Introduction

The encompassing presence of music during the Early Modern period – in cultural and religious institutions, in state and court routines, in popular entertainments and everyday activities – is well documented.1 We have long been made aware that

[t]he place of music in the Elizabethan scheme of things [was] ... not simply as a diversion but as an act of faith, and thing no less essential to the overall pattern than the concepts of degree, body politic, the elements and humours, and the like. (J. M. Nosworthy 1958: 60, cited in Dunn 1969: 391)

Yet polemics around the topic of music also flourished in relation to its ambivalent moral influence, particularly in respect to its religious use. While music was the necessary connection to the divine, it was also credited with negative moral effects leading to dissolution and sin.2 As Thomas Wright (1604: 172) noted, music “inciteth to devotion and intyceth to dissolution”. Shakespeare, as we shall see, used these contrary strains of music as fertile dramatic tools in complex characterization and plot development. In The Merchant of Venice, a highly ambivalent play, music resounds on several levels and takes on many forms: there is vocal music, like Bassanio’s guidance song, and instrumental music emerging from the “flourish of cornetts” (MV 2.1.47) accompanying the entry and exit of princes (Morocco and Aragon) or that played by the musicians for the Venetian masque and, later on, to suggest the final reconciliation. But also, and foremost, there is the music of Shakespeare’s “lines, / Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit” (Jonson 1623). Music, at last, is addressed as a topic: in Lorenzo’s discourse, and in Shylock’s seclusion from it.

The wealth of literary criticism devoted to music in The Merchant of Venice has tended to be mostly concerned with discourses of Pythagorean origin on the music of the spheres and Orphean associations,3 only occasionally tackling music’s and musicality’s role in the shaping of individual and collective memory processes in the theatre. In this paper, I would thus like to elaborate on the use of music as a mnemonic tool in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare, I would like to argue, was particularly aware that musicality – whether that of words or that of music per se – could both aid in the process of memorization (mnesis) and support access to stored memories (anamnesis), all of which, in turn, could give rise to a variety of feelings and emotions. The different forms and references to music embedded in the play appeal to and structure the characters’ and audience’s memories alike. As such, The Merchant of Venice gives us a synoptic reflection of the various, and sometimes contradictory, Early Modern discourses on music. The play constitutes in itself a sort of dramatized archive in respect to these discourses and showcases the variety of mnemonic effects of musicality upon the auditors, allowing diverging forms of memory and commemoration to co-exist. In what follows, I will first focus on musical patterns of words in The Merchant. Indeed music was conceived of as forming a continuum with or participating in rhetoric, which itself lay at the basis of the actor’s art of memorizing, and was meant to work in turn on the audience’s memory.4 I will then examine how the ambivalent reception of music in the Early Modern period, when it was viewed either as “poison” or as universal harmony, is mirrored in the play, and how each of these approaches structures the memory in different ways. In my last part, I will dwell on the articulation between vocal and instrumental music and memory, focusing more particularly on the appeal to instantaneous memory in Shakespeare’s text and on comparing the stage directions and suggestions of the play’s text with some recent stagings to see what they make of this central connection.

1. Shaping Memory through the Musicality of Words

The close association of music and rhetoric was quite frequently addressed in the sixteenth century.5 George Puttenham, for instance, considers “verses or rime [to] be a kind of Musicall vt∣terance, by reason of a certaine congruitie in sounds pleasing the eare” (1589: 53) and notes the analogy between the sounds of music and the sounds of words: “our speech is made mellodious or harmonicall, not onely by strayned tunes, as those of Musick, but also by choise of smoothe words: and thus, or thus, marshalling them in their comeliest construction and order” (1589:164).6 Thomas Wilson compares “the tongue” to a “swete soundynge Lute” (1553: 118), alluding, in this way, to the “phonaesthetic aspect” of an orator’s rhetoric (Plett 20: 388). Henry Peacham, in his Garden of Eloquence (1593: Dedication) viewed “([…] apt speech given by nature, and guided by Art) […] as “sweet & musicall harmonie”. He suggested associations of rhetorical figures (mostly figures of repetition) to musical ornaments:7 epizeuxis8 to “quaver in Musicke”, (1593: 48) traductio9 to “pleasant repetitions and divisions in Musicke”, (1593: 49) symploce a “figure that may serve to any affection, and is a singular ornament, pleasant to the eare, which of some is called the Rhetoricall circle, and of others the Musicall repetition” (Peacham, 1593: 44). These associations are further emphasized by Henry Peacham the Younger, who equates musical to rhetorical figures: “What is a Reuert but her Antistrophe? her reports, but sweete Anaphora's? her counterchange of points, Antimetabole's?10 her passionate Aires but Prosopopoe's?” (1622: 103).

