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So I was saw Something Rotten today.

I think anyone familiar with the show knows where this is going now.

If you aren't familiar with it, it is, keeping spoilers to the minimum, the story of how a down-on-his luck poet creates a musical to combat Shakespeare's fame and fortune and maybe secure his own financial stability. Well, realistically... that ain't happening.

Now, I know the modern musical is... not happening in Elizabethan England. But there was precedence for performative solo and small-chorus performances, with simple dancing sometimes involved— madrigals. So how close can we get to a combination of song, acting, and maybe even dance? With, say, a PoD ranging from the birth of Shakespeare to his death, is there a way some form of show revolving around the idea of "actors in a full-length drama occasionally burst out into song to advance plot and entertain" could exist?

Now of course I don't mean anything quite like a modern song/dance Broadway musical. But how close could we conceivably get?

What would be its effects on future entertainment and the England of its own day, not to mention the rest of Europe?

Could such a thing be a foreign import rather than homegrown?

And, how would this interplay with Elizabethan clergy?
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