ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what might be considered an outlier in the field of jukebox-musical versions of William Shakespeare: the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre's Romeo & Juliet, spread across short YouTube videos. It presents the complex work of which such a compact, if peripheral, adaptation of Shakespeare is capable, and the pleasures that can arise from an encounter with it. The chapter focuses on 'vertical' structure: the piling up of layers of multiple, often incompatible, meanings. It demonstrate how the Puppets' layering of meaning opens spaces for non-heteronormative readings and complex genre understandings of the central love story, relating this to similar, but now often overlooked, reception potentials in the stage history of Romeo and Juliet. The fact that YouTube is the medium through which many audience members encounter the productions also contributes significantly to the Sock Puppets' ability to rely on the density.