Long before him, Quintilian had already laid emphasis on the kindred functions of rhetoric and music – and their ‘instrumental’ role in conveying ideas and emotions to the audience: “different emotions are roused even by the various musical instruments”, (1920: 1.10.26) he writes, also noting that “eloquence does vary both tone and rhythm, expressing sublime thoughts with elevation, pleasing thoughts with sweetness, and ordinary with gentle utterance, and in every expression of its art is in sympathy with the emotions of which it is the mouthpiece”. (Quintilian 1920: 1.10.25)

But before words and music reached the auditors’ ears and impressed their imaginations and memories, however, the art of memory was studied within the framework of rhetoric as a means to enable the orator to deliver discourses from memory. The basic principles of mnemotechnics were related to the creation of an imprint of places and images in the memory, as indicated by Quintillian in his Institutio Oratoria (1920: 11.6). The orator would follow the places of “his memory building, whilst making his speech, drawing from the memorized places the images he had placed on them” (Yates 1966: 3), thus ensuring the foreseen order of delivery of his speech.11 The Early Modern controversy between Giordano Bruno’s disciple Alexander Dicson and William Perkins in 1590 opposed memorizing ad res (by concepts) to memorizing ad verbum (by words). Dicson’s memory system was based on loci and images, considered idolatrous by Perkins, who defended a system based only on language and sound (Wilder 2010: 27). We can extend the latter memorizing technique, to various types of sounds, verbal and nonverbal, music included. In Shakespeare’s time, the aural memory of audiences was also solicited to retain sermons delivered in the Protestant Church of England, with its emphasis on the word and on the Bible, and its elimination of Catholic images. As testified by the use of italics in Early Modern edited sermons, certain words that bore special significance in relation to the lesson that was being taught were repeated and received special emphasis when spoken, functioning as cues or pointers to be remembered.

In perfect application of the Renaissance theory of the commonalities between music and rhetoric and their similar effects upon the human faculties, aural strategies are used throughout The Merchant of Venice to draw the audience’s attention and shape its memory: echoes, repetitions, contrasts, symmetry, rhythm, but also similar sounding words, puns,12 aurally bring out the major themes of the play for those attending the performance. Puns, in particular, due to their polysemy, aid in memorization and appear close to the several interpretative possibilities of music. Peacham counts among the figures of separation: "Paranomasia [is a figure] which declineth into a contrarie by a likelihood of letters, either added, changed, or taken away” indicating its use: “to allude” (1593: 56).13 For instance, Antonio’s lines “My purse, my person, my extremest means, / Lie all unlocked to your occasions’’ (MV 1.1.138-139) sonorously imply,14 through an aural similarity between “purse” and “person”, a double meaning: on the one hand and in the foreground, Antonio shows generosity and his own person’s complete devotion to his friend Bassanio; on the other hand, in the background, an implicit allusion may be perceived to the more worrying proximity between person and purse that is developed as a pattern throughout the play. Thus Antonio’s person may also be “L[ying] all unlocked” to Shylock’s gruesome “bond” to take “an equal pound of [your] fair flesh” (MV 1.3.147-148) from where it “pleaseth him” in exchange for the purse, or the three thousand ducats loan. This close link between “person” and “purse” also resonates in Portia’s connection between herself and her possessions (“Myself and what is mine to you and yours / Is now converted” (MV 3.2.166-167)), in the continuum she establishes between her “fair mansion” and her “servants”, and even in Shylock’s apparent confusion between his “ducats” and his “daughter” (MV 2.8.15), after Jessica has eloped with Lorenzo, taking her father’s “gold and jewels” (MV 2.4.31) with her. While the alliteration in d (“daughter” / “ducats”) sonorously underscores the red thread of the proximity between “person” and “purse”, Shylock’s ducats are complemented by an attribute, the ducats being seemingly converted to “Christian ducats”. This signals their change of owners, as they now belong to Lorenzo through his marriage with Jessica, and at the same time, it foretells Shylock’s own conversion as a Christian at the end of the play, his wealth divided between the Christians, Antonio and the Venetian state.

Another striking aural pattern in the play is the one provided by the repetition of “Kind” and “kindness”, which are used in the double sense of “kind” and “of a kind” and sonorously prepare for Hamlet’s later “More than kin, / And less than kind” (Shakespeare 2008: 1.2.65). Through a pun on the word “kind(ness)” in Shylock’s line “This is kind I offer” (MV 1.3.138) read as “This is (of a) kind I offer”,15 Shylock announces his “kinship”. This is interpreted by Bassanio as “This were kindness” (MV 1.3.139). But Shylock’s “This kindness will I show” (MV 1.3.140, my emphasis) highlights further the similarity between Christians and Jews, when read with the connotation of “more than of a kind, yet less than kind”. This closeness is then spelled out when Shylock announces the forfeit “with an equal pound / Of your fair flesh to be cut out” (MV 1.3.146-147), while reminding us of the Christians’ “hard dealings [that] teaches them suspect / The thoughts of others” (MV 1.3.158-159). Antonio’s “Hie thee, gentle Jew. / The Hebrew will turn Christian; he grows kind’’ (1.3.177.78) underscores the similarity of the “kind” and appears to resonate in Shylock’s later forced conversion.

Shylock’s ‘‘catch him once upon the hip’’ (1.3.44) is echoed in Graziano’s much later ‘Now, infidel, I have you on the hip’’ (4.1.331) and acts as an aural pointer for the audience’s memory, materializing through sound motifs resounding similarity, within the overtly stated difference of the opposed parties of Christians and Jews.

