ABSTRACT
The play originated in a world where the cosmos still consisted of harmonic ratios, where angels were accompanied in their song by the revolving heavenly spheres. Hamlet transforms the association between music and the divine into an association between the musical and the ghostly. The 'music of war' was a common Renaissance trope. Fortinbras's reference to the 'soldier's music' provides the concluding twist to Hamlet's complicated reciprocal, even porous, relationship between the words of the play and the startling songs. As Barnardo's tale conjures up a sound, it also conjures up the ghost; and Barnardo's very words become phantom-like, as his narration is interrupted by itself come to life. The cannon, drum, and trumpet produce a military music, and seem a sonic manifestation of all the previous night's murmurs of past and approaching wars. Ophelia does what their own descriptions of her songs attempt to do: turn hell itself to favor and to prettiness.
