The Alchemical Solfeggio

Mistranslations of Shakespeare have caused readers to miss his encoded secrets for centuries. We’ve especially missed those secrets regarding music and alchemy. Many of Shakespeare’s plays depict human relationships, courtship behaviors, and attempts to bond and incorporate, as metaphors of soil metallurgy. Hortensio, the failed suitor of Bianca in “The Taming of the Shrew,” stands out as a Shakespearean character, as he represents soil functioning in the realm of music. As it turns out, the harmonics of music have much to tell us about fluid dynamics, dissolution, and soil chemistry, and the Solfeggio has even more to tell us about the extraction of noble metals from the earth.