Shakespeare’s linguistic artistry is full of music, presumably because music was within him. His poetry has inspired an incredible number of musicians from the Renaissance to the present day. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the lovers in the underworld describe the “strange sound” of (poetic) fantasy and classify it both rationally and emotionally. And in The Merchant of Venice the young Lorenzo answers the central question, “What is music?” by referring to the “Sweet power of music,” which only ar...