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Shakespeare Desperate Measures is a loose rock musical retellng: "David Friedman's musical score, an agreeable blend of soft rock and faux country, is happily wed to Peter Kellogg's lyrics. Kellogg's book moves the action from 17th-century Vienna to the 19th-century American West, where cowhand Johnny Blood is sentenced to hang for killing a man in a saloon fight. The condemned man's sister, Susanna, who is about to become a nun, urges the governor to Look in Your Heart. He responds with a mocking reprise and a wicked offer: He'll grant Johnny a pardon if Susanna will sleep with him. Not a problem. Arrange the assignation, dim the lights, substitute Bella, the local floozy, for Susanna and you have the device Shakespeare scholars refer to as the "bed trick."