Shylock, however, in much of the play, shows control over aural patterns and uses them in ways that bind his interlocutors. The repetition of words and sentences, in Shylock’s lines suggests almost musical motifs and endows, for instance, his exchange with Bassanio with a measured pace. These resonances translate Shylock’s reveling in his long-awaited advantage over Antonio – by setting his own rhythm, through his unnerving repetitions of Bassanio’s words:

SHYLOCK
Three thousand ducats. Well.
BASSANIO
Ay, sir, for three months.
SHYLOCK
For three months. Well.
BASSANIO
For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall be bound.
SHYLOCK
Antonio shall become bound. Well.
BASSANIO
May you stead me? Will you pleasure me? Shall I know your answer?
SHYLOCK
Three thousand ducats for three months and Antonio bound. (MV 1.3.1-10)

The brief templates “three-thousand ducats”, “For three months”, and “Antonio shall be bound”, are then compounded into a more complex one, “Three thousand ducats for three months and Antonio bound”, that bundles up the first three motifs into another repetition. Sonorous figures of speech implying repetition (anaphora, epistrophe, repetitio) shape a highly musical exchange, reminding the audience of a fuga16 or a canon17, a sort of two voice musical counterpoint18, spoken alternately, in an almost perfect mimesis (imitation) tainted however by a perceptible opposition.

Shylock also has an unnerving habit of rewinding the conversation to its starting point, thus affirming his control over it, and the others’ lack of achievement in obtaining progress.

SHYLOCK [...] I think I may take his bond.
BASSANIO Be assured you may.
SHYLOCK I will be assured I may, and that I may be assured, I will bethink me. (MV 1.3.26–29)

As usual, repeating his interlocutor’s words, “assured”, “may”, Shylock rebuilds them in a chiasmatic structure (or an antimetabole) that finally implies that he is in fact not “assured”. This structure can remind us of the “counterchange of points”, suggested by Peacham.

In scene 3.3, Shylock’s “I’ll have my bond” is omnipresent in multiple repetitions, both as epistrophe and anaphora, overemphasizing the threat and his single-minded goal, but, at the same time, breathing out his anxiety that his vengeance may elude him:

SHYLOCK
I’ll have my bond. Speak not against my bond.
I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond.
Thou called’st me dog before thou hadst a cause.
But since I am a dog, beware my fangs.
The Duke shall grant me justice. I do wonder,
Thou naughty jailer, that thou art so fond
To come abroad with him at his request.
[…]
SHYLOCK
I’ll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak.
I’ll have my bond; and therefore speak no more.
I’ll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool
To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield
To Christian intercessors. Follow not.
I’ll have no speaking; I will have my bond. (MV 3.3.4-17, my emphases)

As Shylock repeats with relish over and over again “I’ll have my bond”, this utterance also serves as the cue for Solanio to throw in another insult at Shylock: “It is the most impenetrable cur / That ever kept with men” (MV 3.3.4 -19). The six times repeated cue “my bond” will probably engender Solanio’s response “impenetrable cur” to be reiterated during Shylock’s discourse, amounting to the sonorous impression of a musical counterpoint.

It is interesting to compare the slow pace set by Shylock’s repetitions in the lines he shares with Bassanio in respect to the latter’s request of a loan with his apprehension that emerges from his lines in court: rendered sonorous through his persistent six-fold repetition of “I’ll have my bond”. The “bond” resonates both as an attempt to social linking and as the reminder of the threat of a “barbarous” outcome “of a kind” – within the Christian/Jewish ‘kinship’.

Shylock’s mistreatment through abusive language stands out in his long complaint and is repeated in Antonio’s ‘commitment’ to future abuse: “spit”, “spurn”, “dog”, resound as a repetitive pattern, underscoring the proximity between rhetorical and musical motifs.

SHYLOCK
you call me misbeliever, cut-throat, dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
[…]
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur (MV 1.3.108-109, 115),
ANTONIO
I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too (MV 1.3.126-127, my emphases)

These abuses are echoed throughout the play by other characters such as Solanio, Salarino and Graziano. Solanio’s “impenetrable cur” or “dog Jew” and Graziano’s “inexecrable dog” constantly remind Shylock of the discrimination and hate he was the object of the few examples mentioned above reveal that musical strategies are embedded in the language of The Merchant of Venice – a resonant reflection of the discourses on the proximity of music and rhetoric in Shakespeare’s time. The near homophones (“purse”/“person), puns (“kind”/“kindness”), and repetitions (“I’ll have you on the hip”, “I’ll have my bond”) participate in the facilitated imprint of the various themes of the play on the audience’s memory. The sustained use of invectives and threats “cut-throat, dog”, “cur”, “spit”, “spurn”, frequently echoed, also support memorization. An extraordinary diversity of rhythm in the play contributes to the increased retentiveness of somewhat controversial discourses. For instance, the voluntarily slow pace imposed by Shylock in his exchange with Bassanio over the loan contrasts with Shylock’s vitality, passion, and verve in his discourse in defense of the Jews: studded with rhetorical figures of repetition (anaphora, epiphora, extended use of isocolon that sustains the intense rhythm through similar parallel structures, successive rhetorical questions (pysma) and anthypophora). Shylock’s “bond” pattern, that he desperately clings to, is a constant reminder, in the form of a burden, of his vengeful hope that, at least, before the law, all Venetian citizens are equal.

2. Conflicted Musical Discourses and Memories

The ambivalence of Shylock’s “bond”, which is signalled through aural patternings to the audience, is also at work in attitudes towards music in the play.

