The Touches of Sweet Harmony

"Is it not strange that sheeps' guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?" (Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Scene iii)

The question Shakespeare puts in Benedick's mouth is one of the deepest questions we still ask about music: Why does it affect us the way it does?

Shakespeare's characters have more to say about music toward the end of The Merchant of Venice, a denouement which, for Shakespeare and his Christian audience, was entirely satisfactory. Not only is Shylock defeated, he is forced to convert, and his daughter has also converted and married a Venetian nobleman.

Lorenzo's praise of music in conversation with Jessica, his bride, in Act V, Scene I, is symbolic of this harmonious ending. He begins:

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.

These lines are of such exquisite beauty that no comment is necessary, beyond noting that it shows us Lorenzo's refinement and his true love for Jessica. He goes on to speak of the metaphorical music of the heavens:

Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines 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;

This heavenly music, the motion of the stars, is mystical:

Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Jessica's response is puzzled:

            I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

Lorenzo's first explanation is psychological, empirical:

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 turn'd to a modest gaze
By the sweet power of music:

He then goes on to confirm this observation with a reference to classical literature:

therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.

Finally, in a kind of non sequitur, he claims that failure to appreciate music is a sign of villainy, probably a veiled reference to her Jewish father's ethical and spiritual inadequacy (prior to his conversion):

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.

Lorenzo's line of thought is as follows: the music we hear on earth is a reflection of the divine voices of the angels in heaven, by implication, what is revealed in Christianity; therefore sensitivity to music, although natural (even wild animals are subject to it), is a sign of communion with mystical truth, and those insensitive to it are not to be trusted. The people in The Merchant of Venice who are not to be trusted are the Jews.

Obviously a Jew reading these lines rejects the Lorenzo's theory, but is there a less tendentious ethical dimension to the love of music?

We are left with Benedick's mystery: “Is it not strange that sheeps' guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?”