Music and love

'If music be the food of love, play on.' But what is a person to do when a song reminds them of sad times, of heartache, and of having their heart broken? Music may be the food love, and it may indeed excite the heart towards love, but does it not also cause melancholy when a person has been touched by sadness? Far be it from me to accuse the famous Bard of being insensitive to such feelings-Desdemona, Juliet, and Cordelia are a testimony of his high sensitivity, but I do think that something can be said of the aforementioned line from Twelfth Night, with regard to the notion of music also being the food of melancholy. Even Romeo's melancholy seems to be not melancholic-he seems rather tired and bored, as he cycles through his confused oxymorons: 'brawling love, loving hate [...] serious vanity, misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms'. He does, however, hit the nail on the head, as it were, with his words, that 'sad hours seem long.' This is of course the genious of Shakespeare-that he can almost demonstrate to be so out of touch with the feelings of the heart, and then demonstrate that he knows exactly how it works.