Reverberating song in Shakespeare and Milton: language, memory, and musical representation

296 Pages·2011·1.3 MB·English

by  Erin Minear

ReveRbeRating Song
in ShakeSpeaRe and Milton
in this study, erin Minear explores the fascination of Shakespeare and Milton with
the ability of music—heard, imagined, or remembered—to infiltrate language.
Such infected language reproduces not so much the formal or sonic properties
of music as its effects. Shakespeare’s and Milton’s understanding of these
effects was determined, she argues, by history and culture, as well as individual
sensibility. They portray music as uncanny and divine, expressive and opaque,
promoting associative rather than logical thought processes and unearthing
unexpected memories. The title reflects the multiple and overlapping meanings of
reverberation in the study: the lingering and infectious nature of musical sound;
the questionable status of audible, earthly music as an echo of celestial harmonies;
and one writer’s allusions to another.

Minear argues that many of the qualities that seem to us characteristically
“Shakespearean” stem from Shakespeare’s engagement with how music works,
and that Milton was deeply influenced by this aspect of Shakespearean poetics.
Analyzing Milton’s account of Shakespeare’s “warbled notes,” she demonstrates
that he saw Shakespeare as a peculiarly musical poet, deeply and obscurely
moving his audience with language that has ceased to mean, but nonetheless
lingers hauntingly in the mind. Obsessed with the relationship between words
and music for reasons of his own, including his father’s profession as a composer,
Milton would adopt, adapt, and finally reject Shakespeare’s form of musical
poetics in his own quest to “join the angel choir.”

