IV. Mortimer, you remember, has married a beautiful

Welsh lady who can speak no English, while he can speak no Welsh ; yet he is complimenting the dainty words which fall from her lips, and declares :
I will never be a truant, love, Till I have learned thy language : for thy tongue Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penned^ Sung by a fair queen in a summer* s bower ^ fVith ravishing (Uvision^ to her lute.
6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
The ditties highly penned is a graceful allusion, likely, to Queen Elizabeth's poems, some of which are, like Henry VIITs music, not bad for a queen. The word division here is a technical term of the musical science of that time. We shall presently see that their music was largely made up of old immemorial tunes, redacted and made new by all sorts of ingenious variations. These variations were called, in general, " division " ; instead of saying " an air with variations," as we do, they said " an air with division."
Coming down from these royal music-lovers, the as- sertion just now made — that not only the monarch, but all lower ranks of society, the nobleman, the private gen- tleman, the merchant, the artisan, the clown, and the beggar, assiduously cultivated music in Queen Elizabeth's time — is not mere rhetoric, but is literally true. If I had time, it would be easy to cite you quotation after quotation from contemporary writers implying the common pursuit and practice of music, at this time, by all classes of people. I have just remarked that Henry VIII and Queen Eliza- beth were good musicians. To leap at once to the other extreme of society, I find in Shakspere's fVinter^s Tale that he could speak, without danger of hissing from the audi- ence, of the rustic sheep-shearers as being able to sing part-songs. In Scene II of Act IV, as the cunning Autol- ycus strolls down the road singing.
When daffodils begin to peer, With heigh ! the doxy over the dale,
presently comes on a clown, who begins to say over to himself the numerous sweets and spices which his sister has sent him to buy against a pudding for the sheep- shearing feast. "Three pound of sugar; five pound of currants ; rice — what will this sister of mine do with rice ?
A Fourteenth -century Representation of VioUn-pUying
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 7
But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. She hath made me four and twenty nosegays for the shearers, three-man song-men ally and very good ones ; but they are most of them means and basest' Here, you see, twenty-four shepherds are represented as all three-man song-men, that is, as able to sing their parts in those concerted songs for three men which form such a curious feature in the music of this time. The " means and bases ** were names of the two parts below the first or treble in a three-part song, the part next below the treble being the mean, and the lowest the base. Again, I find Shakspere giving intimation of the universality of the part-song in Scene III of Act II of Twelfth Night. The jolly Sir Toby and Sir Andrew are carousing in a room in Olivia's house. Presently the fool comes in and sings them a love-song, and then Sir Toby proposes a three-man song — as the clown called it — or catch. The catch, you all probably understand, was a part-song in which one begins a melody, the next waits a couple of bars and then begins to sing the same melody, the third waits still a couple of bars and then he also begins the same melody. This is the general type of a sort of music very popular in those days. The particular species called a " catch " was always a jolly song, and often the words of the second part were a play upon the words of the first ; as, for example, the first voice would start out singing Ah^ how Sophia^ and presently the second voice would begin singing the same melody to words " catching " up the first, as A house afire. Sometimes the catch had words which really were chosen to catch the tongue by their difliculty of pronouncing them ; as, for instance, a catch which was sung in Shakspere's time called " Three blue beans in a blue bladder. Rattle, bladder, rattle." The general nature of the catch may be inferred from what
8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
follows in Twelfth Night. After the fool's love-song. Sir Toby roars out :
But shall we make the welkin dance, indeed ? Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch that will draw three souls out of one weaver ?
&> And, An you love me, let's do 't : I am dog at a catch.
( They sing a catch*)
And the nature of their music may be gathered from what Maria and Malvolio presently say.
Enter Maria.
Maria. What a caterwauling do you keep here ! If my lady have not called up her steward Malvolio and bid him turn you out of doors, never trust me.
Sir Toby. My lady's a Cataian, we are politicians, Malvolio's a Peg-a-Ramsey, and Three merry men be we. Am not I con- sanguineous ? am I not of her blood ? Tilly vally. Lady ! Then dwelt a man in Babylon^ l^dy^ lady !
Enter Malvolio.
Mai. My masters, are you mad ? or what are you ? Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night ? Do ye make an alehouse of my lady's house, that ye squeak out your cosier's [cobbler's] catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice ? Is there no respect of place, persons, or time in you ?
