Monday, January 26, 2026
“Let’s have a song:” Musicals inspired by Shakespeare
Folger Shakespeare Library: One of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, in fact, inspired the earliest example of a musical based on his works. The Boys from Syracuse (1938) infused the Greek setting of The Comedy of Errors with 20th-century American language and jokes by book writer George Abbott, including the moment when Dromio of Syracuse, after hearing an actual line from the original play, leaps out of the wings to announce, “Shakespeare!”
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So there’s already often singing in Shakespearean plays, except no one really knows what the songs sound like anymore so you kind of just read it rhythmically or make up a silly tune and pretend its as profound as Shakespeare is making it out to be. So, this article is interesting to me because as a student reading shakespeare in middle and high school, I often came across the songs and just pretend to be like oh yeah, theres that hit club classic. I had never thought about, though, how so many musicals are really just Shakespeare plays but with the music added back in and exaggerated. So now I’m wondering, did the people watching Shakespeare’s latest work at the Globe consider the play a musical? I don’t think they really even had distinctions between musicals and straight plays, but was the music a central focus? If so, why have we deemphasized the music when reading shakespeare? Many things to think about.
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