attains his desire’. Certainly, this accords with Falstaff’s plight up to a point. Evidence suggests the tune was reasonably well known and identified with

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registered ballads in the 1580s and 1590s. After 1600 it became associated with a large number of ballads, often concerned with ‘solemn or lugubrious accounts of murders, natural disasters, warnings to the impious, deathbed confessions, and the like’.201 David Wulstan records that ‘executions were accompanied by the ballad “Fortune my foe” whose mournful tune was intoned to the baleful burden of the passing-bell’.202 One ballad of special interest which employed the ‘Fortune’ tune was ‘Titus Andronicus’s Complaint’, as it came to be known. It is not certain which came first, ballad or play. Duffin (2004: 400) argues that ‘the use of the “noble minds” image so close to the beginning of the play suggests that the ballad may have priority’ in keeping with Shakespeare’s habit of citing phrases or first lines of ballads unobtrusively in dialogue. The first stanza of the ballad reads, as printed by Thomas Percy: You noble minds, and famous martiall wights, That in defence of native country fights, Give eare to me, that ten yeeres fought for Rome, Yet reapt disgrace at my returning home.203 Duffin refers to the exchange between Saturninus and Titus (Titus 1.1.203–16) and their factions as evidence: Lucius: Proud Saturnine, interruptor of the good That noble-minded Titus means to thee … (Titus 1.1.208–9) In fact, the very opening of the play mentions nobility and defence: Saturninus: Noble patricians, patrons of my right, Defend the justice of my cause with arms. (Titus 1.1.1–2) Percy was reasonably convinced the ballad came first, although he alludes to doubts about the origins of the play: this ballad differs from the play in several particulars, which a simple ballad-writer would be less likely to alter than an inventive



Popular song 91 tragedian. Thus in the ballad is no mention of the contest for the empire between the two brothers, the composing of which makes the ungrateful treatment of Titus afterwards the more flagrant: neither is there any notice taken of his sacrificing one of Tamora’s sons, which the tragic poet has assigned as the original cause of all her cruelties … Let the reader weigh these circumstances and some others wherein he will find them unlike, and then pronounce for himself. After all, there is reason to conclude that this play was rather improved by Shakespeare … than originally written by him.204

Bruce Smith (2006: 193), however, contends the ballad followed the play. He argues that when John Danter entered into the Stationers’ Company register on 6 February 1594 his rights to ‘a booke intituled a Noble Roman Historye of TYTUS ANDRONICUS’ as well as ‘the ballad thereof’, he was securing for himself what today’s entertainment business knows as ‘residuals’. Smith notes that the quarto Danter published ‘presents itself on the title page as a repeat, in a different medium, of a stage performance’. Although no copy of this print survives, subsequent reprints in the seventeenth century, Smith contends, ‘testify to a continuing commercial viability that rivals that of the playscript’. As a transferred medium, ‘ballads functioned as a way of perpetuating stage performances’, Smith (2006: 194–5) argues. ‘Ballads did not record performances; they perpetuated them. They enabled performances to happen again and again as new performers learned the words and took up the story’. Like the ballads cited by Shakespeare, residuals circulated as ‘tokens of cultural memory’. ‘Titus Andronicus’s Complaint’ was by no means the only Shakespeare residual. Smith (2006: 194) discusses three other broadsides included by Percy among his ‘Ballads That Illustrate Shakespeare’ in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) that ‘spin out narrative strands from The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, and King Lear’. In each, Percy rehearses the argument that Shakespeare borrowed

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from the ballad. Smith (2006: 204) is certain all four ‘functioned in their own day as commercially produced residuals’. Another song text Percy included among his Shakespeare ballads was ‘Farewell, dear love’. He prints five stanzas of a poem he derived from Richard Johnson’s ‘little ancient miscellany, intituled, The Golden Garland of Princely Delights’, printed in 1620. An earlier printed song-book source is not mentioned. The twelfth song in Robert Jones’ The First Booke of Songes & Ayres (1600) begins, Farewel dear love since thou wilt needs be gon, mine eies do shew my life is almost done Editors and commentators from Rowe (1709) onwards have argued that Shakespeare incorporated lines from a popular song in the exchanges between Malvolio, Sir Toby, Maria and Feste in Twelfth Night (2.3.91–101). It was not until the early nineteenth century that the song-book source was identified when John Stafford Smith included Jones’ song in his Musica antiqua (London, 1812), noting that it was ‘Quoted by Shakespeare, Twelfth Night’. Shakespeare’s citation of selected lines from Jones’ ayre have been the subject of critical commentary both with regard to theatrical effect and dating of the play.205 What is not clear is how much of the song was intended to be sung. Shakespeare conflates the first two stanzas of Jones’ ayre which then constitutes a ‘new’ stanza. Most modern editions suppose that this ‘new’ stanza is sung by Sir Toby and Feste with alternating spoken interpolations by Maria and Malvolio: Sir Toby: ‘Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone.’ Maria: Nay, good Sir Toby. Feste: ‘His eyes do show his days are almost done.’ Malvolio: Is’t even so? Sir Toby: ‘But I will never die.’ Feste: ‘Sir Toby, there you lie.’ Malvolio: This is much credit to you. Sir Toby: ‘Shall I bid him go?’ Feste: ‘What an if you do?’ Sir Toby: ‘Shall I bid him go, and spare not?’ Feste: ‘O no, no, no, no, you dare not.’ (TN 2.3.91–101)



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Greer (1990: 224) questions this assumption based on typographical and circumstantial evidence. He points out that, As a rule the First Folio follows the convention of printing sung text in italic typeface, implying in this case that only the second strain of the tune (from ‘Shall I bid …’) is to be sung. This is not an infallible guide … But there is one curious fact that lends some weight to the notion that the compositor was right and the singing should not begin until line 8. When Elizabeth Melville used the tune for her poem in 1603 she called it ‘Sall I let her Go’, and in Camphuysen’s Stichtelycke rymen [1624] it is also known as ‘Shal I bed’ or (later editions) ‘Shal I bed her go’. So, for some reason the tune acquired a title from an otherwise unremarkable line in the middle of the second stanza. Could it be that this was because this was the point where – in the play – the singing actually began? It is not difficult to imagine the preceding lines being burlesqued in exaggerated speech. That the last four lines of Shakespeare’s version are not interrupted by Maria or Malvolio tends to support Greer’s theory that these lines were the ones sung. Why Shakespeare should have chosen to incorporate Jones’ ayre into Twelfth Night is not clear. It takes its cue from Malvolio’s dismissive remark to Sir Toby: an it would please you to take leave of her she is very willing to bid you farewell. (2.3.89–90) As a topical song, as Greer (1990: 214–15) demonstrates, Jones’ ayre became ‘one of the most successful of all the English lutenist songs. It was arranged for cittern, lute, mandora and keyboard; both words and music were parodied; new words were composed to the tune; and within a short time of its publication it was taken up in Scotland and the Netherlands’. Including reference to the ayre in a play would seem to confirm its popularity. As so often when Shakespeare alludes to or incorporates popular songs in his dialogue, their popularity needs to be assured so that any irony, parody or burlesque can have their desired effect. Why Jones’

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‘Farewell dear love’ should have been so popular vexed Greer (1990: 225–7) in the concluding section of his discussion of the ayre. Greer observes that the ayre ‘shares a number of features with other tunes in the popular repertory’ including the ballad tune ‘Fortune my foe’ mentioned above. From a text perspective, Greer observes, ‘the notion of farewell was a popular theme in sixteenthcentury verse, courtly or popular, and Jones’s lyric employs motifs that were part of the stock-in-trade of the genre’. It could even be, as Duffin (2004: 139) intimates, Jones in turn incorporates words and lines from pre-existent ballads. It is clear that popularity determines the choice of a specific song. Shakespeare’s juxtaposition of art songs and catches and ballads in this scene indicates a subtle use of genre discrimination for dramatic effect. ‘Farewell dear love’ fulfils the two demands Shakespeare makes of popular song, namely spontaneity in performance and commonality of cultural experience in reception. Shakespeare ‘was wont to make use of the treasury of popular song whenever it suited the humour of his plot. An allusion by title or first line; the quotation of one or more stanzas with, perhaps, minor variations suited to the occasion; even the refashioning of a well-known model almost, but never entirely, beyond recognition.’206 One of those occasional ‘minor variations’ was gender exchange. In ‘Farewell, dear heart’, Shakespeare exchanges the female object of the lover’s lament for the male persona suited to his dramatic context. Jones’ ‘Shall I bid her go’ becomes ‘Shall I bid him go … and spare not?’ (TN 2.3.98, 100). The first of Ophelia’s five ‘mad’ songs, ‘How should I your true love know’ (Ham 4.5.23), reverses the lovers’ roles from the ballad it seems to borrow. Commentators agree Ophelia’s song is an analogue to the popular ballad, ‘As ye came from the holy land of Walsingham’. Seng (1967: 140) suggests that the narrative of the ballad relates how a deserted lover meets on the roadway a pilgrim returning from the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. The lover’s mistress has also gone on a pilgrimage to Walsingham, but has failed to return. The lover inquires of the stranger he has met whether she has been seen on the way. Asked how she can be recognized,



Popular song 95 he attempts to describe her. This opening, the encounter and the inquiry, seems to be the common mark of ‘Walsingham Songs’.

Ophelia’s voice substitutes for the distraught (male) lover of the ballad. Gender exchange in the third stanza of the ballad, as deduced by Seng (1967: 137), depicts Ophelia’s plight as she imagines Hamlet has deserted her: Shee hath left me heere alone all alone as unknowne who sometime loved me as her liffe & called me her owne.207 Ophelia enquires about the home coming of her beloved pilgrim. She is told that ‘he is dead and gone, lady’ (Ham 4.5.29); his burial in a strange land was unattended by his true love, unable therefore to shed tears over the grave, as the extra-metrical ‘not’ affirms:208 Which bewept to the grave did – not – go With true-love showers. (Ham 4.5.38–9) The ambiguity of this reference is intriguing. On one level, it reflects Ophelia’s fantasizing on Hamlet’s ‘death’; on another, it possibly alludes to the circumstances of Polonius’ murder and burial,209 the truth of which is seemingly unknown to Ophelia and veiled in ‘secrecy’ as Claudius concedes to Horatio shortly after Ophelia’s second song, ‘Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day’: the people muddied, Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers For good Polonius’ death; and we have done but greenly In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia Divided from herself and her fair judgement. (Ham 4.5.77–81) Changing the words of the ballad not only provides Shakespeare with theatrical context, it also imbues his characters with an alternative existentialist ego, as Lesley Dunn observes of Ophelia:

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her personal voice is estranged, filtered through the anonymous voices of the ballads, multiplying, and thereby rendering indeterminate the relationships between singer, personae, and audience.210 It is this ‘estrangement’ of ballad and persona, what Lindley (2006: 157) calls ‘theatrical indeterminacy’, which intensifies the effect of Ophelia’s madness. Similar adaptation of a popular ballad provides Shakespeare with the material he exploits in the so-called ‘Willow Song’ in Othello.211 A ballad text, sufficiently close to the one in F to justify comparison as a possible redaction of Shakespeare’s source, is preserved in BL Add MS 15,117, fol. 18. The 1623 Folio expands the ‘willow’ refrains and ‘reconstructs’ certain lines.212 As in the songs in Twelfth Night and Hamlet discussed above, gender exchange takes place in Desdemona’s song. The ballad lines, The poore soule sate sighing by a Sickamore tree, Singe willo, willo, willo with his hand in his bosom & his heade upon his knee … The mute bird sate by hym, was made tame by his moanes singe willo, willo, willo The trewe teares fell from hym would have melted the stones … Let nobody chide her, her scornes I approve become, The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, Sing all a green willow. Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, Sing willow, willow, willow. The fresh streams ran by her and murmured her moans, Sing willow, willow, willow. Her salt tears fell from her and softened the stones … Let nobody blame him, his scorn I approve (Oth 4.3.38–44, 50)



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The incorporation of an ‘old’ and at the same time what must have been a well-known ballad rather than a new song suits Shakespeare’s theatrical purpose. Surviving manuscripts which contain music for the song include breaks in the vocal line appropriately filled by instrumental (lute) accompaniment.213 Whether or not the performance of the song was intended to have (lute) accompaniment is not certain. Sternfeld (1967: 34) argues from both a practical and psychological perspective that it ‘would not be feasible, either for Desdemona or for Emilia to manage a lute while Emilia undresses her mistress. The entire character of her recitation, the spontaneous way in which she breaks into her swansong, modifies and breaks it off, precludes forethought or an elaborate instrumental accompaniment where phrases in the lute complement phrases in the voice’. Lindley (2006: 150) agrees with Sternfeld but, he claims, for different reasons: ‘to introduce accompaniment would tend to turn this from involuntary song into performance, and any sense of self-consciousness would convert its pathos into a stagy sentimentality – a danger which, even if Desdemona sings unaccompanied, is only narrowly averted’, according to, we might add, modern taste and ascetism.214 Contemporary practice at the new ‘Globe’ theatre demonstrates that the song could be accompanied by a lute discreetly placed in the gallery so as not to be visible on stage but perfectly audible to protagonist and audience alike. The danger is, as Lindley intimates, such practice would or could equate to romantic atmospheric filmic underscoring. There is no need to add anything to Shakespeare’s effective use of song. The manner of performance identifies the types of songs Shakespeare employs. The division between popular and art songs is therefore broken down in the dramatic context of a play. The re-labelling of songs – popular/comic and art/serious – might suggest a dramatic role relevant to the genre categories, comedy and tragedy. Shakespeare’s use of popular songs demonstrates he does not observe these retrospectively imposed divisions both as performed entities and subtle allusions.

Chapter 6

‘Suppose the singing birds musicians’: Birdsong

Commentators on music in Shakespeare seem reluctant to discuss birdsong, almost without exception.215 It may be that scholars distrust the status of birdsong as representing or equating to music. Certainly, attempts to identify the music equivalence in birdsong have often been simplistic216 but to ignore the role of birdsong in Shakespeare’s music is a dereliction of critical duty. There are over 600 references to birds in Shakespeare217 and a significant number of those are to bird vocalizations.218 If birdsong is not identifiable specifically with music then its role must be understood as communicative: as language. In that sense it serves as function rather than expression or artistic invention, ‘utilitarian versus aesthetic’ as Hartshorne argued.219 But the two may not be mutually exclusive. E. A. Armstrong argues, in connection with birdsong, that the aesthetic and utilitarian should not be set against each other thus, although it is attractive to suppose that the non-utilitarian, and hence the aesthetic, can be clearly separated from the utilitarian. Only on a pragmatic and materialistic definition of utilitarian would the activity of either the metaphysician or musician be considered non-utilitarian. Rather we must think of the aesthetic as biologically adaptive and involving a delicately refined sensitivity and responsiveness to the environment.220 Accordingly, birdsong can act as both functional communication and expressive ‘music’ depending on the perception of the hearer rather than the understanding of the receiver. Birdsong is therefore



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both a language in itself and a metaphor for language. Historically this has been the stance of both the naturalist and poet since at least the fourteenth century. Gilbert White, writing in the eighteenth century, affords the view that, Many of the winged tribes have various sounds and voices adapted to express their various passions, wants, and feelings; such as anger, fear, love, hatred, hunger, and the like. All species are not equally eloquent; some are copious and fluent as it were in their utterance, while others are confined to a few important sounds.221 It is not practicable to equate acoustic bird utterance with human verbal language. The latter can convey ideas and emotions; it is not possible to say what bird utterance can or cannot impart. Some ornithologists have attempted to list the principal functions of song of an individual species. Armstrong (1963: 2) cites Blanchard222 who proposed that the White-crowned Sparrow’s song expressed: (1) defiance of territorial rivals; (2) longing for a mate; (3) sexual excitement; (4) concern for territorial boundaries as well as communication; (5) eagerness for the female to return to the eggs and (6) fright. Song variants according to differing contexts notwithstanding, it is not difficult to relate White’s empirical theory of expressivity to Blanchard’s functionality. Armstrong (1963: 6) argues that, in general, bird utterance across the species can be categorized under three main headings: identity (informing species, sex, individuality, status); motivation (informing sexual, need, escape or alarm); and environment (informing location, territory and predators). If music is language, then birdsong as music can have meaning. At one level, birdsong has been ‘imitated’ in music variously since the late medieval period,223 starting with the English rota ‘Sumer is icumen in’ (c. 1250) which features the cuckoo. In sixteenth-century French repertoire, the lark, cuckoo, woodthrush, starling, hens and nightingale are imitated in a number of Parisian chansons and notably in Clément Janequin’s virtuosic chansons, ‘Le Chant des oyseaux’, ‘Le Chant de l’alouette’, ‘Le Chant du rossignol’, printed

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together in Verger de Musique (Paris 1559), the first parodied in Nicolas Gombert’s ‘Le Chant des oiseaux’. In Elizabethan England, the nightingale is imitated in Thomas Morley’s ‘The fields abroad with spangled flowers are gilded’ (Madrigalls to Foure Voyces, 1594: 10); the cuckoo, lark, thrush, nightingale and quail in Thomas Weelkes’ ‘Lady, the birds right fairly’ (Madrigals of 5. and 6. parts, 1600: 9); the nightingale, ‘nimble’ lark, blackbird, thrush and cuckoo in Weelkes’ ‘The nightingale, the organ of delight’ (Ayres or Phantasticke Spirites, 1608: 25); and the owl in Thomas Vautor’s ‘Sweet Suffolk owl, so trimly dight’ (Songs of divers Ayres and Natures, 1619: 12). Compared to human vocal music, birdsong is complex in rhythm and tone. It uses very short, quick notes and repeats patterns at close proximity. Musical imitations are stylized approximations involving easily recognizable melodic and rhythmical characteristics. In Medieval and Renaissance musical imitations these can be divided into two main categories, single song and elaborate song. The first includes the cuckoo, owl, crow/raven and hen/cockerel. The second features the lark, nightingale, wren, thrush, sparrow and robin. One of the most distinctive songs and therefore frequently imitated identifies the cuckoo, recte the European cuckoo (Cuculus canorus). That distinctiveness is noted by Portia as she remarks to Nerissa that Lorenzo, He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo – By the bad voice. (MV 5.1.111–12) A falling major or minor third accompanying the onomatopoeic ‘cuccu’ usually represents the call of this harbinger of spring, as in Weelkes’ ‘The Nightingale, the Organ of Delight’ from Ayeres or Phantasticke Spirites (1608), no. 25. See music example p. 101.



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As in nature, that call signifies both good and bad: good because it marks the beginning of spring and new life/love; bad in that the cuckoo interferes with procreation in its parasitic role in relation to other birds. This ‘nest parasitism’, as Jensen (1985: 55) notes, is called ‘traison’ (treason) in contemporary French chansons, where the bird is referred to as ‘un traistre’ (a traitor). Jensen cites ‘Arriere maistre coqu, Sortez de no chapitre’ from Janequin’s ‘Le Chant des oyseaux’.224 Shakespeare alludes to the cuckoo’s habit of laying its egg/s in other birds’ nests in Antony and Cleopatra:

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Thou dost o’ercount me of my father’s house, But since the cuckoo builds not for himself, Remain in’t as thou mayst. (2.6.27–9) That duality marks the epilogue song, ‘When daisies pied and violets blue’ in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Armado proposes a dialogue song ‘in praise of the owl and the cuckoo’. One voice represents ‘spring’, ‘maintained’ by the cuckoo; the other ‘winter’, sung by the owl. Specific meadow flowers and the cuckoo herald the arrival of spring. But, The Cuckoo then on every tree Mocks married men,225 for thus sings he: Cuckoo! Cuckoo, Cuckoo226 – O word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear. The ‘word of fear’ is ‘cuckold’. On its derivation from the bird’s name, James E. Harting states that, The notion which couples the name of the cuckoo with the character of the man whose wife is unfaithful to him, appears to have been derived from the Romans, and is first found in the middle ages in France … the ancients [Aristotle and Pliny] more correctly gave the name of the bird, not to the husband of the faithless wife, but to her paramour, who might justly be supposed to be acting the part of the cuckoo.227 In Shakespeare, as in Renaissance literature, the association of the ‘cuckoo’ is attributed to the husband, a variant on the classical theme, a tradition Shakespeare alludes to (which Harting, p. 154 notes) in, For I the ballad will repeat, Which men full true shall find: Your marriage comes by destiny, Your cuckoo sings by kind. (AWW 1.3.53–6)



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In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom affirms, The plainsong cuckoo grey, Whose note full many a man doth mark, And dares not answer ‘Nay’. (3.1.116–18) The unadorned recurring monody of the cuckoo with its allusion to cuckoldry is emphatic and undeniable, For indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? Who would Give a bird a lie, though he cry ‘Cuckoo’ never so? (MND 3.1.119–20) Here, the call of the cuckoo and its associations are unmistakeable. In The History of Henry the Fourth, its call is not so distinguishable. King Henry alludes to the proverbial saying, ‘No one regards the June cuckoo’s song’:228 So when he had occasion to be seen, He was but as the cuckoo is in June, Heard, not regarded, seen but with such eyes As, sick and blunted with community, Afford no extraordinary gaze. (IH4 3.2.74–8) Variations in pitch and intervallic range (the distinctive third is often replaced by fourths and fifths) and familiarity with its presence (‘community’) after it has been active for a month or two diminish the impact of the spring bird. A similar characteristic is attributed to the nightingale in Sonnet 102, rich in musical imagery: Our love was new and then but in the spring When I was wont to greet it with my lays, As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing, And stops her pipe in growth of riper days – Not that the summer is less pleasant now Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night. (5–10)

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As the summer nights shorten so the song of the nightingale decreases. The cuckoo is one of several birds whose call and name relate. The others are the owl, the crow/raven, and the hen/cockerel. The characteristic call of the Tawny Owl (Strix aluco) is cited in wintercontrast to the cuckoo in the epilogue song in Love’s Labour’s Lost: Then nightly sings the starring owl: Tu-whit, tu-whoo! – a merry note. (5.2.892–3) This is the territorial call sung by both male and female and continues throughout winter.229 That it is a ‘merry note’230 is ironic since owls were usually associated with gloom and doom: Come, doleful owl, the messenger of woe, Melancholy bird, companion of despair, Sorrow’s best friend, and mirth’s professed foe, The chief discourser that delights sad care. O come, poor owl, and tell thy woes to me, Which having heard, I’ll do the like for thee.231 This is the association when the despairing King Richard concludes, Down court, down King, For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing. (R2 3.3.181–2) referring to the evocative nocturnal ‘shriek’ when the bird is hunting. The darkness of his downfall replaces the brightness of his kingship as Richard contemplates the impending loss of his crown and his sorrowful state of being. Owls ‘shriek’ where once larks sweetly ‘sang’. Similarly evocative is Puck’s observation, Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the screech-owl,232 screeching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe



Birdsong 105 In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite In the churchway paths to glide. (MND 5.2.5–12)

This image cluster (owl, night, death) recurs in Macbeth, when Lady Macbeth reminds Macbeth that he must proceed with his heinous crime: What hath quenched them hath given me fire. Hark, peace! – It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman Which gives the stern’st good-night. (2.2.2–4) In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Casca (one of the conspirators) remarks to Cicero that among other strange goings-on, And yesterday the bird of night did sit Even at noonday upon the market-place, Hooting and shrieking. (1.3.26–8) As a harbinger of death, the ‘semiotic bird’233 is alluded to – a reference to be recalled towards the end of the play – when Edward, Duke of York calls for the fatally wounded Clifford to be dragged forward: Bring forth that fatal screech-owl to our house, That nothing sung but death to us and ours. (3H6 2.6.56–7) The combination of the owl with other ominous unattractive birds is invoked when King Henry VI reminds Richard of Gloucester of the portentous circumstances of his birth and prophesizes the future Richard III’s ruinous downfall shortly before Gloucester murders him: The owl shrieked at thy birth – an evil sign: The night-crow234 cried, aboding luckless time;

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Dogs howled, and hideous tempests shook down trees; The raven rooked her on the chimney’s top; And chatt’ring pies235 in dismal discords sung. (3H6 5.6.44–8) The cacophony of these scavenging ‘black’ birds of doom amply portends the evil associated with the Duke of Gloucester. The screech-owl, other birds of prey and scavengers are excluded from the troupe of mourners summoned by the ‘bird of loudest lay’ at the opening of ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’. Exception is made among the birds of ‘tyrant wing’ for the eagle, the ‘feathered king’. The aged, sable crow is also commanded to attend. The ‘deathdivining’ swan is designated priest, responsible for chanting the requiem for the two ‘constant lovers’: the phoenix and turtledove. In this role as funereal bird, the swan, following poetic legend, who ‘living had no note,/As death approached, unlocked her silent throat/ … sung her first and last, and sung no more’.236 Towards the end of The Life and Death of King John, Prince Henry bemoans the impending demise of his father, King John: ‘Tis strange that death should sing. I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan, Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death, And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings His soul and body to their lasting rest. (5.7.20–4) The swan-song of death is alluded to by the distraught Lucrece as she intends suicide: And now this pale swan in her wat’ry nest Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending. (Luc 1611–12) As Emilia prepares to die she recalls Desdemona’s ‘song of willow’: What did thy song bode, lady? Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan, And die in music. (Oth 5.2.253–5)



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This personification of human experiences and emotions in birds and birdsong is characteristic both of Shakespeare237 and contemporary poetic sources. In the context of the Parisian chanson, for example, an influential ‘pocket book of birds’, La Description philosophale, de la nature & condition des oyseaux, & de l’inclination & propriété d’iceux (1571), according to Kate van Orden, was ‘concerned with the philosophical cataloguing of human morality through images of birds. The poetic morals of La Description philosophale that liken various species of birds to the denizens of French society, convey each bird’s natural attributes as human characteristics. The songbirds, as a class, are used to comment on the vices and virtues surrounding sexual behaviour’,238 the latter often as pertaining to godliness. Those attributes seem to have had common currency: the Torterelle (turtledove) represents ‘a chaste and virtuous woman’, just as it does in Shakespeare. Critics disagree about the literal meaning of the poem, but the basis of the allegorical message is clear: the virtue of human constancy through the union of the two birds. Beyond that, nothing is certain. Walter Cohen concludes that ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’, typical of Shakespeare, ambiguously ‘labors to construct an ideal image of love while simultaneously circumscribing the real utility of that ideal. Marriage and funeral, celebration and dirge, ideal affirmation and pragmatic denial’.239 Personification and signification are particularly strong in two of the most prominent songbirds. The binary opposites, night and day, are represented in the imagery of the nightingale and the lark, with their more complex songs. The nightingale has traditionally and romantically been associated with nocturnal musicking, cynically according to Portia because if it sang by day it would not be heard above the din of less musical birds: I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. (MV 5.1.102–5)

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These nocturnal/romantic attributes are essential to Valentine’s complaint: Except I be by Silvia in the night There is no music in the nightingale. (TGV 3.1.178–9) Similarly, in Romeo and Juliet the nightingale features significantly in the lovers’ night before Romeo’s banishment: Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fear-full hollow of thine ear. Nightly she sings on yon pom’granate tree. Believe me, love, it was the nightingale. (3.5.1–5) To which Romeo replies, fearful of the approaching dawn: It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale. (RJ 3.5.6–7) Juliet’s insistence that it is the nightingale whose song they hear may have further connectives. Conventionally, the nightingale sings all night to stay awake. As Kate van Orden observed, in the context of the contemporary French chanson, ‘it easily symbolized the lover’s restless heart, as its nocturnal song conjured notions of amorous serenades’.240 The presence of the nightingale, as it were, in the mistress’ bedroom has poetic connotations, as van Orden indicates: The nightingale’s song holds the promise of persuading the beloved’s heart to greater tenderness for her suitor, since music stirs the passions. The nightingale has a privileged access to the bedroom of the mistress, in which it serves as the lover’s envoy. Its voice in her private chambers is a reminder of her suitor’s desires.241 In this role, the nightingale can act as messenger for the lovers’ emotions, especially relevant in this setting since Romeo is about to go.



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The opposition between the lark and the nightingale, the latter the love-bird of night, the other the love-bird of day, according to some critics internalizes the imagery of Romeo and Juliet. Armstrong asserts that in this scene, we have the nodal point of all the play’s imagery. Indeed, the nightingale is the symbol par excellence of the whole play, epitomising the conflict of the powers of Light and Darkness … The distinctive poignancy of the tragedy is, however, not the plain conflict between good and evil but Juliet’s love torn between two opposing loyalties – lover and family. She belongs, like the nightingale, to two worlds … Love-darkness and death-darkness both claimed Juliet, the singing night-bird of all time.242 Thus Juliet becomes the nightingale of love and of dark night. That Juliet ‘sings’ is significant. Strictly speaking, it is the male nightingale243 that we hear as exemplified in the imagery of the caged nightingale, a persistent image in French courtly chansons and also found in English lyric verse.244 The poet’s heart is imprisoned by love; the song of the caged bird gives expression to the lover’s melancholy: Dainty sweet bird, who art encaged there, Alas, how like thine and my fortunes are. Both prisoners, both sing, and both singing thus Strive to please her, who hath imprisoned us. Only in this we differ, thou and I, Thou liv’st singing, but I singing die.245 In Ronsard’s ‘O ma belle maitresse’, cited by van Orden,246 the caged nightingale is sent as a gift to his mistress so that it may sound the lover’s grief in her ear and rouse her heart to pity and thence return. In Shakespeare, the sadness associated with the caged bird finds expression in King Lear’s defiant resignation that, with Cordelia, they ‘alone will sing like birds i’the cage’ (Lear 5.3.9). Reminiscing on the lost condition of human nature, Arviragus remarks to Belarius that

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our cage We make a choir, as doth the prisoned bird, And sing our bondage freely. (Cym 3.3.42–4) Although caged, the bird can still aspire to freedom through its song. Transgression of female sexuality and its lamentable consequences as related in the myth of Philomela result in the three protagonists being transformed into speechless birds.247 The beautiful Philomela, according to more generally accepted versions of the myth, having been raped and had her tongue cut off, is transmuted into a nightingale: the most vociferous of all song birds. In some instances, ‘Philomel’ simply becomes a synonym for the nightingale without reference to its sorrowful lament, as in the fairy song ‘You spotted snakes with double tongue’: Philomel with melody, Sing in our sweet lullaby. (MND 2.2.13–14) Elsewhere, allusions to the myth are essential. In Titus Andronicus, Lavinia’s plight is partially based on the story of Philomela,248 as several references make explicit. Before she is ravished, Aaron predicts the ‘day of doom for Bassianus’ because His Philomel [i.e. Lavinia] must lose her tongue today, Thy sons make pillage of her chastity And wash their hands in Bassianus’ blood. (2.3.43–5) Titus reminds Marcus that Lavinia’s predicament, is the tragic tale of Philomel, And treats of Tereus’ treason and his rape, And rape, I fear, was root of thy annoy. (4.1.47–9) Alluding specifically to the lament of the nightingale is another rape victim, Lucrece. She suggests they sing together in their sorrow, Philomel as nightingale an elaborate melody, she an underpart:



Birdsong 111 Come, Philomel, that sing’st of ravishment, Make thy sad grove in my dishevelled hair. As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment, So I at each sad strain will strain a tear, And with deep groans the diapason bear; For burden-wise I’ll hum on Tarquin still, While thou on Tereus descants better skill. (Luc 1128–34)

Whether the thorn which pricks the nightingale’s breast, mentioned in the next stanza, contributes to its woeful song or an aide to insomnia, or both, is not clear: And whiles against a thorn thou bear’st thy part To keep thy sharp woes waking. (Luc 1135–6) It may also be an oblique reference to the Christianized interpretation of the myth in that Philomel’s agony is a summation of Christ’s. According to Beryl Rowland, ‘the nightingale sings of Christ’s death and resurrection and is itself the symbol of the greatest love’.249 Interestingly, at the end of the four ‘Philomel’ stanzas, reference is made to the Orphic/Christ redeeming power of song: and there we will unfold To creatures stern sad tunes to change their kinds. Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds. (Luc 1146–8) As rival songsters, when two nightingales compete for love’s attention, neither can out-sing the other, as Theseus remarks to Emilia towards the conclusion of The Two Noble Kinsmen: I have heard Two emulous Philomels beat the ear o’th’night With their contentious throats, now one the higher, Anon the other, then again the first, And by and by out-breasted, that the sense Could not be judge between ’em – so it fared Good space between these kinsmen, till heavens did Make hardly one the winner. (5.5.123–30)

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Neither Emilia nor Hippolyta sense a satisfactory ‘winning’. As herald of the new morn, the lark is much less complicated than the nightingale, although as Juliet implies it is also an accomplished songster capable of improvising ‘sweet divisions’.250 That it is known to sing ‘sweetly’ or harmoniously, as Portia remarked (MV 5.1.101), is proverbial. That it ‘sings so out of tune,/Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps’ (RJ 3.5.27–8) is Juliet’s subjective and unconventional reaction to its aesthetic/utilitarian song. What is pleasing to some is unpleasing to others. In other instances the lark is especially welcome: Your eyes are lodestars, and your tongue’s sweet air More tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. (MND 1.1.183–5) or in contrast to the dualistic cuckoo where the lark has a single, unqualified proclamation to make: When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks (LLL 5.2.878–9) As early morning songster, the lark rises with the sun: Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest, From his moist cabinet mounts up on high And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast The sun ariseth in his majesty. (Venus 853-6) The image of the lark rising to heaven is recurrent. In Sonnet 29, the ‘lark at break of day arising/From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate’ (11–12) arguably represents the speaker’s redemption when previously there was no response to his despair: I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries. (2–3)



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Here the morning lark contrasts with the ‘night-thoughts’ of the previous two sonnets, an interpretation first put forward by Edward Dowden in his edition of the sonnets (1891) and cited by certain subsequent editors, notably excepting H. E. Rollins in his New Variorum edition (1944). The lark singing at ‘heaven’s gate’ as the sun begins to rise is famously repeated in Cymbeline (2.3.17–18) in a song that aims to purify the crude imaginings of Cloten with ‘admirable rich words’. Other songbirds alluded to by Shakespeare include the song thrush or throstle, the wren, finch and the sparrow. Surprisingly, given its reputation, the song thrush (Turdus philomelos) appears very infrequently compared to the lark and nightingale, although it is always acknowledged as a songster: The throstle with his note so true (MND 3.1.112) In the same song, Bottom also identifies the wren with his ‘little quill’ or small, reedy voice and mentions the finch and the sparrow. Often mistakenly linked with the wren in English folklore,251 the robin appears unequivocally as songster in one reference, when Valentine asks Speed how he knows that he is in love, to which Speed replies, by the indicative attributes of love sickness including the inclination ‘to relish a love-song, like a robin redbreast’ (TGV 2.1.17). In another, when Hotspur praises the musical qualities of his wife, Lady Percy, in the hope of persuading her to sing, he concludes, ‘Tis the next way to turn tailor, or be redbreast teacher (1H4 3.1.255) Tailors traditionally sang; it was thought certain tame song birds could be taught to sing by means of the (descant) recorder or flagelot. Specialists maintain that it was the rosy-breasted bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) and not the robin redbreast that was coached in this manner.252 Armstrong, however, cites a couple of precedents of robins being taught to ‘speak’.253 There is a number of instances

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in English lyric verse which refer to birds ‘recording’ their song, without being species specific. Each chirping bird records a piping voice254 and, Now birds record new harmony, And trees do whistle melody.255 Bird symbolism in Shakespeare invariably represents inter-personal relationships, political orientations and conflicts, and spiritual perceptions. Traditional significations of birds are exploited variously in the plays and poems in the context of Nature and its relationship with the Cosmos.256 Birds, together with other animals, plants and rocks stand in harmony with each other and as reflection of the divine order of the world, which in turn accords with Creation, the perfect ordering of Nature’s constituents. When birds sing they vocalize their signification and extend their role beyond their immediate symbolic meaning.