Indeed the play reflects the ambivalent moral and religious reception of music in Early Modern culture, actually retracing and memorializing conflicting contemporary discourses on music. Shylock’s request to his daughter Jessica to close the doors of his house so as not to let in the “sound of shallow fopp’ry” enter his “sober house” (MV 2.5.35-6) contrasts with the long-awaited and pleasurable preparations for the Venetian masque of the various characters who are about to “prepare […] for this masque tonight?” (MV 2.4.21) with “Disguise” (MV 2.4.2) and “torchbearers” (MV 2.4.5).19

Shylock’s aversion towards the “shallow fopp’ry” of the music of the carnival points to the re-awakening of the fear of the influence of a certain type of music on his psyche, leading towards a complete seclusion from it.

[…] when you hear the drum
And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife,
Clamber not you up to the casements then,
Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces; (MV 2.5.29-33)

The play thus stages a very controversial issue of the time, when music was considered by the Puritans as a poison for the soul, beguiling and corrupting it. The anti-theatricalist Stephen Gosson famously suggested that the theatre environment infected the audience’s ears and minds: “There set they [dramatists] abroche straunge consortes of melody, to tickle the eare;”, he wrote, also specifying that: “by the priuie entries of the eare slip downe into the hart, & with gunshotte of affection gaule the minde, where reason and vertue shoulde rule the roste” (1579: 14, 15). Puritans rejected instrumental (most particularly the organ) and even vocal polyphonic music – which they deemed too enticing – within the church as well:

modest and chaste harmonies are to be admitted, by removing as farre as may be all soft effeminate musicke from our strong and valiant cogitation, which using a dishonest art of warbling the voyce, doe leade to a delicate and slothfull kinde of life. Therefore Chromaticall harmonies are to be left to impudent malapartnesse in wine, to whorish musicke crowned with flowers, (Prynne 1633: 275)

Thomas Cartwright objected to antiphonal singing in church: “They tosse the Psalmes in most Places like Tennice Balles”, foreseeing restrictions on the number of sung psalms and recommending “plaine tune[s]” as the musical line (quoted in Hollander, 1961: 247).20

It may well be that Shylock embodies such a stance. Indeed, the issue of Shylock’s Jewishness, at the heart of this interpretation, is quite debated in critical literature, as Elizabethan England harboured only an extremely low number of Jews (a couple of hundred).21 The play could then metaphorically represent – not an enmity between Christians and Jews – but the bloody division within Christendom between Catholics and radical Protestants. Several critics have argued that Shylock’s Jewishness is more emblematic than real (Tretiak 1929, cited in Smith 2013: 219), suggesting the “alien” as standing in for Huguenots seeking refuge from religious wars in Europe. This association between Jews and Protestants appears to have been quite frequent. It is even put forward by the Duke de Guise in Marlowe’s (1968: 612) Massacre at Paris when he explains that “There are a hundred Huguenots and more / Which in the woods do hold their synagogue”. Many Protestants preferred to refer to their place of worship using the old testament term of the “Temple”, to better distinguish their devotional practices from those of the Catholic church. Shylock’s “sober house” secluded from the “shallow fopp’ry” of the carnival, his will “not [to] eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you” (MV 1.3.36-37) could suggest this separateness of Protestant seekers of “purity” and biblical primitivism, supporting the hypothesis of the depiction of the Puritan through Shylock.

While Gosson, in his antitheatricalist puritanical stance, mentions the Merchant of Venice in his Schoole of Abuse, that stages “the Jew […] [as] representing greediness of worldly chusers and the bloodie Mindes of usurers”, Shylock reciprocally appears to cite Gosson, as hereunder, when asking Jessica to “stop my house’s ears” and to “let not the sound of shallow fopp’ry enter / My sober house” (MV 2.5.35-36). According to Gosson,

And if you perceiue your selues in any danger at your owne doores, either allured by curtesie in the day, or assaulted with Musicks in the night; Close vp your eyes, stoppe your eares, tye vp your tongues; when they speake, aunsweare not; when they hallowe, stoope not; when they sighe, laugh at them; when they sue, scorne them; Shunne their company, neuer be seene where they resort; so shall you neither set them proppes, when they seeke to clime; nor holde them the stirrop, when they profer to mount. (Gosson 1579, my emphases)

Shylock proffers very similar advice to his daughter Jessica on how to eschew the enticement of music:

What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica:
Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum
And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife,
Clamber not you up to the casements then,
Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces;
But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements:
Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter
My sober house. (MV 2.5.28-36, my emphases)

This similarity of words and expressions appears to support the idea of Shakespeare’s awareness to satirical writing against the theatre and his taking sides in the antitheatricalist debate. With the masque resembling and even sometimes being integrated to a theatre play, the sound of the “drum / And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife” emanating from the “Christian fools with varnished faces” can be interpreted as, perhaps, Shakespeare’s vivid parody of the Puritan antitheatricalist views that considered that the music of the playhouses and the theatrical performances themselves could lure the audience into sin, like a “harsh [a] chime” of Hell (Pericles) (Shakespeare 1998: 1.1.86).

