THE NEW YORK
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PUBLIC LIBRARY
AStOR, LENOX AND
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48 PAGES,
With which is Incorporated THE KEYNOTE.
VOL XXIV.
No. 23.
Published Every Saturday, at 3 East Fourteenth Street.
SHAKESPEARE'S ALLUSIONS TO IIUSIC.
Shakespeare had a hearty love of music,
and evidently a good knowledge of the
science withal. I need not quote the famil-
iar eulogies of music in the last act of the
"Merchant of Venice," and the opening
scenes of "Twelfth Night," complete
poems in themselves, but I may venture
to cite two in the "Sonnets," which, so far
as I am aware, are not mentioned by any
critic or commentator in connection with
the poet's love of music. The first is in
the eighth Sonnet, one of those in which
he is urging his young friend, " Mr. W.
H.," to marry. The young man has ap-
parently said, like Jessica, " I am never
merry when I hear sweet music;" and
Shakespeare asks:—
" Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
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:
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee, • Thou single wilt prove none.' "
That comparison of musical concords to a
happy family who, "all in one, one pleas-
ing note do sing," seems to me the most
beautiful of the poet's allusions to music.
Incidentally it gives us his ideal of domes-
tic happiness. It is a poor metaphor that
does not work both ways. If musical har-
mony is like the ideal relations of "sire and
child and happy mother," the latter are
like the former.
The 12
to the "dark lady," is hardly less charming
in its way: —
" How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st.
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet ringers, when thou gently sway'st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
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 !
To be so tickled,.they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O'er whom thy ringers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more bless'd than living lips."
It is the most playful of the Sonnets, in-
deed, almost the only one in such a vein;
but some of the allusions may not be un-
derstood by readers who are not familiar
with the musical instruments of the Eliza-
bethan age. The lady is supposed to
New York, June 5,1897.
be playing on the virginal, or virginals,
the piano of the time, as it may be called.
It resembled a very small piano of the
"square" type, being rectangular in shape,
with a keyboard of four octaves, and a
single brass string to each key. It was us-
ually without legs—a mere box, to be placed
upon a table. The keys were of wood, and
were called "jacks," as in the Sonnet.
The instrument was often called "a
pair of virginals," just as the organ was
called "a pair of organs," the word pair
merely suggesting a set of similar parts, as
in a "pair of stairs," etc. The name has
been supposed by some critics to be as-
sociated with hymns to the Virgin. Oth-
ers have said that it was adopted as a
compliment to Queen Elizabeth; but this
is impossible, as the name was in use
before her time. It is probable that it
was suggested by the fact that the in-
strument was commonly played by young
girls. Shakespeare does not mention the
virginal by name, though he has the verb
derived from it (probably his own
coinage) in the "Winter's Tale" (I. ii.
125), where the jealous Leontes sees
Hermione holding the hand of Polixenes:—
"Still virginalling upon his palm I "
But references to the instrument are fre-
quent in other writers of the time. In
Middleton's "Chaste Maid," the gold-
smith's wife says to her daughter: "Moll,
have you played over all your old lessons
o' the virginals?" In Dekker's "Gul's
Hornbook," chattering teeth are said to
"leap up and down like the nimble jacks of
a pair of virginals;" and in the same au-
thor's "Honest Whore," we read: "This
was her schoolmaster, and taught her to
play the virginals." In 1666 virginals had
become so common that Pepys, in his ac-
count of the Great Fire, referring to the
Thames "full of lighters and boats taking
in goods," adds: "I observed that hardly
one lighter or boat out of three that had
the goods of a house in it, but that there
were a pair of virginals in it." As late as
1701 we read in the London Post of July
20, that "this week a most curious pair of
virginals, reckoned the finest in England,
were shipped off for the Grand Seigneur's
seraglio." The average size and shape of
the instrument, though its dimensions
doubtless varied from time to time, may
be inferred from the description of an old
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one sold in 1805: " I t is five feet long, six-
teen inches wide, and seven inches deep,
and the weight does not exceed twenty-four
pounds."
I have said that Shakespeare does not
mention the virginal by name; and the
same is true of the organ. But we have
that fine metaphor of the organ-pipe in "The
Tempest" (III. iii. 98) :—
"And the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe,pronounced
The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass;"
and again, i n " K i n g J o h n " (V. v i i . 21): —
" 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."
To other musical instruments there are
many references, and terms pertaining to
musical instruments are also common. We
find, too, various names of pieces of music,
tunes, and many miscellaneous terms re-
lating to music.
The musical scale is introduced several
times. The most notable, and at the same
time the most amusing, instance is in the
"Taming of the Shrew," iii. 1, where the
disguised Hortensio is playing the music-
master to Bianca.
I have by no means exhausted the sub-
ject of Shakespeare's references to music,
but the limits assigned to this familiar
paper preclude further quotations, says
W. J. Rolfe in the Looker-On. Of course
many that I have given might naturally
occur in any other old writer of plays or
stories; but the reader who has even a
moderate acquaintance with musical mat-
ters will see that many others indicate not
only an interest in the art, but a good ac-
quaintance with its technicalities. A
study of Shakespeare's metaphors and
other figures drawn from music would fur-
nish additional, and perhaps more striking,
illustrations of this; but I must let the
reader look these up for himself.
That the poet really loved music would
be clear from a single passage in the ex-
quisite eulogy of the art in the last act of
" T h e Merchant of Venice," to which I
have already referred—the longest and
most elaborate tribute to music in all his
works:—
" The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is tit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let"10 such man be trusted."