Chapter 7

‘Orpheus with his lute’: Symbolic persons

At the beginning of act 3 in All Is True (Henry VIII),257 Queen Katherine calls for her attendant to sing a lute song: Take thy lute, wench. My soul grows sad with troubles. Sing, and disperse ‘em if thou can’st. Leave working. (3.1.1–2) In the absence of a specified text, any sad and contemplative song would have sufficed, such as Dowland’s ‘Sorrow, sorrow stay’ from his The Second Booke of Songs or Ayres (1600).258 Moreover, as well as reflecting on Katherine’s sadness, music serves to reinforce the contrast in mood and setting of this scene with the previous one. The pomp and ceremony of court, announced by trumpets and cornetts and the procession of church dignitaries juxtaposes with the private chamber of Queen Katherine and the subjectivity of ‘her’ lute song. In the court scene, Katherine addresses the king; in her chamber she expresses her troubled thoughts as it were to herself. Like Ophelia and Desdemona, her anxieties and forebodings are prepositioned in song. Unlike Ophelia and Desdemona, Katherine does not sing herself. Before the king, Katherine pleads her case: Sir, I desire you do me right and justice, And to bestow your pity on me … In what have I offended you? What cause Hath my behaviour given to your displeasure That thus you should proceed to put me off, And take your good grace from me? Heaven witness I have been to you a true and humble wife. (2.4.11–21)

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Her song, ‘Orpheus with his lute made trees,/And the mountain tops that freeze,/Bow themselves when he did sing …’ (3.1.3), reveals that she desires that divine intervention will bring harmony and resolution. Typically, Orpheus’ music has the power to calm troubled beings: In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief of heart Fall asleep, or hearing die (3.1.12–14) and even seemingly unreceptive objects in nature – ‘Even the billows of the sea’ (3.1.10). There may also be added poignancy in the choice of Orpheus in this context, since Orpheus’ music had the power to restore love in marriage and that when Eurydice is lost, Orpheus could not be consoled by love for another woman or the prospect of another marriage.259 Shakespeare invokes the myth of Orpheus as both decorative and structural imagery in his early plays and poems and, arguably, in his late romances as well. Northrop Frye contends that ‘in a wider and more general sense [than having his name mentioned by name in crucial passages such as Lorenzo’s speech on harmony in The Merchant of Venice] Orpheus is the hero of all four romances, the musical, magical and pastoral power that awakens Thaisa and Hermione, that draws Ferdinand toward Miranda, that signalizes the ritual death of Imogen and that gives strange dreams to Caliban’.260 For Shakespeare, the myth is derived from Ovid, Metamorphoses X.1–XI.84, and the ‘Englished’ translation of the Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding (1536–1606) rather than from Virgil, Georgics, IV. The tale of Orpheus, essentially: … concerns a Thracian singer of magic and ‘divine’ power. This divinity usually derives from Apollo, the Greek god of music, and in many versions of the story Orpheus is the son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope. In other versions the connection with Apollo is more mysterious, but it is only rarely that Orpheus is not at least his protégé. The divine power of Orpheus’ song is able to move rocks and beasts as well as humans. Even more miraculously, it overcomes the power of Hades.261



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Significantly, it was not just the power of Orpheus’ music that made him attractive to Renaissance poets and librettists. According to Sternfeld (1988: 179), ‘Orpheus becomes a sage, a courageous seeker after divine wisdom, a conqueror of death, a religious prophet (if not the founder of a religious cult, Orphism), an allegory for Apollo, Dionysus, Osiris, or Christ’. Francis Meres was in no doubt about the influence of Ovid on Shakespeare: As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tonged Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends …262 Two overtly Ovidian references occur in Titus Andronicus and The Rape of Lucrece, both in connection with rape. In Titus Andronicus, the divine interventionist power of Orpheus would have come too late, ironically since Lavinia has already been raped and her tongue excised: O, had the monster seen those lily hands Tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute And make the silken strings delight to kiss them, He would not then have touched them for his life. Or had he heard the heavenly harmony Which that sweet tongue hath made, He would have dropped his knife and fell asleep, As Cerberus at the Thracian poet’s feet. (2.4.44–51) In order to enter Hades, Orpheus had to charm the guarddog, Cerberus, with his music and lull him to sleep. Lucrece’s pleading has the effect of delaying Tarquin’s dreadful assault, just as Orpheus charms the god of the underworld, Pluto, while singing and playing on his lyre: So his unhallowed haste her words delays, And moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays. (552–3)

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Commentators agree that Ovid is the poet identified in the passage when Lorenzo attempts to assuage Jessica’s anxiety towards the end of The Comical History of the Merchant of Venice and among a rich tapestry of musical imagery recalls the myth of Orpheus: For do but note a wild and wanton herd Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, … Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze By the sweet power of music. Therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods, Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage But music for the time doth change his nature. (5.1.70–81) However, as David Armitage points out, if Shakespeare’s debt is uniquely to Ovid, he ‘misrecalls the Metamorphoses, since Ovid’s Orpheus drew only trees and stones, not “floods”’.263 He argues that Shakespeare’s ‘additional waters’ may derive from the prefatory epistle to Golding’s translation, which he cites: So Orphey in the tenth booke is reported too delight The savage beasts, and for too hold the fleeting birds from flyght, Too move the senseless stones, and stay swift rivers, and too make The trees to follow after him and for his musick sake Too yeelde him shadowe where he went. By which is signifyde That in his doctrine such a force and sweetenesse was implyde, That such as were most wyld, stowre, feerce, hard, witlesse, rude, and bent Ageinst good order, were by him perswaded too relent. (‘Epistle’, 517–24) Whatever the source, Shakespeare’s addition of raging rivers or seas is striking and persistent. Pierre Iselin264 states that the classical source for the effect of music on Shakespeare’s ‘wild and wanton colts’ is Aelian: But the mares of Libya … are equally captivated by the sound of the pipe. They become gentle and tame and cease to prance and



Symbolic persons 119 be skittish, and follow the herdsman wherever the music lead them; and if he stands still, so do they. But if he plays his pipes with greater vigour, tears of pleasure stream from their eyes.265

Iselin relates this version of the encomium musicae to Ariel’s luring of the three inebriates through his ‘charming’ music, abandoning them in the ‘filthy-mantled pool’: Then I beat my tabor, At which like unbacked colts they pricked their ears, Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses As they smelt music. So I charmed their ears That calf-like they my lowing followed. (Temp 4.1.175-9) Deviation from the Ovidian source occurs in the reference to Orpheus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona: For Orpheus’ lute was strung with poets’ sinews, Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones, Make tigers lame, and huge leviathans Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands. (3.2.77–80) Despite its rhetoric and dramatically charged context, Armitage (1986: 124) argues that ‘Shakespeare may be seen to use Orpheus as symbolic of the poet’s power to move his audience, in an early moment of poetic self-awareness’. Orpheus’ ‘calming effect on tigers’, Armitage notes, is found in Virgil (Georgics, V.510) and his ability to change the character of deep-sea monsters may also be associated with Virgil, even though Virgil may not be the direct source for Shakespeare’s imagery.266 Here again, the addition of his effect on the (deep) sea to the Ovidian associations of Orpheus, including music/poetry, calming and ordering of nature and emotions, dismemberment (‘strung with poets’ sinews’) is noteworthy. The ‘soul of Ovid’, Armitage argues (1986: 123), finds its last exposure in the four late romances. While specific references to Ovid, such as Prospero’s invocation beginning, ‘Ye elves of

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hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves’ (Temp 5.1.33), are well documented, allusions to the Orphic myth, in particular to music, are not so unequivocal. Performed music and musical imagery are especially integral and influential in these plays. The affective power of music in Pericles, with particular reference to the viol, is discussed elsewhere.267 The harmonizing agency of Orphic song per Ariel is essential to The Tempest. As the statue returns to life at the end of The Winter’s Tale (5.3), Armitage (1986: 130) contends, ‘the instrument of metamorphosis called for by Paulina recalls Orpheus’ lute’, whose sound could ‘soften stone’: Music; awake her; strike! ’Tis time. Descend. Be stone no more. (5.3.98–9) While this could be a non-specific reference to the restorative power of music, Armitage adduces further evidence that Shakespeare may have had the Orpheus myth in mind in the last scene of the play. He cites the ‘conceit of double dying’ and the role of Orpheus in two near contemporary analogues, namely Beaumont’s Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn, and Campion’s The Lords Masque, both performed during the festivities for the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick Count Palatine in February 1613. In both masques, Orpheus’ presence is felt when the statue moves.268 In Cymbeline, Armitage suggests (1986: 132), ‘Cloten masquerades as Orpheus’. Cloten employs music to (try to) affect Innogen’s emotions: I would this music would come. I am advised to give her music o’ mornings; they say it will penetrate. (2.3.10–11) He asks the musicians, Come on, tune. If you can penetrate her with your fingering, so; we’ll try with tongue too. If none will do, let her remain; but I’ll never give o’er. (2.3.12–14) Unlike Orpheus, Cloten’s music is not affective and the explicit bawdy of Cloten’s language is diametrically opposite to the divine



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art of the Thracian poet-musician. If this link with Orpheus is tenuous and unconvincing, Cloten’s death at the hands of ‘villain mountaineers’, and Guiderius’ taking of his head and throwing it into a creek so that it might float to sea, is an ‘ironic reworking of the Orpheus myth’, according to Armitage (1986: 132).269 He suggests that only the ‘memory of Orpheus’ head, floating down the river Hebrus, prophesying as it went, could have allowed this head to go “In embassy to his mother” [4.2.186] and to “tell the fishes he’s the queen’s son, Cloten”[4.2.154]’. The music which follows, Armitage proposes (1986: 132), ‘may recall Orpheus’ head being accompanied by his harp on its river journey’. Peggy Muñoz Simonds is not convinced that Armitage does explain the significance of Orpheus in the late romances and proposes four roles for the demigod, at least in Cymbeline: firstly, as a passionate lover and one cruelly separated from the beautiful woman he adored, as Petrarch is separated from Laura, and as Posthumus is separated from Imogen. His music and poetry celebrate both the beauty of his beloved and his emotional grief at the early loss of such beauty to death. As poet and musician, Orpheus laments the shortness of life and love and the ephemeral quality of the very sensory pleasure that inspires his art in the first place.270 The second category accords with the traditional role of ‘the civilizer’ who calms wild beasts with his music, affects rocks and trees, and ‘softens the hearts of primitive people’.271 Consequently, the teacher-poet ‘leads man to the love of his fellows through his civilizing influence’.272 The third role ‘is that of theologian … [who] taught humanity to love God as the ultimate source of all truth and beauty’.273 The fourth, and arguably the most important role, according to Simonds (1992: 349) is as the manipulative artist who through his magic powers ‘redeems nature or the sensible world by reshaping its forms’ to produce ‘harmony’ and ‘love’, or as Warden (1982: 103) put it, cited by Simonds (1992: 350), ‘the artist brings about a state of love by imposing order and shape; as one who loves and suffers he is privileged to be filled with the furor amatorius which leads the mind beyond understanding to the vision

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of divine beauty and to a state of joy’. The ‘renewal of marital love between Posthumus and Imogen’, Simonds (1992: 351) reminds us, ‘is thus essential to the harmonious ending’ of Cymbeline. If Cloten is an ‘ironic’ Orpheus, then Titus, according to Joseph Ortiz,274 is a ‘failed’ Orpheus since he is unable to ‘move’ stones with his ‘singing’. Despite his pleading, the tribunes are deaf to Titus’ voice: Lucius: My gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak. Titus: Why, ‘tis no matter man. If they did hear, They would not mark me; if they did mark, They would not pity me; yet plead I must. Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones, Who, though they cannot answer my distress, Yet in some sort they are better than the Tribunes For that they will not intercept my tale. When I do weep they humbly at my feet Receive my tears and seem to weep with me … A stone is soft as wax, tribunes more hard than stones. (Titus 3.1.32–44) Ortiz argues that, Titus’s confusion of the literal and metaphorical senses of ‘move’, a word implied but not stated in his speech (stones are ‘soft’ enough to be moved physically, tribunes are too ‘hard’ to be moved emotionally), invokes the doctrine of sympathy in a way which appears ridiculous. As Lucius tells Titus, he ‘lament[s] in vain … you recount your sorrows to a stone’ (3.1.27–9), suggesting that ‘sympathy’, the belief that persons and objects can predictably influence each other with or without words, is merely an empty conceit in the universe of the play. As referred to above in connection with Livinia’s predicament, Orphic powers have been eclipsed by the destructive acts already committed. Titus has neither the power to move by his affective ‘music’, nor the ability to rationalize through his vocal pleading.



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In a romance that is recognizably already ‘full of music’, comparable with The Tempest, certain critics starting with G. Wilson Knight have pointed to the structure of Pericles as influenced by the structures of ‘myth in the Platonic sense’.275 Peggy Ann Knapp contends that by focusing on the explicit identity of the myth, the ‘vision embodied in specific narratives’, then the ‘narrative that reveals the real structure of Pericles is the myth of Orpheus’.276 In locating the function of music imagery, she argues that when it ‘does not actually serve the plot directly and literally, as it does in the winning of Thaisa, her revival by Cerimon, and the recovery of Pericles from his death-like trance, it operates as a metaphor for main events in the play’.277 Knapp cites various instances which coincide at least with the three parts of the Orpheus myth. Pericles’ wooing of and winning Thaisa through the ‘power of a musical performance … serves to prefigure the miraculous restoration scenes in the play’.278 Cerimon, not Pericles, revives Thaisa. More importantly to the structure of the play, Marina awakes Pericles from his trance-like depression by her beautiful singing. The final scene (scene 21) rich in music, is the climactic conclusion to the ‘specific narrative’ and its transformation of the myth of Orpheus. Without having recourse to Orpheus, modern critics see the emblematic function of music in Pericles, especially its restorative power, as a symbol of divine harmony. F. Elizabeth Hart sees Cerimon as a central ‘facilitator or master of ceremonies’ and in supplying a classical context for his music suggests that, Cerimon’s music hints at a link between the healing powers of his “secret art” and the mysteries of the archaic goddesses who were associated with the ancient city of Ephesus, the setting for all of Cerimon’s appearances in the play. Cerimon calls on Apollo and Aesculapius to guide him (3.2.69, 114), but the god whom he most actively serves is Diana of Ephesus, to whose temple and wishes he obviously has access … this Diana of Ephesus …. is best understood with respect to the Mother-worship that flourished in the territory of Phrygia … Included in the forms of Phrygian Mother-worship was a particularly jarring kind of music, often practised by a conspicuous class of priest. The central deity

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defining this culture was Cybele … Cerimon’s proximity to Diana of Ephesus endows him with the healing powers that, historically speaking, were a principal function of the Asian mystery rites.279 In arguing to preserve the problematic ‘rough’ descriptor of Cerimon’s music from the 1609 quarto, nearly always replaced by ‘still’ in modern editions,280 Hart aims to provide an alternative classical source for Shakespeare’s restorative music. Orpheus’ music was calming, reviving but never ‘rough’. Transferral of gender persona may be involved in Othello’s description of Desdemona’s ‘gentle’ virtues: I do but say what she is – so delicate with her needle, an admirable musician. O, she will sing the savageness out of a bear! Of so high and plenteous wit and invention. (Oth 4.1.179–81) Although Othello extols these qualities, they have not been much in evidence during the play, including Desdemona’s Orphic gift of soothing the savage beast (in Othello?). Othello determines not to succumb to Desdemona’s Orphic charm which had the power to ‘soften rocks’ by hardening his heart to her ‘sweetness’: Ay, let her rot and perish, and be damned tonight, for she shall not live. No, my heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand. O, the world hath not a sweeter creature! (Oth 4.1.174–6) Desdemona’s ability to sing, play and dance well had been mentioned earlier (3.3.189) when Othello defends her character. Is it coincidental the same exchange of male for female persona occurs when Desdemona does sing? Possible near contemporary texts for the ‘Willow’ song start from the male perspective, although of course they may not be the sources for Shakespeare’s intertextual process.281 The manuscript ‘with his hand in his bosom & his heade upon his knee’ becomes ‘Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee’ (4.3.40); ‘The trewe teares fell from hym would have melted the stones’ is changed to ‘Her salt tears fell from her and softened the stones’



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(4.3.44); and ‘Let nobody chide her, her scornes I approve’ is altered to ‘Let nobody blame him, his scorn I approve’ (4.3.50). The Orphic resonance, gender exchanged in Shakespeare, ‘tears fell from her and softened the stones’, accords with the earlier reference to singing the ‘savageness out of a bear’.282

Apollo At the end of that conventionally unconventional play, Love’s Labour’s Lost, as the ‘company of women … ride off into the sunset without their men’,283 Armado reflects that, The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo (5.2.903) articulating in essence one dichotomy of the play, the ‘love poetry of the King and courtiers’ (Cohen, 1997/2008: 836) in sharp relief to the message of Monsieur Mercadé, that ‘death enters even the pastoral, Arcadian world of Navarre’s park’ (Cohen, 1997/2008: 831), as he announces to the Princess of France that the King her father is dead. Apollo here is the god of poetic eloquence and musical refinement. And yet it is the entrance of Mercadé at this very late juncture that turns the play from comedy to tragicomedy.284 Who is ‘Mercadé’? Nosworthy (1979:109) contends that our interpretation hinges on the trisyllabic pronunciation of his name in finding a precursor in ‘Markady’, a character in Robert Wilson’s comedy, The Cobbler’s Propehcy, published in quarto in June 1594. Ralph the Cobbler is a stupid, ignorant fellow who gets names wrong. Jupiter becomes ‘Shebiter’ and Mercury, charged with delivering the gods’ prophecy to Ralph, mutates to ‘Markedy’. Such name play recurs in Shakespeare’s play, when Dull and Costard make light of Armado. The very late appearance of Mercadé/Mercury in Love’s Labour’s Lost has an impact beyond the substance of the role. According to Nosworthy (1979: 110), the ‘words [of Mercury] are harsh because the romantic artifice which has been sustained for more than four

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acts must suddenly yield to the reality of death … a harshness which is forcefully underlined by the two songs’. The two songs, ‘Spring’ and ‘Winter’ effectively summarize the paradoxical joys and sorrows that the emblematic birds, the cuckoo and the night owl, bring. While ‘the words of Mercury’ transform the final message of the play, it is evidently the various roles of Apollo that have manipulated the course of the drama and its associations from the outset. Nosworthy (1979: 110) summarizes that function: It is by courtesy of the sun-god that the play, with its exclusive, almost unique, outdoor setting exists at all. The court of Navarre is sunlit parkland and it is only with the entry of Marcade that the scene begins to cloud and Phoebus is eclipsed. The demands of Apollo Musagetes are more than generously fulfilled by song, sonnet, dance and pageant. The presence of Mercury so late in the play brings sudden contrast to the influence of Apollo, but according to classical tradition it does not bring conflict. The roles of the two sometimes intertwine. Apollo, the god of song, was given his lyre, one tradition has it, by Mercury. Apollo’s patronage of poetry does not exclude Mercury who as messenger conveys that eloquence and artistry to humankind. Nosworthy (1979: 113) argues that for most of the play it is Cupid who is in conflict with Apollo, ‘until the Pythian god despatches the arrow which is more potent than the love-god’s darts. Thereupon Mercury … assumes control as psychopomp, the necessary consequence of the King of France’s death, and, in the corporeal form of Marcade, as messenger. Under his aegis the clouds gather and the strenuous, often bitter, realities of life abruptly dispel the holiday humour of the preceding scenes.’ A similar bipartite structure dependent on the influence of Apollo can be adduced in The Winter’s Tale. The Delphic Apollo, per the oracle, informs pivotal events in the first half of the play, so that reacting to Leontes’ blasphemy, Mamillius and (apparently) Hermione suffer sudden death as a result of Apollo’s intervention. In the second half, the Mercurial Autolycus unexpectedly exerts a rectifying influence. Deriving from Ovid, Autolycus was the son



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of Mercury and Chione: ‘such a fellow as in theft and filching had no peere,/He was his father’s owne sonne right’ (Metamorphoses, XI.360) His half-brother, fathered by Apollo, was Philammon, ‘who in musick art excelled farre all other’ (XI.364). This opposition, honesty versus dishonesty, represented by the offspring of Mercury and Apollo, is a recurring theme and reaches its climactic exposition in the exchange between Perdita and Polixenes in act 4. It is Autolycus who uses his art ‘to deceive and lead the credulous astray’.285 But even Paulina’s ‘lawful art’, functionary of Apollo’s ‘secret purposes’ (5.1.36), and honest counterpart to Autolycus’ deceiving art, as Hardman notes (1994: 228), turns out to be no art so that the ‘replacement of the flawed and tragic world of the first three acts with the comic harmony of the end is also the product of a natural art: the dramatist’s art’. Reference to the mythological contest between Apollo and Pan (or Marsyas) is not made explicitly by Shakespeare, but its essence – rude wind music versus refined string music – lies behind the imagery of two symbolic musics, for example in Othello 3.1. The Classical source of the myth is Ovid, Metamorphoses XI. 146–93. It was transmitted by a number of writers and poets. Thomas Wythorne, for example, summarizes it: Midas aforesaid was a covetous king of Phrygia. Pan, the poeticall god of the shepphards contending in music with Apollo, the poeticall god of music. They chose one named Tmolus to be their judge in that controversy, who gave sentence on Apollos part. But Midas preferred Pan with his screaking pipes before the music of Apollo. Wherfor, Apollo gave unto Midas a pair of asses ears.286 The quiet (‘still’), heavenly stringed music of Apollo encourages order, sobriety and control in opposition to the chaos, lust and strife of Pan’s earthly wind music.287 Moreover, that Apollo can both sing and play ‘to his sweet Lute’ in contrast to Pan’s constricted ability only to blow his pipe demotes Pan’s art to a level much lower than Apollo’s, a connective exploited in Hamlet’s disparaging recorder lesson to Guildenstern (Ham 3.2.316–41).

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Ariel The persons of the play in The Tempest are listed at the end of the text in F, compiled most commentators agree by the scribe Ralph Crane who also probably appended very short descriptive roles to the main protagonists’ names. Ariel is simply described as ‘an airy spirit’ which may provide the essential clue to the choice of his288 name. And while that name may, according to Lindley,289 simply emphasize his ‘airiness’, its origins are harder to place. W. Stacy Johnson argues that ‘Ariel functions primarily as a benevolent rather than a diabolical spirit’ – in contrast, for example, to the ‘airy devil’ who ‘hovers in the sky/And pours down mischief’ in King John (3.2.2–3) – and that an interpretation of his role can be deduced from an understanding of the genesis of his name.290 The first theory she recounts is that his name derives from Renaissance occultism and that one of the spirits who serves magicians in the high-brow writing on magic and cryptography, the three volume Steganographia by Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), is called Uriel (book 1, cap. 30). The second theory is that his name comes from the Old Testament, Isaiah Ch. 29, although it does not occur consistently in different versions of the Bible. The Geneva Bible (London, 1594), Johnson (1951: 206) reminds us, glosses the alternative name, ‘altar’ as ‘The Ebrewe word Ariel signifieth the Lyon of God’. Many of Ariel’s biblical qualities relate closely to Shakespeare and as Johnson (1951: 207) suggests, ‘the similarity in imagery and incident makes some relationship – perhaps even a sub-conscious one on Shakespeare’s part – quite possible’, although highly conjectural, as she later admits. A combination of origins results in ‘a complex of overtones’ so that ‘we have a picture of Ariel as primarily elemental, associated directly with the spiritoperated phenomenal world of Neo-Platonism, but maintaining the peculiar personality of a true familiar.’291 This personality ensures Ariel is both a magic-bringing spirit as well as an earthbound creature, who both controls the natural elements and in turn is controlled by his human master. That Ariel is an ‘incomparably comprehensive demon’, Robert Reed argues, has tended to ‘obscure [rather than] define the



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immediate origin of Shakespeare’s most benevolent demon’.292 Reed proposes that the prototype of Ariel is a character in Anthony Munday’s comedy, Jon a Kent & John a Cumber (pre-1595), a magician’s apprentice called ‘Shrimp’. Among his attributes, Shrimp can assume invisibility and play ‘upon a pipe so enchantingly that those who hear him are irresistibly compelled to follow’.293 In The Tempest, Ariel ‘invisible’ lures Ferdinand to Prospero’s cave by his ‘playing and singing’ (1.2.377). It is not sure what instrument Ariel plays at this point. Most editors assume he must sing and play simultaneously, and provide him with a lute. But later in the play, Ariel is identified with the pipe and tabor, and induces other characters through that ‘music’. It is possible he plays the pipe and sings successively. Reed notices ‘exact parallels’ in both Ariel’s ‘stratagem of magic’ and in the texts of the two plays. He also suggests an occasion when Shrimp’s musical magic anticipates Ariel’s. Shrimp’s ‘dainty music’ induces slumber without affecting other characters present. Ariel’s ‘solemn music’ (2.1.181) causes Gonzalo and Alonso to sleep while Sebastian and Antonio remain awake. Reed (1960: 63) argues that in ‘the restricted circle of the Elizabethan theatrical profession, Shakespeare and Munday were certain to have been familiar with one another’s plays’, and that Shakespeare was almost certainly ‘indebted to Munday’s characterization of Shrimp’. Munday’s two-dimensional character, however, is developed by Shakespeare into a multi-faceted spirit, crucial to the structure of the play as Prospero’s magic executor. Significant for his affectiveness is Ariel’s ‘airy music’. The connection between the ‘airy spirit’ and ‘music in the air’ derives from Renaissance theories relating to the transmission of sound and fanciful concepts of the nature and properties of ‘air’. In the absence of scientific verification, natural phenomena were interpreted through perceptual opposites, so that air opposed earth and fire opposed water. Air was thought to be an invisible medium that contained both aural and supernatural beings, as well as something which through the spirit brought life to humans. While the acoustic properties of music were not understood, music was imagined to permeate the air and its sound was transmitted

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through it. It became comprehensible to humans through receptive senses and physical attributes or, as Robert Burton has it, the ‘five senses of touching, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting’.294 For ‘music in the air’, hearing is the ‘most excellent outward sense’, by which we learn and get knowledge. His object is sound, or that which is heard; the medium, air; the organ the ear. To the sound, which is a collision of the air, three things are required: a body to strike, as the hand of a musician; the body strucken, which must be solid and able to resist, as a bell, lute-string, not wool, or sponge; the medium, the air, which is inward, or outward; the outward, being struck or collided by a solid body, still strikes the next air; until it come to that inward natural air, which, as an exquisite organ … conveys the sound … to the common sense, as to a judge of sounds.295 This interaction of psychological sound and material air was perpetuated by late Renaissance writers such as Ficino296 In his well-known extrapolations on music’s power to ‘affect’, Ficino develops various aspects of cognitive sound. Gretchen Finney cites two instances, particularly relevant here to ‘Ariel’s music’. The first is from a letter to Antonio Canisiano, in which he ‘describes not the effect of sound alone, but of music with words, which, having been formed by imagination, mind and passion of the heart, enter the ear and penetrate the imagination, mind, and heart of the listener: Since song and sound arise from the cogitation of the mind, the impetus of the phantasy, and the feeling of the heart, and, together with the air they have broken up and tempered, strike the aerial spirit of the hearer, which is the junction of the soul and body, they easily move the phantasy, affect the heart and penetrate into the deep recesses of the mind.297 The second is from his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, often cited, where he provides an explanation for the effect of music carried through the air. It penetrates the mind and soul, per the ear, as if guided by an ‘airy spirit’:



Symbolic persons 131 Musical sound … conveys as if animated, the emotions and thoughts of the singer’s [or] player’s soul to the listener’s souls … by the movement of the air [it] moves the body; by purified air it excites the aerial spirit which is the bond of body and soul; by motion it affects the senses and at the same time the soul; by meaning it works on the mind: finally, by the very movement of the subtile air it penetrates strongly: by its contemperation it flows smoothly: by the conformity of its quality it floods us with a wonderful pleasure: by its nature, both spiritual and material, it at once seizes, and claims as its own, man in its entirety.298

It is not inappropriate, therefore, that Ferdinand should ask ‘where should [Ariel’s] music be? I’th’air or th’earth?’ (Temp 1.2.391) or that Ariel’s air-borne music should penetrate the ear and work upon the senses.