Sir Toby. We did keep time, sir, in our catcHbs. Snick up !
Here we find the two knights, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, and a clown, singing a three-part song ; while Malvolio's rebuke that they are gabbling like tinkers and squeaking out cosier's (cobbler's) catches shows, as indeed we gather from other evidence, that tinkers and cobblers were in the habit of singing part-songs. To go to the other system in
W i
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 9
society, Peacham, in his Compleat Gentleman^ requires that personage to be able " to sing his part sure, and at first sights and withal to play the same on a viol or lute."
The commonness of playing the viol is shown by the circumstance that it was the custom in Shakspere's time for a gentleman to keep a base viol hanging in the draw- ing-room, upon which a waiting visitor could amuse him- self. Ben Jonson refers to this when one of his characters, in heartening up a timid suitor to his work, says: "In making love to her, never fear to be out for ... a base- viol shall hang o* the wall, of purpose, shall put you in presently." If we go from the gentleman's parlour to the barber-shop of the sixteenth century, we find still more unmistakable evidences of the popularity of music. People would seem to have had more time in those days than now, and do not appear to have minded waiting as much as do brisker moderns ;. and so the barber provided means to amuse those who were waiting their turn. For this purpose he had the virginals in one corner — the virginals being a stringed instrument, the precursor of our piano, in which, by pressing keys like our piano-keys, the strings were struck, not by a hammer as in our piano, but by a quill or an elastic piece of wood, leather, or metal. A virginal of Elizabeth's time is still preserved in the South Kensington Museum in England. But besides the vir- ginals you would find in the barber-shop a cittern — an in- strument like our guitar in shape, with four double strings of wire, tuned \ \\ (below the next J); a gittern — an instrument like the cittern, but smaller and strung with sinew instead of wire, sometimes called " Spanish viol," as in a catalogue of the musical instruments left in charge of Philip van Wilder at the death of Henry VIII, which mentions "four Gitterons, which are called Spanish Vialls " ; and a lute — an instrument larger than our
lo SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
guitar, with a pear-shaped back, and eight frets which, in- stead of brass like those on the mandolin, were made of sinew lute-strings tied round the neck and glued in place. This lute would likely be the first instrument taken up by a gentleman who was waiting while you were in the bar- ber's hands. It was the most popular instrument of the time, ranking like the piano at the present day. Here you see a gallant of the period as he might appear to you while the barber was rubbing your head. It is worth while adding that the barber, though still a man of weight and function in all communities, was a much more impor- tant personage in sixteenth-century society. His pole, with its stripes of red and white, was not then a merely formal sign ; you would often see the original of it in his shop, to wit, bare arm stretched out and the blood flow- ing along it : for the barber had not ceased to be a chi- rurgeon and to let blood from those who were ailing. Moreover, the barber was dentist. If Shakspere had wanted a tooth drawn he would have gone to the barber- shop to get it done. And he managed to connect this un- comfortable profession with music by the singular custom, which prevailed among the barber-dentists, of tying the teeth which he had drawn to the end of lute-strings and hanging them in the window of the shop. Lutes were of various sizes, from the arch-lute, the theorbo, etc., to the mandore and mandolin, strung with eleven or twelve strings, five doubled, sometimes all six doubled : tuned
Base Tenor Counter-tenor Great Mean
C F B flat D
Small Mean Minikin, Treble, or Chanterelle
G CC
I note, as additional evidence of the cultivation of music in this time, how often the pcetsof the period draw strong
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME ii
similes from the playing upon musical instruments. Take, for example, a passage from Ben Jonson's great comedy of Every Man in his Humour^ when a character says of another : « I can compare him to nothing more happily than a barber's Virginals ; for every man may play upon him."
Here, too, one cannot help recalling that wonderful talk of Hamlet's in Act III, Scene II, to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. These two worthy gentlemen have been trying to pump him, you remember, to make him speak, and in various ways to play upon him. Presently,
Enter the Players^ with Recorders,
The recorder was a wind instrument something like a clarinet in shape and like a flageolet in tone.
Ham. O, the recorders ! let me see one. . . . Will you play upon this pipe ?
Guild, My lord, I cannot.
Ham. I pray you.
