But I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an ’twere any nightingale.[236]
The Nightingale
The romance of the nightingale’s song was never more thoroughly discarded than by Portia when she returned from her memorable trip to Venice and found a light and music in her hall. She remarked to Nerissa that by night music sounds much sweeter than by day, and received in reply the explanation that “Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.” Portia, however, with her ingenuity of a barrister, insisted in a passage already referred to:
The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither is attended; and I think
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.[237]