SOURCE: Iselin, Pierre. “‘My Music for Nothing’: Musical Negotiations in The Tempest.” Shakespeare Survey 48 (1996): 135-45.

In the following essay, Iselin explores the relationship between music, myth, and politics in The Tempest, comparing classical and Renaissance views regarding the power and value of music and statecraft.

In an early scene of Henry VIII (or All Is True), while denouncing the ‘spells of France’ displayed at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and the extravagant vanities imitated from the French, Sir Thomas Lovell rejoices in the recent prohibition of these foreign customs and deplores their efficacy in the form of a local ‘O tempora, O mores’, which is not altogether devoid of personal frustration or innocent of erotic meaning:

LOVELL

                                                                      The sly whoresons 

Have got a speeding trick to lay down ladies. 

A French song and a fiddle has no fellow. 

SANDS

The devil fiddle 'em! I am glad...