Who is Silvia? What is she,

That all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair, and wise is she.

The heaven such grace did lend her

That she might admirèd be.

 

Is she kind as she is fair?

For beauty lives with kindness.

Love doth to her eyes repair

To help him of his blindness,

And, being helped, inhabits there.

 

Then to Silvia, let us sing

That Silvia is excelling.

She excels each mortal thing

Upon the dull earth dwelling.

To her let us garlands bring.           (4.2.37-51)

 

Who sings? Probably Proteus, or else an anonymous musician, or Thurio, or both Proteus and Thurio? It doesn’t hugely matter. (There’s no speech prefix in the Folio text.) And as a paean of praise to Silvia, it’s pretty comprehensive: Silvia’s AMAZING, she’s the tops—although the series of rhetorical questions might indeed raise more questions than they answer, about love and value as well as about Silvia herself. Who is Silvia? what is she, that all our swains commend her? What is it about her that makes her universally acclaimed, by all swains, all young lovers? (Swains has pastoral associations—shepherds etc—but not exclusively; it can just mean lover, by extension.) Silvia is a love goddess! She is holy, fair, and wise; no evidence of the former (and the ear might hear wholly, completely) but it’s a comprehensive trinity of virtues, piety, wisdom, and beauty. The heaven such grace did lend her that she might admired be: all of her gifts, her virtues, her qualities are heaven-sent. She’s a goddess, and all we can do is wonder at her.

But: is she kind as she is fair? For beauty lives with kindness. This is the song’s implicit plea: show kindness to those (or the one) who love(s) you; acquiesce to their protestations. Look favourably on them, love them back. Beauty is a sign of inner virtue, of kindness, but also, kindness has to accompany beauty: if you’re beautiful, you’ve got an obligation to be kind, and to share your favours. (It’s an argument from the sonnets: the praise here isn’t entirely neutral, there’s an element of self-interest, even coercion.) Then a swerve back to something less loaded, a pretty conceit: love doth to her eyes repair to help him of his blindness. Blind Cupid looks to her eyes to cure his blindness—and it works; he takes up residence there; he, being helped, inhabits there. Love is in her eyes! Her eyes are amazing!

So, then to Silvia, let us sing that Silvia is excelling. Let’s tell her how amazing she is! How she excels each mortal thing upon the dull earth dwelling. She’s superior to every other woman on earth; she makes them all seem ordinary, mundane. And she excels me/us too, the mere mortals that sing her praises. (The song is, of course, in part animated by the fact that Silvia is physically above everyone else, whether visible or not at her window. There might be a crack in the balcony door, a silhouette, if she’s not actually stood there listening.) So to her garlands let us bring. In performance Thurio may attempt to throw or have delivered a comically large bouquet, but the song itself is a garland, a posy of praise.

The occasion is a bit dodgy and potentially comic and of course undermined by the increasing devastation of the listening Julia, as she realises that Proteus is (probably) singing and wooing on his own behalf, not Thurio’s. But—for all that its underlying assumptions can be probed—the song remains beautiful.

Multiple musical settings: the best known Schubert (Fatma Said)  Finzi (Bryn Terfel) Quilter (Mark Stone) and Schubert (as arranged for the King’s Singers)

And the 2014 RSC version in which Thurio (Nicholas Gerard-Martin) sings, with Proteus joining in on guitar