‘More hits than you can possibly imagine’

This chapter explores the role of music as a tool both to interpret Shakespeare for a modern young audience and to balance the conflicting demands and mythic tensions generated by creating a Hollywood version of Romeo and Juliet in Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996). Although much of the focus on this film has been on the inclusion of pop music, the film soundtrack consists of a varied mixture of pre-existing and commissioned orchestral music and popular songs, crossing a wide range of genres and mixed in innovative ways; the big hits, when they came, mostly occurred after the film was released. The chapter analyses how Luhrmann and his team attempt to ‘translate’ the text through the use of music, arguing that Luhrmann uses familiar musical structures and rhythms to support the language and drama of the play for an audience new to the language of Shakespeare, while also drawing on the cultural connotations and flexibility of the musical score to interpret the text and play with the possibility of a Hollywood-style happy ending.