NY Public Library for the Performing Arts Curator Doug Reside on Shakespeare + Musical Theater

BroadwayWorld.com continues our exclusive content series, in collaboration with The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which delves into the library's unparalleled archives, and resources. Below, check out a piece by Doug Reside (Lewis and Dorothy Cullman Curator for the Billy Rose Theatre Division) on Shakespeare + Musical Theater:

The opening of the Public Theater's 53rd season of Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theater is almost upon us. The series, started by Joseph Papp, is only one of many summer Shakespeare festivals that will open around the country in the coming months. Although Shakespeare is challenging for many audiences, perennial production of his works is, in some ways, not surprising. The plays are public domain and, whatever one might think of a particular production, are mostly immune to criticism--if audiences don't like a play, they assume the fault lies not in the text but in the production.

It is striking, though, that when Shakespeare companies seek to diversify their season they turn frequently to 20th century musical theater. The Public Theatre's Delacorte has, in the last decade, produced revivals of Hair and Into the Woods, and the upcoming season features music by theater composers Tom Kitt and Michael Friedman. The Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada regularly produces musicals, including a revival of Jesus Christ Superstar which recently transferred to Broadway. If, as Cole Porter suggested, brushing up on your Shakespeare will make them "all kow-tow," it helps if the soliloquies are varied by a little song and dance.

There are many possible explanations for this seasonal pairing. Like Shakespeare, musicals form a kind of repertory with popular titles and mass appeal. There are, though, deeper structural connections between Shakespearean plays and traditional musical theater. The famous nineteenth-century German drama critic Gustav Freytag, working from models proposed by Aristotle, argued that most Greek, Renaissance, and German 19th century drama followed a five-part structure of rising and falling action that has sometimes been called "Freytag's pyramid." A translation from 1894 by Elias J. MacEwan calls the five parts "a) introduction, b) rise, c) climax, d) return or fall, [and] e) catastrophe." These can be found in most traditional musical theater as well.

The "introduction" is fairly self-explanatory, and typically includes a prologue or exposition that set the scene. Freytag writes that in Greek tragedy the introduction "comprised that part of the action which lay before the entrance song of the chorus." He then notes that in Shakespeare the introduction is contiguous with the action of the play, and cites the "street brawl" in Romeo and Juliet and the guard scene in Hamlet. Musicals frequently employ a similar kind of prologue. Hamilton opens with the title song author Lin-Manuel Miranda premiered at the White House in 2009 that narrates the early days of Hamilton's life. The Sound of Music (after a brief choral number by the nuns) begins with Maria's titular musical soliloquy. Carousel opens with an extended ballet sequence (the "Carousel Waltz"). Phantom of the Opera begins with the auction house scene, and the original British production of Les Miserables added the long scene in which Valjean is released from prison and robs the bishop (not part of the original French production which began with "At the End of the Day").

According to Freytag, once the action is set, there is a moment of "exciting force," which he describes as "a point where, in the soul of the hero, there arises a feeling or volition which becomes the occasion of what follows[...]". Freytag gives as examples of "the conversation with Cassius" about killing Caesar which "gradually becomes fixed in the soul of Brutus" and "the second conference between Iago and Roderigo, with the agreement to separate the Moor and Desdemona." In the musical theater world, this moment is usually the "I want" song. This song classification, with a name variously attributed to Leonard Bernstein, Bob Fosse, and (perhaps most probably) music conductor Lehman Engel, is the moment in which the protagonist articulates what it is they most desire out of life. Elphaba longs to find acceptance and fame in "The Wizard and I," Princeton in Avenue Q wants to find his "purpose," Pippin his "corner of the sky." Although this moment usually occurs within the first act, it need not occur at the very beginning of the show. In Carousel, it occurs at the very end of the first act when Billy Bigelow realizes, in his "Soliloquy," that he must "be a father to a girl" and decides to join the plot to rob Mr. Bascombe.

Freytag's next section, "the rising movement," is the building towards the climax and includes, in Freytag's words, "no insignificant parts" of the rest of the piece. Freytag believes everything between the meeting of Romeo and Juliet and the death of Tybalt to be part of this phase. In most musicals, this is probably everything in Act One after the "I want song" and may actually spill into Act Two. This section ends at the "climax," which Freytag defines as "the place in the piece where the results of the rising movement come out strong and decisively." Billy's death in Carousel, the marriage of Maria and the Captain in The Sound of Music, and the accomplishment of "The Rain in Spain" in My Fair Lady, are all points in their respective musicals at which almost everything that follows is a consequence of that moment.

Freytag is writing about tragedy, and so his next two sections discuss the descent and final undoing of the hero. Traditional musicals have often been musical comedies, but still follow a general pattern of playing out the consequences of the climatic moment until balance is restored. Once Eliza can pass for a "duchess at an embassy ball" she no longer needs Henry Higgins, and their previously very uneven relationship is suddenly more nearly balanced, and they must both work out what that means.

Aristotle famously argued in his Poetics that drama must include, in order of importance: plot, character, thought (themes and ideas), diction (language), music, and spectacle. Shakespeare more or less follows this recipe. Musicals tend to mix in more music and spectacle than Aristotle prescribed, but traditionally rely heavily on strong plots (concept musicals notwithstanding). Much of contemporary drama, like contemporary literature and art films, relies more heavily on character and thought. However, when spending a summer night under the stars, audiences seem drawn to the pleasures of being told a familiar story with beautiful language and music.