Shylock disdainfully reiterates his opinion on music during the trial, emphasizing its (gross) materiality and suggesting a certain subjectivity “mood” in respect to the reception of music:22

Some men there are love not a gaping pig,
Some that are mad if they behold a cat,
And others when the bagpipe sings i’th’ nose
Cannot contain their urine; for affection,
Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood
Of what it likes or loathes. (4.1.46–51) (my emphases)

The choice of the bagpipe appears deliberate, as Early Modern critics considered the sound issued from the bagpipe as “loud, degraded music” in opposition to the harmony of the “music of the spheres” (Ortiz 2011: 155). Shylock thus remains bound to the physical aspect of music, rejecting any incorporeality that may elevate the mind towards the ‘harmonious spheres’. This supports perhaps Shylock’s Puritan stance as he who remains literally locked in his narrow-minded perception of music, grasping only its materiality – deemed as an offensive sound that aggresses the ear, generates an unbalance in the bodily humors as well as in the harmony between body and mind, and that would even illustrate a divide “from [oneself] and [one’s] fair judgement” (Hamlet 4.5.81) and lure into sin. While the Puritan view of music, feared for its enticement to ‘dissolution’ also attests of its lack of purpose and intelligibility, more particularly in the case of polyphonic music, this may be alternately interpreted as the apprehension before the subjective perceptivity of music as opposed to the clear and unique reading of the Word of God. Shakespeare thus stages Shylock’s dislike of the ‘Christian’ music of the “masque” as the illustration of a religious and social disharmony. An enduring disharmony, as it is finally not ‘retuned’ even by Shylock’s conversion to a Christian.

While Shylock’s dislike of music is made obvious in the play, it is interesting to note that another Jewish moneylender’s name in the play, that of Tubal, can be associated with the origins of music. I believe that Shakespeare indeed covertly reflects on the ancient Biblical and Greek (alternately viewed as competing or complementary) mythologies about the roots of music by citing both the names of Tubal and Pythagoras in the Merchant. When Shakespeare literally mentions Pythagoras, it is rather in relation to his theory on the transmigration of the soul (or metempsychosis) (Ovid 2000: 15): “Thou almost makest me waver in my faith / To hold opinion with Pythagoras” (MV 4.1.130-131), says Graziano in the court scene, accusing Shylock whose “currish spirit” has been infused by that of a dead, murderous “wolf” who now governs his body and person (MV 4.1.132-33). However, the reference to “Pythagoras” may well have appealed to the memory of the more knowledgeable part of Shakespeare’s audience, who would have recalled his association to the origins of music thought of in terms of mathematical ratio.23 Yet, in Shakespeare’s time, others attributed the invention of music to the biblical character of Jubal (Genesis 4:21), often referred to as “Tubal”, both names being derived from the same Hebrew root, the verb יבל (yabal), which means “to flow forth”, or “to carry forth” or “to conduct”. John Merbecke, for instance, in his entry on “Musicke” in his Booke of Notes and Common Places glosses Genesis and explains that ‘‘Tubal, the sonne of Lamech by his wife Ada, inuented the science of Musick, by the stroke and noise of hammers of his brother Tubalkain which was a Smith” (1581: 754). Much earlier, Ranulphi Higden had allowed for a shared claim to the invention of music between Tubal and Pythagoras:

Though men rede that Tubal of caines lygnage was fynder of consonancye and of music bifore Noes flode Netheles me redeth among the Grekes that Pyctagoras founde the craft of musik by sowne of hamers and by stretchyng of cordes and of strenges. (1831-1895: 203)

By weaving both Pythagoras’ name and Tubal/Jubal’s names into his play, Shakespeare turns it into an archive that implicitly memorializes these complementary mythologies. In the Bible, Tubal also refers to another character, one of Japhet’s sons (and Noah’s grandsons). Whereas the name “Jubal” relates to the horn through which music flows, the variant “Tubal” means “earth flowing forth” or “the whole world-economy”.24 Whether or not Shakespeare was fully aware of these meanings, this is suggestive of the ways in which both music and money overlap in measure in the play: the economic bond that is to “conduct” the social contract and the action of the play is sealed by the song-like dialogue between Shylock and Bassanio, first, then Shylock and Antonio, as well as in the audience’s memory, as we have seen.

Yet ‘harmony regained’ can only be achieved through Portia’s resourceful interpretation of the law, leading to a happy conclusion to the “bond”, and by imposing conversion to the prominent Jew of the play, Shylock: “he presently become[s] a Christian” (MV 4.1.383). The final harmony is then suggested through a musical “bond” between the Christian characters – excluding the (converted) Jew. This bitter outcome shows Shylock, now a Christian, still excluded from the community of the Christians bonded within their musical social space.25 In retrospect then, we might also read his words “Let not the sound of shallow fopp’ry enter / My sober house” (MV 2.5.35-36) as a sonorous, perhaps traumatic, reminder of past injustices, past persecutions he underwent as a Jew, pointing to the space of social and religious exclusion. Either way, the economic/musical bond he proposes appears to be either too sad or all too strict and attuned to the Puritan spirit of plain music, calling, it seems, for other forms of measure and harmony.

Lorenzo, in particular, counters Shylock’s apprehensive perception of music with his reflections on the “sounds of music” (MV 5.1.55) and the “sweet harmony” (MV 5.1.57) and spells out the concord within an immortal soul: “Such harmony is in immortal soul” (MV 5.1.63). Lorenzo develops reflections that pick up on Pythagorean, Platonic and Augustinian associations of music with immortality.26 These concepts appeal to the general memory of the audience, and their knowledge derived from Early Modern humanist education, of ancient Greek and Roman philosophical theories.

