Detail of “The Musicians” (about 1595) by Caravaggio

[1]      Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?

[2]       Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.

[3]       Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,

[4]       Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?

[5]       If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds,

[6]       By unions married, do offend thine ear,

[7]       They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

[8]       In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

[9]       Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

[10]     Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,

[11]     Resembling sire and child and happy mother

[12]     Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing;

[13]     Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,

[14]     Sings this to thee: “Thou single wilt prove none.”

 

This sonnet continues the refrain, that it would be wrong to refrain from marriage and a child. Here, the overarching metaphor is the harmony of music. The object of the poem is hearing music, which should bring him pleasure; but the beautiful music is also unsettling him. Why? Because the music is a harmony of parts, a “marriage”, where one sound stands relation to the other sounds, like a husband and wife, like a father, mother and child. But the object, being single, cannot enjoy the harmony.

First Stanza

[1]       Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?

[2]       Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.

[3]       Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,

[4]       Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?

 

The first two lines begin with an accented syllable:

MUSic to HEAR

SWEETS with SWEETS

The effect is to quickly demand the attention. It poses a question: Why does music sound unhappy to you? That does not make sense

Sweets with sweets war not – there is no discord in two sweet sounds.

Joy delights in joy.

Why is this music troubling you? Shakespeare is here mixing the themes of music and love. There is a missing pleasure in your hearing of this music.

Shakespeare will pick up this idea and develop as the introductory lines to the Twelfth Night:

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.

There is the same receiving of music, and yet the troubled receiving. The Duke’s love both craves and is cannot bear the musick.

Second Stanza:

[5]       If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds,

[6]       By unions married, do offend thine ear,

[7]       They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

[8]       In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

If there is a trouble in hearing the music, then the fault is not in the music, but in you who hear the music. The music is “true concord” and “well-tuned sounds”.  There is no fault described in the sound. But there is a fault somewhere, because sounds, “do offend thine ear”.

In the beginning of line 6, Shakespeare puns on the word “married” to introduce a new theme in this discussion of music and the pleasure in hearing music. The “true concord” of harmony is here said to be “unions married”.

The reason for the displeasure in the music is not in the music, but that the concord of the music “sweetly chide thee”. Why? Because being single, the harmony of parts, the marriage of the sounds beckons you to a similar marriage, but you are single.

There are endless speculations about the story behind these sonnets. But this particular sonnet seems to suggest a back story that Shakespeare is writing to someone who is hesitating at a marriage.

Third Stanza

[9]       Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

[10]     Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,

[11]     Resembling sire and child and happy mother

[12]     Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing;

In the third stanza, he speaks of the harmony brought about in the music by developing the sounds in terms of a family. One string is “sweet husband to another”. The musician strikes one string and then another, “by mutual ordering”. The concourse of the sounds creates a resemblance, as a sire and child and mother in order together bring about “one pleasing note”. The parts do all sing together to create beauty.

Couplet:

[13]     Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,

[14]     Sings this to thee: “Thou single wilt prove none.”

The song is “speechless” because it is just music. The various notes are not many but “one”. And this harmony of notes without words is singing: If you will be single, you will be nothing.