Music in Shakespearean Tragedy

F W Sternfeld

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415353274
• eBook ISBN: 9781136569166
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

First published in 1963. When originally published this book was the first to treat at full length the contribution which music makes to Shakespeare's great tragedies, among them Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. Here the playwright's practices are studied in conjunction with those of his contemporaries: Marlowe and Jonson, Marston and Chapman. From these comparative assessments there emerges the method that is peculiar to Shakespeare: the employment of song and instrumental music to a degree hitherto unknown, and their use as an integral part of the dramatic structure.

VIII

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC: PART ONE

Tamburlaine, Richard II, Troilus and Cressida

THE range of instrumental music in Shakespeare's plays extends from the obvious and functional music of battles and banquets to the celestial music not ordinarily heard by mortal ears. At one extreme we have the herald's trumpet, the soldier's drum, the clown's pipe, the fiddler's ‘noise’ of the tavern; at the other extreme the music of the spheres

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;

Such harmony is in immortal souls,

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

It is the playwright's task to make us listen, or, at the least, to suggest to our imagination the music of both worlds, to reflect in poetry and music the flesh as well as the spirit; to bring alive both the ‘brazen din’ and the ‘tuned spheres’.¹ ‘Brazen din’ is a description more apt for the early tragedies, such as Tamburlaine and Henry VI and less for Antony and Cleopatra, where battle scenes give way in importance to character portrayal. The term refers not only to the stentorian voice of brass instruments but also to an unabashed, if not impudent, behaviour. Tamburlaine's progress towards the conquest of the world is punctuated by military flourishes to signify a succession of challenges and bouts that would become tiresome were it not for the poetic relief of Marlowe's blank verse. As early as the turn of thecentury, and before the accession of James I, Jonson and Shakespeare were able to caricature the incessant braying of trumpets and the tireless beating of drums. These military calls were but another aspect of the Ethos of music,¹ for the sound of wind instruments and drums was meant to induce a warlike spirit, intensified by the martial rhythm in which fanfares and drum-rolls were couched. Such signals also conveyed to the characters on stage a call to combat, or the arrival of important personages, and communicated to the audience what was happening on the stage.

Conforming to Elizabethan rules of conduct, the class of instrument employed was defined according to the character of a scene and the social position of its participants. A glance at some of the pre-Shakespearean tragedies reveals the importance of trumpets for the plays that were dedicated to the problems of the aristocracy and the commonwealth. In musical terms the ‘stately-written’, buskinned, tragedy could, if its author wished, dispense with songs and serenades of love, but not with the trumpet signals and fanfares to herald kings and marshals.

Balthazar.	Hieronimo, methinks a comedy were better.
Hieronimo.	A comedy?
	Fie! comedies are fit for common wits;
	But to present a kingly troop withal,
	Give me a stately-written tragedy;
	Tragedia cothurnata, fitting kings,
	Containing matter, and not common things.

The Spanish Tragedy, Act V.

To employ trumpeters was among the carefully guarded privileges of the nobility and, by and large, only court trumpeters were allowed to perform on the instrument. They belonged to a special guild, and in view of their superior position rarely performed in combination with other instruments. In the language of military signals, drums belonged to the infantry, trumpets to the cavalry. The Trojans, Persians, Spaniards and Englishmen of the early tragedies engaged in wars that were fought before the cannon became an exclusive instrument of battle. Hence, we have drums for the commoner and trumpets for the nobleman. In All's Well that Ends Well nothing characterizes Parolles so much as a person of ‘common things’ as his incessant prattle about a lost drum. In the Spanish Tragedy Kyd extols Orpheus's lute and the music of ‘cherubins chanting heavenly notes’, but the actual music is reserved for more penetrating strains. In the opening scene we have

[S.D. A tucket afar off]

King.	What means the warning of this trumpet's sound?
General.	This tells me that your grace's men of war,
	. . .
	Come marching on towards your royal seat
	To show themselves before your majesty.

Equally imposing are the implications of the stage direction at the conclusion of the action

[S.D. The trumpets sound a dead march; the King of Spain mourning after his brother's body, and the King of Portugal bearing the body of his son.]