The complex musical theory assimilating universal and musical harmony was presented in Aristotle’s Politics (Book 8, chapter 5) and Plato’s Republic,27 as being sourced in Pythagoras. This was later formalized and integrated in Christian thought by Saint Augustine (354–430) and then Boethius (480–524), whose ideas were still followed by many within the Church of England. Elizabethan musical theory rested on the concord of sounds representing universal and worldly harmony, following Boethius’ tripartite classification of music as musica mundana, humana and instrumentalis. The first is the “music of the spheres”, “the worlds Musicke …an Harmonie, caused by the motion of the Starres, and violence of the Spheares … for it must needs be that a sound be made of the very wheeling of the Orbes” (Ornithoparcus 1609: 1). But these are sounds not audible by humans. The music of the spheres relies on the concept elaborated by Pythagoras (600 BC) that the universe was constituted of spheres that, in their movement, emitted harmonized sounds. Or, as Castiglione (1900: 89), in The Courtier, put it later, ‘‘the world is made of musick, and the heavens in their moving make a melody’’. Pliny (1938: 2.228-9 in his Natural History refers to Pythagoras as the originator of the concept of an universal harmony based on mathematical relations:

But occasionally Pythagoras draws on the theory of music, and designates the distance between the earth and the moon as a whole tone, that between the moon and Mercury a semitone, between Mercury and Venus the same, between her and the sun a tone and a half, between the sun and Mars a tone (the same as the distance between the earth and the moon), between Mars and Jupiter half a tone, between Jupiter and Saturn half a tone, between Saturn and the zodiac a tone and a half: the seven tones thus producing the so-called diapason, i.e. a universal harmony; in this Saturn moves in the Dorian mode, Jupiter in the Phrygian, and similarly with the other planets.

Pliny (1938: 175) however also states that this elevated “sweet harmony” is out of reach of human ears, as “To us who live within it the world glides silently alike by day and night”. Musica humana pertains to the harmony within the human world, it represents “what unites the incorporeal nature of reason with the body [if not] a certain harmony and, as it were, a careful tuning of low and high pitches as though producing one consonance” (Boethius 1989: 10). This “harmonious blending of soul and body, reason and passion […] is analogous to the harmony of the cosmos” (Danson 2006: 190) and was accomplished through the four humours’ (body and soul) equilibrium. Musica instrumentalis, at last, refers only to the sound of material music emerging from instruments or from the human voice.

The topic of the planets emanating harmonious sounds in their cosmological movement is largely illustrated in Lorenzo’s speech that alludes to a universal higher immaterial harmony, however not perceptible by humans, “we cannot hear it” (MV 5.1.65), perhaps in a post-lapsarian perspective.

[…] 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 choiring 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. (5.1.58-65, my emphasis)

The “touches of sweet harmony” emanating from the “orb[s]” appear however to permeate the human body and soul, participating in their ‘human’ harmony – as illustrated by the concept of musica humana:

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. (MV 5.1.54-57)

Lorenzo’s reflections on the inaudible “music of the spheres” (musica mundana) are concluded with a relevant allusion to musica humana: “The man that hath no music in himself, / Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds” (MV 5.1.83-84); and then interrupted by the material perceptible sounds of the nearing musicians, “Enter Musicians”, “Music plays” (MV 5.1), thus enouncing and linking the concepts of the three music types devised by classical philosophers.

Lorenzo then delineates the transformative power of music, exemplifying its appeasing influence on a “wild herd” or on “unhandled colts”. This may be taken to allude to unbridled desires that could also be tamed by the influence of music.

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. (5.1. 71-79)

With an allusion to the myth of Orpheus whose music “drew to himself the trees, the souls of wild beasts, and the stones that followed him” (Ovid 2000: 11),28 Lorenzo underscores music’s capability for a “conversion” towards gentleness and tolerance: “the sweet power of music” (MV 5.1.79) is such that “naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage / But music for the time doth change his nature” (MV 5.1.81-2). This emphasis on music in Lorenzo’s speech is thus not only contrasted with Shylock’s formerly expressed mistrust of music, but also widens the perspective to the socio-political frame29 when hypothesizing that the lack of inner harmony (testified by his insensitiveness to music and to dance) is the rationale of authoritarian (here patriarchal) behaviour and religious sectarianism. Thus Lorenzo clearly spells out the traits of a “nature” unfeeling to music:

The man that hath no music in himself,
[…]
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night (MV 5.1.83, 85-86).

Henry Peacham, in The Complete Gentleman, agrees with Lorenzo that those who are “of such disproportioned spirits that they avoid [Music’s] company” “are by nature very ill-disposed and of such a brutish stupiditie that scarce any thing else that is good and sauoureth of vertue is to be found in them” (Peacham 1622: 97). This appears to allude primarily to Shylock’s more or less “voluntary” exclusion from the final attained harmony – envisaged as encompassing and leading to social concord – in which all the other main characters of the play participate. The “music of the spheres” that is discussed at the end of the play is undercut by this ambivalent harmony that clearly excludes Shylock, but perhaps also Jessica, leaving out former “infidels”.30 The fact that Jessica is earlier greeted by Graziano as “his [Lorenzo’s] infidel” (MV 3.2.216) and the “stranger” (MV 3.2.235) may also suggest her being left out of the final harmony that unites the Christians. Jessica’s line “I am never merry when I hear sweet music” (MV 5.1.69), uttered as the musicians play a hymn to the goddess Diana may be an appropriate response for one listening to solemn and elevating music. However, it can also be interpreted as a nostalgic reminiscence of her father Shylock’s words and a feeling of self-resentment as she remembers that she eloped, abandoning her father and her faith. Shakespeare is seen once again weaving together conflicting memories and emotions thanks to the characters’ ambivalent responses to music.

