In such a night Loren. Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, And with an únthrift love did run from Venice As far as Belmont. Jess. And in such a night Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well, And ne'er a true one. Loren. And in such a night Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, Slander her love, and he forgave it her. Jess. I would out-night you, did nobody come: But, hark! I hear the footing of a man. Enter STEPHANO. Loren. Who comes so fast in silence of the night? Steph. A friend. Loren. A friend! what friend? your name, I pray you, friend? Steph. Stephano is my name ; 6 and I bring word Loren. Who comes with her? Steph. None but a holy hermit and her maid. 6 In this play the name Stephano has the accent on the second syllable. In The Tempest, written some years later, the same name has it, rightly, on the first. 7 In old times crosses were set up at the intersection of roads, and in other places specially associated with saintly or heroic names, to invite the passers-by to devotion. And in those days Christians were much in the habit of remembering in their prayers whatever lay nearest their hearts. A I pray you, is my master yet return'd? Loren. He is not, nor we have not heard from him.· And ceremoniously let us prepare Some welcome for the mistress of the house. Enter LAUNCELOT. Laun. Sola, sola! wo, ha, ho! sola, sola! Loren. Who calls? Laun. Sola !· did you see Master Lorenzo and Mistress Lorenzo?-sola, sola! Loren. Leave hollaing, man: here. Laun. Sola! - Where? where? Loren. Here. Laun. Tell him there's a post come from my master, with his horn full of good news: my master will be here ere morning. [Exit. Loren. Sweet soul, let's in, and there expect their coming. Within the house, your mistress is at hand; And bring your music forth into the air.- [Exit STEPHANO. Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 8 Here we have a clear instance of the first person plural, in the imperative. The Poet has many such. So in Hamlet, i. 1: “Well, sit we down, and let us hear Bernardo speak of this." And again: "Break we our watch up." 9 The postman used to carry a horn, and blow it to give notice of his coming, on approaching a place where he had something to deliver. Launcelot has just been imitating the notes of the horn in his exclamations, Sola, &c. - Expect, in the next line, is wait for or await. The Poet has it repeatedly in that sense. And so in Hebrews, x. 13: “From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool." Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night Sit, Jessica. Look, how the floor of Heaven Is thick inlaid with patines 10 of bright gold: There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins: Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn! Jess. I'm never merry when I hear sweet music. [Music. 1o A small plate, used in the administration of the Eucharist: it was commonly of gold, or silver-gilt. 11 Continually sounding an accompaniment.— Of course everybody has heard of "the music of the spheres,”-an ancient mystery which taught that the heavenly bodies in their revolutions sing together in a concert so loud, various, and sweet, as to exceed all proportion to the human ear. And the greatest souls, from Plato to Wordsworth, have been lifted above themselves, with the idea that the universe was knit together by a principle of which musical harmony is the aptest and clearest expression. Milton touches it with surpassing sweetness in the morning hymn of Adam and Eve, Paradise Lost, v. 177: "And ye five other wandering fires, that move in mystic dance not without song, resound His praise," &c. See, also, Milton's Arcades, and Coleridge's Remorse, Act iii, scene 1, and Wordsworth's great poem On the Power of Sound, stanza xii. 12 So in Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 38: “Touching musical harmony, such is the force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have thereby been induced to think that the soul itself by nature is or hath in it harmony Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, Fetching mad bounds, bellowing, and neighing loud, If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet Let no such man be trusted.14 Mark the music. Enter PORTIA and NERISSA at a distance. Portia. That light we see is burning in my hall. 18 Erebus was the darkest and gloomiest region of Hades. ་་ 14 Upon the general subject of this splendid strain touching music and musical harmony, it seems but just to quote a passage hardly inferior from Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici; Part ii. Sect. 9: 'There is a music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain 'the music of the spheres': for those well-ordered motions and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church-music. For myself, not only from my obedience but my particular genius I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and tavern music which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of Neris. When the Moon shone we did not see the candie. Portia. So doth the greater glory dim the less: A substitute shines brightly as a king, Until a king be by; and then his state Empties itself, as doth an inland brook, Neris. It is your music, madam, of the house. 15 Neris. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam. Portia. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark, When neither is attended; and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren.16 the first Composer. There is something in it of divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of God, — such a melody to the ear as the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ear of God. I will not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony, but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto music." 15 Nothing is good unless it be regarded, heeded, or attended to. Hence the music sounds much better when there is nothing to distract or divert the attention. 16"The difference is in the hearer's mind, and not in the songs themselves; and the nightingale is reputed the first of songsters because she sings at the time when she can best be heard." We have a like thought in the Poet's 102d Sonnet : Our love was new, and then but in the Spring, And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. |