In a recent item in The New Yorker, Alex Ross began his assessment of the Glimmerglass’s Shakespeare-themed season by posing a larger question about the Bard and his works: how did Shakespeare feel about music as an art form? Ross notes some of the popular quotes by Shakespeare that seem to indicate a fondness for music, and then juxtaposes them against others that offer a less enthusiastic assessment. What if Shakespeare’s feelings about music could be summed up as “Meh?”

Ross then delves further into the Glimmerglass’s series of productions of musical adaptations of Shakespeare, presumably to question what Will himself might think of such adaptations. The majority of the article focuses on a lesser known opera by Wagner entitled “A Ban on Love,” which is based on Measure for Measure. The opera, which flopped initially, has been edited and streamlined for its current incarnation. Aside from Glimmerglass’s edits, Shakespeare himself combined characters and storylines, most notably eliminating the Duke, whose 11th-hour proposal to Isabella has rendered the play so “problematic.”

A different question related to Ross’s inquiry might be whether it matters or not if Shakespeare would have approved of this adaptation. Playwrights tend to be fairly particular about their work (see Samuel Beckett), but does that mean they are right? If someone else can bring out something in a work that its author never intended, is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe Shakespeare hated music, but that doesn’t mean that the feeling was mutual.

Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. Is that all theatre people ever think about? Based on the recent randy interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays, that might seem to be the case. Many artists clearly revel in exploring the seedier side of Shakespeare, as though those elements weren’t already apparent and needed highlighting. This is particularly true for the comedies, whose romantic undertones are often turned into Jenna Jameson-lite overtones. One play in particular that suffers this affliction most consistently is Measure for Measure. Apparently, Isabella is the lone pure figure in a dirty, dirty world, as many productions try to point out.

Lest I sound like a puritan, let me clarify: Measure for Measure IS a play about morality and sexuality. The problem arises when a production gets so enamored of the mechanics and accouterment of such issues that they don’t truly address them on an emotional or intellectual level. A new production of Measure doesn’t soft-sell the edgier elements (yes, there are fishnets), but it grounds the naughty behavior in an environment of political corruption. In this vision, the two are totally intertwined and Isabella finds herself at the intersection of the two. Her choice isn’t merely about a physical act (although that is a huge part of it); it is also a political one. In the end a production of Measure for Measure cannot be praised or reviled based on what the actors do or wear onstage. Go ahead and try to shock me. Just make sure to get me to think and feel while you’re doing it.

If you are looking for a Shakespearean play with street cred, which one do you choose? The tragedies, comedies and histories have all been reimagined in contemporary city environments, but which ones resonate best in that context? One play that might not top your list would be Measure for Measure. After all, the plight of a young nun-to-be fighting for her virtue and her brother’s life doesn’t exactly scream “street” at first glance. Despite the seeming incongruity, a new production of Measure for Measure has done precisely that, staging Shakespeare’s “problem play” in a decidedly urban milieu.

On closer examination, perhaps it isn’t such a bad fit after all. In many ways, the play deals with the issue of political corruption, namely Angelo’s when he takes over for the absent Duke. Placing Isabella and her plight in the middle of an urban environment might reinforce her incongruity. Her old-school vocation is placed in direct confrontation with the modern power plays that make up Angelo’s daily life. Furthermore, many of the supporting characters could easily be translated to an urban setting.

Much has been made of the ending of the play, in which Isabella’s silence following the Duke’s proposal of marriage creates a unique challenge for the contemporary production. Is Isabella a sell-out if she marries the Duke or is she merely catching up with the times? Setting Measure for Measure on the streets places her quandary in a different context: if she denies the Duke, is she endangering the people of the city to further abuses by the Angelos of the world?

Postmodern Essays on Love, Sex, and Marriage in Shakespeare is a mouthful of a title, which is appropriate given the topics it tackles. This new collection of essays seeks to examine the romantic relationships conjured by Will from Stratford. Some of the articles look at conventions of dating and marriage in Shakespeare’s time and how they did and did not manifest themselves in Shakespeare’s plays. Others take a more theoretical approach in an attempt to gauge audience reception and understanding both then and now. It’s definitely heady stuff, but for Shakespeare buffs it would make a perfect beach read. After all, the book is celebrating (and dissecting) one of the things for which Shakespeare is most famous: his evocation of love.