Guild. Believe me, I cannot.
Ham. I do beseech you.
Guild. I know no touch of it, my lord.
Ham. 'Tis as easy as lying : govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will dis- course most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.
Guild. But these cannot I command to any utterance of har- mony ; I have not the skill.
Ham. 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 can- not 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, yet you cannot play upon me.
12 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
Again, quaint old Thomas Tusser, author of the Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry ^ ^S70, advises every housewife to always choose a servant who sings at work ; he says :
Such servants are oftenest painfull and good Who sing in their labour as birds in the wood.
Perhaps, therefore, when next you are so unfortunate as to go to an intelligence office, when you find that the candi- date whom the gentlemanly proprietor calls up can cook, it would be well to inquire also of her qualifications in singing.
And old Merrythought, in Beaumont and Fletcher, says : ^^ Never trust a tailor that does not sing at his work, for his mind is of nothing but filching."
This is indeed but another method of stating the famous sentiment in Shakspere's Merchant of Venice^ Act V, Scene I, where Lorenzo concludes his ravish- ing little conversation with Jessica about music by declar- ing that
The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not mov'd 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.
I find quoted more than once during this period a proverb which expresses the same idea in a more general form, and which I suspect is an old Spanish saying imported into England :
fVho loves not musiCy God loves not him. Again, music seems to have been as much a part of the education of young ladies in Shakspere's time as now.
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 13
Some of the most cunning scenes in The Taming of the Shrew are connected with this circumstance. I cannot help recalling these to you, in the briefest way. You remember that Lucentio and Hortensio, the one disguised as a scholar, the other as a musician, — or rather a teacher of music, — procure themselves to be introduced into Bap- tista's house as tutors to his daughters Katharina and Bianca, both gentlemen being bent upon making love to Bianca. Scene I of Act II is a room in Baptista's house, where presently, after a stormy scene betwixt Katha- rina and Bianca, enters Baptista; then the two young women go out, whereupon enter to Baptista Signior Gremio, with Lucentio in the mean habit of a scholar, Petruchio, with Hortensio disguised as a musician, and Tranio, with Biondello bearing a lute and books.
Pet. (^speaking to Baptista) I am a gentleman of Verona, sir. That . . .
Am bold to show myself a forward guest Within your house, to make mine eye the witness Of that report which I so oft have heard. And, for an entrance to my entertainment, I do present you with a man of mine,
{Presenting Hortensio) Cunning in music and the mathematics. To instruct her fully in those sciences. Whereof I know she is not ignorant : Accept of him, or else you do me wrong : His name is Licio, born in Mantua.
Bap. You're welcome, sir ; and he, for your good sake. . . .
Gre. Neighbour, this is a gift very grateful, I am sure of it. To express the like kindness, myself, that have been more kindly beholden to you than any, I freely give unto you this young scholar {Presenting Lucentio), that hath been long studying at Rheims ; as cunning in Greek, Latin and other languages, as the
14 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
other in music and mathematics : his name is Cambio ; pray, accept his service.
Bap. A thousand thanks, Signior Gremio. Welcome, good Cambio. . • •
Tra, Pardon me, sir. . . . This liberty is all that I request. That, upon knowledge of my parentage, I may have welcome 'mongst the rest that woo And free access and favour as the rest : And, toward the education of your daughters, I here bestow a simple instrument, (^Pointing to the lute) And this small packet of Greek and Latin books : If you accept them, then their worth is great.
Bap. . . . Take you ( To Hortensio) the lute, and you
( To LuCENTio) the set of books ;
You shall go see your pupils presently.
Holla, within !
Enter a Servant.
Sirrah, lead These gentlemen to my daughters ; and tell them both. These are their tutors : bid them use them well.
It would seem that Hortensio, the pretended music- teacher, first attempts to teach Katharina the Shrew. The nature of the usage which the poor musician receives at the hands of this pupil presently appears :
Reenter Hortensio, w/VA his head broken.
Bap. How now, my friend ! why dost thou look so pale ?
Hor. For fear, I promise you, if I look pale.
Bap. What, will my daughter prove a good musician ?
Hor. I think she'll sooner prove a soldier : Iron may hold with her, but never lutes.
Bap. Why, then thou canst not break her to the lute ?
