Shakespeare in Music

The subject that we’re about to consider this evening—Shakespeare in Music—is a topic so immense, so vast, so seemingly endless—that I feel compelled to state up front that in no way are we going to be able to approach exhausting even the mere cream of the crop of this most bountiful phenomenon. But before we get very specific, let’s address a more general artistic matter that bears greatly on our subject at hand. I’m speaking of the friendly aesthetic tension that exists between words and music…