Offering a new way of looking at the work of two major authors, this study engages
and challenges scholars of Shakespeare, Milton, and early modern culture.
erin Minear is assistant professor of english at the College of William and
Mary, USA.
For Kate
Reverberating Song
in Shakespeare and Milton
language, Memory, and Musical Representation
eRin MineaR
College of William and Mary, USA
© erin Minear 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
erin Minear has asserted her right under the Copyright, designs and patents act, 1988, to
be identified as the author of this work.
published by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Minear, Erin.
Reverberating song in Shakespeare and Milton: language, memory, and musical
representation.
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616 – Knowledge – Music. 2. Milton, John, 1608–
1674 – Knowledge – Music. 3. Authors and music – Great Britain – History – 16th
century. 4. Authors and music – Great Britain – History – 17th century. 5. Music and
literature – Great Britain – History – 16th century. 6. Music and literature – Great
Britain – History – 17th century. 7. Music and language.
I. Title
822.3’3–dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Minear, Erin.
Reverberating song in Shakespeare and Milton – language, memory, and musical
representation / by Erin Minear.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Language. 2. Milton, John, 1608–1674—
Language. 3. Music in literature. 4. Memory in literature. 5. English language—Early
modern, 1500–1700. I. Title.
PR3072.M46 2011
822.3’3—dc23
2011030107
ISBN 9781409435457 (hbk)
ISBN 9781409435464 (ebk)
II
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Creeping Music: Sounds, Surfaces, and Spheres
in The Merchant of Venice 17
2 “We Have Nonesuch”: The Haunting Melody 53
3 “Re-speaking Earthly Thunder”: Hamlet’s Sonic Phantoms 89
4 Playing Music: Twelfth Night and The Tempest 125
5 Warbling Fancies: Milton, Shakespeare, and the
Musical Imagination 165
6 “Serpit Agens”: The Song of the Blest Siren 197
7 “Minims of Nature”: Describing Music in Paradise Lost 227
Conclusion: Spirits of Another Sort; or, Hymning and Humming 257
Bibliography 265
Index 279
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Acknowledgments
This book could not have been written without the assistance and encouragement
that I received from a number of people. I would like to take this opportunity to
express my great debt to Stephen Greenblatt and Barbara Lewalski, who gave
guidance, help, and support from the inception of this project and throughout its
development. I also received much assistance and advice from Gordon Teskey,
Marjorie Garber, and Nicholas Watson: thank you. Over the years many thoughtful
readers of my work have given feedback and suggestions that helped to shape this
book, including Leslie Dunn, Wes Folkerth, Ken Hiltner, Wendy Hyman, Catherine
Keyser, Jennifer Ohlund, Adam Potkay, Elizabeth Rivlin, Marie Rutkoski, and
Sarah Wall-Randall. I am most appreciative of all their help. The anonymous
reader for Ashgate gave excellent suggestions that helped shape the final form of
this book. I owe special thanks to Brett Wilson, who read the manuscript with care
and insight, and asked all the right questions. Finally, I would like to express my
deep gratitude to Paula Blank, for unfailing support, advice, and encouragement.
And of course, I owe the most to my wonderful family: Mom, Dad, and Kate—
none of this would have been possible without you.
An earlier version of the final section of Chapter 2 was previously published
as “Music and the Crisis of Meaning in Othello,” and is reprinted with permission
from SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 49, 2 (Spring 2009). A version
of the first section of Chapter 2, combined with some material now in Chapter 3,
was previously published as “‘A Verse to this Note’: Shakespeare’s Haunted
Songs,” and is reprinted with permission from The Upstart Crow: A Shakespeare
Journal 29 (Fall 2010). I am grateful for the permission to reprint these pieces.
This page has been left blank intentionally
Introduction
One of Shakespeare’s most perceptive readers, Milton famously described
the playwright as “sweetest Shakespeare, fancy’s child / Warbl[ing] his native
woodnotes wild.” These lines have suggested to a number of readers that Milton
viewed his predecessor not only as a writer of “natural” facility, but also as a poet
of wide-ranging—and possibly undisciplined—imagination, or fancy. Fancies, or
fantasies, however, are also a particular type of music: a music without words.
I argue that Milton’s account of Shakespeare’s warbled notes suggests that he
saw Shakespeare as a peculiarly musical poet, deeply and obscurely moving his
audience with language that has ceased to mean. This reaction to Shakespeare, while
scarcely complete—and perhaps a touch condescending—nevertheless indicates a
profound insight into the affective workings of Shakespearean drama. Milton’s
condescension only half-conceals his own desire to emulate this Shakespearean
approach to poetry, despite his deep misgivings about such a project. Obsessed
as he was with the relationship between words and music for reasons of his own,
including his father’s profession as a composer, Milton would adopt, adapt, and
finally reject Shakespeare’s particular form of musical poetics in his own quest to
“join the angel choir.”
My title, Reverberating Song, reflects the multiple and overlapping meanings
of reverberation in the story that I tell. These include the acoustic and affective
properties of music, as infectious sounds that linger in the air and in the memory;
the questionable status of audible, earthly music as an echo of celestial harmonies;
and one writer’s allusions to another. All these meanings intersect with another
kind of reverberation suggested by the title, if only through a false etymology:
an echo as a translation of sound into the verbal medium of language. While a
number of early modern English poets and dramatists, including Edmund Spenser,
Ben Jonson, and John Marston, use and represent music in complicated ways,
drawing attention to its mingled dangers and attractions, they do not display a
similar interest in the ability of music—heard, imagined, or remembered—to
infiltrate language. Both Shakespeare and Milton repeatedly suggest that music
possesses the disturbing and exhilarating capacity to spread beyond its boundaries,
to reverberate throughout the larger structure of the narrative or dramatic text.
Consequently, even their descriptions of music are less like set-pieces or fixed
pictures than like a dye soaking through cloth, or a disturbance in water. These
musical representations do not point solely towards some real or fictive music
outside the text, but towards something that potentially inheres within the text
itself, or begins to inhere as soon as it is described. Milton’s verse self-consciously
strives for such effects, while in Shakespeare’s plays, the agency is considerably
less clear: music seems to creep into language of its own volition, beyond the
awareness or desire of the speaker.