Helena Kean - Music and Images

Shakespeare’s Use of Music Elizabethan’s believed in the cosmic and symbolic value of music and its connection to the divine. In the ‘Traité de l’Harmonie Universelle’ of 1627, M. Mersenne illustrates the concept of order and degree in the universe as symbolised by the musical scale. He divides music into four significant categories: I. La Musique Divine II. La musique crée (qui) est dépendante de la Divine III. La musique mondaine IV. La musique humaine Shakespeare and his contemporaries found inspiration and symbolism from the third and fourth categories: the third representing the music of the spheres and the power of music to control the elements, and the fourth, the association of musical harmony with the ‘humors’ of the body, as understood in the medical and psychological lore of the time. In Burton’s ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’ of 1621, we are told that Music ‘is a soveraigne remedy against Despaire and Melancholy’. This is perhaps best represented in the opening of Shakespeare’...