ABSTRACT
The nineteenth century saw the practice of adapting William Shakespeare's plays to various forms of music theatre at its peak. This chapter discusses Frederick Reynolds and Sir Henry Rowley Bishop's musical spectaculars for London's Covent Garden, and the popular, if ephemeral, burlesques of Shakespeare's plays in both Britain and the United States – were staged against a backdrop of operatic adaptations of Shakespeare throughout Europe. From the mid-1810s to the mid-1820s, the prolific playwright Frederick Reynolds and the composer Henry Bishop staged a series of spectacular adaptations of Shakespeare's plays at London's Covent Garden, where Bishop was Director of Music. There was little contemporary consensus on the genre status of Reynolds and Bishop's collaborations, some viewing them as plays with added songs, while others, including Genest, refer to them as operas. Reynolds and Bishop's collaborations represented the return of some of Shakespeare's plays to the British stage after decades of absence, and coincided with the rise of scenic spectacle.