Hermione According to Pafford,299 Shakespeare derived most of the names in The Winter’s Tale from North’s translation of Plutarch, probably from an edition of 1603. This includes Hermione300 whom Pafford (1963: lxxiii) describes as ‘one of many Shakespearian characters in whom qualities, sometimes unexpected, are revealed by changes of circumstance’. One of the changes is manifest in the final moments of the play, in the harmonious reunion of Perdita and Hermione, one young and thought to be lost, the other mature, beautiful and resigned to her destiny: Paulina: Please you to interpose, fair madam. Kneel, And pray your mother’s blessing, – Turn, good lady, Our Perdita is found. Hermione: You gods, look down, And from your sacred vials pour your graces Upon my daughter’s head. – Tell me, mine own, Where hast thou been preserved? Where lived? How found

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Shakespeare’s Musical Imagery Thy father’s court? For thou shalt hear that I, Knowing by Paulina that the oracle Gave hope thou wast in being, have preserved Myself to see the issue. (5.3.120–38)

In his discussion of discontinuity, or ‘slice-of-life realism’, Alastair Fowler draws attention to the ‘rupture in The Winter’s Tale between the younger Leontes’ jealousy and the elder Leontes’ repentance’ and argues that ‘continuity depends on the narrative report by Paulina of Hermione’s concealment and Leontes’ sixteen-year penance – the interval that takes him from adolescentia to senecta. Sixteen probably symbolizes the virtuous quadrate harmonizing passions, part of the allegory of Harmonia–Hermione restored by repentance.’301 In a scene affected by music and the Delphic oracle of Apollo, it is possible Shakespeare invokes a musical interpretation of ‘Hermione’. As Hardman points out,302 ‘Hermione’ is defined in certain Renaissance dictionaries as a variant of ‘Harmonia’,303 and ‘is a personification, like the Latin Concordia, and figures harmony and concord’. John Pitcher argues that In Shakespeare’s day, the first vowel of ‘Hermione’ rhymed with ‘star’ rather than the modern English ‘stir’. This allowed her to be identified with Harmonia, goddess of concord, … and associated with Aphrodite Pandemos, ‘love that unites everyone’, personification of civil unity.304 Just as in Pericles, when Cerimon revives Thaisa (Scene 12.86–90), mention of ‘vials’ may not be exclusively to the medicinal bottle but also an allusion to the reviving quality of (soft) string music, to the music of viols. Certainly, it would not be inappropriate for viols to accompany this passage.305

Viola In a play in which music is so pervasive and influential, it is tempting to seek a specific musical identity for Viola deriving from a possible music interpretation of her name. In her closely argued



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paper, ‘“Many sorts of music”: Musical Genre in Twelfth Night and The Tempest’,306 Lin Kelsey sets out ‘to explore some of the hidden transactions between dramatic genre and kinds or genres of music in [these] two plays of Shakespeare’.307 She takes as her premise ‘two kinds of oneness’ explicated in Sonnet 8, where, The ‘all in one’ note formed by treble, alto or tenor, and bass joined in concord as opposed to the thin, insubstantial note produced by a single [lute] string – offer a revealing background against which to view the deliberately polyphonic texture of Twelfth Night, with its engaging mixture of many voices and ‘parts’, and the tenuous, linear texture of The Tempest, where we and the inhabitants of Prospero’s island are so often taken by the ear by a single voice speaking or singing.308 In Twelfth Night, the ‘parts’ are represented by the protagonists linked by name and purpose. Orsino is the bass; Olivia the soprano part. Viola is ‘poised between the alternatives of Orsino and Olivia, and by her final choice to serve Orsino in the guise of Cesario – a figure who will come more and more to resemble Messer Alto or Tenor … mediating between Bass and Soprano’.309 While she is at pains to remind us that she has the Renaissance viol in mind,310 Kelsey’s identification of Shakespeare’s viola with the function of the eighteenth-century instrument which held the median between violin and ‘cello is hard to discount. She develops the ‘polyphonic’ role argument, perhaps in extremis: Shakespeare appears to be assembling, with his usual mixture of extreme subtlety and open punning, all the makings of a viol consort. The changeable Orsino (Or-C-no), whom Feste would have “put to sea” or C (2.4.76); sea surviving Sebastian (C-bass-tian); and Viola and Olivia (the latter an anagram of Viola) now stand ready to play their parts, shortly to be joined by Malvolio (Mal-violo), a ‘distemper’d’ (1.5.91) or out of tune instrument whose discords are essential to the plot.311 To what extent Kelsey’s subliminal viol consort can be justified depends on interpreting Viola as a central, musical character,

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specifically associated with the viol. Explicit references to Viola’s musicality involve her voice, or rather its tessitura, analogous to a pipe. In her disguise as Cesario, Viola will account for her highpitched voice, serving Orsino as a eunuch: I’ll serve this duke. Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him. It may be worth thy pains, for I can sing, And speak to him in many sorts of music That will allow me very worth his service. (TN 1.2.51–5) The duke is curious: thy small pipe Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound, And all is semblative of a woman’s part. (TN 1.4.31–3) Viola’s/Cesario’s identification with the small, high-pitched pipe is more impactful than any oblique association with the viol. As Elam suggests, the ‘small pipe’ is ‘at once the treble voice and undeveloped member of the boy actor, which is simultaneously … female vocality and genitality together’.312 Bruce Smith adds that Orsino measures ‘not only the physical size of the windpipe but the volume of sound it makes’, and goes on to argue that ‘the interchangeability of boys’ and women’s voices [in early modern theatre] is attested by the Wooer in The Two Noble Kinsmen, who tells of hearing the Jailer’s Daughter (played by a boy) singing: I heard a voyce, a shrill one, and attentive I gave my eare, when I might well perceive T’was one that sung, and by the smallnesse of it A boy or woman. (Q1634: 4.1.56–9)313 Despite her earlier intentions, Viola’s wish to pass herself off as a eunuch is not carried out. She adopts the role of serving boy. Twelfth Night is one of the few plays in which a viol is specifically mentioned in the dialogue. The allusion is not altogether



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straightforward. That Sir Andrew Aguecheek should be praised by Sir Toby as a player ‘o’th’ viol-de-gamboys’ (TN 1.3.21) as well as a fluent speaker of ‘three or four languages’ (TN 1.3.22) as a mark of an educated gentleman is both topical and conventional. But why Shakespeare should have preferred the masculine form of ‘viol da gamba’ here has perplexed several editors and commentators and has gone seemingly unnoticed by others. The Norton Shakespeare (1997: 1796) regards it as a ‘facetious corruption of “viola da gamba”. Ungerer urges that male engendered bawdy is implicit in this ‘sexualised musical metaphor [which] conjures up the picture of Sir Andrew fondling and fingering, instead of a woman, a stringed instrument indecently placed in a straddling posture between his spindly thighs’.314 The gender of Shakespeare’s viol, however, may not be especially significant. The ‘viol de gambo’ is found in several contemporaneous lute-song publications including Robert Jones’ The First Booke of Songes & Ayres (1600), his Ultimum Vale (1605) and Tobias Hume’s The First Part of Ayres … With Pauines, Galliards, and Almaines for the Viole De Gambo alone (1605). The suggestion that Shakespeare’s ‘viol de gamboys’ is an oblique reference to the obese violist Tobias Hume, who was known to have a penchant for boys, is not convincing – not least because it is Sir Toby who praises Sir Andrew and not the other way around. Despite Kelsey’s convoluted attempts to link Viola with a specific musical instrument, it may be the viol has a generalist symbolic role in Twelfth Night, as music. Is it not the case that Orsino’s opening call for music is an adumbration of his destiny, that is ‘Viola’? And that Viola’s general association with ‘music’ is through her name.

Chapter 8

‘Gamut I am, the ground of all accord’: Music theory and pedagogy

Almost without exception, early modern English music treatises (c. 1560 to 1640), like their Italian and German equivalents, begin in the prefatory material or opening chapter by defining elementary rudiments, in particular ‘naming’ of notes in the context of the gamut. The anonymous Pathway to Musicke (1596) states ‘first of all it is needful for him that will learn to sing truely, to understand his Scale, or (as they commonly call it) the Gamma-ut’ (sig. A2). William Bathe likewise emphasizes the need to memorize the gamut or scale and know its notational practice: The Scale of Musick, which is called Gam-ut, conteineth 10 rules, and as many spaces; and is set downe in letters and sillables, in which you must beegin at the lowest word, Gam-ut, and so go upwards to the end still ascending, and learne it perfectly without booke, to say it forwards and backwards.315 The conventional gamut of Renaissance theory comprised the six solmization syllables, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la,316 whose pitch was identified according to their relationship to the first seven letters of the alphabet (A to G). Thomas Morley presents the ‘Scale of Music’ or gamut in tabular form towards the beginning of his A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597), the most important of the English music treatises. Closely echoing Bathe, he instructs his ‘young beginner’, Philomathes, ‘For the understanding of this Table, you must begin at the lowest word Gam-ut, and so go upwards to the end still ascending … Then must you get it perfectly without booke, to saie it forwards and backwards’ (p. 3). Morley goes on to



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discuss notated pitch and the relative position of B flat (B fa) and B natural (B mi), distinguishing the cantus mollis, denoted by the ‘flat cliefe’ or flat key signature, and the cantus durus with no-flat key signature, in other words hexachords beginning on F and G respectively.317 That it was good practice in Elizabethan England to teach the ‘naming’ of notes, the gamut or scale, first before learning to play, finds application in the music lesson in The Taming of the Shrew (3.1). Before she may learn to play the lute, Hortensio/Licio instructs Bianca: Madam, before you touch the instrument To learn the order of my fingering, I must begin with rudiments of art, To teach you gamut in a briefer sort, More pleasant, pithy, and effectual Than hath been taught by any of my trade; And there it is in writing, fairly drawn. (3.1.62–8) Whether or not Hortensio’s ‘brief method’ is an allusion to contemporaneous music treatises cannot be determined, but this early comedy (c. 1592) iterates aims and objectives of contemporary music theory, brevity and accessibility as the titles of Bathe’s chronologically proximate treatises suggests: A Brief Introduction to the True Arte of Musicke (1584) and A Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song (c. 1592). Like Bathe and Morley, Hortensio insists the scale is notated so that it can be learnt. Bianca complains she already knows her traditional gamut. Hortensio urges her to read his new explication of the system. Bianca acquiesces: Gamouth I am, the ground of all accord: Are, to plead Hortensio’s passion: Beeme, Bianca take him for thy Lord Cfaut, that loves with all affection: D solre, one Cliffe, two notes have I, Elami, show pitty or I die. (TLN 1366–71)

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Because interpretations of these musically complex references often depend on phonetic explanation, the Folio version is given here. The gamut or scale Hortensio accurately describes is the cantus durus, starting on G and characterized by B mi (B #). Most commentators are content to offer an explanation of Hortensio’s first line but at best diverge over the rest, at worst claim that Hortensio’s music is like Lucentio/Cambio’s Latin; ‘small’ and misguided. R. Warwick Bond (Arden Shakespeare, 1904), for example, comments ‘it seems vain to trace any relation between the notes of the scale and the remainder of the lines’. Brian Morris (Arden Shakespeare, Second Series, 1981) is similarly non-committal: ‘There is no such obvious correspondence in the lines that follow. Ingenious attempts have been made to see comparisons … but none is convincing’ (p. 222). In keeping with Renaissance theory, Hortensio identifies the first hexachord starting on the bass G - ut. With Lucentio’s construing of the Latin passages from Ovid Heroides, Book I in mind, Morris observes that ‘“Gamut” is the basis of the hexachord just as “I am” (“sum”) is the basis of grammar, and even, perhaps the name of the Creator (Exodus, iii.14)’.318 As the lowest bass note of the vocal range or compass of Renaissance music and as the rudimentary basis for Renaissance theory, the gamut would provide the ‘ground’ of all music. Linking ‘ground’ with ‘gamut’ may have added significance. Hexachords had been used as ‘grounds’ for contemporary keyboard variations such as William Byrd’s piece in My Lady Nevells Book (1591), no. 9. In this sense, the gamut permeates the whole music. In a musical context, ‘accord’ can have both a general and a more specific meaning. Referring to concord or harmony, specifically it can mean ‘the agreeable Union between the Sounds of two Strings [on an instrument] struck at the same time’ (Chamber’s Dictionary, 1728). Hortensio would be keen to emphasize to Bianca that his ‘bass was in tune’ since his rival Lucentio had accused him earlier in the scene of not having tuned the bass of Bianca’s lute. The second line is more cryptic. That the note is pronounced as two syllables, A-re, according to the scansion of the line, is not contentious. But Miller’s idea that because the word ‘sounds when read as “array”, a word often used by Shakespeare meaning “to



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arrange, dress or equip”, Hortensio thus calls on the notes of the scale to dress themselves or to assume a meaning which will plead his passion’,319 is not at all convincing. If Hortensio’s comment construes the music note, then in this Italian context ‘A-re’ could easily be a contraction for ‘amore’, his ‘passion’. The spelling of the third note may be significant. That ‘be’ rhymed with ‘me’ is likely, as suggested elsewhere in Shakespeare, albeit in a much later play: Dorcus: Thou hast sworn my love to be. Mopsa: Thou hast sworn it more to me. (WT 4.4.294–5) Earlier in The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare exploits a homonymic pun on ‘be-bee’: Katherina: And yet as heavie as my waight should be. Petruchio: Shold be, should: buzze. (2.1.206) In Morley (1597) and other Elizabethan music treatises, the equivalent note is expressed as ‘B mi’ and is invariably transcribed as such by modern editors of the play. This led Frank Fabry,320 taking his cue from Edward Naylor,321 to ‘twist’ ‘B mi’ into ‘be mine’. Miller’s approach is pedantic: If the syllable in this line had been printed ‘mi’ and pronounced my it would have given quite good sense: ‘Be my Bianca’. But from the spelling in the Folio, there seems little doubt that it was intended to be called ‘me’ in this case and that it is another example of … the ‘ethical dative’, meaning ‘to me’ or ‘for me’… The line therefore says: ‘Be for me, Bianca; take him for thy Lord’.322 In the hexachord system the character or property of B mi affects the whole nature of the scale. B mi is the only note which can have two ‘properties’, B quarre and B molle, in modern parlance a natural or a flat. This determines the hexachord. If the B mi is a natural, the hexachord starts on G. If it is a flat the hexachord starts on F. Hortensio’s hexachord starts on G so his B mi is quarre or a natural.

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The property of B mi affects the position of the semitone in the hexachord, a vital characteristic. If B mi is a natural, then the semitone occurs between B and C, making C a pivot note and the start of the next hexachord. No commentators have offered a convincing explanation for Hortensio’s Cfaut. Miller (1933: 256–7) is convoluted; Naylor is simply tight-lipped. That ‘fa’ here has any correspondence with ‘fa’ in Romeo and Juliet (4.5) or earlier in The Taming of the Shrew (1.2) is doubtful, since play on the verb fay (feigh) meaning ‘to clean, cleanse, winnow’323 does not make sense; and the Folio spelling of Cfaut as one word militates against introducing such an interpretation by extracting ‘fa’. More possible is the idea that Hortensio uses this point in the hexachord to reaffirm his affection for Bianca. Commentators are more confident in their interpretations of the next note. Norton (2008: 198), for example, offers ‘Referring perhaps to his [Hortensio’s] one love and two identities’. The Arden Shakespeare editions also propose that ‘the “one clef” is love and the “two notes” Hortensio’s real and assumed personalities’. Both these interpretations may be slightly too elaborate, disregarding contemporary music theory. If that is the case then the line means that Hortensio has one name or persona but two identities: himself and a new name, Licio. According to hexachord theory, notes that form part of the next hexachord up assume two or three solmisation syllables as they progress through the scale. Morley demonstrates this in his table. In Hortensio’s case, the next hexachord starts on C, hence C is ‘fa’ in the G hexachord and ‘ut’ in C. Thus D is sol in the G hexachord and re in C. This problem, that one note can have two syllables of the gamut increasingly beset English theorists, until Campion advocated an alternative system in his A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint (c.  1614). Morley’s pupil gets confused when it comes to the actual ‘tuning’ or pitching of notes since, as Morley states, each note has one pitch or ‘cliefe’ but some can have two (or more) syllables or identities. In responding to Philomathes’ query about accidentals (flats and naturals on the same note), Morley (1597: 3) invokes a metaphor not a long way removed from Hortensio’s situation:



Music theory and pedagogy 141 The Herralds shall answere that for mee: for if you should aske them, why two men of one name should not both give one Armes? they will straight answere you, that they be of severall houses, and therefore must give divers coates. So these two bb, though they be both comprehended under one name, yet they are in nature and character divers.

Specifically related to Hortensio’s ambiguous hexachord, Philomathes finds difficulty with the split identity of notes. Morley (1597: 4) instructs his pupil to ‘sing then after mee … and you shall name the notes your selfe’. Philomathes protests that ‘I can name them right till I come to C fa ut. Now whether shall I terme this fa or ut?’ Campion acknowledges this when he remarks: there can be no greater hindrance to him that desires to become a Musition, then the want of the true understanding of the Scale, which proceeds from the errour of the common Teacher, who can doe nothing without the olde Gam-ut, in which there is but one Cliffe, and one Note, and yet in the same Cliffe he wil sing re & sol. (sigs B3v-B4r)324 The new and simpler system Campion proposes is the embryonic major/minor diatonic scale that formed the basis of Western tonality until it was challenged by atonality in the early twentieth century. The spelling of the last note may or may not be significant. Although the same solmization syllable, ‘mi’ here is differentiated from ‘me’ in Hortensio’s third note. However, no tenable explanation of this line has been forthcoming. Fabry (1982: 183) suggests ‘alas! ah me!’. Bianca’s reaction to Hortensio’s new gamut summarizes modern responses to critical interpretations: Call you this gamut? Tut, I like it not. Old fashions please me best. I am not so nice To change true rules for odd inventions. (3.1.77–9)

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In preferring the old gamut, Bianca effectively acknowledges the debate current among early modern music theorists about the adoption of the diatonic octave scale in preference to the increasingly outmoded hexachord system. Puns on solmization syllables in music were not uncommon in a culture which promoted artificial conceits and riddles. A number of hexachord canons in Ravenscroft’s collections of ‘pleasant roundelays and delightfull catches’, Pammelia (1609) and Deuteromelia (1609), exploit the ascending and descending scale according to the sense of the words, ‘hey down a down a dising’ and develop puns on the central ‘tonal’ notes, mi-fa. John Dowland identifies the hexachord syllables in his lute-song setting of ‘Lasso vita mia, mi fa morire’ (A Pilgrimes Solace, 1612, no. 11) in the solo altus voice part (La-sol-mi-fa-re) and similarly exploits the mi-fa relationship.325 The hexachord Holofernes hums to himself in Love’s Labour’s Lost ‘extracts’ mi-fa by placing it after sol-la: ‘[he sings] Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa’ (4.2.92). It could be that the pretentious pedant has misquoted the gamut just as he misquotes the first line of the first eclogue by Baptista Spagnolo (1448–1516), known as Mantuan: ‘Fauste, precor, gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra ruminat’ becomes ‘Facile, precor gelida quando pecas omnia sub umbra ruminat’ (4.2.86–7). The clue to the pun may lie in the new line’s meaning: ‘Easily, I pray, since you are getting everything wrong under the cool shade, it ruminates’ (Norton, 2008: 802). Holofernes seemingly indulges his exclusive access to Mantuan by paraphrazing an Italian proverb: ‘Venezia, Venezia, chi non ti vede, chi non ti prezia’ (4.2.89–90). This line was the first part of the wellknown saying which had appeared in John Florio’s dual language Italian–English teaching books, Firste Fruites (1578) and Second Frutes (1591), translated as ‘Venice, who seeth thee not, praiseth thee not. [But he that sees it payes well for it]’. Holofernes’ adage mutates into ‘Old Mantuan – who understandeth thee not, loves thee not’ (4.2.91–2). Then comes the hexachord. What connection, if any, does it have to Mantuan? Most commentators find none, but Paul Schuyler Phillips, university music lecturer and conductor, argues that there is an association. The solmization syllables derive from



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the eighth-century hymn, ‘Ut queant laxis’ (mentioned in note 316). The hymn, Phillips notes, celebrates the Nativity of St John the Baptist which is the link with Mantuan: ‘The poet’s full name was Johannes Baptista Spagnolo; the solfeggio syllables, even out of order, refer back to this important hymn for the saint whose name Mantuan bore. That Shakespeare intended this pun there can be little doubt’.326 If that is the case, the literary critic cum composer Anthony Burgess makes no mention of the connection. He regarded Holofernes’ gamut as a ‘musical theme of six notes … suitable for a ground bass; it can be extended into a fugal subject. If we repeat it a tritone higher or lower, we have a perfect twelve-tone Grundstimmung for a serial composition’.327 In 1975, Burgess realized this modernist interpretation of Shakespeare’s ‘theme’. The last movement of his Third Symphony is based on this theme, ‘forward, backward, and upside down’.328 He added vocal soloists to sing the ‘Mantuan’ lines immediately preceding Holofernes’ gamut, and the songs of Spring and Winter at the end of the play. Burgess thought this was the ‘only tune that Shakespeare wrote’.329 In Folio King Lear, Edmund vocalizes four tones of the gamut, namely fa, sol, la and mi. The addition of these four notes in F indicates they have primarily a practical function – they designate the relative pitches Edmund hums, for example the notes G, A, B, F.330 But they may also have a theoretical application. If ‘la’ is sung as a B natural then the jump down to F natural forms a tritone, a ‘divided’ interval, effectively musicking the divisions or discords of Edmund’s scheming against Edgar. There may also be an oblique reference to the well-known London street cry, ‘Bedlam’, as set for example by Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) for voice and viols, ‘Poor naked bedlam, Tom’s a-cold’. Sternfeld (1967: 177–80) describes the sources and gives a version of the tune, and argues that the Bedlam lyric, the Gibbons fragment and ‘the passage of Mad Tom in King Lear, are all related in vocabulary and atmosphere’.331 The two notes of the gamut cited by Peter as he rails against the musicians in Romeo and Juliet have both a theoretical and practical application.

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Peter: I will give you the minstrel. First Musician: Then I will give you the serving-creature. Peter: Then will I lay the serving-creature’s dagger on your pate. I will carry no crotchets. I’ll re you. I’ll fa you. Do you note me? First Musician: An you re us and fa us, you note us. (4.4.137–43) Fabry argues that the ‘play on the [two] musical syllables becomes evident when we regard them as Italian words and translate them into English’, following the precedent set in The Taming of the Shrew.332 Consequently, ‘“I’ll re you” becomes “I’ll crown you” … and “I’ll fa you” becomes “I’ll do you in” (assault you)’.333 Kökeritz identifies these homonymic puns as ‘a play on the verbs fay (feigh) “to clean, cleanse, winnow” and ray “to smear, soil, dirty”’.334 In Q1, Peter also threatens the musicians ‘Ile sol you’ which, according to Kökeritz (1953: 146) ‘clearly implies that he will sowl the other musician’, or ‘beat’ him. When the first musician points out that these are also music notes, he intends a bawdy pun, especially on ‘fa’. Whether or not Shakespeare contrives an aural pun is uncertain, but the short phrase rises in pitch with an intervallic leap between re and fa. The ‘sol’ of Q1 Romeo and Juliet occurs in The Taming of the Shrew (1.2), a section whose Shakespearean authorship is sometimes questioned. Like Peter, Petruccio threatens to bang his adversary on the head; Petruccio charges Grumio, his serving-man: Villian, I say, knock me at this gate, And rap me well or I’ll knock your knave’s pate. (1.2.11–12) Grumio observes his master has ‘grown quarrelsome’ but that if he lands the first blow he will come off worse. Petruccio wonders what he is waiting for, and introduces musical puns: Will it not be? Faith, sirrah, an you’ll not knock, I’ll ring it. I’ll try how you can sol-fa and sing it. (Shrew 1.2.15–17) ‘Knock’ and ‘ring’ are used as appositional conjuncts, but the following line, rhyming ‘sing’ with ‘ring’ adds a musical pun which



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may also connect with the Folio next line, ‘He wrings him by the ears’. Elizabethan schoolboys who found difficulty in learning sol-fa had their ears wrung, if we are to believe Lytton Strachey: ‘Anthony Standon, it appears, thought Essex lacked tenacity of purpose, and that “he must be continually pulled by the ear, as a boy that learneth ut, re mi, fa”’.335 Waldo and Herbert contend the Folio’s ‘Sol, Fa, and sing it’ teases us with the possibility that the actor playing Petruchio might have been expected to suggest to the mind two now non-standard words. An old verb ‘sowl’, pronounced the same as ‘sol’, meant ‘to pull, seize roughly, etc., by the ears; used especially of dogs’ (NED); ‘fey’, pronounced in Elizabethan days the same as ‘fa’, meant ‘fated to die, at the point of death’.336 They deduce that this level of complexity in the musical references supports the case for Shakespeare single authorship. They make no mention of ‘sol’ in Q1 Romeo and Juliet. Connected to gamut or scale is the term degree, used musically at one point in Ulysses’ first speech in Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare’s extensive account of order and hierarchy, where everything and everyone have their appointed place in relation to one another, from the lowest to the highest: The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre [the earth] Observe degree, priority, and place, Infixture, course, proportion, season, form, Office and custom, in all line of order. (1.3.85–8) The linear realization of hierarchical interconnectives, famously associated with Tillyard’s Elizabethan world picture,337 is an oversimplification of Shakespeare’s interpretation of the causes of chaos arising from the breakdown of order both in society and in the minds of individuals, because, as McAlindon argues, ‘pre-modern cosmology construed the world not only as a hierarchical structure of corresponding planes but also as a dynamic system of interacting, interdependent opposites… . The two conceptions are logically connected, since every scale of degree is constructed from

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opposites and constitutes in effect an attempt to mediate between them.’338 When disorder challenges order, strife and discord in both societal organizations and the natural elements will ensue: when the planets In evil mixture to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents, what mutiny? What raging of the sea, shaking of earth? Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors Divert and crack, rend and deracinate The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixture. O when degree is shaked, Which is the ladder to all high designs, The enterprise is sick. (Tro 1.3. 94–103) The breakdown of order, the ‘disintegration of the individual and society’,339 is not the result of the violation of a preordained hierarchy but the manifestation of adjacent opposites acting in conflict. Characteristically, Shakespeare offers a complex musical metaphor to intensify the imagery of the preceding passage: Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets In mere oppugnancy. (Tro 1.3.109–11) ‘Untuning’ in-tune strings (of a lute or viol) in connection with causing discord from concord is an image used elsewhere by Shakespeare, notably in Othello (2.1) when Iago contrives to untune the harmony between Othello and Desdemona. In King Lear (4.7), conversely, Cordelia tries to tune the disordered string of her father’s mind. Strings that are out-of-tune with each other will not only sound discordant but they will be incapable of making harmonious music. In Renaissance music theory, ‘degree’ is usually explained in relation to rhythm and post-Medieval mensural notation. The anonymous Pathway to Musicke (1596) defines degree as ‘a certain rate, by which the value of the principall notes is measured and



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knowne by a certaine marke’ (Ciii). The ‘certaine marke’ predicts either duple or tripe time and regulates the groupings of notes. Thomas Morley affirms this approach: Those who within these three hundreth yeares have written the Art of Musicke, have set downe the Moodes otherwise then they eyther have been or are taught now in England … Those which we now call Moodes, they tearmid degrees of Musick: the definition they gave thus: a degree is a certayne meane whereby the value of the principall notes is perceaved by some signe set before them, degrees of musicke they made three, Moode: Time and Prolation. (1597: 12) The ‘moodes’ are the rhythmic modes of medieval music which essentially differentiate between duple and triple time at both local and larger-scale levels. Thomas Ravenscroft is slightly more specific and uses ‘moode’ to signify a note length rather than rhythm, which he divides according to ‘perfection’ and ‘imperfection’: Degrees were invented to expresse the value of the … principall Notes, by a Perfect and Imperfect Measure. Perfect Measure is when all goes by 3. Imperfect Measure when all go by 2.340 According to rhythmic theory in practice, music is ordered by the temporal relationship of notes as indicated in the rhythmic mode, degree or time sign. In medieval and renaissance music, before the employment of the reductive time signature and organization of notes into isochronistic metrical bars using bar lines, the interpretation and meaning of tempo and rhythm were determined by the hierarchical relationship of the longest and shortest notes. Take that order away and the rhythm disintegrates into anarchy. Another usage of the term ‘degree’ is found in Elizabethan music theory. Thomas Campion, for example, talks about ‘Notes rising and falling … not so much by degree as by leaps … rising is said to be by degrees, because there is no Note between the two Notes’.341 Campion refers to adjacent note or stepwise linear movement as distinct from disjunct, leaping intervallic motion. ‘Rising or falling

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by degrees’ is orderly when that motion is conjunct or stepwise. If the intervallic motion becomes disjunct then that order is broken. The identification of ‘degree’ here as Campion’s ‘scale’ could possibly be preferred if Shakespeare’s ‘ladder of all high designs’ is read as a pun on ‘ladder’, ‘scala’ in Italian. No where else, however, do we find Shakespeare using ‘scale’ in its musical sense. The ordering of the scale, according to Campion, was dependent on an understanding of key or what became, as the seventeenth century progressed, the tonal system. He states: Of all things that belong to the making up of a Musition, the most necessary and usefull for him is the true knowledge of the Key or Moode, or Tone, for all signifie the same thing, with the closes belonging unto it, for there is no tune that can have any grace or sweetnesse, unless it be bounded within a proper key, without running into strange keys which have no affinity with the aire of the song.342 Here Campion conflates the old modes and psalm tones into the new major/minor key system, as he sees it, with full and half closes or cadences in relative keys as appropriate. If a melody moves into an unrelated key, it violates its tonal norm. It is important, therefore, that the key is established at the outset, as Dowland stresses: ‘A Key is the opening of a Song, because like as a Key opens a dore, so doth it the Song’ (Dowland, Micrologus, 1609, p. 8). This summarizes Morley’s point that a tune should begin and end in the same key and should not digress into a ‘strange’ key: A great fault, for every key hath a peculiar ayre proper unto it selfe, so that if you goe into another then that wherein you begun, you change the aire of the song, which is as much as to wrest a thing out of his nature, making the asse leape upon his maister and the Spaniell beare the loade … if you begin your song in D sol re, you may end in a re and come again to D sol re.343 By extension, key also signified pitch or tessitura. Morley (1597: 165) states there are two main divisions: ‘all songs made by the



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Musicians, who make songs by discretion, are either in the high key or in the lowe key’, corresponding to today’s treble and bass clefs. Pitch is implied when the Second Queen in The Two Noble Kinsmen implores Hippolyta to persuade Theseus to engage Creon in combat. Despite her military prowess, her approach should be seductive and womanly, even pitiful. The effect of the woman’s voice may possibly be highlighted by mention of the man’s ‘tenor’ a few lines earlier, contrasting the low and high keys: Honoured Hippolyta … That equally canst poise sternness with pity, Whom now I know hast much more power on him Than ever he had on thee, who ow’st his strength, And his love too, who is a servant for The tenor of thy speech; dear glass of ladies, Bid him that we, whom flaming war doth scorch, Under the shadow of his sword may cool us. Require him he advance it o’er our heads. Speak’t in a woman’s key, like such a woman As any of us three. Weep ere you fail. (1.1.77; 86–95) Not only must Hippolyta approach Theseus ‘in a woman’s key’, she needs to be careful not to change key and resort to her military nature. Preserving the key – not changing key – underpins Nestor’s exhortation to Agamemnon to maintain order and, as it were, prefaces Ulysses explication of ‘degree’, discussed above: Why then the thing of courage, As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathize, And with an accent tuned in selfsame key Retorts to chiding fortune. (Tro 1.3.50–3) In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Helena recalls to Hermia their childhood friendship when, among other harmonious activities, they both sang in the same key:

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We, Hermia, like two artificial gods Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key, As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds Had been incorporate. (3.2.204–9) Knowing in what key a person is singing is fundamental to Benedick’s querying of Claudio’s cryptic laudatory comments about Hero and enquires: ‘Come, in what key shall a man take you to go in the song?’ (Ado 1.1.149–50). Not knowing the key, as in Egeon’s exchange with Antipholus of Ephesus, results in misunderstanding and distress. Egeon presumes he is addressing Antipholus of Syracuse, the other twin brother, and asks him if he recognizes his face, despite its disfigurements, or at least knows his voice. When Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus deny that they do, Egeon becomes distressed: Not know my voice? O time’s extremity, Hast thou so cracked and splitted my poor tongue In seven short years that here my only son Knows not my feeble key of untuned cares? (Errors 5.1.308–11) If the fundamental characteristics of a key are not recognized then the key itself cannot be identified and the music will be uncertain, even discordant. Egeon’s voice has grown weak, has lost its key, because of discordant sorrows. Disregarding Morley’s admonition not to ‘change key’ will result in changing the character of the music entirely. At the beginning of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, four days and nights before their nuptials, Theseus promises Hippolyta that, I wooed thee with my sword, And won thy love doing thee injuries. But I will wed thee in another key – With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling. (1.1.16–19)



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Having conquered the Queen of the Amazons through his military exploits, the Duke of Athens asserts he will attend to civil and festive matters in order to secure their future happiness and harmony. His change of key provides contrast and a change of mode. Shakespeare lived during a time of significant change in both music theory and practice, what music historians in the earlier twentieth century described as the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque. England was slow to catch on.344 The new representational harmonic style of Monteverdi, the so-called seconda prattica, was not embraced with much enthusiasm in England although there is evidence the new music from Italy was not totally unknown from as early as 1601. Shakespeare’s music theory was firmly rooted in Renaissance practice, but knowledge of the controversy surrounding the ‘naming’ of notes, for example, and other details referred to above reveals that he was aware of contemporary developments and shifts in interpretative emphasis.

