The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

"Solemn" music is generally played off stage. It comes, that is, from an invisible source which makes it impossible for those on stage to express a voluntary reaction to it. Either they cannot hear it or it has effects upon them which they cannot control. Thus, in Act II, Scene i of The Tempest, it is an indication of their villainy, the lack of music in their souls, that Antonio and Sebastian are not affected by the sleeping- spell music when Alonso and the others are, an indication which is forthwith confirmed when they use the opportunity so created to plan Alonso's murder.

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. . . .