Touches of sweet harmony

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The scene is a manor house in Italy, and a young married couple, utterly in love, are out on the porch, looking up at the night sky. Their names are Lorenzo and Jessica, and they’ve had a little adventure, that’s for sure. She has left her father’s house and run off with Lorenzo to be married. Her father is a shrewdly intelligent, sly, and capable man, a money-lender named Shylock. He makes his living by charging interest on loans, especially to young Christian men enjoying life beyond their means — prodigals, we may say. That career isn’t entirely by choice: since he’s a Jewish man in Venice, many other means of living are shut to him.

In any case, Jessica has eloped with Lorenzo, a well-spoken young man who doesn’t have any wealth, and taken some of her father’s money with her, and she has become a Christian. By the way, her name is the feminine form of Yitzhak (Isaac). Shakespeare himself coined it! It’s fitting, too. For “Yitzhak” is built from the verb meaning to laugh: remember that when Abraham’s elderly wife Sarah was told that she was going to bear a son to the old codger, she laughed, because she could hardly imagine herself and Abraham doing the necessary prerequisite for it. So Lorenzo and Jessica look up at the sky, and they muse, one after the other, about romantic nights in the old stories, and other lovers — though those others come to a tragic end. And then they start teasing each other merrily.

Our Word of the Week, music, comes into play, because their lovely pas-de-deux is interrupted by good news: the lady of the house, Portia, is nearby and will be arriving soon, and things in Venice have gone very well, though Lorenzo and Jessica don’t know the details. We do know them: the Merchant of Venice, Antonio, is saved from the bond that Shylock was using to bring about his death, by the “pound of flesh” he intended to cut from Antonio’s heart. Bassanio, Antonio’s friend and Portia’s new husband, has played a noble and generous and by no means vindictive part. Half of Shylock’s wealth, at his death, will go to Jessica and Lorenzo; meanwhile Shylock may use it as he pleases. Antonio will put the other half to use, in his mercantile endeavors, not for himself but for the young couple. Shylock himself will be saved; but here is not the place to get into the theology of it. So Lorenzo tells the messenger to go inside and let music begin to play, to welcome Portia in a handsome and ceremonious way.

Shakespeare loved music, and most of the time when we hear it in his plays, it is either rollicking and merry, or, more often, sweet, solemn, mysterious, healing. Yes, healing: the good doctor has music played to help the old King Lear, his mind unsettled and his body frail, return to his senses. The conscience-ridden Brutus has his servant boy play music on that last night of his life, when he sees the ghost of Caesar. In the Tempest, Prospero has his attendant spirits play music all the time, to convey the truth in a mysterious way, to bring souls into order, and even to heal the spirit of the King of Naples, a man who had done him egregious wrong, and who stands before him, entranced. But here in The Merchant of Venice the music itself is our theme, in a famous passage that serves as our Poem of the Week. That’s because Lorenzo relates the music that man can make to the music of the universe, the music of the spheres — the music of angels praising God. And Jessica is in tune with him when she says, “I am never merry when I hear sweet music.” Nowadays, by what I’ve seen of productions of this play, that line is misread pretty badly. She isn’t saying that she doesn’t like the music. She isn’t saying that she’s uncomfortable. She loves the music, and she is perfectly comfortable. She is not merry: as you would not be if you can imagine at this moment, in those surroundings, hearing the air “Clair de Lune,” or Puccini’s beloved air “O mio babbino caro,” or that fine song in another play about young love, “Try to Remember.” They bring a joy that is close to tears.

“Mark the music,” says Lorenzo. If you meet someone who has no music in himself, who is not “moved with concord of sweet sounds,” know that such a man is not to be trusted. There’s something to that. He doesn’t say that everyone who loves music is a saint. But to have music in your soul means that you do have a soul, and that it does have something good and beautiful in it. And music, good music, sweet music that in its harmony echoes the harmony of heaven itself, can crack open that door, on the far side of which lies glory.

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LORENZO
Sweet soul, let's in, and there expect their coming.
And yet no matter; why should we go in?
My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you,
Within the house, your mistress is at hand,
And bring your music forth into the air.
                [Exit MESSENGER]
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica.  Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patens 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;
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
     [Enter MUSICIANS]
Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn!
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear
And draw her home with music.
     Play music
JESSICA
I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
LORENZO
The reason is, your spirits are attentive.
For do but note a wild and wanton herd
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood:
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.  Therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;
Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.  Mark the music.