(Lorenzo and Jessica alone.)
_Lor._ How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit, and _let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony_.
* * * * *
L. 60.
There's not the _smallest orb_, which thou behold'st,
_But in his motion like an angel sings_,
Still _quiring_ to the young-ey'd cherubims;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But, _whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it_.
This is finer than Pythagoras.
The next three passages are concerned with the 'fantasie' of Music.
Jaques gives an opinion in a general form--viz., that the musician's
'melancholy' is 'fantastical'; Mariana and the Duke speak of a certain
_doubleness_ that may be noticed in the action of music on the mind.
Jessica is 'never merry' when she hears sweet music: Lorenzo descants
on the evident effects of music on even hardened natures; while
Portia and Nerissa preach a neat little sermon on the text 'Nothing is
good without respect,' with musical illustrations of the powerful
influence of time and place--_e.g._, the silence of night, makes the
music sound sweeter than by day; the crow sings as well as the lark,
if the circumstances favour the crow, or if the lark is not present to
give immediate comparison; and even the nightingale's song is no
better than the wren's, 'by day, when every goose is cackling.
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