The term ‘tucket’ is but one of a bewildering variety of names (let alone doubtful meanings and etymologies) used to describe military signals. Both tucket and sennet probably derive from the Italian: ‘toccare’, ‘toccata’ and ‘sonare’, ‘sonata’ respectively. Both were trumpet flourishes. The term ‘tucket’ occurs seven times in Shakespeare and usually has reference to a particular person, such as Mountjoy or Aeneas. With few exceptions they are not English. The sennet differed from the ordinary trumpet flourish by its greater length. There are nine sennets in Shakespeare. At times the playwright distinguishes between a short fanfare and the more extended, processional composition for brass instruments. For instance, the stage direction in 1 Henry VI, III.i, ‘Sennet. Flourish. Exeunt.’, implies that a sennet was sounded while the procession marched off and a flourish for the completion of the exit. Flourishes and alarums are met with more frequently in Elizabethan plays: there are some seventy occurrences in Shakespeare alone.¹ Even so, he employs the tumult of military signals (as well as the simulation of divine music) with characteristic economy.

Marlowe notes in the Prologue to Tamburlaine the Great, Part II that he was induced to write a sequel to his earlier play in view of the success of Part I which

Hath made our poet pen his Second Part,

Where death cuts off the progress of his pomp, . . .

Trumpets continue to play their roles in Part II with customary splendour, although there is no dead march at the conclusion and frequently the signal ‘alarum’, not ‘flourish’, is given.¹

‘Alarums’ were usually executed by drums which were, at times, accompanied by trumpets. One surmises that the greater prominence of the drum is a reflection of Tamburlaine's character, particularly as it is displayed in his behaviour toward his son and his enemies. But in the present context the main interest of Marlowe's tragedy is in the death scene of Zenocrate in Act II, scene iv. It portrays the emperor ‘raving, impatient, desperate and mad’ at the death of his Zenocrate. Following the example of Bel-Imperia in the Spanish Tragedy he invokes the music of the spheres

The cherubins and holy seraphins,

That sing and play before the King of Kings,

Use all their voices and their instruments

To entertain divine Zenocrate:

And in this sweet and curious harmony,

The god that tunes this music to our souls

Holds out his hand in highest majesty

To entertain divine Zenocrate.

The natural music of Marlowe's verse is later supplemented by actual music:

Zenocrate,	Sweet sons, farewell; in death resemble me,
	And in your lives your father's excellency.
	Some music, and my fit will cease, my lord.
	[S.D. They call music]
Tamburlaine.
	Proud fury, and intolerable fit,
	That dares torment the body of my love, . . .
	And had she liv'd before the siege of Troy,
	Helen, whose beauty summoned Greece to arms,
	And drew a thousand ships to Tenedos,
	Had not been nam'd in Homer's Iliads, . . .
	Nor Lesbia nor Corinna had been nam'd,—
	Zenocrate had been the argument
	Of every epigram or elegy.

This glowing eulogy of the beloved is followed by the stage direction, ‘The music sounds and she dies’.

The ‘god that tunes this music to our souls’ did, indeed, endow Marlowe with the gift of re-creating its sonority for human ears. Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus were worthy ancestors of Shakespeare's immortal verse, for Marlowe was among the first of the Elizabethan writers of tragedy to enhance the pathos of a mournful scene with instrumental music supplied by a consort of strings. The strange strains were a fu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Music Examples and Facsimiles
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• I Tradition of Vocal and Instrumental Music in Tragedy
• II The Willow Song
• III Ophelia’s Songs
• IV Magic Songs
• V Adult Songs and Robert Armin
• VI Adult Songs from Hamlet to Othello
• VII Blank Verse, Prose and Songs in King Lear
• VIII Instrumental Music, Part One: Tamburlaine, Richard II, Troilus and Cressida
• IX Instrumental Music, Part Two: Stringed Versus Wind Instruments
• X Retrospect of Scholarship on Shakespeare and Music
• Bibliography
• Index of Lyrics
• Index of Persons, Places, Plays, Etc.
• Index of Subjects