Chapter 9

‘A thousand twangling instruments’: Art and country instruments

The lute The lute was the quintessential instrument of the Elizabethan age345 and yet for much of the twentieth century the virginal was regarded as the essential representative of early music. The great collection of English keyboard music compiled by Francis Tregian in the early seventeenth century, now known as the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (FWVB) but at first thought to be Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book, was edited by the historians and bibliophiles J. A. Fuller Maitland and W. Barclay Squire, dedicated to Queen Victoria as ‘Empress of India’, and published by Breitkopf and Härtel in 1899. It was reprinted by Dover Publications, New York in 1963. Hilda Andrews’ edition of William Byrd’s 1591 manuscript anthology of mature keyboard music known as My Ladye Nevells Booke of Virginal Music (MLNB) was published by J. Curwen and Sons in London in 1926 (reissued by Dover in 1969). Several critical books appeared, including Charles van den Borren’s The Sources of Keyboard Music in England (Novello and Oxford, 1914) and Margaret Glyn’s English Virginal Music and Composers (W. Reeves, 1924). Even the first volume of Musica Britannica, the series launched following the Festival of Britain in 1951, was an edition of Tudor keyboard music, the so-called Mulliner Book. This trend of bringing to light the English virginal repertoire continued with renewed vigour during the 1950s and 1960s. In contrast, very little of the huge source of English lute music was catalogued let alone



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edited and published until the mid 1950s. It is worth reflecting that compared to the 406 pieces in FWVB and 42 in MLNB and 200 or so in other sources to 1620, more than 3,000 lute pieces from the period have been identified, not to mention more than 600 lute songs published between 1597 and 1622 and the dozens of songs extant in manuscript sources from 1560. This disparity is reflected in Shakespeare’s references to the lute and virginals. There are a little over 20 references involving the lute, whereas there is only one direct reference to the virginals (in TNK 3.3.34) and two oblique references (Sonnet 128 and WT 1.2.125). Shakespeare’s symbolic allusions to the lute, preference technical aspects of the instrument such as its stringing, tuning and fingering (‘touch’), learning to play, social domesticity, romantic associations, accompaniment for song, and bawdy. The lute emblem exists in two main forms: as an object in itself signifying certain attributes and as an object being played. As a visual object it is manifestly one of the most distinctive and arguably attractive of all Renaissance musical instruments, as the number of appearances it makes in paintings and drawings attests. As an aural experience, either imagined or real, it is capable of invoking the most sensitive and expressive reactions in both player and hearer. The shape of the lute is unmistakably evocative. On an artistic level, the perfect symmetry of its design and metrical proportions of its frets, even the arithmetic associations of its central rose,346 allowed it to become the representative of ‘musica’, for example on the title page of Morley’s A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) and by extension artistic creativity. On a sensory level, its pear-shaped, oval soundboard or belly set on a rounded body or back, its tapering neck and bent-back head (peg box) are irredeemably suggestive of the beautifully seductive female figure ubiquitously portrayed in renaissance paintings. Inevitably, perhaps, that idealized beauty degenerated in the emblem of the lute into lust and basic sexual activity. A lute hung on a wall, for example, indicated a brothel, as in Van Mieris the elder Brothel Scene (1658). In Thomas Coryat’s Crudities (London, 1611), Venetian courtesans are identified by carrying lutes. In Hamlet, the stage direction in the ‘bad’ quarto (Q1), ‘Enter Ofelia playing on a Lute, and her

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haire downe singing’, according to Lindley (2006: 158) ‘associates [Ophelia] both with music’s irrational force, and perilously with the prostitute’. The trade of the heroines in Dekker’s The Honest Whore and Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan, and possibly the Amazons in the masque scene in Timon of Athens, is made explicit by the lute emblem. Ophelia’s playing on a lute as she enters distracted and jilted may mark her out as a courtesan. But it is more likely the lute identifies her as a woman of ‘great sensibility and expressive emotional power’, an image Julia Craig-McFeely connects with the lute symbolism in the portrait of Lady Mary Wroth (niece of the exemplar Elizabethan knight, Sir Philip Sidney) and similarly with Lady Anne Clifford (Craig-McFeely, 2000: 8.14). The equivocation of Ophelia’s lute prop is understandable given the complexities of the emblematic use of the lute in renaissance literature and art, and possibly why the stage direction is not repeated in Q2 or F. This crossover situation is articulated by Craig-McFeely when she says (2000: 8.14), The two stereotypes seem to be clearly defined: the lute as a metaphor for sex and sensuality or as a metonymic substitution for the expression of complex feelings that could not be adequately or appropriately verbalised. However, these stereotypes merge seamlessly in the majority of situations: the basic erotically-charged image overlaps with the artful manipulation and expression of emotions. It is possible that Ophelia’s music, her singing and lute playing, served to give her a sociological and political voice otherwise denied in the ‘literary high culture of Renaissance England’,347 and allowed her to free herself from the code of passivity imposed on women in early modern society.348 The lute’s association with lust and vice find resonance in Falstaff’s melancholic disposition, his love-sickness. When Hal compares him to a ‘lover’s lute’ (1H4 1.2.66), among other ‘unsavoury’ similes, his allusion is ambivalent. The lute’s significance here, according to Wells (1994: 53),



Art and country instruments 155 depends essentially on the idea of parody. Characteristic of evil is its propensity for mocking and perverting the true forms of virtue – something at which Falstaff is notably adept. Thus, although the iconography of the lover’s lute to which Hal compares the melancholic Falstaff may be arcane, its meaning in this context is clear enough. This is plainly no symbol of virtue. For undoubtedly the sound that Falstaff is used to hearing in the Eastcheap tavern is … the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

The lute as symbol of love and lust is similarly invoked in The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, when Richard Duke of Gloucester in his opening soliloquy ironically contemplates domestic pleasures in contrast to military exploits: Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments, Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front, And now – instead of mounting barbèd steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries – He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. (R3 1.1.5–13) Richard’s sexually implicit dance and the seductive lute reveal his willingness to be ensnared by what is on offer in the lady’s chamber. There is also the suggestion here that Richard feigns his innocence because it is the lady who plays the lute and therefore lures him into temptation. The lute as an emblem of love, domesticity and pleasure as opposed to hostility, war and destruction is used in The Taming of the Shrew, when the disingenuous music teacher, Hortensio is asked by Katherine’s father, Baptista: What, will my daughter prove a good musician? Hortensio: I think she’ll sooner prove a soldier. Iron may hold with her, but never lutes. (2.1.142–4)

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The imagery of Hortensio’s encounter with the recalcitrant Katherine in the artificial context of the music lesson – which we’ll deal with shortly, depends on contemporaneous practices of learning and playing the lute in Elizabethan society. Although the lute was the most popular art-music instrument in Elizabethan times, comparatively little is known about how it was taught and what was learnt. A number of music theory instruction manuals were published from the 1580s on,349 but no instructions on how to play the lute were included in those treatises. The reasons for this are not evident. Either methods for learning to play the lute were relatively standard and the need for individual tutors superfluous, or lute pedagogy was not part of the print culture, new music polemic. In other words, there was nothing controversial or progressive about how to play the lute. The earliest tutors, The Sceyence of Lutynge, printed by John Alde in 1565 and An Exortation to all Kynde of Men How they Shulde Learn to Play of the Lute, printed by Robert Ballard in 1567, are lost. English books containing lute instruction printed before 1603 were derived from a French original by Le Roy. These included A Brief and Easye Instrution [sic] of 1568, ‘englished by J. Alford Londenor’ and William Barley’s A New Booke of Tabliture (1596). Thomas Robinson’s lute tutor, The Schoole of Musicke was published in 1603. It claimed to inform the ‘perfect method, of true fingering of the Lute, … with most infallible generall rules, both easie and delightfull’. It is written in dialogue ‘between a Knight, having children to be taught, and Timotheus, who should teach them’. Robert Dowland’s Varietie of Lute-Lessons, the last ‘Elizabethan’ lute instruction book to be printed, was published in 1610. It incorporates two prefatory essays, ‘Necessarie Observations Belonging to the Lute, and Lute playing by John Baptisto Besardo of Visonti’ (translated from Besard’s Thesaurus Harmonicus, 1603), and ‘Other Necessary Observations belonging to the Lute by John Douland, Batcheler of Musicke’. The instruction book on the ‘Art of Lute-playing’ by John Dowland, metioned by Robert in his Preface, was seemingly never completed. There seems to have been some conventional approaches to teaching the lute. According to Spring (2001: 112):



Art and country instruments 157 The normal method of instruction on the lute was for the teacher to visit the pupil at home, and leave a ‘lesson’ which the pupil would then copy into his/her book before the next visit, though sometimes the teacher would copy the piece in. The teacher might keep a set of unbound exemplars for this purpose, to which the individual ‘lesson’ would be returned after use.350

Surviving manuscript miscellanies from the mid-century to c. 1630 indicate the sort of music learnt.351 These so-called pedagogical books, compiled by pupils under the guidance of a teacher, comprise two categories, according to Craig-McFeely (2000: 87): The most common is that compiled by a young woman, or less usually a young man, from the leisured classes learning the instrument as part of their social armour, and easily forgotten when more important matters (such as marriage) took over. The second type was compiled by a man with a lower social status, who may have intended to use the skill either semi-professionally, or as an attempt to improve his social standing by complementing his other professional skills. It is not certain at what age young women were expected to start learning to play, but an ability to write is presumed and this was generally acquired from the age of 12.352 Some pedagogical books confirm that this was the age when lute lessons began. According to Craig-McFeely (2000: 29), Margaret, 3rd Countess of Wemyss (1659–1705), for instance, started copying her lute book from the age of 13. How many years it took and how difficult it was to become an accomplished player are unknown variables. A comment by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) suggests that not only hard work and time were involved but also considerable commitment and expense from the parents were necessary: Our young women and wives, that they being maids took so much pains to sing, play and dance, with such cost and charge to their parents to get these graceful qualities, now being married will scarce touch an instrument, they care not for it.353

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Clearly, music practice was a desirable marital attribute, but once matrimony had been achieved, it was thought no longer necessary to pursue that practice.354 That learning to play the lute made a young lady a more eligible spouse is an Elizabethan commonplace. A watercolour illustration in the lute manuscript, Berlin Mus. MS 40641 (Kraków: Biblioteka Jagiellon´ska) f. 1v, according to Spring (2001: 229), depicts an allegorical reason for learning the lute: Between a man and a woman a lute, flute, and music book are laid out. The lute is held up by an arm descending from clouds. From other clouds at the top right Cupid descends, aiming an arrow at the woman. The lute is the most prominent feature of the picture, and its role as matchmaker is evident. The Board and Pickeringe manuscripts confirm that young ladies from privileged backgrounds learnt the lute as ‘a pre-marriage accomplishment to advertise their gentility’ (Spring, 2001: 115). The lute lesson in The Taming of the Shrew (3.1) affords Shakespeare the opportunity to exploit several contextual normalities granted to a music teacher not usually available to an individual suitor. It gives the amorous Hortensio a legitimate reason to visit Bianca at home; it allows him a would-be one-to-one encounter (Lucentio scuppers that), and it emphasizes the marital symbol of learning to play the lute. That Bianca rejects his musical instruction and is not willing to learn the lute makes her position unequivocal and his disguise ineffectual. Hortensio’s lute lesson alludes to two important adjuncts to playing: namely tuning and music notation. With regards the latter, young beginners were expected to learn the basics of music theory, as the music treatises of the period attest, by committing to memory the principle of the gamut.355 This was achieved by learning music notation. Students of the lute were expected to transcribe teaching pieces or ‘lessons’ into compendiums or ‘pedagogical books’ under the supervision of the tutor.356 It was necessary, therefore, for Hortensio to attempt to teach Bianca the ‘rudiments of art’ before he began instruction on how to play the lute.357



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It was also necessary for Hortensio to tune his lute before demonstrating it to Bianca. The normal Elizabethan (domestic) lute comprised six courses of strings in which pairs of strings, except for the bass, were tuned in unisons.358 This is the crucial technical allusion is Sonnet 8, so that, as Robinson (1603) says, ‘two strings are in one tune’: Mark how one string, sweet husband to another, Strikes each in each by mutual ordering, Resembling sire and child and happy mother, Who all in one one pleasing note do sing. (9–12) That Hortensio finds it difficult to tune his lute adequately belies his competency on the instrument. Not only does Shakespeare provide correct, practical advice on tuning, he also exploits the carnal innuendos of those references to tuning. Hortensio’s claim that his ‘instrument is now in tune’ betrays his sexual prowess; Lucentio’s suggestion to ‘spit in the [peg] hole’ as an aid to tuning is not only sound practical advice, it is also a barely disguised allusion to intercourse. Continuing in the same vein, shortly after, Hortensio tells Bianca she must ‘learn the order of [his] fingering’ before she ‘touch the instrument’. Again, technical advice colludes with bawdy. The symbol of a lute string out of tune, or broken, has pervasive resonance in Renaissance literature and art. As Hollander (1961: 44) asserts, transcending strict figurative use of instruments, It was by and large most common to allow the strings to represent abstract ‘harmony’ or ‘order’ by typifying musical harmoniousness and ordered tuning. Thus the Platonic notion of the World-Soul (as well as the individual psyche) considered as a tuning, or harmonia, finds figurative expression in the image of the World-Lyre, or the stringed instrument of the human soul. With reference to political harmony, Peggy Simonds (1992: 337–8) cites Andrea Alciati, Emblemata Liber (Paris, 1534), Emblem 10359

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which ‘depicts a lute as a symbol of political alliance, but the verse warns that a single broken string can destroy its harmony’: Difficile est, nisi docto homini, tot tendere chordas; Unaque si fuerit non bene tenta fides, Ruptave (quod facile est) perit omnis gratia conchae, Illeque praecellens cantus, ineptus erit. (It is difficult, unless a man is skilled, to tune so many strings. And if one string is not well tuned, or is broken – which can easily happen – the entire pleasantness of the shell perishes; and that excellent music will be ineffectual.) (Translated Simonds, 1992) According to Simonds (1992: 337), ‘when Britain withdraws from its alliance with the Roman Empire in Cymbeline, the entire harmony of the Augustan pax romana is also temporarily put out of tune’. As a Renaissance image of political and social harmony, the lute with all its strings in tune and intact was an effective symbol. A broken string had to be repaired by a monarch, state authority or those representing the state. Mary F. S. Hervey was one of the first modern critics to see a connection between the broken lute string in Holbein’s famous painting ‘The Ambassadors’ and Alciati’s lute emblem.360 It is hoped the French ambassadors in Holbein’s painting can effect a repair of the broken alliance between differing states. The instrument of state, usually the lute which replaces the ancient lyre, is sometimes the harp.361 In his exchange with Queen Elizabeth concerning the future of her daughter, King Richard urges her not to keep bringing up the matter of her ‘dead, poor infants’, the murdered princes: Harp not on that string, madam. That is past. (R3 4.4.295) To which King Edward’s widow retorts, Harp on it still shall I, till heart-strings break. (R3 4.4.296)



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The discord of the tragedy is symbolized in the broken string, the agony of the broken harp/heart string. That it was the king who caused such devastation is emblemized in the harp with its broken string. The broken or untuned string symbolizes a broken heart, promise or alliance. In his lute ayre, ‘When to her lute Corrina sings’ (A Booke of Ayres, 1601, no. 6), Thomas Campion lyricizes the conventional notions of the broken string: And as her lute doth live or die, Led by her passion, so must I, For when of pleasure she doth sing, My thoughts enjoy a sodaine spring, But if she doth of sorrow speake, Ev’n from my hart the strings doe breake. Corrina both sings accompanied by her lute and, as Hollander (1961: 204–5) observes, addresses her instrument ‘as if it were a person … [and] responds sympathetically to her mood … the receptive audience to her very feelings’. This (Petrarchan convention) has precedence in mid-sixteenth-century French literature; for example, certain sonnets by Louis Labé, a woman poet from Lyon. In her Sonnet XII, cited by Craig-McFeely, the lute not only express[es] the subject’s feelings, being transformed by the writer’s mood, but it also fulfils the role of both a compassionate friend and a protagonist in the argument … Labé endows the lute with the power to make decisions, to offer comfort in its own right as well as to act as a vehicle for the expression of the player’s anguish. In her works, the lute is always melancholy and an outlet for pent emotion. For her, the lute represents and expresses the inexpressible: the passions and sensibilities. In Sonnet XII she uses the idea of singing to the lute to express the conflict between expression of the private and internal (the lute) and the public convention verbally or vocally expressed (singing).362

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The lute persona and human body, although separate, act as conjoint emotional expression. While the lute can express the player’s innermost feelings and the voice his or her audible sentiments, only when the lover both sings and plays can his or her true emotions be expressed. The lute’s honesty, its ability to express true feelings, is applicable only when it is played openly, out of its case. The case, therefore, represents an opposite persona. As critics observe, in Holbein’s The Ambassadors the lute is depicted clearly out of its case, while the case can be seen placed under the table, suggesting deceit has been put aside so that the integrity of the ambassadors’ deliberations should not be questioned. When Don Pedro attempts to woo Hero on Claudio’s behalf during the masked revels in Much Ado About Nothing, the opposition between the true (inner) self and the dishonest apparent self is referenced in the contrast between the lute and its case: Don Pedro [to Hero]: Lady, will you walk a bout [i.e. dance] with your friend [i.e. lover]? Hero: So you walk softly, and look sweetly, and say nothing, I am yours for the walk; and especially when I walk away. Don Pedro: With me in your company? Hero: I may say so when I please. Don Pedro: And when please you to say so? Hero: When I like your favour; for God defend the lute should be like the case. (2.1.71–9) Don Pedro tries to explain that his mask – his ‘case’ – is only a disguise. Playing and singing to the lute have effective power in various situations. If Philomel/Lavinia had had Orpheus’ musical ability their awful fate might have been avoided, as Marcus recalls to his niece, ‘her hands cut off and her tongue cut out’: O, had the monster seen those lily hands Tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute And make the silken strings delight to kiss them,



Art and country instruments 163 He would not then have touched them for his life. Or had he heard the heavenly harmony Which that sweet tongue hath made, He would have dropped his knife and fell asleep, As Cerberus at the Thracian poet’s feet. (Titus 2.4.44–51)363

The emotional power of a young lady’s playing and singing to the lute is imagined by Gower as he reflects on Marina’s womanly virtues along with other maids ‘ripe for marriage-rite’: When to th’lute She sung, and made the night bird mute, That still records with moan. (Per Scene 15. 25–7) Such singing can out-ravish even the proverbial nightingale.364 The lute’s ability to ravish the senses, especially when combined with singing, is noted elsewhere in Shakespeare and others. Shortly before Balthasar’s lute ayre, ‘Sigh no more, ladies’, Benedick remarks, Now, divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies? (Ado 2.3.53–4) His quizzical observation could be aimed at either the lute or the viol, but the lute’s sensuous reputation makes it the most obvious candidate for Benedick’s irony (since he will soon fall victim to Beatrice’s attractiveness). That reputation is confirmed in Richard Barnfield’s assessment of the conjoint and separate effects of music and poetry at the hands of their greatest contemporary exponents: If music and sweet poetry agree, As they must needs (the sister and the brother), Then must the love be great ‘twixt thee and me, Because thou lov’st the one, and I the other. Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;

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Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such As passing all conceit, needs no defense. (PP 8.1–8) In The History of Henry the Fourth (1H4), Lord Mortimer enthuses about the beauty of Glyndwˆr’s daughter, his wife, in terms of highly ornamented lute music: for thy tongue Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penned, Sung by a fair queen in a summer’s bower With ravishing division, to her lute. (3.1.203–6) The lute’s ability to ‘ravish the soul’ is heightened here by reference to the practice of embellishing a melody with sophisticated ornamentation. That ravishment is intensified in practice when the ‘lady sings a Welsh song’, presumably a lute ayre (3.1.240.SD).365 Why Ophelia should enter, ‘playing on a Lute, and her haire downe singing’ in Hamlet (Q1. G4v) is not clear nor is the direction so specific in Q2 or F. Shakespeare may have wanted to invoke the conventional image of the lady both singing accompanied by her lute and addressing her instrument. Or, Ophelia not so much plays her lute as carries it to add signification to her plight. This may be understood by analogy with contemporary painting. A portrait of Lady Mary Wroth (referred to earlier) depicts the niece of Sir Philip Sidney posing naturally accompanied in her stance by a lute (recte archlute).366 Lady Mary was famed as a skilled and imaginative poetess. Why therefore does the lute replace the book? CraigMcFeely argues that its presence ‘tells us that this is a woman of great sensibility and expressive emotional power … [acting] as a symbol of the personality and sensitivity of the subject’.367 Whether the lute is played or serves as a prop affects the intensity of the image. Craig-McFeely concludes that two stereotypes seem to be clearly defined: the lute as a metaphor for sex and sensuality or as a metonymic substitution for the expression of complex feelings that could not be adequately or appropriately verbalised.368



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This is surely why Ophelia sings, to vent her feelings in a situation in which she customarily is denied a voice. According to Jacquelyn Fox-Good, Ophelia’s songs allow her to free herself from the code of passivity imposed on women in early modern society.369 The presence of the lute reinforces the expressive image, the depth of Ophelia’s emotional state.370 The lute and its music as metaphor for love find expression in Biron’s self-reflective admission to his companion lords of the sensory power of love: But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain, But with the motion of all elements Courses as swift as thought in every power … Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible … … is not love … … as sweet and musical As bright Apollo’s lute strung with his hair;371 And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods Make heaven drowsy with the harmony. (LLL 4.3.301–4, 311, 314–19) It is not surprising that in modern culture these lines in particular are extracted as the most suitable ‘quotes for the incurable romantic’.372

The virginals In contrast to the lute, the virginals did not have the same visual or emotive connectivity. When played, the lute is held, caressed close to the player’s body. The virginals is a rectangular box placed on a table or trestle. Shakespeare’s infrequent use of ‘virginals’ as musical imagery reveals two things: one, that, like the viol, the virginals was not a major part of his musical experience; and, two, what references do occur are bawdy and relate to women. Both these usages, in turn,

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reflect on the perception and role of the instrument in Elizabethan society. Where the name ‘virginal’ or ‘virginalls’373 comes from is not known. It starts in late fifteenth-century Europe and persists, especially in England until the mid seventeenth century. Praetorius (1619: Ch. 38) observes that in ‘England, all such [keyboard] instruments, whether large or small, are termed Virginall. In France, Espinettes. In the Netherlands, Clavicymbel and also Virginall. In Germany, Instrument (in the narrow sense of the word)’. While Queen Elizabeth is known to have been an accomplished player of the virginals, and an instrument thought to have belonged to her survives in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, there is no real reason to suggest the term derives from the instrument’s association with the ‘virgin queen’. A much more likely explanation, however, for the name’s persistence is the instrument’s special association with female players as the title-page of the first printed collection of virginal music in England, Parthenia or The Maydenhead of the First Musicke that ever was Printed for the Virginalls (London, c. 1612–13) with its depiction of a seemingly contented female player, attests. Marcuse recalls the point that some theorists likened the tone of the virginals to that of a young female voice, ‘vox virginalis’.374 In The Two Noble Kinsmen (3.3), sexually imagery is explicit in the reference to the virginals in the comic episode interjected between the two mad speeches of the jailer’s daughter. Palamon and Arcite recount the ‘wenches’ they have ‘known’. Palamon proposes a toast to the lord steward’s daughter: Do you remember her? … She loved a black-haired man … And I have heard some call him Arcite, and … She met him in an arbour – What did she there, coz? Play o’th’virginals? (3.3.29–33) The daughter’s encounter with Arcite in the arbour resulted in her losing her virginity and becoming pregnant:



Art and country instruments 167 Made her groan a month for’t – Or two, or three, or ten. (3.2.35–6)

Sexual puns surround ‘virginalling’ in Leontes’ exchange with Mamillius in The Winter’s Tale when he becomes jealous of Hermiones’ ‘paddling palms and pinching fingers’ with Polixenes: Why, that’s my bawcock. What? Hast smutched thy nose? … We must be neat – not neat, but cleanly captain … Still virginalling Upon his palm? – How now, you wanton calf – Art thou my calf? (1.2.123–9) The position of their hands, fingers to palm, suggests a certain intimacy. The image of the woman’s arousal of the man by ‘virginalling’ or playing upon the keys of the virginal is vividly exploited in Sonnet 128 and depends to a certain extent on a knowledge of the construction of the instrument and the manner of playing it. Elizabethan English virginals were rectangular and smaller than the more common Italian and Flemish models, which were also often polygonal in shape. Their cases were wooden, generally oak, plain on the outside, decorated on the inside. The lids often contained landscape scenes with stylized pastoral figures. The layout of the strings, running at right angles to the keys, differentiates the instrument from the harpsichord and spinet. The jacks are usually arranged in pairs placed in a line from the front left to the right back of the instrument. They can be easily seen by both player and anyone standing close by. The keys, which sometimes projected at the front, were made from wood. Most commentators interpret Sonnet 128 as an example of the fashion for describing situations of close intimacy with the reluctant or distant beloved by imagining they are an object she touches or embraces.375 In Romeo and Juliet, for instance, Romeo fantasizes: See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek! (2.1.65–7)

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In Sonnet 128 the lover wishes he were the keys (of the virginals) which his ‘music’ – the object of his love – ‘play’st’. When she plays, she makes music (love): How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds. (1–2) It may be that there is an oblique reference to divine music here, the ‘motion of the spheres’ which makes music. The visual and sensual pleasure of the lady playing is captured in the next two lines. Keyboard players, especially younger and female players, today still, can be seen to be gently rocking from side to side, unconsciously, when playing. The sound of the virginals’ strings, which were made of wire as opposed to the lute or viol’s gut, gives pleasure to the listener: With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st The wiry concord that mine ear confounds. (3–4) The pleasure of seeing and hearing his beloved play is tempered by carnal thoughts and jealousy: Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap, To kiss the tender inward of thy hand Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand! (5–8) The use of ‘jacks’ here and later in the sonnet has caused editors and commentators problems. A near contemporary manuscript version (Oxford: Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet 152, f. 34) changes ‘jacks’ to ‘keys’, as do many editors.376 However, this betrays an ignorance of the basic mechanism of the virginal (or harpsichord or spinet). When the key is depressed it causes the jack to ‘leap’ or rise up quickly. The key itself does not ‘nimble leap’. If ‘jack’ is replaced by ‘key’ the particular sexual pun is lost. The presence of ‘leap’ confirms the sexual reference (‘leaping houses’ was a term for brothels as in 1H4 1.2.8 ‘dials the signs of leaping-houses’).



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The intimacy of playing the keys of the virginals is portrayed by the hand position: that is palms next to the keys. In Elizabethan society, as in many, a formal greeting was expressed by a kiss to the upper part of the hand. A lover’s kiss consisted of raising the palm of the hand to the other’s lips. This same image, the significance of hand position and playing the virginal, has already been noted in The Winter’s Tale (1.2). That Shakespeare wished to distinguish between ‘jacks’ and keys is confirmed by the introduction of the word ‘woods’ in this context to mean the keys. Having reached the first punctuation stop of the sonnet, the next line develops the sexual pun. The poet wishes to change places with the keys which the lady is ‘tickling’. ‘Tickling’ to mean playing a keyboard instrument is straightforward enough, just as today ‘tickling the ivories’ means playing the piano. It also suggests sexual arousal. The Oxford manuscript changes ‘tickled’ to ‘touched’, which is acceptable but less instrument specific (‘touch’ can also apply to playing the lute, see note 29). To be so tickled they would change their state And situation with those dancing chips O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, Making dead wood more blessed than living lips. (9–12) In addition to ‘woods’, Shakespeare next employs ‘chips’ to mean the keys of the virginal. His observation of keyboard technique is very precise. Elizabethan virginalists sat at a slight angle to the keyboard and used long-over-short/short-over-long fingers for ascending and descending scalic passages, so that their fingers would appear to be walking, as in the depiction of the lady playing on the title-page of Parthenia. The final couplet confirms the more telling use of ‘jacks’ of the 1609 quarto in preference to ‘key’s’ of the Oxford Rawlinson manuscript: Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss. (13–14)

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‘Saucy jacks’ are not only forward men but more specifically their genitalia which ‘leap’ when she fingers them. He would prefer that she kissed him, although there is also a barely disguised hint at fellatio. The epigrammatical twist of the final couplet further implies that the poet is not only envious of the lady’s ability to give him pleasure, but that she has been imparting her gifts to other men, a conceit explored more dismally in the next sonnet and Sonnets 133 and 134. Sonnet 128 depends for a close reading on a knowledge of the actual performative attributes of the virginals and its role in Elizabethan society as a domestic instrument, invariably played in private by ladies. Regula Hohl Trillini determines that set against this topical background, the poem should be construed as ‘a uniquely dense and meaningful display of highly topical preoccupations with musical performance: an exemplary embodiment of the discursive complications that surround women’s musicmaking in the early modern period’.377 As the ‘female instrument by default’, playing the virginals is regularly associated with sexual innuendo in Elizabethan literature, as Trellini observes. She notes (2008: 8) that, ‘in many allusions, the underlying sexual tension surfaces in puns on the name of the instrument or its mechanism. The conspicuous bobbing of the ‘jacks’ … provoked innumerable jokes along the lines of: “[S]he’s like a paire of virginals, always with Iackes at her taile”’.378 She sees the ‘mixed metaphors that tangle between the player’s body and [musical] instrument’ (p. 11) as commentary on both issues in music performance and attitudes to gender and the subservient role of women when associated with playing a musical instrument. She concludes that, in Sonnet 128, Shakespeare ‘explores the popular derogatory tropes associated with the mechanism of the virginals for a dense and purposeful enactment of fundamental ambiguities about female sexuality and music’ (p. 17). On this basis, Shakespeare has most certainly not mistaken the ‘jacks’ for the ‘keys’, as a number of commentators dismissively assert.379



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The viol There is no doubt the English lute song flourished during the first two decades of the seventeenth century, given the number of ayres published between 1597 (Dowland’s first book) and 1622 (Attey’s first and last book). But the lute as a domestic, solo instrument was losing sway to the viol, if the manuscript and printed sources are any indication. Spring (2001: 98) argues that, Source survival leads us to conclude that the zenith of the lute’s so-called golden age in England was the 1590s. In part at least, this was because the lute was pivotal to the mixed consort which was flourishing at this time. It may also relate to the fact that the period of popularity for the viol among amateurs had yet to start. The creative energy in lute music of the late Elizabethan period outweighed that of the Jacobean, which produced less new music, and during which much of the old music remained popular. It is noteworthy that when Alfonso Ferrabosco II was appointed ‘extraordinary groom to the Privy chamber’ in 1604/05 to instruct Prince Henry ‘in the art of music’,380 evidence suggests that it was the viol Henry learnt and not the lute,381 even though Ferrabosco was a professional lutenist382 and published a book of lute ayres in 1609. Ferrabosco did not publish any solo lute music whereas he did produce a substantial body of songs and viol music, and promoted the lyra viol at court. Despite his best intentions, the greatest lutenist of the day, John Dowland, never succeeded in compiling a retrospective of his finest pieces for lute. Only a few pieces for solo lute were published post 1603.383 In his preface ‘To the Reader’ to A Pilgrimes Solace (1612), Dowland warns the next generation of talented but smug young lutenists that their instrument is losing ground to the viol: To these men I say little, because of my love and hope to see some deedes ensue their brave wordes, and also being that

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here under their owne noses hath beene published a Booke in defence of the Viol de Gamba, wherein not onely all other the best and principall Instruments have beene abased, but especially the Lute. Dowland’s adversary was no less than Tobias Hume whose preface ‘To the Understanding Reader’ in his The First Part of Ayres, French, Pollish and others (1605) had been extremely disparaging about the status of the lute and had championed the viol as ‘the most received Instrument that is’. This change in taste away from the solo domestic lute towards the viol is reflected in Shakespeare’s output, albeit not emphatically. Specific references to the viol occur only in Twelfth Night and Pericles, both post-1600 plays. Sir Toby Belch’s retort to Maria that Sir Andrew Aguecheek is no fool or waster because, He plays o’th’ viol-de-gamboys,/and speaks three or four languages word for word without/ book, and hath all the good gifts of nature (TN 1.3. 21–3) depends on the assumption that an ability to play the viol was the mark of an educated gentleman.384 Some critics argue that bawdy is intended in this ‘sexualised musical metaphor’,385 even though innuendos about the viol da gamba invariably refer to females. This is certainly the case in Pericles, when the Prince of Tyre discovers the incestuous goings on between the King of Antioch and his daughter, and invokes the viol as metaphor: You’re a fair viol, and your sense the strings Who, fingered to make man his lawful music, Would draw heav’n down and all the gods to hearken, But, being played upon before your time, Hell only danceth at so harsh a chime. (Per scene 1.124–8) Whether or not Shakespeare knowingly intensifies the metaphor by the fact that an unseasoned viol sounds weak and unsatisfactory, as any present-day viol maker will attest, is not certain. But it adds force to Pericles’ vituperation.



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It is possible that the sound of the viol and its courtly association are recalled elsewhere in Shakespeare. In The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, King Henry on his sickbed calls for soft and gentle music: I pray you take me up and bear me hence Into some other chamber; softly, pray. Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends, Unless some dull and favourable hand Will whisper music to my weary spirit. (4.3.131–5) The suggestion here is that soft, gentle music is soothing. The symbolic associations of (bowed) stringed music with healing make the viol the most probable instrument. This is the conclusion Sternfeld (1967: 243) draws when he proposes that Lear’s ‘untuned and jarring senses’ are restored through the music of stringed instruments, namely the viol. Cordelia (Lear 4.7.15–17) urges that her father’s disordered mind, out of tune, be brought back into tune as if by ‘winding up’ the strings of a musical instrument. This could only refer to a lute (preferred by the Norton editors) or the viol. That this is the case is probably confirmed in the line following, ‘Of this child-changèd father’ (4.7.17) with the word-play on ‘change’. In a musical context, ‘change’ can either refer specifically to a ‘key’ shift or more generally to a mood swing. There may also be further signification of the musical strings in this restorative scene at the end of act 4. King Lear, Tom McAlindon argues, is ‘a tragedy of the heart in a unique sense. Its searing effect on the whole self is an extension of its self-conscious engagement at every point with the human heart as the beginning and the end, the source and the explanation, of almost all our concerns. Referred to about sixty times in the play, the heart is arguably the major image.’386 In this scene, crucially it is Cordelia’s expression of feeling – her tears – unable to ‘heave her heart into [her] mouth’ (Lear 1.1.90–1), which cures the old king’s ‘heart-struck injuries’ (3.1.17), his heart-piercing dismay at the seeming betrayal of paternal love. McAlindon (1991: 177) is certain that Cordelia’s name ‘is meant to be descriptive of her nature and her dramatic role, and that a kind of silent pun animates her name throughout’. That pun depends on the etymology of ‘cordial’ which derives from

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the Latin cor, meaning ‘heart’ or ‘feeling’. In music, the ‘cord’ is the string on an instrument such as a lute or viol. Referring to ‘cords’ in relation to heart-strings was a recurrent image in early modern literature. In All Is True (Henry VIII), Surrey, noticing Wolsey’s displeasure, comments on the king’s love for Anne Boleyn to the other nobles present: I would ‘twere something that would fret the string, The master-cord on’s heart! (3.2.106–7) Cordelia’s implicit reference to a stringed instrument as suited to cure her father’s ‘jarring senses’ is uniquely confirmed in her name. The punning connection between Cordelia’s name and the word ‘cord’, meaning a musical string, gains added credence when we consider Edgar’s last speech in the final scene of the Quarto text in which he refers to Kent’s impending death. The context is furthermore unmistakeably musical: His grief grew puissant and the strings of life Began to crack. Twice then the trumpets sounded, And there I left him tranced. (Scene 24. 212–14) Just as the strings on a viol or lute may ‘crack’ or break, and the music is destroyed, so the tale of Lear’s predicament is ‘most piteous … that ever ear received’ (24.211–12). Emotional and experiential transformation, explicitly associated with stringed instruments and tuning out-of-tune strings, is developed in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and glosses what Shakespeare may have had in mind in The Tragedy of King Lear. The song ‘Who is Silvia? What is she’ reveals Julia in a sad mood and not changed by music: Host: How now, are you sadder than you were before? How do you, man? The music likes you not. Julia: You mistake. The musician likes me not. Host: Why, my pretty youth? Julia: He plays false, father.



