YMMV / Something Rotten!

• Adorkable: Nigel is as sweet as they come, and his eager yet awkward personality only makes him cuter.
• Award Snub: Played for Laughs by the Broadway production. They lose the 2015 Best Musical Tony Award to Fun Home, and then posted an advertisement boasting about their loss, citing camaraderie with some other famous shows that lost that prize, like West Side Story and Wicked.
• Awesome Ego: Shakespeare is a douche with an ego the size of Europe, but he became the most acclaimed writer in history for a reason.
• Awesome Music:
  • "A Musical", a song which lovingly mocks everything about musicals, and contains references to many others, including Annie, Les Misérables, and even Seussical.
  • "Hard to Be the Bard" is remarkable for showing Shakespeare has an Awesome Ego and show his motivations for infiltrating Nick's play.

• Crosses the Line Twice: “The Black Death” is a rather upbeat song about, well, The Black Death. It’s extremely tasteless but is still one of the funniest songs in the entire show.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Nostradamus is very popular for bringing an assortment of funny moments to the show and singing “A Musical”.
• Genius Bonus: Nick Bottom was the Butt-Monkey character from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Of course his character here wouldn't have better luck.
  • Becomes Fridge Brilliance when you realize that, since the events of the musical line up with the timing of A Midsummer Night's Dream being written, it implies that Shakespeare was so petty that he named his Butt-Monkey character after his rival.
  • Overlaps with Black Comedy Burst. Francis Bacon is shown trying to freeze chicken, an experiment that led to his death by food poisoning.
• Fridge Horror: Would America really be that easy to survive in during the 16th century? What with all the native attacks, the French to the north, and the Spanish to the south, things won't improve until after our heroes have long since died of old age, if the aforementioned factors don't get them first..
• Hilarious in Hindsight: While looking into the future for musicals, Nostradamus bellows out a cry of "CATS". The joke would already get a good laugh, but now chances are it'll do even better given the show's bad press coming off of its infamously panned movie.
• Ho Yay: Shakespeare has it with both Nick and Nigel. The Broadway production even had an Almost Kiss between him and the latter. Helps that the real life man is considered Ambiguously Gay.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Nick is a bit of an ass and is far too wrapped up in his jealous hatred of Shakespeare, but it's clear he's struggling to provide for his family, and he only resorts to plagiarism when he's totally backed up into a corner.
  • While Shakespeare is a jackass who whines about how tough his life is all while enjoying luxuries most can only dream of, it's also shown that the pressures to deliver consistent excellent work is getting to him, and his Wangst isn't entirely unjustified.
• Love to Hate: Shakespeare is a self obsessed douche, but he’s also a hilarious Large Ham who gets to sing some great songs, and is actually surprisingly easy to root for.
• Magnificent Bastard: William Shakespeare is a famous English playwright who learns that his rivals, The Bottom Brothers, have used a Soothsayer to copy a play he would write in the future. Shakespeare would infiltrate the Bottom Brothers' acting troupe and encourage the brothers to continue making "Omelette", while convincing Nigel Bottom to give him Nigel's written work. After exposing the Bottom Brothers of using a Soothsayer to steal his work, Shakespeare will have their sentence reduce from execution to banishment to the Americas and Shakespeare would use Nigel's work to create the universally acclaimed Hamlet.
• Rooting for the Empire: Ordinarily the audience would never feel sympathy for the world’s most popular author trying to plagiarize from two struggling brothers, but Shakespeare actually comes across as justified in doing so. Nick tries to plagiarize Shakespeare’s work first, and the bard is only trying to get back what’s his. Or rather what will be his.
  • However, his blatant manipulation of Nigel and public embarrassment of Nick keeps makes it clear that while he may be justified in his self plagiarism, he's still a Jerkass. Not to mention, while he can be excused for trying to plagiarize what has been plagiarized from him, he was already planning to steal from Nigel before that which he had no excuse for.
• Signature Song:
  • "A Musical"
  • "Hard to be the Bard"
• Wangst: Played for Laughs in “Hard to be the Bard” where Shakespeare goes on and on about how difficult it is to be him, even as the song illustrates the many perks of his life.
• The Woobie: Poor Nigel, who's such a self doubting mess he can't even see that his writing is amazing enough to save him and his family from poverty. And then over the course of the show he comes close to losing the newfound love of his life, nearly splits up with his beloved brother, and is manipulated by his idol Shakespeare who steals his latest work, which just so happens to eventually become the most acclaimed theatrical work of all time. Thankfully he comes into his own and succeeds as an artist and gets the girl and his brother back.

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