Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story

Abstract

T.S. Eliot compared Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry with music. The similarity was also recognized by those music dramatists who drew inspiration from Shakespeare’s plays in their operas and ballets. Some of those works are masterpieces (like Verdi’s Otello) and are considered by George Steiner to be the only real tragedies of the late 19th century. There are even American musical comedies that have been adapted from Shakespeare’s comedies. And when the theatrical art forms using music developed into music theatre, some of the new musicals drew inspiration from his tragedies. Bernstein’s West Side Story, in which the serious and the popular are merged, is the epitome of American music theatre. It sets the story of Romeo and Juliet in the mid-20th century streets of New York, where ethnic rivalry culminates in tragedy. The different adaptations of Shakespeare’s works, involving changes to the time period and setting of the narrative and the social class of the characters as well as the various interpretations of staging, are proof that his writing affords possibilities for new discoveries, and is at once versatile and universal.