It is interesting to note, by the same token, that Lorenzo’s speech on the musical harmony of the spheres – sounds which are unheard by human ears – and his depiction of music’s influence on the human soul - recognizing the limited effects of music on a vile receptacle - conclude both in a singular and a rather flat manner. Lorenzo’s philosophical reflections on music also appear undercut by Portia’s more pragmatic comments on the sweetness of the music of her house by night. Portia stresses the importance of circumstances when listening to music, that enable her to strikingly compare a croaking crow to a lark and a nightingale to a cackling goose (MV 5.1.102-105). Musical and unmusical sounds are thus transformed, depending on the surroundings and the way they are “attended” to (MV 5.1.103).31

This more experiential approach to music may remind us of Bacon’s comment on the enhancement of the sense of hearing when isolated from vision:32

Sounds are meliorated by the intension of the sense, where the common sense is collected most to the particular sense of hearing, and the sight suspended: and therefore sounds are sweeter, as well as greater, in the night than in the day. (1753: 157)

The “intension” or intensification,33 of the sense of hearing may resonate with the Protestants’ tendency to reduce as much as possible visual stimuli in order to turn the sense of hearing into a more efficient entry gate,34 facilitating a straight access to aural memory. And, as severally suggested in the play, particular circumstances may enhance and facilitate the mnesis process.

While the lines of Lorenzo’s speech allude to a recalling of acquired knowledge – mythological, classical – that sometimes requires a longer quest within the mind, Portia’s practical approach perhaps offers a better model to think of the power of the stage in terms of mnesis and instant anamnesis processes.

3. Performing mnesis and anamnesis

The characters’, and more particularly Portia’s illustration of the uses of memory, when she tests music’s influence on Bassanio’s instant memory, mimics the implicit memorization techniques used by the audience to retain “melodic” lines from the theatre play. Music appears to be the bearer of a message, endowed with almost supernatural qualities, when Portia thinks fit to surround Bassanio with a particular type of vocal music meant to enlighten him. But one may wonder to what extent this music is really supernatural or if it is not, rather, subtly crafted by Portia in such a way that it may act efficiently upon the memory of her beloved. As Portia, it seems, plays both the role of a poet here, suggesting music through rhyming words, and the role of a stage director, willfully deciding on what musical technique she will use to spur the right emotion in Bassanio. Portia indeed relies on an evocative soundscape – music and words – to create an adequate psychic environment that might guide Bassanio to the leaden casket containing her “counterfeit” (miniature portrait). Several critics (Shakespeare 2008: 167) have noted the song’s allusive content, and the way the rhyme “bred/head/nourishèd” may resonate with the “[casket of] lead”, suggestively leading Bassanio to it. Instantaneous associations seem to be instinctively activated by the sonorous and suggestive rhymes in ed delivered on a melodious musical support that enhances the assimilation of the message. Also, the song’s warning against shallow ornaments could have brought to Bassanio’s mind an association with the deceptiveness of “outward shows” (MV 3.2.73) “engendered in the eyes” (MV 3.2.67). The lines of the song stand out with their particular rhythm, that of the tetrameter of the popular ballad form, starkly contrasting with the longer and more complex spoken lines of the characters in the play mostly written in iambic pentameter. The repeated “Ding, dong, bell” (MV 3.2.71-72) conclusion of the song’s lines could have resounded to the audience like the church and monastery bells that rang for centuries announcing Catholic practices, customs that were significantly slimmed down in Protestant times.

It is also to be noted that Portia does not stage any music for her other suitors, counting in fact on their character defaults to let them fail on their own. In her lines preceding Bassanio’s choice, Portia even speculates on the hoped for near future when music will “creep” into the “bridegroom” Bassanio’s ear, thus reminding him of his promise and subtly leading him to their marriage.

As are those dulcet sounds in break of day
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear
And summon him to marriage. (3.2.51-53)

The effect of music upon memory is thus suggested even before Portia’s request for an actual musical environment. This supports then the use of the ‘prepared’ song and its musical rhyming words as an inspiring addition to Bassanio’s own reflections.

As will be demonstrated by the brief analysis of some recent stagings of the play, the song performed for Bassanio appears to be one of the main musical moments associating music, rhetoric and memory. However, the wealth of music-related topics and their association to memory – that the text reveals – is sometimes only summarily broached in the stagings of the play. The musicality of the language and the employed musical strategies are however present in most stagings35 and bolster the audience’s memorizing of the lines.

Over more than four centuries of stagings of The Merchant of Venice – from the first recorded performance of the play at court, before King James, “on Shrove Sunday, the 10 of February, 1605” (Royal Shakespeare Company) until nowadays – music has been awarded a diversity of roles, like entertainment or displaying music’s function as a mnemonic device. I will consider here only a few examples of contemporary stagings, aiming to reveal the various manners music is used or not to unveil meanings and to support the mnesis/anamnesis processes in the theatre.

