Two Hamlets

Abstract

Although Shakespeare has in the past been freely plundered for musical settings of every kind—from song to opera—it still seems a fair generalisation to say that his best work does not lend itself to this kind of treatment. Perhaps the most successful of all Shakespeare operas in English is Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which follows closely the text of one of the less substantial comedies. Of The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, no satisfactory opera has apparently been made (though Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict contains charming music), and for much the same reason—namely Shakespeare's unrivalled genius for linguistic imagery—the great tragedies have resisted direct musical setting, Boito's Otello and Piave's Macbeth being, of course, free derivatives, not translations. Only in our own century has it become normal to set Shakespeare's tragedies in the original text, translated or otherwise.