Concord of Sweet Sounds: Musical Instruments in Shakespeare.

Laila Abdalla is an associate professor of English at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, and former professor at McGill University.

Shakespearean scholar F. David Hoeniger has compiled the twenty-seven musical instruments referenced by Shakespeare in his plays. Devoting from a few lines to a page per instrument, he describes briefly their nature (string, wind, percussion, bells, or organ), sound, shape, function, and, since most are now antiquated, their modern version. He also cites at least one mention of each instrument from Shakespeare’s drama, and provides what the title page calls “an interpretation” of the line.

The illustrations and the parchment-like quality of the pages make this a lovely little book, and music historians and art aficionados would probably enjoy it on their shelves. But Hoeniger has missed a fine opportunity to make the book also desirable and significant to lovers of Shakespeare, for the “interpretations” he offers are but paltry reiterations and offer no insight. In “trumpet,” for instance, he notes that a trumpet is often sounded when a city is under siege, as in Troilus and Cressida. He fails to note that when Cressida, a Trojan woman, is traded against her will to the Greek camp, she enters to a trumpet call. The Greek generals, who have been without women for several years, declare “The Trojan’s trumpet.” An audience would also hear the pun, “the Trojan strumpet.” Cressida is then treated to a hostile game of kissing and flirting, a game to which she responds first as victim, then as player, and finally as winner. As she walks away, the Greeks term her a “daughter of the game,” i.e. a whore. The event illustrates the vulnerable role of Cressida and raises questions about survival, patriarchy, female agency, etc. Not all musical references in Shakespeare are as noteworthy, but many are much more so than Hoeniger’s slight paraphrases reveal.