CHAPTER XIII

THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME — I
HAVE lately read a story by Mr. Tyndall to the effect that upon a cer- tain occasion he invited Mr. Faraday into his laboratory to witness an ex- periment. Just as he was about to begin, Mr. Faraday said, "Stop: tell me what 1 am to look for." Taking my cue from a mind so great and so trained as Faraday's, you will not think it a reflection upon your intelligence if in the outset of my lecture I tell you what you are to look for. I wish that, besides any en- tertainment you might find in it, you may carry away with you some definite idea of the facts which I am to bring before you ; and judging from my own needs in similar cases, I think that a brief synopsis of the lecture may give you serviceable grouping-points for the somewhat miscellaneous mass of circumstances which I must array. I propose, then, first to show the great love which Englishmen had for music in Shakspere's time, and the extraordinary cultivation of it among all classes : for which
4 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
purpose I shall give many citations from Shakspere and contemporary writers. Second, I will endeavour to show, by quotations from Shakspere, that music was his best- beloved art, and that he had a wonderful insight into its deeper mysteries. Third, I will discuss the various kinds of music which Shakspere was accustomed to hear, vocal and instrumental, and shall endeavour to supply you with the foundation for an instructive contrast between the music of Shakspere's time and that of our own.
There is a wide-spread notion that the native soil of music is in Italy and Germany, that the art is an alien one in England and America, and that such inclination as we English-speaking people have towards it is in the nature of an "acquired taste." It is perfectly true that in origi- nating music — in what is called musical composition — we have not ever played a supreme part ; but the popular love for music among English-speaking peoples has certainly been much underestimated. As to the popular attitude towards musical cultivation in the present day, you have but to cast a glance about you in order to see how many striking signs exist that even here in the United States there is a great under-passion for music already beginning to develope itself, although but a few years have passed since we were all fighting starvation, winter, and the savage too desperately to sing, save it might be a snatch betwixt two strokes of the axe or two shots of the rifle. Consider the thousands upon thousands of churches in our land, each with its organ and its choir ; consider the multitudes of musical concerts to which our people flock night after night in theatre, in concert-room, in church chapel, in vil- lage hall ; consider the underlying sentiment which has brought about that scarcely any home in the United States is considered even furnished which has not a piano in the par- lour, and that scarcely any young woman's schooling does not embrace "taking lessons" either in playing or in'singing.
King David, surrounded by Musicians and a Juggler
From a tinlk-cintury MS.
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THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 5
As we now go back to study the state of music in Shakspere's time, we find that the English people of the sixteenth century were enthusiastic lovers of the art. There were professorships of music in the universities, and multitudes of teachers of it among the people. The monarch, the lord, the gentleman, the merchant, the artisan, the rustic clown, the blind beggar, all ranks and conditions of society, from highest to lowest, cul- tivated the practice of singing, or of playing upon some of the numerous instruments of the time. Early in the century Henry VIII evinced his own personal love for music, and thus established it as the fashion with his royal countenance. Hollingshead in his chronicles records that Henry VIII "exercised himself daylie in shooting, singings dancings wrestling, casting of the barre, plaieing at the recorders,^ flutCy virginalsy in setting of songes and making of ballades^ You can find in the Peabody Library some part-songs of King Henry VIITs composi- tion which are not bad — for a king. After Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth preserved a genuine delight in music, and with her queenly favour added such incentives to the popular inclination that the art flourished in her reign with the greatest vigour. The Queen herself was a good per- former on the lute and the virginals. It is thought that a compliment to her playing is intended in a passage in Act
III, Scene I of the first part of Shakspere's King Henry