As You Like It has more songs than any other Shakespeare play. Six scenes (out of the play’s 23 scenes [if you count the Epilogue and I do]) have songs in them, and two of those scenes have multiple singings (I suppose you could play them as the same “song” but they aren’t continuous).
That’s over a quarter of the scenes.
In my head I always thought Twelfth Night was the king in this regard… maybe because of the opening line and its inclusion of songs… but nope, this is the king…
To paraphrase a character from Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl, “I’ve seen musicals with less music than this.”
Why?
Why so many songs? Did they get a new actor who could sing, so Shakespeare put him to use?
I don’t have a clue. Just thought I’d throw it out there…