Art and country instruments 175 Host: How, out of tune on the strings? Julia: Not so, but yet so false that he grieves my very heart-strings. Host: You have a quick ear. Julia: Ay, I would I were deaf. It makes me have a slow heart. Host: I perceive you delight not in music. Julia: Not a whit when it jars so. Host: Hark what fine change is in the music. Julia: Ay, that ‘change’ is the spite. Host: You would have them always play but one thing? Julia: I would always have one play but one thing. (4.2.52–66)

Julia’s talk of strings, most editors argue, implies the song ‘Who is Silvia’, possibly sung by Proteus, is accompanied by a stringed instrument. A knowledge of the symbolic associations of the viol (an instrument confined exclusively to early music ensembles in the twenty-first century), in particular healing, could not be relied upon in a modern audience. However, the passages in The Tragedy of King Lear and elsewhere offer the present-day director opportunities for appropriate and meaningful atmospheric music or quasi-filmic underscoring, so often the scurge of modern productions. Here is a possible exception. In Pericles, Prince of Tyre, music also heals. Cerimon revives King Simonidus’ daughter, Thaisa, to the sound of music: The still387 and woeful music that we have, Cause it to sound, beseech you. The vial388 once more. How thou stirr’st, thou block! The music there! I pray you give her air. Gentlemen, This queen will live. Nature awakes, a warmth Breathes out of her. (scene 13.86–91) Here the clues as to what kind of music is played are harder to prise out. While this is undoubtedly a musical episode, and there is much musical reference in the play, the inclusion of ‘vial’ here refers to the small jar or bottle of smelling salts customarily used

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to revive those who have been ‘entranced’ and not to the stringed musical instrument. But Shakespeare rarely misses an opportunity for word-play.389 Given its healing associations, it would be appropriate to play viol music. Another music pun occurs very shortly after. Those who have fainted need air. But ‘air’ is also a musical term for a song or melody. Did Shakespeare have a soft melody accompanied by a viol in mind at this juncture? The same musical imagery is possibly found in The Winter’s Tale where a pun on ‘vial’ might contrive a metatheatrical device. John Pitcher argues that when the music returns in 5.3 it is ‘heavenly or supernatural, poured down in “sacred vials” by the gods’,390 as Hermione says: You gods, look down, And from your sacred vials pour your graces Upon my daughter’s head. (5.3.122–4) ‘As in Pericles’, Pitcher continues, ‘ when Cerimon revives Thaisa, the pun on ‘vials’ (vessels) and ‘viols’ (stringed instruments) suggests that Paulina’s music, whether it was performed above or below the action, was played on viols’.391 While Shakespeare unequivocally intends ‘vessels’ here, and there are no other music words in close proximity to suggest otherwise, unless ‘graces’ could be interpreted as another pun, the use of viols as atmospheric music would be in keeping with their role as symbolic ‘healing’ instruments. If that were the case, then the presence of ‘graces’, in contemporary musical parlance also known as ‘divisions’, might be more than a purely coincidental pun, since the early seventeenth-century viol, certainly in courtly and professional circles, became especially associated with ‘division’ playing. This, however, would be a unique and uncharacteristic reference to the viol by Shakespeare – that is to professional viol playing commonly associated with boy actors. Shakespeare was aware of the children’s companies and the rivalry they posed as his critical review in Hamlet (2.2.326–36) shows, but it is noticeable that he avoids any reference to musical imagery, in particular the viol and consort song, especially associated with them. The viol was introduced into the English court in the



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early sixteenth century. Consorts of instruments including viols were employed to accompany dancing. As the instrument gained acceptance among professional players, its usage increased. From the middle of the century, choirboys from the Chapel Royal, Westminster and St Paul’s learned to play the viol as part of their education. Certain among their number played in the theatre and at courtly ceremonial occasions.392 Some became professional players later in their careers. While the viol remained essentially an instrument for professional players, towards the end of the century an increasing number of stately homes owned a set or ‘chest’ of viols, suggesting that the instrument was gaining in popularity with the nobility and the rising mercantile classes for domestic distraction. Woodfield (1984: 211–12) gives a list of references to viols in private households from c. 1550 to 1575, which shows that ‘the viol was becoming more widely disseminated in the middle years of the reign of Elizabeth’ (p. 212) although its popularity compared with the lute and virginals was small. Evidence suggests that while the viol was more common in the choirboy company plays, it was also used by adult companies. Woodfield (1984: 222) deduces that by the end of the sixteenth century some actors in adult companies were also viol players and cites an inventory of the Lord Admiral’s men (10 March 1598) taken from the diary of Philip Henslow which includes ‘iij trumpettes and a drum, and a treble vial, a basse vial, a bandore, a sytteren’. Woodfield notes the presence of the viol on-stage in the Elizabethan theatre and refers to Ben Jonson’s Every Man out of his Humour (1599) where ‘Fastidious ‘takes down the viol, and playes’. According to Chambers, one of the actors in this performance was Augustine Phillips who was known to play the viol.393

The recorder If the Elizabethan lute was not the most straightforward instrument to learn, as far as we know, then the flute or recorder in contrast was regarded as relatively easy to learn to play, as Virdung (c. 1465–1530) contends.394 It was an instrument young children

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could and should easily learn, as the second edition of Agricola’s treatise (1545) intends.395 Recorders were the most common woodwind instruments of the sixteenth century, not only because they were cheap to buy and easy to play, but also because they were made from one piece of wood and could not be tuned to variable pitch; they had to be in plentiful supply, if they were to play with other instruments. Like the lute, the recorder was played by both amateur and professional players, as the surviving repertoire attests. Consorts of generally four or five instruments ranging in size from what is often called the bass to the small treble constituted the normal ensemble. Occasionally a single recorder would substitute for a side-blown or transverse flute in a mixed consort, as found in the Matthew Holmes consort books (Cambridge University Library Dd. 5.21 c. 1595). Amateur music usually comprised arrangements of dances and polyphonic songs such as motets and madrigals (for example, Cambridge Fitzwilliam MS 734); Jeronimo Bassano’s five and six-part fantasias (late sixteenth century) show the more elaborate type of music for professional performance. While the recorder was popular with amateurs (mercantile and upper-class men and women), it was not an instrument to be played in public, especially by noble or courtly gentlemen, and certainly not in the presence of ladies, as Castiglione warns in The Book of the Courtier (1528). The disparaging performative associations of the recorder are exploited in Hamlet. Following the performance of The Mousetrap in 3.2, the king rises and the entire company, except Hamlet and Horatio, depart. Shortly after they are joined by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, at which point Hamlet calls for music: Ah ha! Come, some music, come, the recorders. (3.2.268) Presumably Hamlet invites a consort of recorders to play. Fiveand six-member professional consorts were active as city waits and London theatre ensembles towards the end of the sixteenth century,396 and a group of players could have attended The Mousetrap episode. Before they enter, Hamlet’s two school mates try to reason



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with the prince, on behalf of the Queen his mother, to justify his astonishing behaviour. Hamlet cannot and will not comply. The recorder players enter with their instruments (3.2.315.SD). Hamlet takes one of the instruments and asks Guildenstern to play it: ‘Will you play upon this pipe?’ (3.2.322). In doing so he humiliates him twice over. Once by asking him to play this base pipe in a courtly setting; and twice because he knows he can’t play the recorder, the simplest of instruments. Guildenstern protests: ‘My lord, I cannot… I know no touch of it’ (3.2.324; 328) to which Hamlet replies, describing a typical six-hole plus thumb Renaissance recorder: ‘Tis as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most excellent music. Look you, these are the stops. (3.2.329–31) Developing the musical metaphor, Hamlet indicates his disdain and distrust of his former close friends because they are now conniving with Claudius: Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ‘Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me. (3.2.334–41) Not only is the recorder an aural prompt, it is also a visual signifier here as elsewhere in Shakespeare’s plays when instruments such as lute, pipe and tabor, or trumpet are both heard and seen. The stage direction for the entry of the players in F differs from Q2. The former identifies the singular instrument which is to become Hamlet’s stage prop: ‘Enter one with a recorder’ (3.2.315. SD). The Quarto has ‘Enter the Players with Recorders’.397 The most likely explanation for the disparity is that one of the ensemble steps forward and either demonstrates the basic playing technique

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following Hamlet’s instruction or hands his instrument to the prince. Single recorders were not played on stage; only the pipe (and tabor) was played singularly in the theatre. Lindley (2006: 99) argues there is no evidence recorder consorts performed in pre-1610 amphitheatre plays or in outdoor theatres. The reference to the single recorder, he suggests, might be explained because it was ‘one of the instruments of the mixed consort’ which it is thought customarily ‘supplied most of the instrumental cues that the plays called for’. While single recorders are found in music sources for mixed consorts (e.g. Matthew Holmes consort books), their presence is rare compared with the transverse flute. That the mixed consort was the standard theatre band, as Lindley notes (2006: 100), is now being questioned. Just as in today’s Western society, so in the sixteenth century the recorder was regarded as a suitable instrument for children with varying abilities and musical inclinations to begin playing music, often in groups. Agricola, for instance, aimed his 1545 treatise at ‘our schoolchildren and other beginning singers’. Shakespeare picks up on this in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hippolyta compares Quince’s ‘disordered’ delivery of the prologue to Pyramus and Thisbe to a child’s faltering playing of a recorder: Indeed, he hath played on this prologue like a child on a recorder – a sound, but not in government. (5.1.122–3) This reference discloses the elementary but well-intentioned level of Quince’s acting ability. The sound of the recorder is important to its symbolism. The soft, slightly breathy tone can give it an eerie sound capable of associating it with death and the supernatural. Although no instruments are specified in the stage direction, ‘Solemn music’ (Cymbeline, 4.2.187), recorders could be the most appropriate instruments to accompany Guiderius’ announcement that he has sent Cloten’s head, Orpheus-like, downstream to meet his mother. The most appropriate use of recorders is, as it were, confirmed very shortly afterwards when Arviragus enters carrying the apparently dead Innogen in his arms. As Lasocki notes (1984), recorders were



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often present at mock funerals in the Jacobean theatre, when the deceased recovers, as in Marston’s Sophonisba (1606) and Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613). The ‘Solemn music’ which accompanies the entries of the apparitions of Posthumus’ father, mother and younger brothers a little later in Cymbeline (5.5.123.SD) might also appropriately be recorders. The quieter, atmospheric ‘Still music of record[er]s’ (TNK 5.3.) is particularly suitable for Emilia’s entry as she prays before the altar of Diana, goddess of the moon: ‘O sacred, shadowy, cold, and constant queen’ grant that of her two suitors, Arcite and Palamon, the one who loves her best and true will ‘gather’ her. That her prayer will be answered is signified when the rose, symbol of virginity, falls from the rose tree to the sound of ‘a sudden twang of instruments’ (TNK 5.3.32.SD), a contrast to the ‘still’ or soft recorders and an allusion to Emilia’s loss of her virginity when she marries.

Pipe and tabor In his Nine Daies Wonder, published in 1600, the Shakespearean comic actor and dancer, William Kemp recorded his achievement of having morris danced from London to Norwich, a feat which he claims took him nine days over a period of four weeks, earlier that year, starting on the ‘first Munday in Lent’. In this publication, ‘every dayes iourney is pleasantly set downe, to satisfie his friends the truth, against all lying Ballad-makers; what he did, how hee was welcome, and by whome entertained’.398 Customarily, his ‘Morrice’ was accompanied by a pipe and tabor, as a woodcut on the title page in his publication seems to confirm. His ‘taberer’ was Thomas Slye, mentioned in the first day’s account. The function of the taborer, Kemp indicates, was to lead the dance and the throng of people following on: ‘when they heard my Taber [those that followed] would trudge after me through thicke and thin’. The purpose of the tabor, to lead the dance, is alluded to in The Tempest, when Ariel recounts to Prospero how he lured Caliban, Stefano and Trinculo into the ‘filthy-mantled pool’ where ‘dancing up to th’chins, that the foul lake/O’er-stunk their feet’ (4.1.183–4):

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Then I beat my tabor, At which like unbacked colts they pricked their ears, Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses As they smelt music. So I charmed their ears That calf-like they my lowing followed (4.1.175–9) Why Ariel should have performed on the tabor and pipe earlier in the play is not clear. When Caliban points out to Stefano and Trinculo that they are not ‘singing’ the correct tune for their catch, ‘Flout ’em and cout ’em’ (3.2.116), the stage direction states ‘Ariel plays the tune on a tabor and pipe’ (3.2.119.SD). While the ‘tune’ of a catch is not necessarily a distinct melody in the art-song sense of the term, the tabor and pipe are essentially a rhythm and accompaniment combination one-man band and would not be especially suited to playing the ‘tune’. However, it is essential that the rhythm is kept in a catch which would justify the use of the tabor. At the end of the scene, the more usual function of the tabor and pipe as a dance leader is featured as Trinculo and Caliban follow Stefano led on by Ariel’s music: Trinculo: The sound is going away. Let’s follow it, and after do our work. Stefano: Lead, monster; we’ll follow. – I would I could see this taborer. He lays it on. Trinculo: Wilt come? I’ll follow Stefano. (3.2.143–7) Modern editors defend the use of the tabor and pipe in this scene because of its popular music and festive associations. The Norton Shakespeare (2008: 3096), for example, refers to its connection with ‘rustic dances and merrymaking’. Lindley, in his New Cambridge The Tempest (2002: 169), notes the ‘combination [of tabor and pipe] was associated with popular festivity, and with the professional clown (as with Feste in TN 3.1.1–10 and famously with William Kemp and Richard Tarleton)’. Kermode reminds us that airy spirits were also connected with playing tabors: ‘You shall heare in the ayre the sound of tabers and other instruments … by



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evill spirites that make these soundes (Marco Polo, Travels, transl. Frampton, 1579)’.399 The rustic associations of pipe and tabor and its function as accompaniment to folk dancing are essential contrasts to the comparatively sophisticated accomplishments of Autolycus, as the Servant claims: O, master, if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you would never dance again after a tabor and pipe. No, the bagpipe could not move you. He sings several tunes faster than you’ll tell money. He utters them as he had eaten ballads, and all men’s ears grew to his tunes. (WT 4.4.182–6) The simplicity and apparent innocence of the shepherds with their rustic music and dancing stands in contrast to the worldly urbanity of Autolycus with this ‘fast’ tunes and bawdy ballads. The development of binary opposites such as the simple rural life and the seeming sophistication of the visiting pedlar as in The Winter’s Tale, between military pursuits and intimate amatory relationships, are represented in the juxtaposing of pipe and tabor with military drum and fife, neatly in Much Ado About Nothing. When Benedick muses on Claudio’s transformation from a no-nonsense military man to one besotted in love, he remarks: I have known when there was no music with him but the drum and the fife, and now had he rather hear the tabor and the pipe. (2.3.12–14) Lindley (2006:47) observes that the ‘opposition between the manly world of war and the effeminized world of the court is not infrequently characterized in the drama as an opposition of musics’. Benedick despairs that Claudio’s love of Hero has changed him from a plain-speaking hard man to a soft, eloquent wooer: He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier, and now is he turned orthography. (2.3.16–18)

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Shakespeare chooses to exchange like for like – military drum with rustic tabor and ‘ear-piercing’ fife with melodious pipe – rather than substitute instruments of love, especially the lute, for instruments of war.

Bagpipe Like the pipe and tabor, the bagpipe had folk and rustic associations, being often played at social dances and feasts. This function, and its link with the pipe and tabor, are found in The Winter’s Tale: O, master, if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you would never dance again after a tabor and pipe. No, the bagpipe could not move you. (4.4.182–4) While the types of instrument seem to have varied considerably throughout Europe, folk bagpipes are consistently referred to or depicted, from Chaucer onwards, as outdoor instruments invariably accompanying dancing. Of all Shakespeare’s pipes, the bagpipe, with its distinctive shape and sound, has the most obvious associations with crudeness and bawdy. If the bagpipe is the instrument identified in Cassio’s ‘morning music’ (Oth 3.1), the aubade he organizes which customarily accompanies the matrimonial breakfast, then surely this is its primary function. Shakespeare’s description of the musicians’ instruments as ones that ‘speak i’th’nose’ could be to any nasalsounding wind instruments such as shawms, crumhorns or hoboys which incorporate a double reed in the mouthpiece. But the specificity of the bagpipe is possibly confirmed by a comparative reference in The Merchant of Venice: ‘when the bagpipe sings i’th’nose’ (4.1.48). The use of the bagpipe as both an aural and visual signifier in this scene would be the most effective. One particular association of the bagpipe from late medieval times onwards was with baseness and male carnal lust, the instrument, according to D. W. Robertson, ‘with which male lovers make melody’.400 The explicit comedic and bawdy tone of Cassio’s wind



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music aubade, according to Lawrence J. Ross, gains significance by its contrast with the implicit ‘opposition … of two symbolic musics’, earthy wind music versus the divine harmony of the music of the spheres, music unheard by mortals.401 This is the interpretation Ross reads into the Clown’s advocacy: [Othello] so likes your music that he desires you, for love’s sake, to make no more noise with it. (Oth 3.1.11–13) The crucial reference to ‘unheard’ music is lodged in his next utterance to the musicians: If you have any music that may not be heard, to’t again; but, as they say, to hear music the general does not greatly care. (Oth 3.1.15–16) On one level, Othello does not want to hear anymore crude music from Cassio’s band or ‘noise’; on another, Othello begins to feel uncomfortable that the only music he can hear is the wind music of mortal strife rather than the ‘sweet’ music of celestial harmony. This short episode, often denigrated to insignificance by modern producers and cut, Ross argues (1966: 124) ‘offers an oblique and generalizing comic image of the human insufficiency from which the substance of the tragedy is to grow’. He elevates 3.1 to pivotal status: Its function is symbolic exposition, its dramatic mode, emblematic action, the center of which is the group of pipers and their music. As comic presenter of this action, the Clown so closely identifies the players with their wind music that, by his logic, they ought to be as insubstantial and vanishingly transitory as the air they share with their instruments … By his agency, the passage sets their piping, with its evoked traditional implications, in symbolic contrast to ‘true musick’.402 Othello’s ‘true musick’, the harmony and concord in his life become more discordant as Iago weaves his destructive web. As Ros

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King contends in describing the structure of Othello according to its ‘music’, ‘as the audible music in the play gets noticeably falser, so both Othello and Desdemona find it progressively more difficult to effect the harmony of true partnership’.403 The contrast between base wind music and divine harmony is embodied in the symbolic opposites of wind versus stringed instruments, in particular the bagpipe versus the ‘lyre’ and harp. This opposition was perpetuated in the myth of the contest between Apollo and Marsyas, when the latter with his pipe challenges the superiority of Apollo’s lyre music.404 The symbolic piper is regarded as foolish because he rejects the harp and lyre (lute), as depicted typically for example in the Ship of folys (1509), in which the fool is shown specifically playing the bagpipe.405 In The Merchant of Venice, Solanio attempts to console Antonio by rationalizing his distress: Then let us say you are sad Because you are not merry, and ’twere as easy For you to laugh, and leap, and say you are merry Because you are not sad … Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time: Some that will evermore peep through their eyes And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper. (1.1.47–53) Parrots are proverbially foolish, so the foolish mock their kind. Also, the parrots with their screeching deride the bagpipe which makes a similarly wailing sound. The characteristic woeful sound of the bagpipe with its accompanying drone has resulted in it becoming associated with melancholy.406 In The History of Henry the Fourth (1H4), the selfpitying Falstaff claims he is as melancholy as ‘the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe’ (1.2.67). The bagpipe, from medieval times on, was also symbolically identified with gluttony and lechery,407 so it is not inappropriate, according to Robin Headlam Wells (1994: 51–2), that ‘the bibulous Falstaff should be compared, among other “unsavoury similes”, to a “Lincolnshire bagpipe”’.408 As Ross points out (1966: 122) with regard to Hieronymous Bosch’s right wing panel ‘Hell’ in the Millenium (‘The Garden of Delight’,



Art and country instruments 187

Madrid, Museo del Prado), the bagpipe is a ‘central symbol of the folly and vanity of human life devoid of spiritual direction’. This reflects on Falstaff’s condition. Shakespeare’s acute sense of the individual sounds and playing techniques of differing instruments is manifest in the ‘recorder’ scene in Hamlet, cited above (p. 179). Various editors and commentators imply that Shakespeare plays loose with his musical imagery. Harold Jenkins, for example, in his Arden 2 edition of the play, remarks that ‘Hamlet switches from wind to stringed instrument for the sake of the pun on “fret”’.409 This misses the point. Hamlet deliberately references the playing techniques of the major categories of instruments, namely plucked stringed instruments, bowed stringed instruments and wind instruments in a passage where he makes it clear that no matter how others try to ‘play’ him, he will not be ‘governed’. It is clear that here and elsewhere, Shakespeare’s use of musical imagery, in this case musical instruments, is both incisive and differential.

Epilogue ‘A swanlike end, fading in music’

When Caroline Spurgeon produced what was arguably pioneering work on Shakespeare in the 1920s and early 1930s, she set out to determine new directions in which ‘detailed examination of Shakespeare’s images … throw new light on the poet and his work’.410 She concluded that her systematic investigation and collation of the entire range of images would, in her first study, reveal insights into ‘Shakespeare’s personality, temperament and thought [and] on the themes and characters of the plays’.411 Subsequent studies, she suggested, might offer further truths about Shakespeare’s mind and the origins of his imagery. Books such as Edward Armstrong’s Shakespeare’s Imagination (London: Lindsay Drummond, 1946) appear to have taken their cue from Spurgeon: This essay is an endeavour to study Shakespeare’s mind in the travail of composition by investigating the associative process revealed in his imagery.412 Armstrong goes on to examine ‘linked’ images connected with birds and other animals arguing that Shakespeare’s imagery is both theoretical and experiential, in other words because a certain bird such as the kite was relatively common in Tudor times he was more than likely to capture his knowledge and experience of it in his treatment of its imagery. Analysis of ‘image clusters’ leads Armstrong to conclude that the ‘foundation of Shakespeare’s imaginative thought … is the realisation and expression of life’s dualism. His mind was dominated by the warring opposites disclosed by experience’.413 He determines that Shakespeare’s imagery can be categorized according to fundamental antitheses, notably Life and



‘A swanlike end, fading in music’ 189

Death, Good and Evil, Day and Night. Such a determinate critical stance is difficult to maintain. Much has been written on the application of psycho-analytical methods to literary criticism, especially Shakespeare. One fall-out, Armstrong claimed, is that image cluster analysis can be employed in helping to determine authorship in problematic cases. He applied his theory to The Two Noble Kinsmen. Binary opposites are exploited by Shakespeare in his musical imagery at both generic and specific levels. These include images relating to consonance/dissonance, harmony/discord, sweetness/ harshness, merriment/sadness, war/peace, court/country, high/ low pitch, sophisticated/unsophisticated instruments as well as musical terms imaging Armstrong’s major dualisms mentioned above. It is possible to identify, especially in plays where musical imagery is prevalent, music dualisms at work. In The Merchant of Venice, opposites resound in music: Some that will evermore peep through their eyes And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper. (1.1.52–3) Parrots are proverbially foolish; the bagpiper is melancholic. Therefore the foolish mock the sad. ‘Let music sound while he doth make his choice./Then if he lose he makes a swanlike end,/Fading in music’ (3.2.43–5). While Bassanio makes his choice, Portia instructs music to play. If he chooses wrongly, Bassanio’s ‘music’ will end in a cadence and ‘die’. If he wins: ‘And what is music then? Then music is/Even as the flourish when true subjects bow/To a new-crowned monarch. Such it is/As are those dulcet sounds in break of day/That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear/And summon him to marriage’ (3.2.48–53). His music, as if announced by an opening flourish, will bring a new day and new life. ‘And bring your music forth into the air./How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!/Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music/Creep in our ears. Soft stillness and the night/ Become the touches of sweet harmony’ (5.1.52–6), involving night/day, harmony/discord.414 ‘There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st/But in

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his motion like an angel sings,/Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubins./Such harmony is in immortal souls,/But whilst this muddy vesture of decay/Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it’ (5.1.59–64): heavenly versus earthly musics (mundana and humana), audible/inaudible music. ‘I am never merry when I hear sweet music’ (5.1.68). Concordant music does not please Jessica. Lorenzo explains, invoking concord/discord, loud/quiet [still], wind/stringed instruments, order/chaos, good/evil, day/night: ‘The reason is your spirits are attentive,/For do but note a wild and wanton herd/Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,/Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,/Which is the hot condition of their blood,/ If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,/Or any air of music touch their ears,/You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,/ Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze/By the sweet power of music. Therefore the poet/Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods,/Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage/But music for the time doth change his nature./The man that hath no music in himself,/Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,/Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils./The motions of his spirit are dull as night,/And his affections dark as Erebus./Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music’ (5.1.69–87). ‘The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark/When neither is attended, and I think/The nightingale, if she should sing by day,/ When every goose is cackling, would be thought/No better a musician than the wren’ (5.1.101–5) involving night/day, crow/ lark, nightingale/wren. Dualisms in Hamlet include: ‘I have heard/The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,/Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat/Awake the god of day’ (1.1.130–3): night/day, high/low pitch, loud/soft. Shakespeare continues the dualistic imagery, ‘and at his warning,/Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,/Th’rextravagant and erring spirit hies/ To his confine … The bird of dawning singeth all night long’ (1.1.133–6, 141). ‘With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage’ (1.2.12): merry/sad, fast/slow music.



‘A swanlike end, fading in music’ 191

‘And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,/That sucked the honey of his music vows,/Now see that noble and most sovereign reason/Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh’ (3.1.154–7): sweet/harsh, harmony/discord, consonance/dissonance. ‘Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make/of me! You would play upon me, you would seem to know my/stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would/sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and/there is much music, excellent voice in this little organ, yet/cannot you make it speak. ‘Sblood, do you think I am easier to/be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will,/though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me’ (3.2.334–41): wind/stringed instruments, high/low pitches, control (skill)/disorder (ignorance). ‘My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,/And makes as healthful music’ (3.4.131-2): rhythmical proportion/discord, consonance/dissonance, restorative/destructive music. It would be possible to examine every play and extract music dualisms but it is not practicable to present such evidence here. That is the potential for a separate study. Sufficient to say that Shakespeare’s musical imagery depends on a variety of metaphors and similes involving dualisms, contextual connectives, topical similes, atmospheric metaphors, stage similes, magic metaphors and character references.

Notes

1. Except for the non-canonical Sir Thomas More. Cardenio has not been included. 2. For a line to line identification of musical references in the plays and poems, see www.shakespeare-music.hull.ac.uk 3. For definitions of those terms and discussion of their occurrences see Christopher R. Wilson and Michela Calore, Music in Shakespeare: A Dictionary (London and New York: Continuum, 2005). 4. See Gary Tomlinson, Music in Renaisssance Magic: Toward A Historiography of Others (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 44–66. 5. See Penelope Gouk, Music, Science and Natural Magic in Seventeenth-century England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 268. 6. John Dowland, transl. Ornithoparcus. His Micrologus (London, 1609), p. 1. See Diana Poulton, John Dowland (London: Faber, 1982), pp. 376–87. 7. David Lindley opens his Shakespeare and Music, Arden Critical Companions (London: Thomson Learning, 2006), with a discussion of Lorenzo’s ‘exquisite amplification of the commonplaces of musical theory [which] locates the source of music’s harmony in cosmic myth, and at the same time gestures towards an explanation of the capacity of music to affect human behaviour’ (p. 14). 8. However, in Titus Andronicus (2.3), Joseph Ortiz, ‘”Martyred Signs”: Titus Andronicus and the Production of Musical Sympathy’, Shakespeare, 1: 1 (2005), p. 72, proposes there is ‘another possible reading of the horn call, which also suggests a gap between music and language. In classical antiquity, wind instruments were often negatively distinguished from string instruments for their inability to produce words (i.e. a wind



Notes 193

musician could not sing while playing). Therefore, the winding horn may signify Lavinia’s new status as an instrument that can “blow” but not speak’. 9. Linda P. Austern, ‘Musical Treatments for Lovesickness’, in Peregrine Horden (ed.), Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy Since Antiquity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), p. 227. See also, Penelope Gouk, ‘Music, Melancholy, and Medical Spirits in Early Modern Thought’, in Horden (ed.), Music as Medicine, 195–212. 10. On the implications of this see F. W. Sternfeld, Music in Shakespearean Tragedy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), 226–35; also Bruce Smith ‘The Contest of Apollo and Marsyas: Ideas About Music in the Middle Ages’, in David L. Jeffrey (ed.), By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979), 81–107. 11. Brian Gibbons (ed.), Romeo and Juliet, Arden 2 (London: Methuen, 1980), p. 272. 12. R. Warwick Bond (ed.), The Complete Works of John Lyly (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), vol. II, p. 297. 13. Bond (ed.), The Complete Works of Lyly (1902), vol. III, p. 248. 14. Bond (ed.), The Complete Works of Lyly (1902), vol. III, p. 313. 15. Although the song ‘Who is Silvia?’ is not ascribed in F (first folio), most editors suggest it is Proteus who sings. 16. Tommy Ruth Waldo and T. W. Herbert, ‘Musical Terms in The Taming of the Shrew: Evidence of Single Authorship’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 10/2 (Spring, 1959), p. 186. 17. Waldo and Herbert, ‘Musical Terms in The Taming of the Shrew (1959), p. 188. 18. Roger Warren (ed.), Edward III (London: Nick Hern Books, 2002), p. xvi. 19. Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language (London: Penguin Books, 2000), p. ix. 20. For a selective summary of the theories pertaining to the emotional power of music in early modern culture see David Lindley, Shakespeare and Music (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006), 27–49.

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Notes

21. See further, Claude V. Palisca, ‘Scientific Empiricism in Musical Thought’, in Hedley Howell Rhys (ed.), Seventeenth Century Science and the Arts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 102–3; James Tenney, A History of ‘Consonance’ and ‘Dissonance’ (New York: Excelsior Music Publishing, 1988). 22. For further discussion of coincidence theory, see Palisca, ‘Scientific Empiricism’, 104–37; D. P. Walker, Studies in Musical Science in the Late Renaissance, Studies of the Warburg Institute, 37 (London: The Warburg Institute, 1978), 13–26; H. Floris Cohen, Quantifying Music: The Science of Music at the First Stage of the Scientific Revolution, 1580–1650 (Dordrecht, Boston and Lancaster: D. Reidel, 1984). For a study of the development of acoustic theory see Penelope Gouk, Music, Science and Natural Magic in Seventeenth-century England (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 157–92. For a summary of the ancient Greek ‘impact’ theory, which is in essence equivalent to the Renaissance coincidence theory, see with particular reference to Archytas, John G. Landels, Music in Ancient Greece and Rome (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 137–45. 23. Claude V. Palisca, ‘Consonance: History’, Grove Music Online, www.oxfordmusiconline.com 24. Brian C. J. Moore, ‘Consonance: Psychoacoustic factors’, Grove Music Online www.oxfordmusiconline.com 25. Shakespeare does not use the terms themselves; he refers to ‘accord’, ‘concord’, ‘concent’ and ‘harmony’, and ‘discord’, ‘jarring’ and ‘harsh’. See further under each term, Christopher R. Wilson and Michela Calore, Music in Shakespeare: A Dictionary (London and New York: Continuum, 2005). 26. Shakespeare’s poetic art was lauded as ‘sweet’ during the 1590s on account of his two great narrative poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and Lucrece (1594). Ben Jonson confirmed the epithet in his commemorative verse to the bard, ‘Sweet Swan of Avon’, prefixed to the First Folio (1623). According to Katherine Duncan-Jones and H. R. Woudhuysen (eds), Shakespeare’s Poems, Arden 3 (London: Cengage Learning, 2007), p. 6, ‘what his contemporaries received with such immediate delight were



27.

28.

29.

30.

