In the books of I and II Samuel the de Vere Bible annotator follows the life and career of David from start to last. This is perhaps not surprising given the enormous “anxiety of influence” that David manifests in Shakespeare. To Shakespeare, and throughout the Renaissance, David was the author and songwriter of the psalms and therefore ideal combination of homo politicus and artist – the royal poet who composed hymns to God.
Higher criticism of subsequent centuries would override the belief that David had written all the psalms, but in Shakespeare’s religious culture, it would have been an accepted fact.
A Secret Chord in Shakespeare
David not only composed lyrics and music devoted to the greater glory of God, passed down as the Psalms in the holy Bible, but also danced before the Lord (II Sam. 6:14).
It is this renaissance image of David as the king of arts, rooted in the books of Samuel, to which Andre Gide appeals when he describes the Shake-Speare Sonnets as the “Davidic hymns of modern man.” The legacy of David is deposited in several ways throughout the plays and poems, just as the sonnets themselves imitate the psalms.
Episodes from the books of Samuel have a widely distributed influence throughout the Shakespeare plays and poems, appearing in as many as 23 plays. These Bible references allude to the divine election of David at I Samuel 16.7 (“The lord looks not on the stature or exterior of a person, but on the inward heart”) to the motif of self-reflexive punishment at I Kings 2.32-34 (“the blood of the sinner falls upon his own head”).
In between lie music as a medicine at I Sam. 16.23, “familiar spirits” from “underground” at I Sam. 28.7-8, the lord’s anointed monarch at I Sam 10.1/16.13, and the sanctity of the Lord’s anointed at I Sam. 24.11 — all of them landmarks in Shakespeare’s pattern of Biblical reference (Shakespeare Diagnostics).
Each of these moments is recalled multiple times by Shakespeare in different situations and in different ways. All of them are underlined in the de Vere Geneva Bible.
Musical Healing in I Samuel 16.23 and Shakespeare
Here is I Sam. 16.23 from the de Vere Geneva Bible with faded original underlining of three key action parts of the verse:
“When the evil spirit of God” came upon Saul, “David toke an harpe” and played until the “evil spirit departed from him.”
This verse is one of thirty “Shakespeare Diagnostics” found in the plays and poems.
In fact, the motif of healing music, as has long been acknowledged, belongs to the deep structure of Shakespeare’s canonical works. The plays frequently include stage directions or dialogue that require musical accompaniment, and often this music has a distinctly therapeutic significance for the scenes or the characters; for example, in the musical epiphanies of Winter’s Tale in Act 5, Scene 3 or Pericles 5.1.
In at least six plays, characters make definite reference to the idea of musical healing,and in at least one case Shakespeare reflects empirical knowledge of the distinctive wording of this passage.
Both Richmond Noble (1935) and Peter Milward (1987), have found the influence of this verse, underlined in the de Vere Geneva Bible, in two plays:
As when in Richard II the declining Richard confuses the value of musical healing, instructing his musicians to stop playing:
This music mads me; let it sound no more. / For though it have holp madmen to their wits/ In me it seems will make wise men mad (Richard II 5.5.60-62).
In Merchant of Venice, as Carter (1905) proposed, Lorenzo discourses to Jessica on the healing powers of music and the dangers of a man who is not moved by music:
…naught so stockish, hard and full of rage/ The man that hath no music in himself,/ But music for the time doth change his nature. / Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds/ Is fit for treasons, strategems and spoils… (Merchant 5.1.82-85)
Carter also saw that in Taming of the Shrew , when Lucentio praises the power of music to heal, he echoes the term refreshed which is used in the Geneva translation influence of the underlined verse. Lucentio is berating his rival for the love of Bianca, his music student:
Prosperous Ass, that never read so far / To know the cause why music was ordained! / Was it not to refresh[1] the mind of man After his studies or his usual pain. (3.1.9-12)
In 1 Henry IV, the dying king declares:
Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends, / Unless some dull and favourable hand / Will whisper music to my weary spirit ( 4.5.1-4)
To which the Earl of Warwick ambiguously replies: “Call for the music in the other room.”
Or in Tempest, where Prospero solicits accompaniment for his masque-within-the-play, he also remembers the curative properties of music:
A solemn air, and the best comforter / To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains/ Now useless, boiled within thy skull (5.1.57-59).
In Merchant of Venice this scriptural concept of music as therapy re-echoes in association with traditions of Orpheus employing music to tame the savage beast:
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, / Or any air of music touch their ears, / You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, / Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze, / By the sweet power of music (Merchant 5.1.75-79)
Finally, we might recall the wise words of in Measure for Measure:
Music hath such a power to make bad good (4.1.14)
In this blog we have seen that I Samuel 16.23, a verse underlined deliberately in three places in the Edward de Vere copy of Geneva Bible, is echoed numerous times, sometimes more and sometimes less directly, many times in Shakespeare and that the theme of healing music is expressed as a foundational concept in several other ways in the Shakespeare plays.
In a future blog entry, we’ll consider “David’s Larger Legacy” in Shakespeare.
[1] As Carter (238) notes, the verb “refresh” is carried over from G’s “refreshed.”
May 5, 2022 at 3:32 pm
This is brilliant! It’s consistent with the observation that actual music or technical musical terminology is found in every play. And that every major composer since Oxford’s day has been inspired to compose music based on Shakespeare’s works. In addition, it’s consistent with Oxford’s strong preference for the musical version of the psalms, which was an Elizabethan “hymnal.” Poetry is meant to be set to music, just as Oxford’s poems in the Paradise of Daintie Devises were all song lyrics.
“Music therapy” also makes me think of the brilliant documentary “Alive Inside,” showing that individuals with dementia can “come to life” when they are listening to music.
May 5, 2022 at 10:15 pm
Thank you, Richard. I especially appreciate your point about the way that Shakespeare has always inspired composers.
Personally I think that the great symphonic composers of the 18th century come closest to the range of expression that Shakespeare has in the plays, which is to say that they have nuance and design, the sense of proportion and timing, that are also in the great symphonies. Different media but produced with similar sense of complex design.
Its so cool to have the tools to finally being to tell this story, including these chapters.