One of the examples featured in the book is Measure for Measure, a play about women placed in impossible positions by their romantic entanglements with men. Juliet (not the one who goes all crazy over Romeo) gets pregnant by Claudio, resulting in his death sentence for fornication. Isabella is given the choice to surrender her virtue (and her plans to become a nun) in order to save Claudio’s life. Finally, Mariana, pretends to be Isabella so that her union with Angelo will force him to marry her. For each of these women, their relationships (whether desired or not) are defined along legal lines. Their need to negotiate their circumstances speaks volumes about the options available to women when Shakespeare was writing. Books like Love, Sex and Marriage… force us to look more closely at the serious roots of seemingly lightweight romantic entanglements.

Shakespeare’s women are nothing if not succinct. While their husbands, fathers, brothers and male friends blather endlessly about every stupid thought in their heads, the girls choose their words carefully; so carefully, in fact, that many of them simply do not speak for lengthy stretches. Given the tradition of boy actors in Shakespeare’s time, perhaps this reduced “female” presence made sense. Still, Will’s heroines are at times maddeningly taciturn. At the end of Measure for Measure, does Isabella accept the marriage propose to her or renounce it and continue with her religious avocation? No one can be sure because she never utters another word, and as a result Measure for Measure has become the Edwin Drood of Shakespeare’s canon because each production must decide how to end it.

Somewhere out in internetland, some folks explored this problem from the opposite perspective. Instead of focusing on the negative, they counted the number of lines of every female character in Shakespeare’s plays to discover who was the most talkative. The results are surprising in that they do not include The Bard’s most famous femmes like Juliet or Lady Macbeth. Coming in at number three is Imogen, the plucky heroine of the complex (and often confusing) Cymbeline. First runner-up goes to the Queen of the Nile herself in Antony and Cleopatra. Finally, the gabbiest gal in Bard-dom is none other that Rosalind from As You Like It. The winner is easily the most recognizable of the three as the other two are featured in less frequently staged works. What does that say about contemporary appreciation of Shakespeare’s women? Do we simply exalt the plays based on the male characters and the women become famous by default (sort of like Kelly Preston)? Or, more insidiously, do we prefer these characters when they suffer in silence?

According to the saying, a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about the opposite? Could a word (or even a series of words) be worth a thousand pictures? It seems that a Seattle art critic is attempting the latter–or maybe a combination of the two. In covering a local art exhibit, the writer attempts to find a line of Shakespeare that evokes the main idea(s) of the piece of art. So, perhaps in this case, the picture and the words are equally worthy. For this critic, art provides the means to comment on and respond to other art.

If Shakespeare were used as commentary for artists, which one or ones would be most likely to meet The Bard halfway? And which plays/sonnets/etc. would match with these artists? Though it might seem capricious at first, it is a challenging undertaking. Could Dali’s melting clocks serve as a counterpoint to Hamlet or Macbeth’s fraying sanity? Do the distortions and exaggerations of Picasso suit Shakespeare’s more structurally ambiguous plays like Cymbeline or Measure for Measure? In a sense, this is the same question faced by directors and designers of high-concept Shakespearean productions: what environments, periods, historical figures, icons, and symbols create a dialogue with Will’s words? Is this dialogue balanced, offering equal enlightenment to both the play and the conceptual element, or is one favored over the other? Such comparisons are intriguing because the call into question the notion of a hierarchy among the arts themselves: which would be worth more, an image or a printed word?

The question of faith comes up often in discussions of Shakespeare’s works. How does the faith of Shylock function in The Merchant of Venice? Does Isabella forgo her faith for the proposal offered her at the end of Measure for Measure? One of The Bard’s great strengths as a writer is depicting characters in moments of conflict, whether it is about their circumstances, their identity or their faith. Since the root of all of these depictions is Shakespeare himself, it is quite natural to wonder what, if anything, these plays say about the playwright and his spiritual associations and convictions.

