ABSTRACT
Discussions of the rise of jukebox musicals on Broadway around 2005 suggested that the use of existing popular songs in music drama was of very recent origin, a sign of the collapse of creativity in the face of the desire for profit. The works themselves are clearly contemporary, early West End and Broadway examples arising only in the 1980s, and distinguish themselves from the historical works discussed in this and the following chapter by drawing on songs made famous through recording technology. However, the compositional practices used to create jukebox musicals and the reception strategies they encourage have a long history. One aim of this book is to demonstrate that, rather than being a symptom of creative exhaustion, jukebox-musical versions of Shakespeare form part of a minor but tenacious strand of Shakespeare adaptations within a broader theatrical tradition of reusing songs of various genres to create dramatic meaning. I therefore present jukebox-musical versions of Shakespeare as part of a diachronic continuum of musical-theatre engagements with Shakespeare as well as part of a synchronic continuum of modern jukebox musicals.
