Shakespeare and Popular Music

Exploring the interactions between Shakespeare and popular music, this book links these seeming polar opposites, showing how musicians have woven the Bard into their sounds. It shows what happens to Shakespeare when he exists in and becomes popular music, in all its diverse and glorious forms.

Exploring the interactions between Shakespeare and popular music, this book links these seeming polar opposites, showing how musicians have woven the Bard into their sounds. How have Shakespearean characters, words, texts and iconography been represented and reworked through popular music? Do all types of popular music represent Shakespeare in the same ways? And how do the links between Shakespeare and popular music challenge what we think we know about both Shakespeare and popular music? One of the enduring myths about how Shakespeare and popular music relate is that they don't - after all the antagonism between high culture and pop music could be considered mutual. In the first book of its kind, Adam Hansen shows what happens to Shakespeare when he exists in and becomes popular music, in all its diverse and glorious forms. Exploring these interactions reveals as much about the functions of the diverse genres of popular music as it does about Shakespeare as a global cultural form. Discussing a wide range of examples in a critically-informed but lively and accessible style, this book brings something new to Shakespeare and popular music, capturing the excitement and energy of both for its readers.