ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the following William Shakespeare's texts: A Midsummer Night's Dream; Twelfth Night; Romeo and Juliet; Hamlet; Othello; and Venus and Adonis. Shakespeare's green world has inspired an abundant world of music in places ranging from nineteenth-century Berlin to contemporary Hong Kong. The Shakespearean world of music addresses a global audience without borders. Following the structure of Shakespeare's play, Britten delineated three "orders of being" that "remain on musically independent planes." The "traditional theatrical tune" is almost certainly an eighteenth-century composition, but by virtue of Shakespeare's words it became a mainstay of the twentieth-century early music revival. In Shakespeare's play, the duel between Hamlet and Laertes, Hamlet's death, and the entry of Fortinbras represent three separate dramatic moments. Comparisons of Othello and Otello, which are numerous in the Verdi and Shakespeare literature, encompass every aspect of both works, including the stage convention of black-face make-up.
