The Shakespearean plays are intensely musical, and the focus on music in the plays suggests that their author came from and environment that included some study of it. Most of the plays refer to music in their text, and there are in total more than 300 musical stage directions. The plays incorporate about a hundred ballads, popular songs and other secular music. In the early history plays, the musical references tend to be limited to flourishes of trumpets, drums, and alarms such as in Troilus and Cressida. However, by the middle period, the plays began to incorporate more sophisticated music, such as the consort of mixed instruments in Midsummer Night's Dream and the use of hautboys in Anthony and Cleopatra. This increasing sophistication leads to the integrated use of ballads in The Winter's Tale. As Ross Duffin has pointed out, the playwright also uses song titles as literary puzzles, for instance, the character 'Rogero' in The Winter's Tale is intended to remind the audience of a ballad by that name and thereby bring up the imagery of a jealous husband who killed his wife. (65)
Many of the songs used in the Shakespearean plays can be seen as autobiographical to Emilia Bassano. The heroine of the song Oyster Pie (mentioned in Taming of the Shrew IV, 2) goes to church not for devotion's sake, but to spy out the one who will be her true love. The female subject of Heigh Ho for a Husband (mentioned in Much Ado About Nothing (III, 4 & II, 1) ends up like Emilia, with a much older man groaning at her side.
The plays include a number of songs about Jews, but there is virtually no Christian music. For example, Hamlet (II, 2) used Jephata Judge of Israel as a portent for the fate of Ophelia. It is a song that describes how Jephata kept his vow to God to sacrifice the first thing that he met on his return home, which turned out to be his daughter. A song praising Solomon simply entitled, King Solomon, was referenced twice in Love's Labours' Lost (I, 2 & IV, 3). Another Jewish song, one that can be seen as autobiographical to Emilia, was The Ballad of the godly constant wife, Susanna. This song, used in Twelfth Night (II, 3), The Merry Wives of Windsor (III, 1) and Merchant of Venice (IV, 1), tells the story of a virtuous Jewish wife who resisted evil. It is easy to see how Emilia Bassano might have seen a connection between the song's lyrics, given below, and her own life. On the other hand, it is difficult to explain why such a Jewish song would have made so strong an impression on the 'Will from Stratford' as to have caused him to use it in three of his plays.
There dwelt a man in Babylon
Of reputation great by fame
He took to wife Susanna
A woman of fair name
Brought up on Moses' Law.
But resting in the orchard by
Two Elders had a lust and
Tried her chastity, and when
She resisted, brought her to trial
So that she would die
Then the Lord raised up Daniel
To deal with these wicked men
(Who falsely lied that they had seen her
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