A new argument has been put forth asserting that Shakespeare was Catholic. The basis is for this is some information that might potentially link his family to the Catholic Church, along with interpretations of the plays themselves. Nowadays, an author’s religious convictions are interesting insomuch as they impact their work, yet in Shakespeare’s time, it had even greater significance. Being Catholic in Elizabethan England was a political act because it was prohibited by the crown. Given the favorable support of Shakespeare’s work by the Queen, is it possible he was part of a faith she abhorred. Some scholars will argue that discreet evidence in the plays (such as Hamlet’s Ghost being in purgatory, a Catholic concept) support this notion, while others shrug off the idea as simply improvable. Whether or not Will was a Catholic of any degree, his works can be examined in light of the conflicts of faith in the world in which he wrote.

Move over Christopher Marlowe; back up Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford; step off Francis Bacon. There’s a new sheriff in town, and he’s laying his own claim to some of Shakespeare’s plays. It is none other than Shakespeare’s contemporary and fellow playwright, Thomas Middleton. Your reaction to this news might be a maelstrom of emotions, asking yourself, “What does this mean for Shakespeare’s reputation?”; “How are the Oxfordians going to rebut this?”; and, most importantly, “Who the hell is Thomas Middleton?”

If you’re an aficionado of Jacobean drama, his name will not be a complete mystery to you; still, even for the faithful, Middleton’s best-known plays—The Revenger’s Tragedy, Women Beware Women, and The Changeling—rarely show up in multi-period anthologies or production. Nevertheless, Middleton did make an important contribution to English drama and, if you believe the evidence, a significant part of that contribution was the refining of some of Shakespeare’s plays. A new two-book set of Middleton’s plays takes the theory a step further, including two of Shakespeare’s plays. Many have speculated that Measure for Measure and Macbeth were partially written by Middleton and new textual analysis asserts that as much as ten percent of the plays may be his work. The relatively early publication of Shakespeare’s collected works (which appeared just seven years after his death) has long eclipsed Middleton’s potential contribution. This new collection seeks to re-stake Middleton’s claim as part of the Shakespearean canon.

Who knew that Shakespeare and Dolly Levi had so much in common? One of the few well-documented moments in Shakespeare’s life is the subject of a new book, The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street, by Charles Nicholl. In it, Shakespeare is involved in some matchmaking that unfortunately does not go as planned. Around 1604, Shakespeare was residing in a home owned by a French family whose daughter was engaged to be married to a young man who did not meet the father’s approval. The daughter sought Shakespeare’s assistance, a dowry was negotiated, and The Bard himself helped cement their legal union.

It sounds like a plot for one of Shakespeare’s comedies, yet this real-life story did not play out that way. Apparently, the father denied a dowry had ever been agreed upon and eight years later, his son-in-law belatedly sued him for reneging on the contract. Naturally, Shakespeare was their star witness, but the playwright, in true Alberto Gonzales fashion, could not remember exactly what happened when deposed. Perhaps one of the most striking things about Nicholl’s book is how he parallels this fractured love story, along with Shakespeare’s further immersion into the seamier side of London life, with the writer’s increasingly darker look at romance. After all, it was during this period that he wrote one of his most problematic romances or comedies (or whatever other category you wish to use): Measure for Measure. As Nicholl suggests, perhaps Shakespeare found that love was not all it appeared to be.

In case you have not heard, Shakespeare won the lottery. That’s right. Twelve million dollars, in fact. But Shakespeare’s buddy is none too happy about this. In fact, he is taking Shakespeare to court claiming that half of it is his. You see, Shakespeare’s buddy bought two lottery tickets, one of which was the big winner. Shakespeare claims his buddy used Shakespeare’s money to buy the tickets, however his buddy insists that he bought them and Shakespeare later stole them out of his wallet while the two were delivering meat. Clearly, all is not well, nor will it end well.

Yes, the Shakespeare in question is not our Will, but Abraham Shakespeare of Frostproof, Florida. Yes, that is a real place in a state that also includes towns named Celebration, Two Egg and Kissimmee (locals of the latter will insist on emphasizing the middle syllable to keep it from sounding like a come-on). Even though The Bard’s involvement in this legal wrangling is limited to his name, it seems like the type of thing that would have filled the plot of one of his plays. In Will’s version, the two would have love interests, one repulsed by her lover’s greed, the other spurring her lover on. The judge, a la Measure for Measure, would disguise himself to uncover the truth. It would end with the bad couple imprisoned and the good couple getting married. Think of it as The Lottery of Errors.