And a one-ah and a two-ah

"Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about my ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep, 
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again."

                                                   The Tempest      (III, ii)


Man, fish, or whatever he is, Caliban seems to have quite the ear for music and poetry. So much so that the above lines were used, four hundred years after Shakespeare wrote them, at the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Oddly enough, the last few lines were used at the closing ceremonies as well. Whether there was any grumbling in the pantheon of English poets over that little slight to their literary output is anyone's guess.

Scholars have pointed to several hundred passages in the works of Shakespeare that reflect the playwright's familiarity with the music of his day. He includes a great number of popular ballads in his works, knowing his audience would be receptive to the songs. Almost all of his musical references involve secular rather than sacred music, hardly surprising in an English nation violently torn by religious differences during the previous century. That violence was far from over.

It is quite probable that, in his early youth, the poet became familiar with the mystery and morality plays, rooted in the mists of England's medieval past. These were usually performed by local tradesmen and other amateurs on holy feast days, prior to the advent of a more austere Protestantism. Music was also at times performed, and so much of that music had its antecedents in the liturgy of the church.

The above photograph shows calligraphic details of a psalter in the collection of Agecroft Hall that dates to c1600. A psalter is a collection of Psalms arranged for devotional use, for singing and/or musical accompaniment. Shakespeare was in all likelihood not unfamiliar with this type of work, and would no doubt have recognized the Latin word "fatigari" in the above view as meaning labored or fatigued and the fancifully illuminated "Erat" (he was, she was, it was). That is, unless Ben Jonson's claim that Shakespeare knew "small Latin and less Greek" was much closer to the mark than we tend to think.

As for secular musical accompaniment in Elizabethan England, there were a variety of instruments: the plaintive viols, somewhat similar to modern-day violins but played with the instrument resting on the knees; lutes, flutes, and citterns, among other instruments. Invented shortly before the birth of Shakespeare was the bandora, an instrument much like a large guitar.

There are many instances of characters suddenly breaking into song in Shakespeare's plays, even in his tragedies. He has Desdemona, shortly to be murdered, singing the mournful, long-familiar "Willow Song" in Othello and Edgar chanting "Child Rowland to the dark tower came" in King Lear. At the other end of the emotional scale, the playwright has his character Feste in the masterful comedy Twelfth Night end the play booming out "When that I was and a little tiny boy" with its peculiarly compelling repetition of "With hey, ho, the wind and the rain." One has to wonder whether audiences ever sang along.