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.

If ever there was a classical smackdown, it is the one currently going on in New York. The City that Never Sleeps has always been the focal point of the country’s theatrical activity. Now, it is playing host to the biggest fight in town: Macbeth versus Macbeth. While Patrick Stewart is asking Broadway audiences eight times a week if there’s a dagger before him, nearby Verdi’s opera based on the very same play is also dazzling audiences. A New York Times piece on both productions pitted the two against each other and suggested a possible draw, if not a win in favor of the opera.

In discussing the ups and downs of the two Macbeths, the writer also made comparisons between Verdi’s other Shakespearean operas and the original source material. For this writer, the operas sometimes are move evocative than the plays upon which they are based. The argument put forth is that music is more visceral than words and can evoke a clearer response from an audience far more quickly. The writer admits that Shakespeare purists would balk at such a notion and compromises by saying that the two productions can coexist quite nicely because they are both so strong (in different ways).

Is that true? Are the majority of Shakespeare aficionados actually Bard Snobs? I’ve recently complained about an updated version of a classic play that includes jokes about contemporary pop stars. Am I putting Shakespeare before all else? It’s possibly that artists, critics and theatergoers like to be contrary, and this particular columnist is no different. In order to make the daring statement that Shakespeare isn’t all that and a bag of chips (yes, I know that catchphrase has expired, but I haven’t found anything to take its place), he has to assume that Will’s fans are stodgy, old, and clinging to dusty leatherbound copies of his plays as if they were sacred texts. Maybe in order to make the two Macbeths sound like a battle, you have to spin it like everything else.