| SHAKESPEAREAN BELL VERSE |
| If Hamlet Marked His Music by Tamara L. Raetz (reprinted with permission) To mark, or not to mark, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the choir ro suffer The circles and arrows of highlighted music, Or to take arms against a sea of colors, And by opposing end them. To draw, to tint-- No more--and by a tint to say we end The mistakes and the thousand natural shocks That ear is heir to. 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To draw, to tint; To tint, perchance to shade. Ay, there's the rub, For in that tint of notes what shades may come When we have finished off this Level Two, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of such a crutch. For who would bear the sniffs and scorns of peers, The ringers' wrong, the director's abuse, The pangs of despis'd need, the rehearsal's delay, The pallidness of pencil marks, and the spurns That patient merit of th' addicted takes, When he himself might his markings make With a highlighter? Who would marked notes read, To peer and squint under a sudued light, But that the dread of facing afterwards The aggravated leader from whose wrath A slipshod ringer hides, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those marks we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus wrong notes do make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of colored markers Is attentuated with the pale cast of dread, And performances of great pitch and tempo With this regard their smooth course goes awry, And lose the ear's attention. |
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