On some occasions, e.g., in the vision of Posthumus (Cymheline, Act V, Scene 4), Shakespeare has lines spoken against an instrumental musical background. The effect of this is to depersonalize the speaker, for the sound of the music blots out the individual timbre of his voice. What he says to music seems not his statement but a message, a statement that has to be made.
Antony and Cleopatra (Act IV, Scene 3) is a good example of the dramatic skill with which Shakespeare places a supernatural musical announcement. In the first scene of the act we have had a glimpse of the cold, calculating Octavius refusing Antony's old-fashioned challenge to personal combat and deciding to give battle next day. To Octavius, chivalry is one aspect of a childish lack of self-control and "Poor Antony" is his contemptuous comment on his opponent. Whereupon we are shown Antony talking to his friends in a wrought-up state of self-dramatization and self-pity:
Give me thy hand,
Thou hast been righdy honest; so hast thou;
Thou—and thou-—and thou; you have serv'd me well.
Perchance to-morrow
You'll serve another master. I look on you As one that takes his leave. Mine honest friends, I turn you not away; but like a master Married to your good service, stay till death: Tend me to-night two hours, I ask no more, And the gods yield you for't.
We already know that Enobarbus, who is present, has decided to desert Antony. Now follows the scene with the common soldiers in which supernatural music announces that
The god Hercules whom Antony lov'd Now leaves him.
The effect of this is to make us see the human characters, Octavius, Antony, Cleopatra, Enobarbus, as agents of powers greater than they. Their personalities and actions, moral or immoral, carry out the purposes of these powers but cannot change them. Octavius' self-confidence and Antony's sense of doom are justified though they do not know why.
But in the ensuing five scenes it appears that they were both mistaken, for it is Antony who wins the batde. Neither Octavius nor Antony have heard the music, but we, the audience, have, and our knowledge that Antony must lose in the end gives a pathos to his temporary triumph which would be lacking if the invisible music were cut.
Of the instances of mundane or carnal instrumental music in the plays, the most interesting are those in which it is, as it were, the wrong kind of magic. Those who like it and call for it use it to strengthen their illusions about themselves.
So Timon uses it when he gives his great banquet. Music stands for the imaginary world Timon is trying to live in, where everybody loves everybody and he stands at the center as the source of this universal love.
timon: Music, make their welcome!
first lord: You see, my lord, how ample y'are beloved.
(Timon of Athens, Act I, Scene 2..)
One of his guests is the professional sneerer, Apemantus, whose conceit is that he is the only one who sees the world as it really is, as the absolutely unmusical place where nobody loves anybody but himself. "Nay," says Timon to him, "an you begin to rail on society once, I am swom not to give regard to you. Farewell, and come with better music."
But Timon is never to hear music again after this scene.
Neither Timon nor Apemantus have music in their souls but, while Apemantus is shamelessly proud of this, Timon wants desperately to believe that he has music in his soul, and the discovery that he has not destroys him.
To Falstaff, music, like sack, is an aid to sustaining the illusion of living in an Eden of childlike innocence where nothing serious can happen. Unlike Timon, who does not love others as much as he likes to think, Falstaff himself really is loving. His chief illusion is that Prince Hal loves him as much as he loves Prince Hal and that Prince Hal is an innocent child like himself.
Shakespeare reserves the use of a musical background for the scene between Falstaff, Doll, Poinz, and Hal (Henry IV, Part II, Act II, Scene 4). While the music lasts, Time will stand still for Falstaff. He will not grow older, he will not have to pay his debts, Prince Hal will remain his dream-son and boon companion. But the music is interrupted by the realities of time with the arrival of Peto. Hal feels ashamed.
By heaven, Poinz, I feel me much to blame
So idly to profane the present time. . . .
Give me my sword and cloak. Falstaff, good-night!
Falstaff only feels disappointed:
Now comes in the sweetest morsel of the night, and we
must hence, and leave it unpick'd.
In Prince Hal's life this moment is the turning point; from now on he will become the responsible ruler. Falstaff will not change because he is incapable of change but, at this moment, though he is unaware of it, the most important thing in his life, his friendship with Hal, ceases with the words "Goodnight." When they meet again, the first words Falstaff will hear are—"I know thee not, old man."
Since music, the virtual image of time, takes actual time to perform, listening to music can be a waste of time, especially for those, like kings, whose primary concern should be with the unheard music of justice.
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 disordered string; But, for the concord of my time and state, Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
CRichard II, Act V, Scene 5.)
iv
We find two kinds of songs in Shakespeare's plays, the called-for and the impromptu, and they serve different dramatic purposes.
A called-for song is a song which is sung by one character at the request of another who wishes to hear music, so that action and speech are halted until the song is over. Nobody is asked to sing unless it is believed that he can sing well and, litde as we may know about the music which was actually used in performances of Shakespeare, we may safely assume from the contemporary songs which we do possess that they must have made demands which only a good voice and a good musician could satisfy.
On the stage, this means that the character called upon to sing ceases to be himself and becomes a performer; the audience is not interested in him but in the quality of his singing. The songs, it must be remembered, are interludes embedded in a play written in verse or prose which is spoken; they are not arias in an opera where the dramatic medium is itself song, so that we forget that the singers are performers just as we forget that the actor speaking blank verse is an actor.
An Elizabethan theatrical company, giving plays in which such songs occur, would have to engage at least one person for his musical rather than his histrionic talents. If they had not been needed to sing, the dramatic action in Much Ado, As You Like It and Twelfth Night could have got along quite well without Balthazar, Amiens and the Clown.
Yet, minor character though the singer may be, he has a character as a professional musician and, when he gets the chance, Shakespeare draws our attention to it. He notices the mock or polite modesty of the singer who is certain of his talents.
don pedro: Come, Balthazar, we'll hear that song again.
Balthazar: O good my lord, tax not so bad a voice To slander music any more than once.
don pedro: It is the witness still of excellency
To put a strange face on his own perfection.
He marks the annoyance of the professional who must sing for another's pleasure whether he feels like it or not.
jaques: More, I prithee, more.
amiens: My voice is ragged: I know I cannot please you.