Hor. Why, no ; for she hath broke the lute to me. I did but tell her she mistook her frets. And bow'd her hand to teach her fingering ;
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 15
When, with a most impatient devilish spirit,
Frets y call you these? quoth she ; F II fume with them :
And, with that word, she struck me on the head.
And through the instrument my pate made way ;
And there I stood amazed for a while.
As on a pillory, looking through the lute ;
While she did call me rascal fiddler
And twangUng Jack ; with twenty such vile terms.
As she had studied to misuse me so.
But afterwards the two pretended tutors get access to the milder Bianca, and proceed to teach her, as far as they can, the only lore in which either of them has any skill. I will not dare to give this scene as a specimen of the sys- tem employed by musicians in teaching their lady pupils during Shakspere's time; but it must be confessed the methods are not without illustration in the nineteenth cen- tury. The scene is the first of Act 111: A Room in Bap- tistas House. Enter Lucentio (the pretended Greek and Latin tutor), Hortensio (the pretended musician), and BiANCA, whom I might as well call the pretended pupil, for she could doubtless have taught both her masters in that science of love which they really professed, and which every woman understands by nature better than any man does by study. The two tutors endeavour to outwit each other in giving the first lesson :
Luc. {Scornfully addressing Hortensio) Fiddler, forbear ; you grow too forward, sir : Have you so soon forgot the entertainment Her sister Katharine welcom'd you withal ?
Hor. But, wrangling pedant, this is The patroness of heavenly harmony : Then give me leave to have prerogative ; And when in music we have spent an hour.
i6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
Your lecture shall have leisure for as much. . . .
Bian. Take you your instrument, play you the whiles ; His lecture will be done ere you have tun'd.
Hot. ( To Bianca) You'll leave his lecture when I am in tune ?
(HoRTENSio retires.)
Luc. That will be never : tune your instrument.
Bian. Where left we last ?
Luc. Here, madam :
Hie ibat Simois ; hie est Sigeia tellus ; Hie steterat Priami regia eelsa senis.
Bian. Construe them.
Luc. Hie ibat^ as I told you before, — Simois^ I am Lucentio, — hie est J son unto Vincentio of Pisa, — Sigeia tellus^ disguised thus to get your love; — Hie steterat^ and that Lucentio that comes a-wooing, — Priami^ is my man Tranio, — regia^ bearing my port, — ceba senis^ that we might beguile the old pantaloon.
Hor. {Returning) Madam, my instrument's in tune.
Bian. Let's hear. {Hortensio plays.) O fie ! the treble jars.
Luc. Spit in the hole, man, and tune again.
Bian. Now let me see if I can construe it : Hie ibat Simois^ I know you not, — hie est Sigeia tellus j I trust you not, — Hie stet^ trat Priami^ take heed he hear us not, — regia^ presume not, — celsa senis^ despair not.
Hor. Madam, 'tis now in tune.
Luc. All but the base.
Hor. The base is right ; 'tis the base knave that jars. How fiery and forward our pedant is ! . . . ( To Lucentio) You may go walk and give me leave a while : My lessons make no music in three parts.
Luc. Are you so formal, sir ? well, I must wait, {Aside) And watch withal ; for, but I be deceiv'd. Our fine musician groweth amorous.
Hor. Madam, before you touch the instrument, To learn the order of my fingering, I must begin with rudiments of art \
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 17
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.
Bian, Why, I am past my gamut long ago. Hor, Yet read the gamut of Hortensio. Bian. {Reads) Gzmut I am, the ground of all accordj
A re, to plead Hortensio^ s passion ; B mi, Bianca, take him for thy lord,
C fa ut, that loves with all affection : D sol re, one cliff, two notes have I: £ la mi, show pity, or I die.
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.
Perhaps it is by the rebound of contrast that poor Hor- tensio's broken head in this fictitious comedy carries my mind to three all too real tragedies of this period, in each of which an unfortunate musician had his head broken beyond all mending. First in order comes poor Mark Smeaton, who taught music to the lovely Anne Bullen, and whom Henry VIII had executed upon a pretext that (like Hortensio) he had taught her more love than music ; four years later — in 1 540 — the same Henry VIII hanged and quartered Thomas Abel, who was musical tutor to his Queen Catherine, because Abel wrote a tract against the divorce; and twenty-six years after this David Rizzio, the musical secretary of that poor lovely Mary, was murdered in her very presence.
