Appendix A: Music
H. David Brumble · 1998
Music therapy served Shakespeare&s; s characters better than it had brother Hugo. Prospero calls up music as a part of his healing charm: A solemn air, and the best comforter To an unsettled fancy , cure thy brains, Now useless, boil&s;d within thy skull l (Tempest: 5.1.58-60) Pericles is brought up out of his severe melancholia by his daughter &s; s song (Pericles: 5.1.44-95). And late in King Lear a physician undertakes to cure the old king&s; s ravaged mind, his "untuned and jarring sense" (4 .7.16). The sleeping Lear is carried to a tent where the doctor calls for music. When Lear awakes, his jarring senses have been retuned (see Hoeniger 1984 for a brief history of musical curing as this relates to Shakespeare).