Notes 195 the decorative and harmonious qualities of Shakespeare’s poetic rhetoric. Both in structure and in detail all parts of his poetic discourses are “sweetly” married together’. They go on to explain that the ‘pleasures afforded by “sweet” rhetoric are at once emotive and technical, almost musical. They do not derive from subject-matter as such, but from the sophistication and sensitivity with which any subject-matter, whether light or sombre, trivial or tragic, has been rhetorically shaped’ (p. 7). The term does not have musical signification today. It lost currency during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. On the theory of the neo-Platonic ‘Music of the Spheres’ see John Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961); and, briefly, David Lindley, Shakespeare and Music (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006), 15–26. Fingers touching or playing the strings of the lute (plucking) or keys (pressing down) of the virginal produced the (musical) sound of the instrument. Shakespeare uses ‘touch’ in this sense elsewhere: ‘For Orpheus’ lute was strung with poet’s sinews/Whose golden touch could soften steel and storm’ (TGV 3.2.77–8); Brutus orders his boy servant Lucius to ‘touch thy instrument a strain or two’ (JC 4.3.257); Mowbray laments his banishment as being ‘like a cunning instrument cas’d up,/ Or being open, put into his hands/That knows no touch’ (R2 1.3.155–7); in Edward III the King refers to ‘the touch of sweet concordant strings’ (scene 3.76). Hollander argues that Shakespeare digresses from neo-Platonic norms for the reasons why heavenly music is not heard by mortals: ‘Neither of the traditional reasons (acclimatization, or the physical thresholds of perception) is given. Instead the unheard music is related to immortality, and by extension to a prelapsarian condition’, The Untuning of the Sky, p.  152. Lindley defends this stance and invokes Kathi Meyer-Baer’s exposition of the development of the pictorial tradition in late medieval and renaissance culture in her Music of the Spheres and the Dance of Death: Studies in Musical Iconology (Princeton,

196

31. 32.

33. 34.

35.

36.

37.

Notes NJ, 1970): ‘Shakespeare has deployed other central strands of neoplatonic thinking – that humankind’s descent from the divine renders us incapable of perceiving absolute reality, but only its shadow, so that although human music gets its power through its reflection of celestial harmony, and we respond to it because of our faint memory of its original, we have no direct access to the heavenly music itself’ (Shakespeare and Music, p. 17). Compare Morley’s ‘compact of divers sounds’ (1597, p.  71) meaning the effect of several ‘voices’ sounding together. This in turn relates to the ‘impact’ theory of ancient Greece. Archytas argued that ‘of the various sounds which strike our … perception, those which arrive from the impact swiftly and strongly seem to be high in pitch, while those which arrive slowly and weakly sound low in pitch’; cited in Landels, Music in Ancient Greece and Rome (1999), p. 138. See further, pp. 116–17. For a discussion of the Orphean powers of music, both literal and metaphoric, in The Merchant of Venice, see Elise Bickford Jorgens, ‘A Rhetoric of Dissonance: Music in The Merchant of Venice’, John Donne Journal, 25 (2006), 118–28. On the affective powers of the Siren’s song and its associations, see further Linda Phyllis Austern, ‘“Sing Againe Syren”: The Female Musician and Sexual Enchantment in Elizabethan Life and Literature’, Renaissance Quarterly, 42 (Autumn, 1989), 420–44. G. Wilson Knight, ‘A Note on Richard II’ in The Imperial Theme (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931; rev. Methuen, 1965), p. 361. The theory of early modern counterpoint and the ‘pleasantness’ of intervals emanates from the fifteenth century as recounted in the writings of Johannes Tinctoris (c. 1435–c. 1511), in particular his Liber de arte Contrapuncti (1477). For wide-ranging discussion see Bonnie J. Blackburn, ‘On Compositional Process in the Fifteenth Century’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 40 (1987), 210–84; Rob C. Wegman, ‘Sense and Sensibility in Late-Medieval Music:



38.

39.

40.

41.

42. 43.

44.

Notes 197 Thoughts on Aesthetics and “Authenticity”’, Early Music, 23 (1995), 298–312; Christopher Page, ‘Reading and Reminiscence: Tinctoris on the Beauty of Music’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 49 (1996), 1–31. Henry Peacham, Minerva Britanna or a Garden of Heroical Devices (London: Wa.Dight [1612]), p.  204. Cited by Linda Phyllis Austern in ‘Words on Music: The Case of Early Modern England’, John Donne Journal, 25 (2006), 202–3 and by John Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry, 1500–1690 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961) between pp.  242–3: ‘Music Herself. … Music is not represented here by an instrument, a mythological figure, etc., but rather in the pure abstract’. Questions of authorship notwithstanding, the reference in the anonymous Edward III (1595) to sweet (concordant) music and lovers is in keeping with Shakespeare’s usage. On the ‘complexity’ of this image, see above, pp. 12–13. See further, Rosalind King, ‘“Then Murder’s Out of Tune”: The Music and Structure of Othello’, Shakespeare Survey, 39 (1986), p. 158. The peg was the small screw-key at the end of the fingerboard of a lute, viol or cittern that could be turned to either tighten (sharpen) or loosen (flatten) the string. There were as many pegs as there were strings. See further pp. 173–4. On the connection between Concordia discors and the occult tradition in Renaissance writers see Gary Tomlinson, Music in Renaissance Magic (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993), where he argues (p.  50) that Humanists ‘constituted a world of likeness and its opposite that was differentiated but unified. They maintained the universe … in the image of discordia concors, of harmony created from dissimilarity (or of dissimilarity in harmony).’ Barbara Heliodora C. de M. F. de Almeida, ‘Troilus and Cressida: Romantic Love Revisited’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 15/4 (Autumn, 1964), 327–8 argues that ‘romantic love cannot survive materially, or even be successful morally, in a corrupt

198

45.

46.

47. 48.

49.

50. 51.

Notes society; the connection between the disordered state and the moral corruption of the individual is inextricable’ and goes on to discuss, in particular, the similarities and differences between Romeo and Juliet and the later Troilus and Cressida, ‘the story of Romeo and Juliet with a morally unhappy ending’. (p. 329). David Lindley sees this as a ‘tendency either to dissolve [Shakespeare’s] text into the contexts of which it then becomes simply an exemplification, or, on the other hand, to claim that all variation from the sources is of itself intrinsically significant. To pursue the first line flattens the individuality of a text, while the danger of the second is to assume that an audience is capable of recognizing citation in the rapid movement of the theatrical action’ (Shakespeare and Music, 2006, p. 18). Bruce Smith’s, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999), is one of the few studies to attempt to locate Shakespeare’s plays in the soundworld of Elizabethan London (in particular). It does not, however, deal with imagined sound to any extent. Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 88. Costumes and props were part of an acting company’s property as Philip Henslowe’s inventory of the Admiral’s Men’s goods in 1598 would suggest: R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert (eds), Henslowe’s Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961). Inga-Stina Ewbank, ‘“More Pregnantly than Words”: Some Uses and Limitations of Visual Symbolism’, Shakespeare Survey, 24 (1971), p. 13. Benedict Nightingale, ‘The Winter’s Tale, “This is the Real Thing”’, review in The Times (6 June, 1997), p. 35. For a ten-year retrospective of the Globe experience, see Christie Carson and Farah Karim-Cooper (eds), Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).



Notes 199

52. M. C. Bradbrook, Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 5. 53. Anne Barton, ‘Shakespeare and the Limits of Language’, Shakespeare Survey, 24 (1971), pp. 19–20. 54. Barton, ‘Shakespeare and the Limits of Language’ (1971), p. 20. 55. Barton, ‘Shakespeare and the Limits of Language (1971), p. 20. 56. Northrop Frye, A Natural Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), p. 22. 57. Plato, The Republic, I. Loeb Classical Library (London: W. Heinemann, 1930), 245–6, cited in Oliver Strunk (ed.), Source Readings in Music History, ‘Antiquity and the Middle Ages’ (London: Faber, 1981), pp. 4–5. 58. Aristotle, The Poetics, Loeb Classical Library (London: W. Heinemann, 1932), 639, cited in Strunk, Source Readings (1981), p. 19. 59. Timothy R. McKinney, Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010). 60. Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 227–8. 61. See Peter Holman, Dowland: Lachrimae (1604) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 62. See further, K. S. Teo, ‘Chromaticism in Thomas Weelkes’s 1600 Collection: Possible Models’, Musicology, 13 (1990), 2–14. 63. David Brown, ‘Weelkes, Thomas’, Grove Music Online, www. oxfordmusionline.com 64. Thomas Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (London, 1597), p. 177. 65. Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction (1597), p. 177. 66. Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction (1597), p. 177. 67. Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction (1597), p. 178. 68. Stefano Venturi del Nibbio published five books of madrigals between 1592 and 1598. His ‘Quell’aura che spirand’a l’aura mia’ appeared Englished in Morley’s Madrigals to Five Voyces (1598) as ‘As Mopsus went hir silly flock foorth leading’.

200

Notes

69. Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction (1597), p. 178. 70. John Dowland, The Second Booke of Songs or Ayres (London, 1600), no. 2. 71. John Dowland, The First Booke of Songes or Ayres (London, 1597), no. 17. 72. Dowland, The Second Booke (1600), no. 1. 73. In practice, according to the Renaissance convention of musica ficta, the B could be changed to B flat to avoid the tritone. In theory, however, the tritone still exists. To perform this four-note progression with the tritone would be very effective on the stage. 74. See Ross W. Duffin, Shakespeare’s Songbook (London and New York: Norton, 2004), p. 443. 75. Denis Stevens (ed.), The Mulliner Book, Musica Britannica 2 (London: 1954), no. 113, pp. 83, 96. 76. National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: Brogyntyn MS 27, p. 125. 77. John Ward, ‘The “Dolfull Domps”’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 4 (1951), 111–21. 78. Of the 20 dumps found in English manuscript sources c. 1530 to 1620, the large majority are for solo lute and the remainder for keyboard. There are no surviving dumps for consort but references to dumps played by ensembles exist in plays. See further Ward, ‘Domps’ (1951), p. 119 and pp. 112–13 for sources. 79. ‘Polydore’ and ‘Cadwal’ are the brothers’ assumed names after their abduction by Belarius. 80. See, for example, Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (eds), William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987; rev. 1997), pp. 607–8. For a discussion of the voice change in pubescent boys as explained in early modern physiology see Bruce Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England (Chicago, 1999), pp. 227–9. 81. Peggy Muñoz Simonds, Myth, Emblem, and Music in Shakespeare’s ‘Cymbeline’ (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1992), p. 357. 82. G. K. Hunter, ‘The Spoken Dirge in Kyd, Marston, and Shakespeare: A Background to Cymbeline’, Notes & Queries, 11 (1964), 146–7.



Notes 201

83. Hunter, ‘The Spoken Dirge’ (1964), p. 147. 84. Simonds, Myth, Emblem, and Music (1992), p. 358. 85. David Lindley, Shakespeare and Music, Arden Critical Companions (London: Thomson Learning, 2006), pp. 182–3. 86. Lindley, Shakespeare and Music (2006), p. 183. 87. On ‘Swansong’ see further p. 106. 88. Norton edn (1997), p. 3184, fn. 4. 89. Ernest Brennecke, ‘“Nay, That’s Not Next!”: The Significance of Desdemona’s “Willow Song”’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 4/1 (1953), p. 37. 90. Peter J. Seng, The Vocal Songs in the Plays of Shakespeare: A Critical History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), p.  199; compare, for example, A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (London: Macmillan, 1904), p. 61. 91. Eamon Grennan, ‘The Women’s Voices in Othello: Speech, Song, Silence’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 38/3 (Autumn, 1987), p. 277. 92. Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London and New York: Methuen, 1980), p. 2. 93. Grennan, ‘The Women’s Voices in Othello’ (1987), p. 277. 94. Sir Thomas Elyot, The Boke Named the Governour (London, 1531), facs. reprint (Menston: Scolar Press, 1970); Robert Krueger (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 87–126. 95. Alan Brissenden, Shakespeare and the Dance (London: Macmillan, 1981), p. 3. 96. For a detailed discussion of Pythagorean cosmology and its application in the understanding of Elizabethan poetry see S. K. Heninger, Jr, Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1974). 97. Robert Krueger (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 94. 98. Krueger (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies (1975), p. 115. 99. Skiles Howard, ‘Hands, Feet, and Bottoms: Decentering the Cosmic Dance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 44/3 (Autumn, 1993), p. 326.

202 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106.

107. 108. 109.

110. 111.

112.

113. 114.

Notes Howard, ‘Hands, Feet, and Bottoms’ (1993), p. 335. Howard, ‘Hands, Feet, and Bottoms’ (1993), p. 335. Krueger (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies (1975), p. 95. Philip C. McGuire, ‘On the Dancing in Romeo and Juliet’, Renaissance and Reformation, 5, 17/2 (1981), p. 87. See further, Brissenden, Shakespeare and the Dance (1981), p. 25 and pp. 63–5. McGuire, ‘On the Dancing in Romeo and Juliet’ (1981), p. 95. S. K. Heninger, Jr, Touches of Sweet Harmony (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1974), pp.  [184–5]. Heninger reproduces Fludd’s diagram and provides a detailed commentary. Heninger, Touches of Sweet Harmony (1974), p. [185]. Thomas Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (London, 1597), Annotations to the First Part. Reproduced in Brissenden, Shakespeare and the Dance (1981), Pl. 1. He translates the caption as ‘Here flourish decency, integrity of behaviour, courtly charm, both grace and well-bred decorum. What wonder if divine qualities naturally follow divine beings. The bumpkin is as far from the courtier as the sheepcote from the palace – so much the uncouth dancing before you will show. But that’s well enough: let the differences between different kinds of life appear as they are.’ Brissenden, Shakespeare and the Dance (1981), p. 90. Many commentators argue for a direct link between Oberon and The Winter’s Tale. It is likely some of the King’s Men took part in the masque and that the theatre company hired dancers for the play. See further, Brissenden, Shakespeare and the Dance (1981), pp. 90–2. See R. A. Foakes, Shakespeare: The Dark Comedies to the Last Plays: From Satire to Celebration (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971), pp. 132–3. Brissenden provides a concise ‘Glossary of Dance Terms’ in Shakespeare and the Dance (1981), pp. 112–16. ‘Orchestra’ in Krueger (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies (1975), p. 108.



Notes 203

115. ‘Grues’ (cranes), birds with spindly long legs which seem to dance when crossing. 116. ‘Orchestra’ in Krueger (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies (1975), p. 108. 117. Charles Read Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig and Related Song Drama (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1929; reprint 1965), p. 358. 118. Florio, A Worlde of Words (London, 1598), ‘chiarantana’. 119. ‘Orchestra’ in Krueger (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies (1975), p. 107. 120. The other is Twelfth Night (5.1.193) when he refers to a ‘passymeasures pavan’ (passing measures pavan). 121. John M Ward, ‘The English Measure’, Early Music, 14 (1986), 15–21, identifies 11 discrete meanings and six different musical applications. 122. Robert Mullally, ‘More about the Measures’, Early Music, 22/3 (1994), 417–-38. 123. Desmond Bland (ed.), Gesta Grayorum, English Reprint Series, 22 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1968), p. 28. 124. The titles are: ‘The Quadran Pavan’, ‘Turkelony’, ‘The Earl of Essex’ Measure’, ‘Tinternell’, ‘The Old Almain’, ‘The Queen’s Almain’, ‘Cecilia Almain’, ‘The Black Almain’. See Mullally, ‘More about the Measures’ (1994), pp. 422–5. 125. Harry Berger, Jr, ‘Against the Sink-a-Pace: Sexual and Family Politics in Much Ado About Nothing’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 33/3 (Autumn, 1982), p. 302. 126. Mullally, ‘More about the Measures’(1994), p. 427. Mullally (p. 437, fn. 67) cites Marston, The Malcontent 5.4; The Insatiate Countess 2.1; John Ford, The Broken Heart 5.2; Loves Sacrifice 3.4. 127. On connections between Jonson’s Masque of Oberon (1611) and The Winter’s Tale, Francis Beaumont’s Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn (1613) and The Two Noble Kinsmen, the unperformed The Masque of Amazons and Timon of Athens, Thomas Campion’s Lord Hayes Masque (1607) and Pericles, Jonson’s Masque of Queenes (1609) and Macbeth, see Tiffany

204

128. 129.

130. 131. 132. 133.

134.

135. 136. 137. 138.

139.

Notes Stern, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 150–3. Walter Cohen, ‘Introduction’ to Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Norton Shakespeare (2008), p. 772. Stern, Documents of Performance (2009), p.  152. Stern cites Irwin Smith, ‘Ariel and the Masque in The Tempest’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 21 (1970), 213–22, who proposes the masque printed in the Folio was written for the play’s second court performance included in the wedding festivities of Princess Elizabeth and Frederic, Elector Palatine in 1613. See, for example, David Lindley (ed.), The Tempest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 13–15. Mullally, ‘More about the Measures’ (1994), p. 432. Mullally, ‘More about the Measures’ (1994), p. 433. Paul A. Jorgensen, ‘A Fearful Battle Rend’red You in Music’, Shakespeare’s Military World (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1956), p. 3. Anon, The Tragedie of Caesar and Pompey. Or Caesar’s Revenge (1607), sig. H4v, text in Malone Society Reprints, Vol. 2 (1911). See also, Jacqueline Pearson ‘Shakespeare and Caesar’s Revenge’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 31/1 (1981), 101–4. Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World (1956), p. 4. Robert Krueger (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 113. Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World (1956), p. 5. ‘The noisiest places in London’; see further, Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-factor (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp.  217–8. He refers to the ‘petition raised by neighbors in the Blackfriars in 1596, when James Burbage bought the Upper Frater and started fitting out a new acting space for the Chamberlain’s men. In addition to the traffic, the neighbors complain, “the same playhouse is so neere the Church that the noyse of the drummes and trumpetts will greatly disturbe and hinder both the ministers and parishioners” (Gurr, 1996: 283)’. Nick de Somogyi, Shakespeare’s Theatre of War (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), p. 44.



Notes 205

140. Gabriel Egan, ‘Leashing in the Dogs of War: The Influence of Lyly’s Campaspe on Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well’ (2000), p. 2, www.gabrielegan.com/publications/Egan2002a.htm 141. Egan, ‘Leashing in the Dogs of War’ (2000), p. 2. 142. Robin Headlam Wells, ‘“Manhood and Chevalrie”: Coriolanus, Prince Henry, and the Chivalric Revival’, Review of English Studies, 51 (2000), 395–422. 143. Egan, ‘Leashing in the Dogs of War’ (2000), p. 2. 144. Egan, ‘Leashing in the Dogs of War’ (2000), p. 1. 145. John Lyly, ‘Campaspe’ and ‘Sappho and Phao’, in G. K. Hunter and David Bevington (eds), Revels Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991). 146. Egan, ‘Leashing in the Dogs of War’ (2000), p. 2. 147. Smith, The Acoustic World (1999), p. 230. 148. Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World (1956), p. 24. 149. William R. Trotter (2005) ‘The Music of War’, www.historynet. com 150. On Paroles’ drum in particular and the signification of war see further Helen Wilcox, ‘Drums and Roses? The Tragicomedy of War in All’s Well that Ends Well’, in Ros King and Paul J. C. M. Franssen (eds), Shakespeare and War (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 151. See Christopher R. Wilson and Michela Calore, Music in Shakespeare: A Dictionary (London and New York: Continuum, 2005), p. 146. 152. Calore reminds us that ‘in theatrical jargon, “afar off” would have worked as an instruction to beat the drums from behind the tiring-house’, Wilson and Calore, Music in Shakespeare (2005), p. 147, equivalent to the stage direction ‘within’. 153. The authorship of this early play has been questioned for a long time, starting with Edmond Malone in 1790. In ‘Shakespeare and Others: The Authorship of Henry the Sixth, Part I’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 7 (1995), 145–205, Gary Taylor argues for a collaborative construction, involving more of Nashe and less of Shakespeare. 154. Exactly what the distinction between the English and French march was, is not certain but retrospective sources indicate

206

155.

156. 157. 158.

159.

Notes it had to do with tempo, and encaptured the essential rhythmical difference between infantry and cavalry. Sir John Hawkins, for example, reports that ‘the old English march [of Elizabethan times] of the foot was formerly in high estimation … its characteristic is dignity and gravity, in which respect it differs greatly from the French, which, as it is given by Mersennus is brisk and alert’, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776), p. 229. Edward Burns (ed.), King Henry VI Part 1 (London: Arden, 2000) comments that there could not be a significant difference between the marches and that their instrumentation provided that distinction. David Lindley, Shakespeare and Music, Arden Critical Companions (London: Thomson Learning, 2006), p.  114, cites a ‘drummer petitioning for a place in Queen Elizabeth’s service’ as being able to ‘sownde the englishe, allmaigne, flemishe, frenche, Pyemount, highe Allmaigne, Gasgoigne, Spanishe’ marches. The inventories, now lost, were first published by Edmond Malone in his The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, vol. 1, part 2 (London, 1790), pp. 300–7. The lists are reprinted in R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert (eds), Henslowe’s Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), pp. 317–25. Digital images of manuscripts from the Henslowe-Alleyn archive are available on www.henslowe-alleyn.org.uk Foakes and Rickert, Henslowe’s Diary (1961), p. 318. Foakes and Rickert, Henslowe’s Diary (1961), p. 130. See further, Anthony Baines, Brass Instruments: Their History and Development (London: Faber, 1976); Peter Downey, ‘The Trumpet and its Role in Music of the Renaissance and Early Baroque’, PhD dissertation, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1983. For a discussion of the background and use of military signalling instruments in contemporary repertoire, see Elizabeth Ketterer, ‘Musical Military Signals, “Govern’d by Stops, Aw’d by Dividing Notes” : The Functions of Music in the Extant Repertory of the Admiral’s Men, 1594–1621’, unpublished PhD thesis, The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, 2009, pp. 103–9, 164–80.



Notes 207

160. Most of the extant sarasinette are found in the Magnus Thomsen Trumpet Book, c. 1596 (Copenhagen: Kongelge Bibliotek, GL. Kgl. Saml., 1875). Several others survive in Cesare Bendinelli, Tutta l’arte della trombetta (MS 1614) in Documenta musicologica, 2nd series, vol. 5 (Kassell: Bärenreiter, 1975). 161. Frances Ann Shirley, Shakespeare’s Use of Off-stage Sounds (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), p. 74. 162. Wilson and Calore, Music in Shakespeare (2005), p. 378. 163. For a brief discussion of the ‘collision between the erotic and the martial’ in this ‘bitterly ironic’, play, see David Lindley, Shakespeare and Music (2006), pp. 119–20. 164. See further p. 145. 165. Alan C. Dessen and Leslie Thomson, A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.  239 note that ‘of the roughly twenty signals for a tucket many are in the Shakespeare canon’. 166. Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World (1956), p.  21 cites Francis Markham, Five Decades of Epistles of Warre (1622), p. 83: ‘Butte sella, Clap on your saddles; Mounte Cavallo, mount on horseback; Tucquet, march; Carga, carga, an Alarme to charge; Ala Standardo, a retrait or retire to your Colours; Auquet, to the watch, or a discharge for the watch, besides other points, as Proclamations, Cals, Summons’. 167. The French army was famously dependent on its cavalry at Agincourt. Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World (1956), p. 22 argues that the sparseness of ‘tuckets’ and other cavalry signals in English drama was because ‘they were still, like the language of fencing, imperfectly naturalized and therefore unsuited for patriotic English usage’. 168. Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World (1956), p. 22. 169. For a detailed discussion of the comparative reliabilities of the sources, see Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, Modernizing Shakespeare’s Spelling, with three Studies in the Text of ‘Henry V (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). In Q1, many stage directions especially for music are missing. This may be why when

208

170.

171.

172.

173. 174. 175.

176. 177.

178. 179. 180. 181. 182.

Notes Montjoy enters he says ‘You know me by my habit’ (3.6.104), making no reference to his tucket. Just as in Henry V, Q1 (1600) Merchant of Venice contains far fewer musical cues than F. Lorenzo’s line, ‘Your husband is at hand. I hear his trumpet’ (5.1.121) could have functioned as an explicit stage instruction. In Q1 King Lear these stage directions are not found. Like The Merchant of Venice, textual lines could serve as explicit stage instructions. In King Lear, Gloucester recognizes Cornwall’s trumpet signal: ‘Hark, the Duke’s trumpets’ (scene 6. 79); Regan is familiar with Goneril’s trumpet: ‘What trumpet’s that? I know’t, my sister’s. This approves her letter/That she would soon be here’ (scene 7. 334). Again, lines in the dialogue act as explicit stage instructions. ‘Hark. You may know by their trumpets’ (AWW 3.5.8); ‘What means that trump?’ (Tim 1.2.107). In F, this line is part of the dialogue, spoken by York. According to most editors, going back to Lewis Theobald in the early eighteenth century. ‘In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed’ (King James Bible Authorized Version). Nick de Somogyi, Shakespeare’s Theatre of War (1998), p. 47. De Somogyi, Shakespeare’s Theatre of War (1998). ‘The pattern of Clifford’s apostrophe [to war]’, de Somogyi reminds us, ‘was later repeated in a sermon preached in May 1598 by Stephen Gosson, and printed as The Trumpet of Warre’ (p. 48). Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World (1956), p. 18. Source: Elizabeth Rogers’ Virginal Book, BL Add. MS 10337; MLNB no. 4. John S. Manifold, The Music in English Drama, from Shakespeare to Purcell (London: Rockcliff, 1956), p. 49. John W. Draper, ‘Shakespeare’s Use of the Grand Entry’, Neophilologus, 44/1 (December, 1960), p. 134. Compare Timon of Athens (1.2.OSD): ‘Hautboys playing loud music. A great banquet served in’; and Folio Titus Andronicus



183.

184. 185.

186. 187. 188.

189.

190. 191.

192. 193.

Notes 209 banquet scene (5.3) in which Tamora eats the flesh of her sons. Adam Hansen, Shakespeare and Popular Music (London and New York: Continuum, 2010), p. 17 argues that popular song in Shakespeare’s plays should include not only ballads and related genres but music effects and street noises. David Lindley, Shakespeare and Music, Arden Critical Companions (London: Thomson Learning, 2006), pp. 141–2. See further, Natascha Würzbach, The Rise of the English Street Ballad, 1550–1650, transl. Gayna Walls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Richard Middleton, Voicing the Popular: On the Subjects of Popular Music (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), p. 23. Edward Naylor, Shakespeare and Music (London: Dent, 1896), 69–95. F. W. Sternfeld, ‘Shakespeare’s Use of Popular Song’, Elizabethan and Jacobean Studies, in Herbert Davis and Helen Gardner (eds), Elizabethan and Jacobean Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), pp. 150–66. Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, vol. 1 (London: Cramer, Beale, and Chappell, 1855–59), p.  239, maintains ‘hit’ refers to the dance tune which he says is mentioned in the Elizabethan play, Wily Beguiled (George Peele ? printed 1606). Chappell (ibid.) notes that ‘a ballat intituled There is better game, if you could hit it was licensed to Hughe Jaxon’ in 1579. H. R. Woudhuysen (ed.), Love’s Labour’s Lost, Arden 3 (London: Thomson Learning, 1998), p. 182. Ross W. Duffin, Shakespeare’s Songbook (London and New York: Norton, 2004), pp.  88–9 reports that a ‘lute setting for the tune survives in Dublin, Trinity College MS 408/2 (c. 1605) under the title Hit … the same tune survives in a setting for keyboard in Paris Conservatoire MS Rés. 1186 (1630–40) as Can you not hit it my good man.’ The tune Duffin presents is essentially the one Chappell gives. The Norton Shakespeare (2008), p. 1759, fn. 7. According to Roy Lamson, Jr, ‘English Broadside Ballad Tunes of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in

210

194.

195. 196. 197. 198. 199. 200.

201. 202. 203.

204. 205.

206. 207.

Notes Arthur Mendel et al. (eds), American Musicological Society: Congress Report New York, 1939, (New York, 1944), of the 1,766 broadside ballad tunes studied to 1700, ‘Greensleeves’ was the third most popular (with 80 occurrences) behind ‘Fortune my foe’ (91) and ‘Packington’s Pound’ (99). Cited by Ward (1990: 190). Ralph Vaughan Williams includes a version in his opera, Sir John in Love (1928), 3.2 and the interlude between 4.1 and 2. This music was arranged as Fantasia on ‘Greensleeves’ (1934). In the later nineteenth century, seasonal texts to ‘Greensleeves’ became the most popular Christmas songs. For a classified chronological list of versions see John M. Ward, ‘And Who But Ladie Greensleeues?’ in John Caldwell, Edward Olleson and Susan Wollenberg (eds), The Well Enchanting Skill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 196–211. The Norton Shakespeare (2008), p. 1400, fn. 2. Duffin, Shakespeare’s Songbook (2004), p. 236. Duffin, Shakespeare’s Songbook (2004), p. 340. Duffin, Shakespeare’s Songbook (2004), pp. 143–4. Duffin, Shakespeare’s Songbook (2004), pp. 440–1. See, for example, F. W. Sternfeld, Music in Shakespearean Tragedy, 2nd edn (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), p. 303; Duffin, Shakespeare’s Songbook (2004), pp. 152–4. Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1966), p. 225. David Wulstan, Tudor Music (London: Dent, 1985), p. 49. Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, ed. Henry B. Wheatley (London: Swan Sonneschein, Lebas & Lowrey, 1886; New York: Dover Publications, 1966), p. 225. Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1886) p. 224. See further, David Greer, ‘Five Variations on “Farewel dear loue”’, in John Caldwell, Edward Olleson and Susan Wollenberg (eds), The Well Enchanting Skill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 213. Sternfeld, ‘Shakespeare’s Use of Popular Song’ (1959), p. 150. Text in Seng (p. 137) from BL. Add. MS 27,879, fols 251–251v.



Notes 211

208. See Lucy Bate, ‘Which Did or Did Not Go to the Grave?’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 17 (1966), 163–5 argues that the interpretation of the song depends on the interpolated ‘not’. 209. For a discussion of the possible subject of Ophelia’s lines, see Stuart Gillespie, ‘Tragic Ballads: Ophelia and Others’, in Stuart Gillespie and Neil Rhodes (eds), Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture (London: Arden, 2006), pp. 188–90. Concerning the relationship of the song to the play, Gillespie asks whether ‘the main referent is (a) Polonius, (b) Prince Hamlet or (c) Hamlet Senior?’ 210. Lesley C. Dunn, ‘Ophelia’s Songs in Hamlet: Music, Madness, and the Feminine’, in Lesley C. Dunn and Nancy A. Jones (eds), Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 58. 211. Printed in F but omitted in Q 1622. See further, Sternfeld, Music in Shakespearean Tragedy (1967), pp. 25–9. 212. See further, Seng, The Vocal Songs, pp.  195–8. See also Sternfeld, Music in Shakespearean Tragedy (1967), pp. 33–4 and Duffin, Shakespeare’s Songbook (2004), pp. 467–70. 213. See Sternfeld, Music in Shakespearean Tragedy (1967), pp. 39–52. 214. That Elizabethan actors milked the pathos of the scene could be deduced from a report of a performance at Oxford in 1610 when the boy playing Desdemona seemingly moved the audience by his facial expressions, as recorded by Sternfeld (1967: 24): ‘Henry Jackson, a member of Corpus Christi [College], was moved to record his impressions, and it is noteworthy that he singles out the performance of Desdemona without bothering to mention other members of the cast: At verò illa apud nos a marito occisa, quanquam optimè semper causam egit, interfecta tamen magis movebat; cum in lecto decumbens spectantium misericordiam ipso vultu imploraret. (She who was killed by her husband acted excellently throughout but was nevertheless more moving when dead; as she lay on the bed she appealed to the compassion of the spectators by the very expression of her face).’

212

Notes

215. Peggy M. Simonds, Myth, Emblem, and Music in Shakespeare’s ‘Cymbeline’ (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1992) includes a chapter ‘The Iconography of Birds in Cymbeline’, pp.  198–240, which refers to song together with ‘multiple symbolic meanings’ for bird imagery in the play. 216. One of the earliest in a non-vocal music context is illustrated in Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgia universalis (1650) which notates at some length the song of the nightingale and depicts with short musical extracts the cockerel crowing, the hen clucking, the hen calling her chicks, the cuckoo, the quail and the parrot talking Greek. 217. According to Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare’s Imagery and What it Tells Us (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935), p. 48, ‘the special aspect of [bird] life which attracts [Shakespeare] is their movement … their flight, and their swift, accurate, easy movements when free; their fluttering, struggling movements when imprisoned; the soaring of the eagle and of the hawk, the ‘fell swoop’ of the kite, the wild geese flocking together … the tiny wren fighting the owl to protect her young, … the imprisoned bird in a cage or on a silken thread …’. 218. The lark is the most frequently cited songbird. Surprisingly, the robin redbreast, a prominent contributor to the dawn chorus, sings only once (TGV 2.1.18). 219. C. Hartshorne, ‘The Relation of Bird Song to Music’, Ibis, 100 (1958), 421–45; ‘Freedom, Individuality and Beauty in Nature’, Snowy Egret, 24/2 (1960). 220. Edward A. Armstrong, A Study of Bird Song (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 245. 221. Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne. Letter XLIII, (9 September 1778), ed. E. M. Nicholson (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1929), p. 325. 222. B. D. Blanchard, ‘The White-crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) of the Pacific Seaboard; Environment and Annual Cycle’, University of California Publications in Zoology, 46 (1941), 1–178.



