Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2023
Summary
The Role of the Singer in Shakespeare's Plays
Shakespeare did not overvalue music. It is true that he sometimes wrote about music in his loftiest, most chryselephantine manner:
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.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold.
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-ey’d cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
Come ho, and wake Diana with a hymn,
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear,
And draw her home with music.
Jess. I am never merry when I hear sweet music. Play Music.
(Merchant of Venice 5.1.54–69)
Here Lorenzo, the second-string lover in The Merchant of Venice, instructs Jessica with a short course in music appreciation—and in Lorenzo appreciation. He is also coaching the audience: we hear this on stage, and are supposed to feel, ah young love! ah elation! ah music! But perhaps it would be good to regard this scene with a suspicious eye. The poetry itself is pretty thick-inlaid—slathered on in a self-consciously impressive fashion; and the tactile language (touches of sweet harmony; With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear) may suggest that Lorenzo is less concerned with aesthetics and Plato's philosophy of sirens on crystalline spheres than with sex—Jessica seems on the verge of an auricular insemination. Furthermore, the cue to an actual musician (the clown Stephano) shows us that the whole scene is a setup: in the Renaissance, music couldn't be procured simply by turning on a radio, but required careful preparation. Lorenzo and Jessica are cuddling together according to the script of a scenario. Music is a delight, but a staged delight.
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- Information
- Musicking ShakespeareA Conflict of Theatres, pp. 1 - 30Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007