But I will not accumulate more circumstances or quo- tations to show you the fact I started out to prove — that the English in Shakspere's time were ardent music-lovers, from the highest to the lowest orders of society. Every-
1 8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
where you heard the organ, the stately motett and involute (canaro), the Puritan's psalm, the jolly catch, the melodi- ous madrigal, the tinkling of citterns, gitterns, lutes, and virginals, the soft breaths of recorders, the louder strains of clarion, sackbut, shawm, hautboy, trumpet, cymbal, and drum. Everybody sang ballads ; the number of ballads printed in this time is simply enormous. There is a line in Bishop Hale's satires which always brings up to me a pleasant picture of old ballad-singing England, in which he speaks of ballads as being
Sung to the wheel and sung unto the pail,
i.e., sung by those who sat at the spinning-wheel, and by the milkmaids as they milked into the pails.
In an old piece called Martin MarsixtuSy dating 1592, is a livelier description of the flood of ballads which rained upon England in this period ; he cries : " Every red-nosed rhymester is an author. . . . Scarce a cat can look out of a gutter, but out starts a half-penny chronicler and presently a proper new ballet of a strange sight is indited." Per- haps I can fitly conclude this sketch of the popularity of music in Shakspere's time with a remark made in Summer* s Last Will and Testament^ by Nash, a contempo- rary writer. It seems that a package of lute-strings was a customary present from a gallant to a young lady in that time; and it therefore shows the public favour towards music in general and the lute in particular when we find Nash's character here recording, " I knew one that ran in debt in the space of four or five years above fourteen thou- sand pounds in lute-strings and grey paper."
I have said that Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth were musical amateurs and made it the fashion, but I do not mean that the popular love for music in England depended at all on this royal favour. We trace the same devotion to music among Englishmen long before Henry
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 19
and Elizabeth. Chaucer is full of naVve and cunning illus- tradons that England was as musical in the fourteenth century as in the sixteenth. You will remember the Nun, of whom I read in one of my earlier lectures, so exquisitely described in the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales — how
Ful wel sche sang the servise devyne,
Entuned in hire nose ful setnyly.
Again, we find the young Squire, in the same Prologue, "singing and floyting all the day." In this description of the musical Friar even the Chaucerian vividness is unwontedly bright :
Wei couthe he synge and playe on a rote,
Somewhat he lipsede for wantonnesse
To make his Englissche swete upon his tunge ;
And in his harpyng, when that he had sungc.
His eyghcn twynlded in his hed aright
As don the sterrcs in the frosty night.
Of the poor scholar Nicholas, Chaucer says :
And a] above there lay a gay sawtrye,
(The psaltery was an instrument of the harp species, some- times triangular like this /J^j,
ywimmnium\ \ \\\ \ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\Kcc& and sometimes square.)
20 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
On which he made, a-nightes, melodye So swetely that al the chamber rang.
The Parish Clerk Absolon could
Pleyen songes on a small Ribible ; Therto he sang a lowde quynyble, And as wel coude he pleye on a giteme.
The ribible was an ancestor of the fiddle species. Thie " lowde quynyble " was when the player sang the melody in one key and played it in another key a fifth above ; as, for example, when he sang a melody in the key of C and played the same melody at the same time in the key of G. Of course to a modern ear this would be intolerable ; for the whole performance would consist of " consecutive fifths," which are looked upon with horror and rigidly for- bidden by the modern systems of thorough-base. It may be interesting, however, to mention in this connection that I myself have heard a similar performance, and have noted that the consecutive fifth possesses a great fascination for the stronger-tympanumed ears of those who have lived outside the current of musical cultivation. I have heard» among the backwoods fiddle-players of Georgia, two per- sons play the same melody in fifths, that is, one playing it in G while the other played it in C ; and after the first shock of strangeness to my ear was over, I found the eflFect weird and stirring beyond description. I have also heard the Georgia crackers sing in this way, one screaming a loud " quynyble " to the other, and this is even more striking than the instrumental performance. In Chaucer also we find that the carpenter's wife sang, and that as for
Her song, it was as lowde and yerne As cny swalwe chiteryng on a berne.