Notes 213

223. See further, Richard d’A. Jensen, ‘Birdsong and the Imitation of Birdsong in the Music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance’, Current Musicology, 40 (1985), pp. 50–65. 224. A. Tillman Merritt and François Lesure (eds), Clément Janequin: Chansons Polyphoniques (Monaco : Oiseau-Lyre, 1965), pp. 18–21. 225. Compare, ‘The messenger of the delightful Spring,/The cuckoo, proud bird mocking man,/On lofty oaks and every under-spring/To chant out cuckoo scarce began’, in Francis Pilkington, The First Set of Madrigals and Pastorals (London, 1613), no. 10. 226. F (1623) has ‘cuckow’. No onomatopoeic spelling seems intended. No original music setting has been identified. Duffin (2004: 440–1) suggests ‘Packington’s Pound’, found in William Barley’s A New Book of Tabliture (1596). 227. James E. Harting, The Birds of Shakespeare (London: J. Van Voorst, 1871), pp. 153–4. 228. T. F. Thiselton Dyer, Folk-lore of Shakespeare (1883), Chapter 6 ‘Birds’, p.  106, cites an old Gloucestershire rhyme: ‘The cuckoo comes in April/Sings a song in May;/Then in June another tune,/And then she flies away.’ 229. See further, Armstrong, A Study of Bird Song (1963), p. 174. 230. M. C. Bradbrook, ‘“Tu-whit, Tu-who, a Merry Note”’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 33 (1982), p.  95, asked why ‘does the owl sound a merry note when he lengthily hoots his long “tu-whit, tu-who”’?, to which she replied: ‘Two puns supply the cheer. “To it!” is the hunter’s cry of encouragement to his dogs; there has been enough mixture of hunting and wooing in this play to allow it to apply in the manner of Squire Western in Tom Jones, who delightedly cries, at the moment when Tom kisses Sophia, “To it, little honeys, to it, O that’s it!” … “To it! to woo!” repeats the “merry note” Longaville sounded: “Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?”. M. C. Andrews, ‘The Owl’s “Merry Note”’, Notes & Queries, 31 (June, 1984), 187–8 cites a ‘goodly Owle’ passage in Lyly’s Endimion and adds that the owl’s call may long have been associated with courtship.

214

Notes

231. Robert Jones, The First Set of Madrigals (London, 1607), no. 13. 232. While Tawny owls are known to ‘screech’, Barn owls are commonly termed ‘screech owls’ and their customary association with churchyards is particularly apt in this context. 233. See John D. Cox and Eric Rasmussen (eds), King Henry VI, Arden 3 (London: Thomson Learning, 2001), p.  258: ‘The semiotic screech-owl is proverbial: “The croaking raven (screeching owl) bodes misfortune”.’ 234. The Norton Shakespeare (2008: 395) suggests a ‘mythical bird supposed to be an evil omen’. There is, however, no reason why this couldn’t be a Carrion Crow (Corvus corone), ‘night’ being a reference to its particularly black plumage. Or the ‘night-raven’ mentioned in Much Ado About Nothing: ‘I had as life have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it’ (2.3.78–9). 235. In other words, Magpies, variously associated with bad and good luck. Sometimes referred to as ‘Magot-pie’ (Monkey bird) after the French. 236. Orlando Gibbons, The First Set Of Madrigals (1612), no. 1. 237. On ‘creatures which have human characteristics’ in Shakespeare, see Edward A. Armstrong, Shakespeare’s Imagination: A Study of the Pyychology of Association and Inspiration (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), pp. 75–8. 238. Kate van Orden, ‘Sexual Discourse in the Parisian Chanson: A Libidinous Aviary’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 48/1 (Spring, 1995), pp.  1–2. The sparrow, for example, is known to be one of the most lustful birds and ‘represents a lewd and carnal man who hides in his house, immersed in libidinous behaviour’ (van Orden, p. 1). In Shakespeare: ‘this ungenitured agent will unpeople the province with continency. Sparrows must not build in his house-eaves, because they are lecherous’ (MM 3.1.406–8). 239. Walter Cohen, ‘Various Poems’ The Norton Shakespeare (New York: Norton: 2008), pp. 2013–14. 240. Van Orden, ‘A Libidinous Aviary’ (1995), pp. 7–8. 241. Van Orden, ‘A Libidinous Aviary’ (1995), p. 7.



Notes 215

242. E. A. Armstrong, Shakespeare’s Imagination (1963), pp. 48–9. 243. A patriarchal fallacy. Armstrong, A Study of Bird Song (1963), p. 175 asserts that the ‘traditional poetic fancy that the female bird sings has been so thoroughly discredited that it is now necessary to emphasize that many female birds do sing … The potential songfulness of the female has been suppressed because among birds, as in human society, division of labour is advantageous’. 244. On ‘The Caged Bird’ see further, Peggy M. Simonds, Myth, Emblem, and Music in Shakespeare’s ‘Cymbeline’ (1992), pp.  174–82, where she observes that a ‘major courtier topos, with a number of interesting variations, during the Renaissance was based on precisely this image of the caged bird – usually the nightingale – which either sings or does not sing in captivity’. 245. Thomas Vautor, The First Set: Beeing Songs of Divers Ayres and Natures (London, 1619), no. 18. 246. Van Orden, ‘A Libidinous Aviary’(London, 1995), pp. 6–7. 247. The essence of the myth from Ovid, Metamorphosis Book 6 as transmitted by Arthur Golding, The XV Bookes of P. Ovidius Naso, Entytuled Metamorphosis (London, 1567) is: ‘When … came Philomele in raiment very rich,/And yet in beautie farre more rich …/King Tereus at the sight of hir did burne in his desire …/But as for him, to fleshly lust even nature did him move …/In Thracia, when that Tereus tooke the Ladie by the hand,/And led hir to a pelting graunge that peakishly did stand/In woods forgrowen. There waxing pale and trembling sore for feare,/And dreaming all things, and with teares demaunding sadly where/Hir sister was, he shet hir up: and therewithal bewraide/His wicked lust, and so by force because she was a Maide/And all alone he vanquisht hir …/But if the Gods doe see this deede, and if the Gods, I say,/Be ought, and in this wicked worlde beare any kinde of sway/And if with me all other things decay not, sure the day/Will come that for this wickedness full dearly thou shalt pay …/As prisoner in these woods, my voyce the verie woods shall fill,/And makes the stones to understand …/With these

216

Notes

and other such hir wordes, both causes so him stung,/That drawing out his naked sworde that at his girdle hung …/… the cruell tyrant came/And with a paire of pinsons fast did catch hir by the tung,/And with his sword did cut it off …/ Yet after all this wickednesse he keeping countenance still,/ Durst unto Progne home repaire. And she immediately/ Demaunded where hir sister was. He sighing feynedly/Did tell hir falsly she was dead …/Then Progne strake him [Itys her son] with a sword …/…the tother sister slit/His throte …/King Tereus sitting in the throne of his forefathers, fed/ And swallowed downe the selfsame flesh that his bowels had bred …/As he was yet demaunding where, and calling for him: out/Lept Philomele with scattered haire aflaight like one that fled/Had from some fray where slaughter was, and threw the bloudy head/Of Itys in his fathers face …/He that had beene present would have deemde/Their bodies to have hovered up with fethers. As they seemde,/So hovered they with wings in deede. Of whom the one away/To woodward flies [the nightingale], the other still about the house doth stay [the swallow] …/And he through sorrow and desire of vengeance waxing wight,/Became a Bird … A Lapwing named is this Bird’. In Ovid, Philomela becomes a swallow whereas in Virgil and other Roman poets, Philomela turns into the nightingale, the version of the myth retained in the Renaissance. 248. See further, Coppélia Kahn, ‘The Daughter’s Seduction in Titus Andronicus; or, Writing Is the Best Revenge’, in The Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 46–76. 249. Beryl Rowland, Birds with Human Souls: A Guide to Bird Symbolism (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1978), p. 106. 250. The onomatopoeic ‘tirra-lirra’ (WT 4.3.9) probably derives from an old Provençal refrain, ‘ture-lure’. Cotgrave A Dictionarie of the French and English tongues (1611) states that ‘tirelirer’ means ‘to warble, or sing like a larke’. See further Christopher R. Wilson and Michela Calore, Music in



251.

252. 253. 254. 255. 256.

257.

258.

Notes 217 Shakespeare: A Dictionary (London and New York: Continuum, 2005), pp.  427–8. In contemporary French chansons, e.g. Janequin’s ‘Chant de l’alouette’ the lark sings ‘Que dit Dieu il est jour’. Harting, The Birds of Shakespeare (1871), p.  140 notes that ‘country people, in many parts of England, still regard [the robin and wren] as the male and female of one species’. Armstrong, Shakespeare’s Imagination (1963), p.  79 confirms this. See Harting, The Birds of Shakespeare (1871), p. 142. Armstrong, Shakespeare’s Imagination (1963), p. 75. Thomas Weelkes, Madrigals (London, 1597), no. 1. Francis Pilkington, The First Booke of Songs or Ayres (London, 1605), no. 20. For a discussion of the use of emblems as an adjunct to interpreting Renaissance bird imagery, see Peter M. Daly, ‘Of Macbeth, Martlets and other “Fowles of Heaven”’, Mosaic, 12 (Fall, 1978), 23–46. Shakespeare’s exact contribution to The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight as it appeared in F is uncertain. For a long time, critics and editors have argued that John Fletcher, Shakespeare’s successor with the King’s Men and collaborator on The Two Noble Kinsmen, contributed at least one-quarter of the play, that is 1.3–4, 3.1 and 5.2–4 and was involved in 2.1–2 and 4.1–2. Internal evidence strongly suggests, in turn, that Shakespeare was also responsible for 3.1. The musical episode at 3.1 arguably confirms this. Dowland’s intensely melancholic songs invariably represent the man’s point of view; however, the content and emotion of ‘Sorrow, sorrow stay’ fit the mood here in this scene. This remarkable song became known as ‘Dowland’s Sorrow’ in subsequent arrangements, for example by William Wigthorp for voice and viols (BL Add MS 17786-91). Poulton (1982: 259) suggests that Beaumont and Fletcher’s allusion to the song in The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1613) indicates that it had become ‘one of the “song hits” of the day’, and would therefore be current.

218

Notes

259. Orpheus’ link with matrimony and his persuasive eloquence are articulated by Erasmus: ‘Poetes do declare that Orpheus the musitian and minstrell, did styrre and make softe with his pleasaunte melodye the mooste harde rockes and stones. And what is their meaninge herein? Assuredlye nothinge elles, but that a wise and well spoken manne, did call back harde harted menne, suche as liued abroade like Beastes, from open whoredome, and brought them to lyue after the most holye laws of Matrimonye’, cited by Thomas Wilson in The Arte of Rhetorique (London, 1553), f. 26. 260. Northrop Frye, A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearan Comedy and Romance (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1965), p. 147. 261. Frederick W. Sternfeld, ‘The Orpheus Myth and the Libretto of Orfeo’ in John Whenham (ed.), Claudio Monteverdi: Orfeo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 20. 262. Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (London, 1598), pp. 281–2. 263. David Armitage, ‘The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Mythic Elements in Shakespeare’s Romances’, Shakespeare Survey, 39 (1986), p. 125. 264. Pierre Iselin, ‘“My Music for Nothing”: Musical Negotiations in The Tempest’, Shakespeare Survey, 48 (1995), p. 142. 265. Aelian, On the Nature of Animals, tr. A. F. Scholfield, 3 vols (London: Loeb, 1958–9), XII, p. 44. 266. Shakespeare’s debt to Virgil is questioned by T. W. Baldwin, William Shakspere’s Small Latine and Lesse Greeke, 2 vols (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1944), II. p. 464. 267. See pp. 175–6. 268. For a challenging view of the role of Orpheus in Campion’s masque see, A. L. De Neef, ‘Structure and Theme in Campion’s Lords Maske’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 17/1 (1977), 95–103. 269. See also, Ros King, Cymbeline: Constructions of Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 27–9. 270. Peggy Muñoz Simonds, Myth, Emblem, and Music in Shakespeare’s ‘Cymbeline’ (Newark, NY: University of Delaware Press, 1992), p. 345.



Notes 219

271. Simonds, Myth, Emblem, and Music (1992), p.  347. As the ‘teacher of Humanitas’, see John Warden, ‘Orpheus and Ficino’ in John Warden (ed.), Orpheus: the Metamorphoses of a Myth, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), pp. 89–91. 272. Simonds, Myth, Emblem, and Music (1992), p. 348. 273. Simonds, Myth, Emblem, and Music (1992), p. 348. 274. Joseph M. Ortiz, ‘”Martyred Signs”: Titus Andronicus and the Production of Musical Sympathy’, Shakespeare, 1/1&2 (June & December, 2005), p. 69. 275. G. Wilson Knight, Myth and Miracle: An Essay on the Mystic Symbolism of Shakespeare (London: Burrow, 1929), p. 12. 276. Paggy A. Knapp, ‘The Orphic Vision of Pericles’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 15/4 (Winter, 1974), p. 618. 277. Knapp, ‘The Orphic Vision of Pericles’ (1974), p. 618. 278. Knapp, ‘The Orphic Vision of Pericles’, pp. 624–5. 279. F. Elizabeth Hart, ‘Cerimon’s “Rough” Music in Pericles, 3.2’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 51/3 (Autumn, 2000), pp. 317–18. 280. On this substitution relating to questions of authorship see Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (eds), William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 556–60; and MacD. P. Jackson, ‘Rhyming in Pericles: More Evidence of Dual Authorship’, Studies in Bibliography, 46 (1993), pp. 239–49. 281. Peter J. Seng, The Vocal Songs in the Plays of Shakespeare: A Critical History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), p.  195 cites BL Add MS 15,117, fol. 18. He says ‘the verbal resemblance between the two songs is so close that the manuscript version can unquestionably be regarded as a surviving redaction of the original song which Shakespeare adapted for use in Othello’. He goes on to refer to ‘at least five more willow songs’ (pp. 197–8). 282. As Lawrence J. Ross observes, ‘the bear … was figuratively associated with violence and savage cruelty from ancient times. In medieval allegoriae, “Ursus est quilibet crudelis, ut in Isaia [xi.7]”; and in many Renaissance pictures … the “churlish bear” (Troilus and Cressida I.ii.24) appears as an emblem of wrath’, ‘Shakespeare’s “Dull Clown” and Symbolic Music’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 17/2 (Spring, 1966), p. 126.

220

Notes

283. Walter Cohen, ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’, The Norton Shakespeare (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 773. 284. J. M. Nosworthy, ‘The Importance of Being Marcade’, Shakespeare Survey, 32 (1979), p.  107 contends that ‘the last fifty lines testify to some kind of revision or augmentation, so that the 1598 Q preserves Shakespeare’s original comedy of c. 1594 plus a new ending provided for the royal occasion in c. 1598’. The two songs are arguably later insertions and because of reference (in the cuckoo song) to a contemporary pamphlet, namely Gerard’s Herbal (June, 1597), could not have been written earlier. The dialogue itself, according to Nosworthy, ‘affords supporting evidence, for Armado is, in fact, brought back to offer what is almost an apologetic explanation: But, most esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? It should have followed in the end of our show. (5.2.861–4)

The texts of the play, Nosworthy (1979:107–8) suggests, ‘preserve alternative endings … in its original form, the play ended with: King : Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day, And then ‘twill end. Berowne : That’s too long for a play.



This means that Berowne, deservedly, had the last word, but his right to this is powerfully challenged by Armado and by no other character … the two songs and a few lines of dialogue represent the postulated augmentation of c. 1597, it seems unquestionable that Shakespeare, making a virtue of necessity, allowed Armado, who is now obviously in control, to have the final say. This indicates that the line about Mercury and Apollo [in Q and F] is authentic.’



Notes 221

285. Christopher B. Hardman, ‘Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and the Stuart Golden Age’, Review of English Studies, 45/178 (1994), p. 227. 286. James M. Osborne (ed.), The Autobiography of Thomas Wythorne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), p. 184. 287. For a discussion of ‘Pan’s Pipes versus Apollo’s Strings’ see F. W. Sternfeld, Music in Shakespearean Tragedy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), pp. 226–35. 288. In F, Ariel is clearly male, played by a musician boy actor. From the Restoration to the 1930s, however, it was invariably played by a female. 289. David Lindley (ed.), The Tempest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. [89]. 290. W. Stacy Johnson, ‘The Genesis of Ariel’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 2/3 (July 1951), p. 205. 291. Johnson, ‘The Genesis of Ariel’ (1951), p. 210. 292. Robert R. Reed, Jr, ‘The Probable Origin of Ariel’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 11/1 (Winter, 1960), p. 61. 293. Reed, ‘The Probable Origin of Ariel’ (1960), p. 62. 294. Robert Burton, ‘The Anatomy of the Soul’, in Floyd Dell and Paul Jordan-Smith (eds), The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York: Tudor Publishing, 1938), p. 137. 295. Burton, ‘The Anatomy of the Soul’ (1938), p. 138. 296. See further, Daniel Pickering Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London: Warburg Institute, 1958). 297. Gretchen Finney, Musical Backgrounds for English Literature: 1580–1650 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1961), p. 86. 298. Finney, Musical Backgrounds (1961), p. 87. 299. J. H. P. Pafford (ed.), The Winter’s Tale (London: Arden Shakespeare, 1963), p. 163. 300. E. E. Duncan-Jones, ‘Hermione in Ovid and Shakespeare’, Notes and Queries (April, 1966), 138–9, suggests the source of the name ‘Hermione’ came from Ovid’s Heroides, a work cited in 3 Henry VI (1.3.48) and The Taming of the Shrew

222

301.

302. 303.

304. 305. 306. 307. 308. 309. 310. 311. 312.

313.

Notes (3.1.28–9). She argues that ‘Hermione, the daughter of Helen and Menelaus, whom Ovid makes the author of his eighth epistle, was pretty certainly the Hermione best known in Shakespeare’s day … only in Ovid [are] her relations with her mother Helen depicted’. Julia Gasper and Carolyn Williams, ‘The Meaning of the Name “Hermione”’, Notes and Queries (September, 1986), 367, deduce further associations and argue that derived from the neo-Latin ‘herma’ (statue or memorial), ‘the name “Hermione” … would mean principally a stone statue, with possible further implications of mourning, sanctity, and even the working of miracles – a further hint that Shakespeare neither expected nor intended the denouement of his comedy to take the off-stage audience by surprise’. Alastair Fowler, Renaissance Realism: Narrative Images in Literature and Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 62. Hardman, ‘Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale’ (1994), pp. 225–6. Hardman, ‘Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale’ (1994) cites Robert Estienne, Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (1573) and Charles Estienne, Dictionarium (1596). John Pitcher (ed.), The Winter’s Tale, Arden 3 (London: Methuen Drama, 2010), p. 141. See further, pp. 175–6. Lin Kelsey, ‘“Many Sorts of Music”: Musical Genre in Twelfth Night and The Tempest’, John Donne Journal, 25 (2006), 129–81. Kelsey, ‘“Many sorts of music”’ (2006), p. 129. Kelsey, ‘“Many sorts of music”’ (2006), p. 130. Kelsey, ‘“Many sorts of music”’ (2006), p. 142. Kelsey, ‘“Many sorts of music”’ (2006), p. 140, fn. 18. Kelsey, ‘“Many sorts of music”’ (2006), p. 142. Keir Elam, ‘The Fertile Eunuch: Twelfth Night, Early Modern Intercourse, and the Fruits of Castration’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 47/1 (1996), p. 35. Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-factor (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 226–7.



Notes 223

314. Gustav Ungerer, ‘The Viol da Gamba as a Sexual Metaphor in Elizabethan Music and Literature’, Renaissance and Reformation, 8/2 (1984), pp. 87–8. 315. William Bathe, Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song (c. 1592), sig. A4v. 316. The system was thought to have been devised in the eleventh century in Italy by Guido d’Arezzo, who observed that the verse of a hymn, written in the eighth century by Paulus Diaconus for the feast day of St John the Baptist, began each phrase with a note of the hexachord in ascending order: Ut queant laxis, Resonare fibris Mira gestorum Famuli tuorum Solve polluti Labii reatum, Sancte Ioannes (Liber Usualis, 1952, p. 1504)

317.

318. 319. 320.

321. 322.

He adopted the syllables as the basis for his solmization system which was used virtually unchanged for more than five centuries. Interestingly, no Elizabethan treatises use the term ‘hexachord’. For a detailed discussion of the ‘Scales of Musick’ or Gamut see Jessie Ann Owens, ‘Concepts of Pitch in English Music Theory, c.1560–1640’, in Cristle Collins Judd (ed.), Tonal Structures in Early Music (New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 191–215. Brian Morris (ed ), The Taming of the Shrew (London: Arden Shakespeare, 1981), p. 222. Harry Colin Miller, ‘A Shakespearean Music Lesson’, Notes and Queries, CLXV (October, 1933), p. 256. Frank Fabry, ‘Shakespeare’s Witty Musician: Romeo and Juliet, Iv.v.114–17’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 33/2 (Summer, 1982), p. 183. Edward Naylor, Shakespeare and Music (London: Dent, 1896; rev. 1931), p. 40 Lines in Thomas Ravenscroft’s canon ‘Fay mi, fa re la mi’ in his Pammelia (London, 1609) possibly endorse this interpretation. Line 3 has ‘sing flat fa, me’ rhyming with line 4 ‘so shall wee

224

323. 324.

325. 326.

327. 328. 329. 330. 331.

332. 333. 334. 335. 336.

337.

338.

Notes well agree’. However, lines 1–2 use ‘mi’ but preserve the same rhyme; ‘Fay mi, fa re la mi,/beginner my sonne and follow mee’. See Helge Kökeritz, Shakespeare’s Pronunciation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953), p. 105. Christopher R. Wilson (ed.), A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint by Thomas Campion and Rules How to Compose by Giovanni Coprario (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p. [43]. See further, Diana Poulton, John Dowland (London: Faber, 1982), pp. 304–6. Paul S. Phillips, ‘Symphonic Shakespeare’, Anthony Burgess Newsletter, Issue 2, p.  5, bu.univ-angers.fr/EXTRANET/ AnthonyBURGESS/NL2Symphonic.html Anthony Burgess, Shakespeare (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), p. 252. Premiere, Iowa Program Note (22 October 1975). Burgess, Shakespeare (1970). See also p. 42. For a discussion of the lyrics of a Bedlam song and possible connection with King Lear, see Stanley Wells, ‘Tom o’Bedlam’s Song and King Lear’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 12/3 (1961), pp. 311–15. Frank Fabry, ‘Shakespeare’s Witty Musician: Romeo and Juliet, IV.v.114–17’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 33/2 (1982), pp. 182–3. Fabry, ‘Shakespeare’s Witty Musician’ (1982), p. 183. Helge Kökeritz, Shakespeare’s Pronunciation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953), p. 105. Lytton Strachey, Elizabeth and Essex (London: Chatto & Windus, 1928), p. 60. Tommy Ruth Waldo and T.W. Herbert, ‘Musical Terms in The Taming of the Shrew: Evidence of Single Authorship’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 10/2 (Spring, 1959), p. 195. E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1942); The Elizabethan World Picture (London: Chatto, 1943). T. McAlindon, Shakespeare’s Tragic Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p.  5. McAlindon cites Paul Roubiczek, Thinking in Opposites: An Investigation of the



339.

340.

341. 342. 343. 344. 345.

Notes 225 Nature of Man as Revealed in the Nature of Thinking (London: Routledge, 1952). McAlindon, Shakespeare’s Tragic Cosmos (1991), p.  5. Here, McAlindon refers us to A. P. Rossiter’s influential essay, ‘Ambivalence: The Dialectic of the Histories’ in his Angel with Horns (London: Longmans, 1961). Thomas Ravenscroft, A Briefe Discourse of the True (but Neglected) Use of Charact’ring the Degrees, by their Perfection, Imperfection, and Diminution in Measurable Musicke (London, 1614), p. 4. Thomas Campion, A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint (London, c. 1614), sig. B7r. Campion, A New Way (c. 1614), sig. D4r. Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (London: 1597), p. 147. For a general discussion see John Caldwell, The Oxford History of English Music, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). The years 1580 to 1603 have been identified by lute historians, in particular Matthew Spring, The Lute in Britain: A History of the Instrument and its Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) and Julia Craig-McFeely, English Lute Manuscripts and Scribes, 1530–1630, www.ramesescats.co.uk/thesis (Oxford, 2000), as the ‘Golden Age’ for English lute music, reaching its height in the 1590s. Spring argues that the ‘two working generations from the appointment of John Johnson in 1579 to a place as a lutenist in the Queen’s music to the death of his son Robert Johnson in 1633 encompass the maturity and decline of an identifiable native style, and its replacement by something quite different. These years coincided with the high point of the lute’s popularity, not only in England but throughout Europe, and the period from which by far the most English source material survives. This age produced the complete output of English madrigals, of published English lute songs, of mixedconsort music, of the maturity of the virginal school, and a large proportion of English viol consort music’ (pp.  97–8). Spring divides the years 1580 to 1625 into two ‘Golden Age’ parts, 1580–1603 and 1603–25. Craig-McFeely identifies the ‘Golden Age’ as roughly 1550 to 1630 (p. 5).

226

Notes

346. See Robin Headlam Wells, ‘Number Symbolism in the Renaissance Lute Rose’, Early Music, 9 (1981), 32–42. 347. See further, Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-factor (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 26. 348. See Jacquelyn A. Fox-Good, ‘Ophelia’s Mad Songs: Music, Gender, Power’, in David G. Allen and Robert A. White (eds), Subjects on the World’s Stage (Newark, NY: University of Delaware Press, 1995), pp. 217–38. 349. See further, Jessie Ann Owens, ‘Concepts of Pitch in English Music Theory, c. 1560–1640’, in Christle Collins Judd (ed.), Tonal Structures in Early Music (New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 183–246. For an extensive discussion of the later printed sources see Rebecca Herrisone, Music Theory in Seventeenthcentury England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). For a summary, see Christopher R. Wilson (ed.) A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint by Thomas Campion and Rules How to Compose by Giovanni Coprario (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 4, 15–16. 350. Craig-McFeely, English Lute Manuscripts (2001), p. 80 believes that the Trumbull manuscript was a teacher’s exemplar that was later bound. 351. According to Spring (2001: 112) these include the Dallis, Folger, Board and Pickeringe manuscripts. 352. In his dedicatory epistle to King James, Robinson points out that he ‘was thought (in Denmarke at Elsanure) the fittest to instruct your Majesties Queene’ (The Schoole of Musicke, 1603, sig. A2r). This means he must have taught Anne when she was 15, before she married James in 1589. 353. Cited by Craig-McFeely, English Lute Manuscripts (2000), p. 88. She notes that Richard Mulcaster, Positions Wherin Those Primitive Circumstances be Examined, which are Necessarie for the Training up of Children (London, 1581) also makes the same point. 354. Craig-McFeely, English Lute Manuscripts (2000), p.  32 notes that Mary Burwell in her Lute Tutor (copied 1668–71) seemingly disapproves of this attitude.



Notes 227

355. Concerning the ‘naming of notes’ in early modern English treatises, see Owens, ‘Concepts of Pitch’, pp. 191–215. 356. On the distinction between professional books and pedagogical books see Craig-McFeely, English Lute Manuscripts (2000), pp. 82–97. 357. See further, ‘Music Theory and Pedagogy’ Chapter 8, pp. 136–42. 358. Thomas Robinson, The Schoole of Musicke (1603), sig. B2 confirms the contemporary practice that ‘upon the Lute everie string double, you shall understand, that two strings are in one tune, & also beare the name but of one string’. William Barley, A New Booke of Tabliture (1596) had advocated octave stringing for the lowest three courses. 359. See further, Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry, 1500–1700 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Prses, 1961), pp.  47–50. Alciati’s emblem book, first published in 1531, remained popular into the eighteenth century. 360. Mary F. S. Hervey, Holbein’s ‘Ambassadors’: The Picture and the Men (London: George Bell and Sons, 1900), pp. 228–31. 361. Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky (1961), pp.  49–50, cites an emblem from Henry Peacham’s Minerva Britanna (1612) in which the ‘slackt and broken’ strings of an Irish harp are repaired by King James ‘Dread Soveraigne’, so that ‘the harp is at once the spirit of Ireland and the tuneable string instrument of Alciati and the ancient writers’ (p. 50). 362. Craig-McFeely, ‘The Signifying Serpent: Seduction by Cultural Stereotype in Seventeenth-century England’, pp. 4–5, addendum in English Lute Manuscripts (2000). 363. For the Orphic connection see p. 117. 364. See further, p. 107. 365. Despite the prescriptive stage direction, no text is provided. This is one of about six ‘lost songs’ in the Shakespeare canon. See further, Tiffany Stern, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 122–34. 366. Penshurst Place, Kent, UK. See www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/ julia/

228

Notes

367. Craig-McFeely, ‘The Signifying Serpent’ (2000), p. 14. 368. Craig-McFeely, ‘The Signifying Serpent’(2000), p. 14. 369. Jacquelyn A. Fox-Good, ‘Ophelia’s Mad Songs: Music, Gender, Power’ in David G. Allen and Robert A. White (eds), Subjects on the World’s Stage, (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1995), 217–38. 370. See also, p. 154. 371. The image of Apollo stringing his lute with his hair is not repeated in Shakespeare or elsewhere. Lyly, Midas (1592) 4.1 alludes to Apollo’s lute strung with Daphne’s hair: ‘Tell mee Apollo, is there anie instrument so sweete to play on as ones Mistres? Had thy lute been of lawrell, and the strings of Daphnes haire, thy tunes might have beene compared to my noates’ (4.1.12–15). 372. www.useful-information.info/…/romantic_quotes. See also, for example, ‘Shakespeare Readings for Your Wedding’, www. weddings.about.com 373. The term ‘pair of virginals’, found in early literature derived from organ terminology, refers to the single instrument (linguistically comparable to ‘pair of scissors’, ‘pair of trousers’). 374. Sibyl Marcuse, Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1964; 2/1975). 375. For a succinct appraisal visit www.shakespeares-sonnets. com/128comm.htm 376. See R. H. A. Robbins, ‘A Seventeenth-century Manuscript of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 128’, Notes and Queries, 14 (1967), 137–8. 377. Regula Hohl Trillini, ‘The Gaze of the Listener: Shakespeare’s Sonnet 128 and Early Modern Discourses of Music and Gender’, Music & Letters, 89/1 (February, 2008), p. 2. 378. Thomas Dekker, The Second Part of the Honest Whore (London, 1630), Part 2, (2.1.2141), sig. H4r. Cited by Trillini, ‘The Gaze of the Listener’ (2008), p. 8. Trillini becomes distracted when she tries to explain ‘the “gentle gait” of the player’s fingers across the “jacks” seems to indicate that the term refers to the keys rather than the jacks … Keys are in contact



379.

380. 381. 382. 383. 384.

Notes 229 with the fingers, but they cannot leap, and jacks – which do leap – could touch the player’s hands when she puts them inside the instrument to tune the strings or to loosen jacks that have got stuck … in tuning one hand turns the tuningpeg inside the instrument, while the other repeatedly strikes the corresponding key to check the shifting pitch’ (p.  10). This is precisely the problem with this idea. The hand inside the instrument when tuning touches the tuning peg and not the jack. Moreover, even if the woman player did actually tune – it would be more likely to be the male household musician and/or teacher – the act of tuning is not artistic or poetic. Trillini, ‘The Gaze of the Listener’ (2008), p.  10, cites Eric Blom, The Romance of the Piano (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969): ‘it is plain that [Shakespeare] misuses the word [“jacks”] for “keys” … the demon of inaccuracy that seems to pursue all literary men when they come to deal with musical matters’ (p. 57). Andrew Ashbee (ed.), Records of English Court Music (Snodland: Ashbee Publications, 1991), iv.11. Records show that in 1604 two viols with cases and strings were purchased for the prince. See RECM iv.76. Ferrabosco is listed as one of the lutenists at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral in 1603. See RECM iv.2. For a list of manuscript sources, see Diana Poulton, John Dowland (London: Faber, 1982), pp. 478–83. Castiglione reports that among the many kinds of vocal and instrumental music, the best of all are ‘keyboard instruments [which] are harmonious because their consonances are most perfect, and they lend themselves to the performance of many things that fill the soul with musical sweetness. And no less delightful is the music of four viols which is most suave and exquisite … wherewith I deem it enough if our Courtier be acquainted (but the more he excels in them the better)’: Baldesar Castiglione, in Daniel Javitch (ed.), The Book of the Courtier, Charles Singleton, trans. (New York: Norton, 2002), pp. 76–7.

