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asr comments on To like, or not to like? - Less Wrong
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As counter-evidence, Shakespeare has been widely successful in translation. There wouldn't be Russian ballets and Italian operas based on his work if its appeal was due to the style of the English.
I'm not sure about that. It could be that (1) English people loved Shakespeare because his writing is so pretty, (2) England was powerful and influential, and then (3) non-English people admired Shakespeare for signalling reasons.
A first-rate musical work can be based on a not-so-great text. For instance, many of Schubert's greatest songs are settings of poems by Wilhelm Müller, and they really aren't particularly good poems. (At least, they don't seem so to me and I don't get the impression that others generally disagree.) So there could be ballets and operas based on Shakespeare's plays, and they could be really good ballets and operas, even if the plays weren't very good.
A musical setting of a poem isn't really about the words, and poems are already not really about their content; I think the relationship between a play and an adaptation of that play is much tighter.