A Seven leenth -century Mandolin-pUyer
Engravtd hy Audnuin from Ibt fainting by Ctrard Ttrhmrg
.L. I "MS
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 21 The Pardoner,
Ful lowde he sang " Come hider, love, to me,"
While the Sompnour
Bar to him a stif burdoun.
I shall have occasion to explain these " burdouns " pres- ently. The Miller plays the " baggepipe," and there is mention here and there of lutes, shawms, trumpets, and organs. Even William Langland — who, although he wrote in the same time with Chaucer, wrote, one may say, in a different world, for he saw English life from the point of view of a ploughman, while Chaucer saw it from that of a courtier — even Langland, in his Vision of Piers Plow- many indignantly reproaches the clergy that
They kennen no more mynstralcy, ne musik, men to gladde,
and he records of himself,
Ich can not tabre, ne trompe, ne telle faire gestes,
Ne fithelyn at festes, ne harpen,
Japen, ne jagelyn, ne gentillich pipe,
Nother sailen, ne sautrien, ne singe with the giterne,
implying, by his own singularity in this disability, that it was common for others to be able to do some of these things.
Thus we find Englishmen great music-lovers in Chau- cer's period, and if I had time I could easily cite evidences enough to show that this love of music was a legitimate inheritance from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, with whom this art was held in great esteem.
It is interesting, by the way, — before I leave this
22 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
theme, — to ask the question, why is it that, while Eng- lishmen have thus shown in all ages a genuine love for music, and while (as I shall presently show more in detail) the science of music was studied and the art cultivated by scores of men possessing great abilities in the sixteenth century and since, we have never yet developed a single great English composer of music ? Without stopping to answer this question, — indeed, I do not know how to answer it, — perhaps it will be of interest to compare it with a similar question regarding women. We all know with what enthusiastic, even religious devotion women have loved music in all ages, and particularly in this age ; one may almost say music would have perished but for the active sympathy of women for the art and its artists ; and we all know, further, what brilliant heights of excellence have been attained by women as executive musicians, both in vocal and instrumental kinds : yet no woman has ever yet composed any great music. Perhaps the solution of both these questions is simply that never yet is not never at all : it is not conclusive proof that a thing may not be done in the future to show that it has not been done in the past ; and perhaps women and Englishmen will both write immortal music in the ages to come.
But having now established the musical character of the age in which Shakspere lived in general, I go on fur- ther to say that I find Shakspere in particular a special adorer of music. I have counted one hundred and sixty- seven references to music in his plays, nearly all of which betray the tone of a passionate lover of the art. Not only so, but I find occasionally little touches which give solid, if subtle, proof that the awful mystery of music had in a shadowy way dawned on Shakspere's soul. A single line in that immortal scene between Lorenzo and Jessica in The Merchant of Venice reveals this :
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 23
ACT V.
Scene I. Belmont. Avenue to Portia's House.
Lorenzo. . . . 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 patines 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.
Jessica breaks in upon this high talk with this intuition :
I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
{^Music.)
Jessica here pierces quite near to the root of the mat- ter, namely, to that infinite underfeeling of serious and illimitable desire which every one who knows music under- stands and which no one who knows music will attempt to describe.^ It seems much that any hint of this should have dawned upon Shakspere, when we reflect that he died, poor soul ! seventy years before Bach was born, a hundred and fifty-odd years before Beethoven was born ;
^ The sharp contrast between the ing py, or mirths from the Anglo- feeling here expressed by Jessica Saxon gligg, which meant music^ and the primitive conception of or song. Jessica's remark is the music is strikingly shown by the first note we hear of the modern derivation of our word glee, mean- sorrow-cultus in music.
24 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
that he knew nothing of the orchestra ; that, in short, he never heard anything that we would call great music. I find another subtle touch of this sort in that wonderful clos- ing scene of the play of King Richard II. The poor fallen monarch in his lonesome room of the castle of Pomfret, where Bolingbroke has confined him, is meditating alone, at night, but a few moments before his death. Presently the twanging of lutes and viols is heard in the darkness below his window ; some faithful soul has come to sound up to him in this pathetic way that he has at least one friend left living. The current of his thought seizes upon the music and turns the stream of sound into its own sad direction.
ACT V.
Scene V. Pomfret. The Castle.
King Richard. . . . Music do I hear ? (JHusic.)