230

Notes

385. See Gustav Ungerer, ‘The Viol da Gamba as Sexual Metaphor in Elizabethan Music and Literature’, Renaissance and Reformation, 8/2 (1984), p. 87. 386. T. McAlindon, Shakespeare’s Tragic Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 175. 387. Q1 has ‘rough and woeful music’. Sternfeld (1967: 243) notes this ‘makes no sense. The substitution “still” is suggested by a parallel passage in George Wilkins’s Pericles, 1608, K. Muir (ed.), Liverpool, 1953, p.65: … then calling softly to the Gentlemen who were witnesses about him, he bade them that they should command some still music to sound. For certainly, quoth he, I think this Queen will live …’ F. Elizabeth Hart, ‘Cerimon’s “Rough Music” in Pericles 3.2’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 51/3 (Fall, 2000), 313–31 refutes Sternfeld. 388. Q1 has ‘Violl’, Q4 ‘viall’. Most modern editions adopt ‘viol’. The original spelling is not indicative. 389. This is confirmed by Wolfgang Clemen’s insistence that ‘every image, every metaphor gains full life and significance only from its context’ as the tenet for his The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery (London: Methuen, 1951; 1977). 390. John Pitcher (ed.), The Winter’s Tale, Arden 3 (London: Methuen Drama, 2010), p. 383. 391. Pitcher (ed.), The Winter’s Tale (2010), p. 384. 392. See further, Ian Woodfield, The Early History of the Viol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 216–18. 393. E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), vol. 3 p. 361. 394. Sebastian Virdung, Musica getutscht (Basel, 1511). See Musica Getutscht. A Treatise on Musical Instruments (1511) by Sebastian Virdung, Beth Bullard trans. and ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 95–181. 395. Martin Agricola, Musica instrumentalis deudsch (Wittenberg, 1529; enlarged 1545). See The ‘Musica instrumentalis deudsch’ of Martin Agricola: A Treatise on Musical Instruments, 1529



396.

397.

398. 399. 400. 401. 402. 403.

Notes 231 and 1545, William E. Hettrick trans. and ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 67–95. See further, David Lasocki, ‘The Recorder in the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline Theater’, American Recorder, 25 (1984), 3–10. Editors have varied widely in their responses to these stage directions. Harold Jenkins (Arden, 1982: 308), for example, prefers Q2 and impatiently glosses ‘the Players’ as the ‘actors of course. The notion that this might refer to special recorder-‘players’ would not need refuting if it had not been so strangely persistent’. Clearly, he does not allow for consorts of recorders playing at theatres or for the presence of actor-musicians. Philip Edwards (Cambridge, 1985/2003: 179) similarly opts for Q2. He explains F’s modification as an indication of the ‘theatre’s concern not to bring on characters who were not strictly necessary’. The discrepancy here and in several other stage directions in Hamlet, he argues, is due to the ‘scribe’s constant concern to reduce the number of minor characters [which] throws into relief the strange lavishness, for a practical man of the theatre, with which Shakespeare produced additional characters, especially late in the play, who have little or nothing to say or do’ (p.  22). In fact, this would not necessarily apply to this stage direction since the musicians would already be in attendance. The Oxford/Norton editors select F and alter the succeeding text. Oxford: Bodleian Library, Art. 4o.L.62, ed. G. B. Harrison (Oxford: Bodley Head, 1923). Frank Kermode (ed.), The Tempest (London: Methuen, 1954), p. 82. D. W. Robertson, Jr, A Preface to Chaucer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 128. Lawrence J. Ross, ‘Shakespeare’s “Dull Clown” and Symbolic Music’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 17/2 (Spring, 1966), p. 117. Ross, ‘Shakespeare’s “Dull Clown”’ (1966), p. 124. Rosalind King, ‘“Then Murder’s Out of Tune”: The Music and Structure of Othello’, Shakespeare Survey, 39 (1986), p. 155.

232

Notes

404. See further, p. 127. 405. Alex Barclay, This present boke named the Ship of folys of the worlde (1509; reprinted 1570, 1590). 406. The open fifth, two-note drone example in William Byrd’s virginal piece, ‘The Bagpipe and the Drone’, The Battell in Hilda Andrews (ed.), My Ladye Nevells Booke (London: J. Curwen & Sons, 1926), pp. 28–29 was widespread throughout Europe in the sixteenth century according to Baines, The Oxford Companion to Musical Instruments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 15. 407. C. Fenwick Jones observes that the bagpipe represents the ‘innate qualities of the peasants’, namely gluttony, folly, avarice, lasciviousness, greed and lust: ‘Wittenwiler’s Becki and the Medieval Bagpipe’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 48 (1949), pp. 207–28. 408. Why Shakespeare specifically refers to a ‘Lincolnshire’ bagpipe is not clear. Boswell and Malone, Third Variorum edition, 1821, XVI, p. 197, cite Robert Armin, Nest of Ninnies (1608), ‘Christmas time, when … a noyse of Minstrells and a Lincolnshire bagpipe was prepared: the minstrels for the great chamber, the bagpipe for the hall … for common dancing’. Anthony Baines, Bagpipes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), notes that up to the eighteenth century Lancashire, Derbyshire, and Lincolnshire bagpipes were sometimes identified by county but have fallen completely out of use today. See further, Christopher R.Wilson and Michela Calore, Music in Shakespeare: A Dictionary (London and New York: Continuum, 2005), p. 33. In a letter to Early Music, 4/3 (1976), pp. 363–5, Stephen Taggart, an amateur early instrument maker, asks for more information on the Lincolnshire bagpipes. He claims they ‘really did exist’ and cites among various bits of evidence a London street cry of Shakespeare’s day, ‘The sweet ballad of the Lincolnshire bagpipes’. He refers to a stone carving in Navenby church, near Lincoln, of folk musicians including a bagpiper, a fiddler, and pipe and taborer accompanying a couple dancing.



Notes 233

409. Harold Jenkins (ed.), Hamlet (London: Methuen, 1982), p. 309. 410. Caroline Spurgeon, Shakespeare’s Imagery and What it Tells Us (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935), p. ix. 411. Spurgeon, Shakespeare’s Imagery (1935), p. ix. 412. Edward A. Armstrong, Shakespeare’s Imagination: A Study of the Psychology of Association and Inspiration (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), p. 7. 413. Armstrong, Shakespeare’ Imagination (1963), p. 107. 414. As an explication of the ‘sweet’ power of music, Ralph Vaughan Williams extracts this scene (5.1) for his Serenade to Music (1938).

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Index

accord 2, 26, 137, 138, 194 Agricola, Martin 178, 180, 240 Agrippa, De occulta philosophia 3 air 51, 67, 76, 128, 129–31, 175, 182, 185, 189, 190; see also ayre alarum 63, 65, 67, 68, 69, 73, 76–7, 78, 155 Alciati, Andrea 159, 160, 227 Alde, John 156 Apollo 7, 8, 12, 116, 117, 123, 125–7, 165, 186, 193, 220, 221, 228, 245 versus Pan 127, 186, 221 Arbeau, Thoinot 57 Aristotle 36, 102, 199 Armin, Robert 232 Armitage, David 118–21, 234 Armstrong, Edward 98, 99, 109, 113, 188–9, 214, 215, 217, 234 Ashbee, Andrew 229, 234 Auden, W.H. 81 Austern, Linda 7, 193, 196, 197, 234 ayre 6, 17, 38, 39, 41, 92, 93, 94, 112, 148, 161, 163, 164, 171, 176 Baines, Anthony 206, 232, 234, 235 ballads viii, 1, 6, 81, 82–90, 91–3, 94–7, 102, 181, 183, 209, 210, 211, 232; see also song ‘As ye came from the holy land of Walsingham’ 94–5 sung by Autolycus viii, 83, 88–9 ‘Bonny Sweet Robin’ 6 ‘Farewel dear love’ 92–4 ‘Fortune my Foe’ 6, 88, 89, 90, 94, 210

‘Greensleeves’ 6, 85, 86, 210 in Hamlet 1, 84 ‘King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid’ 86–8 ‘The Merry Miller’s Wooing’ (The Miller’s Daughter of Manchester) 84 ‘Packington’s Pound’ 6, 88–9 ‘The poor soul sat sighing’ 96 ‘The Passionate Shepherd to his Love’ 6 ‘Robin Hood and the Jolly Pinder of Wakefield’ 88 ‘Thou canst not hit it’ 84 ‘Titus Andronicus’s Complaint’ 90–2 Barley, William 88, 156, 213, 227 Barnfield, Richard 163, 241 Barton, Anne 34, 199 Baskervill, Charles Read 57, 203, 235 Bathe, William 136, 137, 223 Beaumont, Francis 120, 203, 217 Bendinelli, Cesare 71, 207 Benedetti, Giovanni Battista 16 Berger, Harry 59, 203, 235 birds blackbird (woosel cock) 100 crow 28, 100, 104, 105, 106, 190, 214 cuckoo 10, 99, 100–4, 112, 126, 212, 213, 220 finch 113 goose 28, 107, 190 hen 99 lark 10, 28–9, 99, 100, 104, 107–9, 112–13, 190, 212, 216, 217



Index 251

[mag]pie 106, 214 nightingale 10, 28–30, 99–100, 103, 104, 107–12, 113, 163, 190, 212, 215–16; see also Philomel owl 10, 84, 100, 102, 104–5, 106, 126, 213, 214, 220 quail 100, 212 raven 100, 104, 106, 214 robin 100, 113, 212, 217 sparrow 99, 100, 113, 214 starling 99 swan 42, 43, 47, 97, 106, 194, 201 thrush (throstle) 99, 100, 113 turtledove 106, 107 wren 28, 100, 107, 113, 190, 212, 217 Blackfriars theatre 79, 204 Blanchard, B.D. 99, 212 Boëthius 3, 18, 20 Bond, R. Warwick 9, 138, 235 Borren, Charles van den 152 Bradbrook, M.C. 33, 34, 199, 213 Brennecke, Ernest 201, 235 Brissenden, Alan 53, 54, 55, 61, 201, 202, 235 Brogyntyn lute book 43, 200 Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet 8–9 Burgess, Anthony 143, 224 Burton, Robert 130, 157, 235 Burwell, Mary (lute book) 226 Byrd, William 78, 138, 152, 232 caged bird 109–10, 212, 215; see also nightingale Caldwell, John 210, 225, 235 Campion, Thomas 120, 140, 141, 147, 148, 161, 203, 218, 226, 236, 248 Canisiano, Antonio 130 Carson, Christie and Farah KarimCooper 198, 235 Castiglione, Baldesar 178, 229, 236

Chambers, Dictionary 2, 138 Chambers, E.K. 177, 236 Chappell, William 82, 209, 236 chromaticism 37–9, 199 Clemen, Wolfgang 230, 236 Cohen, Walter 107, 125, 236 concord 2, 3, 8–10, 13, 15–22, 24, 28, 50–3, 132–3, 138, 146, 168, 185, 190, 194 concordia discors 28, 197 consonance: see concord consent 2, 9, 51; see also accord consort 23, 30, 44, 133, 171, 177–8, 180, 200, 225, 231 Corkine, William 11 Coryat, Thomas 153 Craig-McFeely, Julia 154, 157, 161, 164, 225, 226, 227, 236 Crane, Ralph 128 Daly, Peter 217, 236 dances 5, 50, 54, 55, 58 almain 57, 58, 135, 203 back-trick 56 bergomask 51 brawl (branle) 54, 55, 57 caper 56, 57, 61, 65, 155 carole 55 cinquepace (sink-a-pace) 56–7, 59, 203 coranto 55, 56 galliard 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 135 jig 56, 57–9, 203 measures 5, 58–60, 63, 65, 155, 203, 204 pavan 38, 43, 55, 57, 58, 203 dancing Florizel and Perdita 54 Oberon and Titania 51–2 Romeo and Juliet 52–3 Sir Toby Belch 55–6 Daniel, John 38 Danter, John 91

252

Index

Davies, Sir John 50–2, 56, 58, 59, 62, 201, 202, 203, 204, 242 dead march 44, 69 degree 2, 8, 145–9, 225 Dekker, Thomas 61, 154, 228 descant 11–12, 23, 57, 111 Dessen, Alan and Leslie Thomson 207, 237 dirge 1, 7, 9, 36, 44–7, 106–7, 190, 200–1, 240 discord 1–3, 7, 9–11, 15, 17, 20, 23–9, 51, 53, 64, 106, 112, 133, 143, 146, 150, 161, 185, 189–91, 194 discordia concors 197 dissonance: see discord divisions 42, 112, 176 Donne, John 38 Dowden, Edward 113 Dowland, John 15, 18, 20, 38, 41, 43, 115, 142, 148, 156, 163, 171–2, 192, 199, 200, 217, 237 Dowland, Robert 156 Downey, Peter 206, 237 Draper, John 79, 208 Dufay, Guillaume 36 Duffin, Ross 6, 82–4, 86, 89–90, 94, 200, 209, 210, 211, 213, 237 dumps 43, 44, 200 Duncan-Jones, Katherine 194, 237 Dunn, Lesley 95, 211, 237 Edwards, Philip 231 Egan, Gabriel 66, 67, 205, 237 Elam, Keir 48, 134, 201, 222, 237, 238 Elyot, Sir Thomas 50, 52, 60, 201, 238 Fabry, Frank 139, 141, 144, 238 Farnaby, Richard 58 Ferrabosco II, Alfonso 171, 229 Ficino, Marsilio 130, 219, 247

fingering 53, 120, 135, 137, 153, 156, 159, 168, 169, 172, 179, 195, 228; see also touch Finney, Gretchen 130, 238 Fitzwilliam Virginal Book 152, 243 Fletcher, John 217 Florio, John 142 flourish 4, 63, 68–72, 74, 77, 79, 123, 189; see also trumpet Fludd, Robert 53, 54, 202 Foakes, R.A. 202, 238 Fowler, Alastair 132, 238 Fox-Good, Jacquelyn 165, 226, 238 Frye, Northrop 34, 116, 199, 218, 238 gam–ut 2, 8, 54, 136–43, 145, 158, 223 Gesta Graiorum 58, 203 Gibbons, Brian 193 Gibbons, Orlando 143, 214 Gillespie, Stuart 81, 82, 211, 238 Globe theatre 33, 97, 198 Glyn, Margaret 152 Golding, Arthur 116, 118, 215, 238 Gombert, Nicolas 100 Gouk, Penelope 3, 192, 193, 194, 239 Greer, David 93–4, 210, 239 Grennan, Eamon 48, 201, 239 ground 2, 11–12, 137, 138, 143 Gurr, Andrew viii, 23, 32, 198, 204, 239 Hansen, Adam 81, 82, 209, 239 Hardman, Christopher 127, 132, 239 harmony 1, 2, 3, 8–9, 10, 13, 17–18, 19–20, 23, 26, 28, 30–1, 36–7, 40, 46–7, 50–3, 54–5, 61, 62, 65, 114, 116–17, 121, 123, 127, 132, 138, 146, 151, 159–60, 163, 165, 185–6, 189–91, 192, 194, 196, 197, 201, 202, 239



Index 253

Hart, F. Elizabeth 123, 124, 230, 239 Harting, James 102, 217, 239 Hartshorne, C. 98, 212, 239 Heninger, S.K. Jr 201, 202, 239 Henslowe, Philip 71, 177, 198, 206, 236, 238 Herrisone, Rebecca 226, 240 Hervey, Mary 160, 227 Herzog, George 37 Holbein, Hans the Younger 160, 162, 227 Hollander, John 159, 161, 195–6, 197, 227, 240 Holman, Peter viii, 199, 240 Horden, Peregrine 193, 240 Howard, Skiles 51, 52, 201, 202, 240 Hume, Tobias 135, 172 Hunter, G.K. 45, 46, 200, 201, 205, 240 hymn 9, 42, 43, 44, 45, 103, 106, 112, 143, 223 instruments bagpipe 4, 5, 183, 184, 186–7, 189, 232, 241, 243 bandore 71, 177 bells 9, 27, 44, 47, 76–7, 80, 90, 130, 191; see also alarum cittern 4, 61, 71 (sytteren), 93, 197 cornett 4, 5, 61, 79–80, 115 drum 4, 5, 177, 204, 205; see also alarum drum and colours 68–9 in Hamlet 1 for marching 78, 206 military 62–8, 70, 72, 76, 79, 183–4 mournful 44 Paroles’ 205 fiddle 4, 5, 12, 61, 66, 85, 232 fife 64, 66, 183, 184 harp 8, 121, 160–1, 186, 227

harpsichord 167–8 hoboy (hautboy) 4, 5, 61,79, 80, 184, 208 horn 4, 5, 69, 72, 192–3 keyboard 30, 43, 78, 93, 138, 152, 166, 168, 169, 200, 209, 229 lute 152–65 as accompaniment 5–6, 21, 97, 127, 129, 153, 161 and dancing 61, 65 domesticity 67, 153, 155, 171–2, 184 learning to play 156–8 references 12, 30, 137, 153, 177, 200, 225, 248 songs or ayres 38, 93, 115, 135, 142, 163, 171, 209 as symbol 4, 8, 26, 61, 117, 119–20, 153–4, 155, 165, 179, 186, 226, 228 structure 4, 27, 168, 195, 227 tuning 2, 9–10, 138, 146, 173, 197 mandora 93 pipe and tabor 4, 5, 66, 129, 179, 180, 181–4, 232 Pan’s 127, 221 as recorder 179, 191 references 12, 66, 112, 118, 119, 129, 246, 248 as voice 103, 134 recorder 177–81 for birdsong 113 for children 180 in Hamlet 1, 4, 127, 178–80, 187, 231 trumpet; see also alarum, flourish, parley, retreat, tucket, sennet in Hamlet 1, 190 ironic 72–4 as loud instruments 68, 70, 73, 79, 204

254

Index

as military instruments 63, 64, 65, 70, 75–7 as signalling instruments 4, 5, 30, 69, 71–5, 78, 115, 208, 246 references 12, 71, 174, 177, 179, 190, 208, 237 viol 171–7 references 4, 61, 120, 132, 133, 134, 143, 163, 165, 168 tuning 2, 27, 146 as symbol 8, 53, 135, 172 virginal 165–70 jacks 167, 168, 169, 170, 228, 229, 235 keys 167, 168, 169, 170, 195, 228, 229 references 4, 11, 88, 153, 177, 195, 225, 228 as symbol 152 Iselin, Pierre 118, 119, 240

King, Ros viii, 186, 197, 205, 241 Kircher, Athanasius 212 Knapp, Peggy Ann 123, 241 Knight, G. Wilson 23, 123, 196, 219, 241, 242 Kökeritz, Helge 144, 242 Krueger, Robert 201, 202, 242 Kyd, Thomas 44, 45, 200, 240

Janequin, Clément 99, 101, 213, 217, 240 Jeffrey, David 193, 245 Jenkins, Harold 187, 231, 233 Jensen, Richard d’A 101, 213, 241 Johnson, Richard 86, 92 Johnson, Robert 225 Johnson, W. Stacy 128, 241 Jones, Robert 92–4, 135, 214 Jonson, Ben 32, 33, 55, 60, 61, 89, 177, 194, 203, 236 Jorgens, Elise Bickford 196, 241 Jorgensen, Paul 62, 68, 75, 76, 78, 204, 205, 207, 241

madrigal 6, 18, 38, 40, 41, 178, 199, 225 Manifold, J.S. 79, 208, 243 march 4, 44, 62, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 74, 78, 155, 205, 206, 207 Marcuse, Sibyl 166, 228 Markham, Francis 75, 207 Marlowe, Christopher 6, 12 Marston, John 20, 44, 45, 61, 154, 181, 200, 203, 240, 244 masque 32, 33, 53, 55, 59–61, 75, 120, 154, 202, 204, 218 McAlindon, Thomas viii, 145, 173, 224–5, 242 McGuire, Philip 52, 202, 242 McKinney, Timothy 37, 199, 243 melancholy 6, 7, 9, 25, 26, 37–9, 42, 44, 68, 104, 109, 155, 161, 186, 193, 240 Meres, Francis 117, 218 mermaid 21–2 Meyer, Leonard B. 37, 199, 243

Kelsey, Lin 133, 135, 241 Kemp, William 181, 182 Kermode, Frank 13–14, 182, 193, 231, 241 Ketterer, Elizabeth 206 key 9, 10, 36, 38, 43, 137, 148–51, 173

Labé, Louis 161 Lamson, Roy 88, 209 Landels, John 194, 196, 242 Lasocki, David 180, 242 Lindley, David viii, 23, 46, 48, 60, 78, 81–4, 96, 97, 128, 154, 180, 182, 183, 192, 193, 195, 198, 201, 204, 206, 207, 209, 221, 242 Long, John viii, 242 Lyly, John 9, 67, 205, 213, 228



Index 255

Meyer-Baer, Kathi 195, 243 Middleton, Richard 82, 209, 243 Middleton, Thomas 181 Miller, Harry 138, 139, 140, 223, 243 modes 36–7, 147–8 Monteverdi, Claudio 151, 218 Morley, Thomas 15, 16, 25, 38–40, 54, 57, 100, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 147, 148, 150, 153, 196, 199, 200, 243 morris dance 181, 248 Morris, Brian 138, 223 Mullally, Robert 58, 59, 61, 203, 204, 243 Mulliner Book 43, 152, 200 Munday, Anthony 129 music see also consort; harmony; instruments; scale for banquets and feasts 5, 25, 79, 208 ‘called for’ 5, 73, 81, 83 and celestial harmony 3, 19, 54 and the devil 42 and emotion 36–40, 41, 43, 65, 77, 193 ‘moody’ 1, 7, 117 and rhythm 41, 56, 100 ‘rough’ 123–4, 219, 230 ‘sad and solemn’ 47–8, 62, 180 of the spheres 3, 18, 19, 20, 31, 54, 168, 185, 195, 243, 246 musica humana 3, 20, 190 musica instrumentalis 3, 47, 230 musica mundana 3, 18, 48, 190 My Ladye Nevells Booke 138, 152, 232 Naef, Irene viii, 243 Naylor, Edward viii, 83, 85, 139, 140, 209, 223, 244 Nightingale, Benedict 33, 198

Noble, Richmond viii, 244 noise 4, 63–5, 67–9, 79, 80, 173, 185, 209 Nosworthy, J.M. 125, 126, 220, 244 Orden, Kate van 107, 108, 109, 214, 244 Ornithoparcus, Andreas 15, 18, 20, 192 see also Dowland, John Orpheus 7, 21, 31, 115–25, 162, 180, 190, 195, 218, 219, 234, 245, 246, 247, 248 Ortiz, Joseph M. 3, 122, 192, 219, 244 Ovid 31, 116–19, 126, 127, 138, 215, 216, 221, 222, 237, 238 Owens, Jessie Ann 223, 226, 227, 244 Pafford, J.H.P. 131, 221 Palisca, Claude 16, 194 parley 69, 77 Parthenia or The Maydenhead of the First Musicke . . . for the Virginalls 166, 169 Pathway to Musicke 15, 16, 136, 146 Peacham, Henry 24, 25, 197, 227 Percy, Thomas 82, 83, 90, 91, 92, 210, 244 Phillips, Paul Schuyler 142, 143, 224 Philomel 103, 110–11, 162, 215–16 Pilkington, Francis 213, 217 Pitcher, John viii, 132, 176, 222 Plato 18, 31, 36, 50, 123, 128, 130, 159, 195, 196, 199 Poulton, Diana 224, 244 practical music viii, 11, 19, 31, 83, 120, 182 Praetorius, Michael 166, 244 psalms 6, 85, 148, 240 Pythagorean theory 3, 16, 51, 52, 201, 239

256

Index

Ravenscroft, Thomas 142, 147, 223, 225 Reed, Robert 128–9, 245 Reese, Gustav 37 requiem 1, 7, 106 ‘residuals’ 91–2, 245 retreat 30, 69, 77, 78; see also trumpet Robinson, Thomas 156, 159, 226, 227 Rollins, H.E. 113, 245 Ronsard, Pierre 109 Ross, Lawrence J. 185, 186, 219, 245 Rossiter, A.P. 225 Rowland, Beryl 111, 216, 245 Sachs, Curt 37 scale of music 136–42, 145, 148, 223; see also gam-ut Scotch jig 57–8 Seng, Peter viii, 82, 94, 95, 201, 210, 211, 219, 245 sennet 4, 12, 68, 71–3, 78, 79 Shakespeare’s characters and music Aeneas 73–4 Alonso 9, 129 Ariel 7, 119–20, 128–31, 181–2, 204, 221, 236, 241, 245 Armado 41, 86–7, 102, 125, 220 Autolycus viii, 54, 83, 88, 89, 126–7, 183 Cassius 22 Cerimon 123–4, 132, 175, 176, 230 Cloten 113, 120–2, 180 Constance 9 Cordelia 27, 68–9, 109, 146, 173–4 Desdemona 27, 31, 48, 54, 96–7, 106, 115, 124, 146, 186, 201, 211 Edmund 42, 69, 143

Edward III, King 11, 13 Evans, Sir Hugh 6 Falstaff 66, 78, 85, 86, 88, 89, 154–5, 186–7 Feste 92, 133, 182 Hamlet 24, 27, 84, 95, 127, 178–80, 187, 211 Hermione 7, 116, 126, 131–2, 167, 176, 221–2, 237 Holofernes 142–3 Hortensio 2, 8, 10, 137–41, 155–6, 158–9 Iago 27, 54, 146, 185 Jessica 21, 28, 75, 118, 190 Julia 10, 174–5 Juliet 29, 44, 108, 109, 112, 198 Katherine, Queen 21, 47, 60, 79, 115 Lady Percy 113 Lavinia 11, 110, 117, 162, 193 Lear 24, 69, 72, 109, 173–4 Lorenzo 3, 19–21, 28, 75, 100, 116, 118, 190, 192, 208 Lucrece 47, 106, 110, 117 Nerissa 28, 100 Ophelia 5, 27, 84–5, 95, 115, 154, 164–5, 211 Orsino 7, 23, 133–5 Pandarus 30–1 Parol[l]es 66, 68, 205 Pericles 53, 54, 123, 172 Portia 19, 28, 75, 100, 107, 112, 189 Prospero 60, 119, 129, 133, 181 Proteus 10, 43, 175, 193 Richard II 7, 9, 22–4, 26, 196 Richard, Duke of Gloucester 11, 61, 63, 68, 105, 155, 160 Romeo 29, 87, 108, 167, 198 Silvia 10, 29–30, 43–4, 108, 174–5, 193 Tamora 5, 11, 91, 209 Troilus 30–1, 73–4 Ulysses 2, 8, 73–4, 145, 149



Index 257

Viola/Cesario 132–5 Shakespeare’s plays All is True (Henry VIII) 5, 14, 21, 60, 79, 115, 174 All’s Well that Ends Well 28, 66, 67, 75, 79, 205 Antony and Cleopatra 53, 79, 101, 239 As You Like It 1, 20 Comedy of Errors 1, 14, 21 Coriolanus 44, 67, 79, 205 Cymbeline 14, 45, 113, 120–2, 160, 180, 181, 200, 212, 215, 218, 240 Edward III 11–12, 13, 26, 193, 195, 197, 248 Hamlet 1, 5, 13, 14, 44, 82, 83, 96, 153, 164, 176, 178, 187, 190, 211, 231, 237 1 Henry IV 66, 78, 103, 164, 186 2 Henry IV 78, 83, 88, 173 Henry V 2, 72, 74, 75, 83, 207, 208 1 Henry VI 69, 72, 205, 206, 214 2 Henry VI 72, 76, 249 3 Henry VI 105, 221, 249 King John 43, 63, 78, 106, 128 Julius Caesar 1, 105 King Lear 27, 42, 68–9, 71, 72, 75, 83, 91, 109, 143, 146, 173–4, 175, 208, 224, 248 Love’s Labour’s Lost 1, 13, 59, 60, 61, 82, 84, 86, 89, 102, 104, 125, 142, 204, 209, 220 Macbeth 53, 89, 105, 203 Measure for Measure 1, 214 Merchant of Venice 12, 19, 21, 75, 91, 116, 118, 184, 186, 189, 196, 208 Merry Wives of Windsor 6, 85, 86, 89 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 21, 61, 103, 149, 150, 180, 201, 240 Much Ado About Nothing 1, 57, 58, 86, 162, 183, 203, 214

Othello 14, 27, 54, 65, 82, 83, 96, 127, 146, 186, 197, 201, 219, 231 Pericles 14, 53, 54, 120, 123, 132, 172, 175, 176, 203, 219, 230 Richard II 13, 196 Richard III 11, 13, 65, 66, 68, 77, 155, 160 Romeo and Juliet 1, 2, 8, 29, 43, 44, 52, 53, 87, 108–9, 140, 143, 144, 145, 167, 198, 202 The Taming of the Shrew 1, 8, 10, 12, 13, 19, 28, 64, 91, 137, 139, 140, 144, 155, 158, 193, 221 The Tempest viii, 1, 6, 14, 17, 32, 55, 60, 120, 123, 128, 129, 133, 181, 182, 204, 218 Timon of Athens 5, 32, 53, 61, 75, 154, 203, 208 Titus Andronicus 5, 11, 71, 90, 110, 117, 122, 163, 192, 208, 216, 219 Troilus and Cressida 8, 14, 30, 73, 75, 145, 197–8, 219 Twelfth Night 1, 13, 14, 23, 55, 82, 92, 93, 96, 133–5, 172, 203 The Two Gentlemen of Verona 29, 43, 119, 174 The Two Noble Kinsmen 14, 111, 134, 149, 166, 189, 203 The Winter’s Tale 1, 2, 14, 32, 53–5, 83, 88, 120, 126, 131–2, 167, 169, 176, 183, 184, 198, 202, 203, 221 Shakespeare’s poems The Passionate Pilgrim 1, 164 The Phoenix and Turtle 1, 13, 14, 106, 107 The Rape of Lucrece 1, 47, 106, 111, 117, 194 Sonnets 1, 2, 10, 13, 26, 34, 103, 112–13, 117, 133, 153, 159, 167–70, 228, 247

258

Index

Venus and Adonis 1, 112, 117, 194 Shirley, Frances 72, 75, 207, 245 Simpson, Claude 88, 89, 210, 245 Sidney, Sir Philip 25, 154, 164 Simonds, Peggy M. 45, 46, 121, 122, 159, 160, 200, 212, 215, 219, 245 Smith, Bruce 68, 91, 92, 134, 193, 198, 200, 204, 245 Smith, John Stafford 92 Somogyi, Nick de 65, 76, 204, 208, 246 songs art songs 5, 6, 81, 94, 97, 116 birdsong 1, 10, 98–114, 213 catches 94, 142, 182 chansons 99–100, 101, 107, 108, 109 consort songs 6, 176 dialogue 45, 102 gender exchange 94–5, 96, 124–5 lullaby 110 Ophelia’s ‘mad’ songs viii, 1, 94–6, 226, 228 popular songs 5, 6, 51, 81–97, 209 snatches 83 tailors 113 use of 5, 82 ‘willow song’ 48–9, 96, 106, 124, 201, 219, 235 Spagnolo, Baptista 142, 143 Spenser, Edmund 164 Spring, Matthew 156, 158, 171, 225, 226, 246 Spurgeon, Caroline 188, 212, 233, 246 Stern, Tiffany viii, 60, 204, 227, 246 Sternfeld, F.W. viii, 6, 23, 43, 82, 83, 97, 117, 143, 173, 193, 209, 210, 211, 218, 221, 230, 246

Strachey, Lytton 145, 224 strings, stringing 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, 22, 23, 26–7, 46, 53, 117, 130, 133, 138, 146, 153, 159–62, 167–8, 172–5, 195, 197, 221, 227, 228–9 stringed instrument 5, 8, 61, 127, 135, 159, 173, 174–6, 186, 187, 190, 191 swansong 106 sweet music 2, 3, 9, 10, 13, 15–35, 39, 75, 112, 116–18, 127, 163, 165, 185, 189–90, 195, 197, 201, 202, 229, 233, 246 sympathy 3, 122, 192, 219 theatre versus drama 19, 31–4, 48–9 Tillyard, E.M.W. 145, 224 Tomkins, Thomas 19 Tomlinson, Gary 192, 197, 247 touch 13, 19, 26, 117, 119, 130, 137, 153, 157, 159, 163, 167, 169, 179, 189, 190, 195, 229, 239 Trillini, Regula Hohl 170, 228, 229, 247 Trithemius, Johannes 128 tucket 4, 12, 71, 74–5, 78, 207–8 tuning 2, 9, 27, 54, 120, 140, 146, 153, 158–9, 173, 174, 229 Ungerer, Gustav 135, 223, 230, 247 Vautor, Thomas 100, 215 Virdung, Sebastian 177, 235 Virgil 116, 119, 216, 218 voices (tessitura) alto 133 bass 10, 26, 54, 68, 71, 133, 138, 143, 149, 159, 177, 178 mean 9, 10, 84 tenor 133, 149 treble 10, 71, 133, 134, 149, 177, 178



Index 259

Waldo and Herbert 12–13, 145, 193, 224 Walker, D.P. 194, 247 war 4, 5, 62–80, 149, 155, 183, 184, 189, 204–5, 207, 208, 237, 241 masculine soundscape 65–8, 183–4 Ward, John 43, 85, 200, 203, 210, 247–8 Warden, John 121, 219, 248 Warren, Roger 13, 193, 234, 248 Weelkes, Thomas 38, 100, 199, 217 Wells, Robin Headlam 67, 154, 186, 205, 226, 248 Wells, Stanley viii, 224, 248; and Gary Taylor 200, 207, 219

White, Gilbert 99, 212 Willaert, Adrian 37, 40, 199, 243 Williams, Ralph Vaughan 210, 233 Wilson, Christopher R. viii, 192, 194, 205, 216, 226, 232, 248 Wilson, Robert 125 Wilson, Thomas 218 Woodfield, Ian 177, 248 Wroth, Lady Mary 154, 164 Wulstan, David 90, 210, 249 Würzbach, Natascha 209, 249 Wythorne, Thomas 127, 221 Zarlino, Gioseffo 16