If music be the food of love, play on

Cultural  

1. The first line of the play Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare. The speaker is asking for music because he is frustrated in courtship; he wants an overabundance of love so that he may lose his appetite for it.

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Example Sentences

"The title, Eat the Music, is meant to be a playful nod to 'If music be the food of love, play on,' from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night," Bush explained in a statement.

From BBC

The words were a riff on the play’s opening line, “If music be the food of love, play on.”

From New York Times

He begins, appropriately enough, with Orsino’s “If music be the food of love, play on” speech from “Twelfth Night” — a giddy if somewhat moody take on romance — which flows into the youthful elation of the Stephen Sondheim song “Love, I Hear” from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and the dizzy waltz of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s “Falling in Love With Love” from “The Boys From Syracuse.”

From Los Angeles Times

“Twelfth Night’s” famous invocation — “If music be the food of love, play on!” — is fulfilled with elegant relish in Shakespeare Theatre Company’s deeply satisfying new production in Sidney Harman Hall.

From Washington Post

If music be the food of love, play on!

From Seattle Times