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 daintiness of ear To check time broke in a disorder'd string ; 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 ;
. . . but my time Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy. While I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock. 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. Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me ! For 'tis a sign of love ; and love to Richard Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 25
Reflecting, as I said, upon the fact that Shakspere died a century before the epoch of really great musical art, I am struck with astonishment at the deep and almost ador- ing reverence for music which lies everywhere revealed through his writings. This astonishment, however, is only part of a greater general problem : for, from this point of view, how strange seem all the stories of the power of music which come down to us from ancient times ! The Greeks had scarcely anything that we would call music ; they had no harmony, their instruments were weak in tone and limited in range, their melodies were crude and poor ; yet what a cyclus of Greek stories about the wonders wrought with music, culminating in that strange fable of Orpheus, who could move trees, stones, and floods with his melodies !
Again, even among a people so barbarous as the early Danes, it is related by Saxo Grammaticus that Eric, King of Denmark, having heard that a certain harper could cast men into all moods according to the tunes he played, desired the harper to play, and presently the harper played a fierce tune, under whose power the King became so enraged that he attacked even his friends standing about, and, having no weapon, killed several of them with his fist before he could be appeased by a change in the melody. Again, leaving the Indo-European peoples and passing over to the great Semitic branch of the human race, I have somewhere read a gigantic old fable — I cannot now remember whether it was Rabbinical or Mohammedan — that when God first moulded the body of Adam out of the clay. He laid it along the ground, and invited the soul to come and enter it. But the soul, upon first beholding the body, was displeased and frightened at the cold and unsightly mass lying there on the earth ; and the soul of Adam for a long time could not be induced to enter his body, until
26 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
finally the angel Gabriel came and sat at the feet of the body and played on the flageolet a melody so ravishing that the soul straightway entered in at the mouth of the body, and Adam arose a perfect man. What a deep and beautiful commentary do these stories make on the mys- terious reality of music and on the mysterious growth of man, when we think that they were invented ages before the existence of any musical combinations which would sensibly affect the emotions of a modern hearer !
The mention of the music which Shakspere did not hear now leads us quite naturally to the consideration of that which he did hear, and I shall devote my next lecture to that very interesting subject. I shall then explain the two general kinds of music in Shakspere's time, to wit, extempore discant and pricksong; I shall then take up in detail the sort of church music with Shakspere's con- temporaries were accustomed to hear, both the formal canons of the Church and the simpler psalms of the Puri- tans ; I shall then consider the sorts of secular music which Shakspere was accustomed to hear, particularly the madrigal, the catch, and the ballad, on the vocal side, and the dance-tunes on the instrumental side, particularly the galliard, the passamezzo or paspy, the coranto, the morrice-dance, and the pavan ; I shall next present some account of the great English musicians of Shakspere's time, who were in various ways very interesting men and ought to be better known to us than they are. I hope to be able to give you some actual reproductions of Shaksperian music in illustration of these matters ; for this purpose I have selected a very pretty canon of old John Taverner's for five voices, which I found in the Peabody Library ; also a part-song by John Milton, father of the poet, who was a good musician. Then I have a madrigal of Shak- spere's time, and I think I shall be able to find an old
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 27
catch such as the jolly Sir Toby roared out with his com- panions in Olivia's house ; I have also a very pretty galliard by Frescobaldi dating from 1 63 7 ; a song called The Song of Anne Bullen^ and said to have been written by her not long before her execution ; I have also the tune of Green- sleeveSy which Shakspere mentions, and to which scores of sonnets and ballads were sung; and finally I have the Cuckoo Songy which is a good specimen of a song with a ** burdoun " such as the Sompnour roared with the Par- doner in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. If I succeed in find- ing the voices to sing these part-songs properly, it is my desire to have the class meet at my own house, where we shall have the piano and other facilities for music ; but of that you shall have due notice, and, unless you have notice, I will ask you to meet here as usual. I sincerely hope I may be able to get up the voices for the music, so that when you shall have heard it you will know what ideas Shakspere had in his mind when the bewildered Ferdinand, in The Tempest^ following the sprite Ariel in the air, cries, ** Where should this music be ? i' th' air or th' earth ? '*
. . . Sure, it waits upon
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank.
Weeping again the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air. . . .
This is no mortal business.