In the 1973-74 National Theatre film adaptation starring Sir Laurence Olivier as Shylock, background music is not omnipresent in the play, but marks two main moments proposing additional clues for their interpretation. The music staged by Portia to guide Bassanio in his choice towards the lead casket interestingly appears as a duet by two sopranos who give full voice to the fruitful lines bearing the rhymes with “lead”. The two singers are almost adjacent to Bassanio and to the lead casket, even advancing towards him so as to ensure they gain his full attention. The shrill and penetrating voices seem to literally ‘pierce’ Bassanio’s ears, to reach his soul and mind. “Bred”, “head” and “nourishèd” are accentuated and twice repeated by the two singers. Shylock’s exchange with Jessica forbidding the entrance of the Venetian masque’s “shallow fopp’ry” into his “sober house” is not surrounded by music, but delivered with OP pronunciation, in a rigid manner that, added to the black and white evening clothes Shylock is wearing, may suggest a Puritan’s dress. Lorenzo’s soliloquy on music is delivered simply, without any accompanying sound. Instrumental music resonates later on, contrasting with the pondered upon ‘unheard’ “music of the spheres”. Interestingly at the end of the play, when Jessica, alone, reads the act of justice condemning her father, a mourning Kaddish resounds,36 appearing as a lamentation for Shylock’s abuse and exclusion and perhaps Jessica’s regrets and anxiety for her new life. This suggests that the “infidel[s]”, both Shylock and Jessica, are still separated from the main group of Christian characters – not included in their harmony – and appears to comfort the director’s choice of presenting Shylock as a Jew.

In the 2004 film version of The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino in Shylock’s role, directed by Michael Radford, environing music is quite sparingly used to enhance meaning. There are no fife or drums to suggest the noise of the Venetian masque, Shylock’s “shallow fopp’ry”. The song staged by Portia to guide Bassanio in his choice between the three caskets is cut in half by the director; however, it resonates like a melodious rather entrancing song of a siren, voiced by what appears to be a page. The sound seems to have an enchanting power over the beholders’ – and especially Bassanio’s – psyche, nourishing his reflection and guiding him towards the right casket. The director’s cut also affects Lorenzo’s philosophical speech on music, eliminating both the speech and the instrumental music that would have followed. Several musicians, among them a lute player and a singer, appear for a brief moment on a balcony reminding us of the musicians’ location on the theatre stage, later on, during Portia’s and Nerissa’s home-coming. This staging, while extremely well-played by a star-studded cast, does not make use of environing music to deepen the representation of the ideas it means to put forward. It brings to the viewer luxurious images that feed the eye more than the ear, as the text appears to suffer under the director’s cut.

In the 2015 RSC production of The Merchant of Venice directed by Polly Findley, the staging has Portia herself sing the ballad-like song to guide Bassanio in his choice towards the lead casket. The rhyme in ed “bred/head/nourishèd” is rendered sonorous, as Portia stresses these three words more than the others. This may perhaps suggest the topic of the woman’s empowerment in making her own choices.

The three staging examples above have in variable degrees kept the song environing Bassanio’s choice, but dwell less on the topic of music as such – supposed to recreate harmony – thus scaling down the range of subjects in the play. While the stagings recreate the sonorous environment, the present analysis also rests on the play’s text.

4. Conclusion

In The Merchant of Venice, music is invested with several roles, healing and harmony, luring and enticement, guiding, recollection, all of which imply music’s effects on the psyche.

The play appears as the epitome of the fusion between rhetoric and music, constantly assessing music’s and musicality’s leverage on memory. The structure, the rhythm, the harmonies (echoes, repetitions, etc.) of a musical work, appear embedded in the play. Shakespeare’s extraordinarily musical language stands out and is used, among other purposes, to comment on Renaissance and classical values awarded to music. It is also used to direct attention to and facilitate memorization of the main themes of the play: religion, sectarianism, discrimination, female assertion. The various stage directions suggest that music was frequently used during the play to support a character’s lines and meanings.

Shakespeare consistently reveals the varied ways in which music provides access to stored memories – be they joyous or painful. The sounds of the Venetian masque – traumatic for Shylock and pleasurable for the other characters of the play – are used at the same time to render the ambivalent reception of music in the Early Modern period. Shylock’s willful seclusion of music may recall the Puritans’ fear of “chromatic harmonies” viewed as “whorish music”.

A complex soundscape made of music and words pertains to an instant memory, enabling guidance towards an intended end, as in Bassanio’s choice. The audience’s memory is however also solicited in the collective mnesis effort sustained by the musical strategies employed in the play. And speeches on classical concepts of music entreat at least part of the audience’s memory – those liable to be acquainted with these ideas. The discourse on the “music of the spheres” (Shakespeare, Pericles 2016: 5.1.223) and the global harmony that the “solemn” music (Shakespeare, The Tempest 2008: 2.1.189) provides to the main group of characters aims to recreate a social and religious union (“bond”) that clearly excludes the Jews (even if, through Tubal, they are described as the original, Biblical creators of music).

Shakespeare’s nuanced approach is supported by his masterly use of a panoply of rhetorical figures – revealing and employing the words’ intrinsic musicality and multiple senses – and by his artful intertwining of musical sounds. This encompassing soundscape gives shape to the staged recollection of some of the main Early Modern issues (such as religion, prejudice, female empowerment) and supports their retention by the audience through the musical design of the play.