Shakespeare: A Hidden Life Sung in a Hidden Song

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Extract from Part I of Shakespeare: England's most famous author stands blurred in the shimmer of history. Some even challenge his authorship, so hazy is the detail of his life. Consequently, although Shakespeare left us nearly one million words and a horde of characters, his own character and most of his activities have remained elusive.

Such mystery extends seemingly to his sonnets. These poems were, on contemporary observation, intended for private consumption 1. Their language is often archaic and it is easy for us, living over four centuries later, to miss the subtleties and double meanings designed to stimulate their original audience, who had the advantage of context and background.

Nevertheless, with the many insights afforded by generations of analysts and a number of discoveries outlined below, the Sonnets shed startling light on the Stratfordian, his complicated love-life and several of his contemporaries. Similar assertions have been made before.

Each has lacked sufficient evidence and has failed to win general acceptance. Yet, in the following outline I expect to persuade anyone of an open mind that here survives part of the record of an extraordinary private life! Given its association with so popular an author at the summit of his career, this work was incongruous. It carried no acknowledgement from the poet.

Its themes were often offensive to contemporary culture, yet sometimes boringly mundane. It attracted hostile comment 2.

And it sank into obscurity until interest arose some two centuries later, centred largely on what the work might reveal of the author. The poems are presented in a structured order. Sonnets all of which lack any absolute indicator of a female subject appear to be addressed to or for the benefit of a young man; Sonnets appear largely to concern a dark-haired woman, whom the poet describes as his mistress. Observers have long recognized that the poems suggest an underlying story: For some two centuries, commentators have been divided on whether the sonnets contain biography, and, if so, who were their characters.

There are three widely held orthodox theories. The first asserts that there is little to be read into the Sonnets but their artistry 3. The appearance of an underlying story is regarded as coincidence, as part of their fiction or as contrived by editorial ordering of the poems. However, the odds are long that so many of the sonnets contribute by chance to the unusual, coherent and fictionally unattractive themes outlined above.

Nor does such scepticism adequately explain the many highly prescriptive messages encountered in the collection 4.

The theory is essentially a default position, reliant on the absence of better explanations. The second popular theory is based on the presumptions that Shakespeare controlled the publication of the Sonnets and that he dictated their dedication by Thorpe to Master WH. The latter is taken to be William Herbert, who became third earl of Pembroke in There is a superficial plausibility to this notion, first aired by James Boaden in Pembroke resisted marriage in his youth 6 as implied of the young aristocrat in the early sonnets and, with his brother, he was a dedicatee of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, produced by the playwright's colleagues in , several years after his death.

Joy is its own justification. It looks neither forward nor backward, but simply bubbles out in ecstatic song, dance, and frolic. Song is the absolute ideal expression of joy, in real life as on the stage.

Reviving Ophelia’s Song

Naturally, every convivial scene in Shakespeare contains snatches of singing, more often than not accompanying a complete song. There are five notable passages of bacchanalian gaiety in Shakespeare's plays: The central song of the last passage, "O mistress mine," completely and purely expresses delight in living, but in it there is nothing dramatic, not so much as special appropriateness to the character of the singer. It is, of course, something to cause reflection that such words should be put into the mouth of a professional entertainer singing to two old sinners.

We know Elizabethan England could provide plenty of ribald songs; but testimony of the most irrefutable nature assures us that the sympathies of the time were sufficiently pure for very ordinary fellows, boors even, to delight in such strains as these. Several of the drinking songs are designed to be in keeping with the characters who sing them, — for example, Stephano's vulgar tavern songs, and Caliban's grotesque canticle of freedom; and no doubt the drinking song in Antony and Cleopatra is designedly classical in its allusions.

The central function of Shakespeare's songs, however, the function of the songs most loved and best remembered, is to give a tone, usually a glamor and a sense of romance, to a whole play. Proteus's song to Sylvia, the only song in Shakespeare actually sung by a lover to his mistress, and by him under pretense of acting as a deputy, is the song of a faithless lover, and its substance has no peculiar fitness to the situation.

Only the age and time and place wherein such songs are sung is raised and ideal. In Cymbeline it is Cloten who causes to be sung the "hunt's-up," — "Hark! It is in the woodland romances that this effect is most plain; as is natural from the traditions of Elizabethan song.

