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Some Diversions of a Man of Letters by Edmund William Gosse
page 28 of 330 (08%)
precursors conceived the possibility of making the Song an integral part
of the development of the drama. This was Shakespeare's invention, and
he applied it with a technical adroitness which had never been dreamed
of before and was never rivalled after.

This was not apprehended by the early critics of our divine poet, and
has never yet, perhaps, received all the attention it deserves. We may
find ourselves bewildered if we glance at what the eighteenth-century
commentators said, for instance, about the songs in _Twelfth Night_.
They called the adorable rhapsodies of the Clown "absurd" and
"unintelligible"; "O Mistress mine" was in their ears "meaningless";
"When that I was" appeared to them "degraded buffoonery." They did not
perceive the close and indispensable connection between the Clown's song
and the action of the piece, although the poet had been careful to point
out that it was a moral song "dulcet in contagion," and too good, except
for sarcasm, to be wasted on Sir Andrew and Sir Toby. The critics
neglected to note what the Duke says about "Come away, come away,
Death," and they prattled in their blindness as to whether this must not
really have been sung by Viola, all the while insensible to the poignant
dramatic value of it as warbled by the ironic Clown in the presence of
the blinded pair. But indeed the whole of _Twelfth Night_ is burdened
with melody; behind every garden-door a lute is tinkling, and at each
change of scene some unseen hand is overheard touching a harp-string.
The lovely, infatuated lyrics arrive, dramatically, to relieve this
musical tension at its height.

Rather different, and perhaps still more subtle, is the case of _A
Winter's Tale_, where the musical obsession is less prominent, and where
the songs are all delivered from the fantastic lips of Autolycus. Here
again the old critics were very wonderful. Dr. Burney puts "When
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