It is largely, if not mainly, pastoral in spirit. The pastoral form has never taken firm hold in English literature, but the pastoral spirit has been vital there as in few literatures, a spirit of delight in rural life, felt by people near enough to enjoy it, far enough to appreciate it, and sophisticated enough to idealize it. In the pastoral romances, elegant and refined shepherdesses, or princesses disguised as such, are wooed by elegant and chivalrous shepherds; and both of them fill every pause with song. When the hero is sad, he sings; when hopeful, he sings; when he has nothing to do, he sings; when he is going to do something, he sings; and when he has done something, he sings.

We are told what passion his songs display, but when we read the verses the passion seems to have evaporated, leaving usually a caput mortuum , but sometimes a delicate savor of gentle and romantic beauty, and a strange and sweet union of sincerity and artificiality. Such are the songs and pastorals of Breton, the successful songs of Lodge and Greene, and such in the drama are the golden songs of Peele, and Lyly's "Cupid and my Campaspe.

The appropriateness of such songs to the forest of Arden is evident, even though a clearer air blows in it than in the sometimes "musky alleys" of Arcadian groves. Without "Under the greenwood tree," "Hey, ding-a-ding," and "Blow, blow, thou winter wind," how much even of the charm of Rosalind would be lost.

Fairies and sweet spirits of course sing. One might think song would be their natural speech; but this is not the case. Fairies and witches speak in a special metre, but they speak. Yet the incantations of fairyland are often sung: The scenes in Macbeth containing stage directions for a song are generally regarded as spurious, and while the witches must intone "Double, double," or deliver it in recitative, the metrical structure of the verses which accompany this refrain seem to make a regular tune for the words very unlikely.

Ariel is a creature of song. His element is even more ethereal than that of the fairies, and he is represented nearly always as exercising his magic influence, or as in an ecstasy beyond expression except through song.

Music in the plays of William Shakespeare

Hence he sings always. Fools are all singers. They are professional entertainers, they are emotionally unbalanced, hysterical, and excitable, and song, whether fragmentary or complete, is appropriate in their mouths. Like fools, they make a business of entertaining; and their irresponsibility is marked by their giving themselves up to impulse, instead of looking to the remote consequences of action. Illustrations are Falstaff, Pandarus, Autolycus. Rogues and fools are generally but two species of the same genus in Shakespeare, and both alike are usually given something of the golden charm of Arcadian life such as pervades the atmosphere of As You Like It.

Autolycus in particular through his songs expresses the delights of irresponsible living sweetly and perfectly. Effective men do not sing in Shakespeare, Iago may seem to be an exception; but Iago sings not to sing but to seduce. He sings as a dramatic act, with purpose and with effect in the plot.

He assumes the appearance of unthinking good-fellowship, and in doing so displays another of the gifts which his creator lavished upon him. We may be sure he was a creditable vocalist as well as a ready improvisator. A station of dignity is incompatible with singing, on the stage of Shakespeare, either by man or woman.

Hence great personages who desire to hear music call for it, and the actual singing is performed by a servant or attendant, usually a young person. Here, of course, the influence of practical exigencies in determining the assignment of roles must be recognized. Singing parts would naturally be taken by the best vocalist in the company; and a company would be strangely fortunate in which the best vocalist possessed also the abilities qualifying him for the nobler roles.

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In principle, Hamlet as a complete gentleman should be a musician; but Hamlets who can rise to the part are not so common that the choice should be limited by adding dispensable requirements to the absolute necessities of the part. Often, indeed, the singer might not have histrionic talent for even humble roles.

Hence, the playwright, except where assured of uncommon powers possessed by the singing actor, could safely offer him only a colorless part, or at best one of little variety, in which he could be coached. Inherit at my house. I , ii, The final couplet can be construed as Shakespeare's excuse: I was depressed with you away, so I fooled around with these lesser substitutes for you. From this, we can surmise that Earl and poet have become close again, after their extended separation. In astrology, Saturn was, and is, symbolic of discipline, privation, dourness, age and steadiness.

From you have I been absent in the spring,. When proud pied April, dressed in all his trim. Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,. That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him. Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell. Of different flowers in odour and in hew,. Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.

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