Shakespeare in a Divided America
A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- £8.49
Publisher Description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2020
Shakespeare's position as England's national poet is established and unquestionable.
But as James Shapiro illuminates in this revelatory new history, Shakespeare has long held an essential place in American culture. Why, though, would a proudly independent republic embrace England's greatest writer? Especially when his works enact so many of America's darkest nightmares: interracial marriage, cross-dressing, same-sex love, tyranny, and assassination?
Investigating a selection of defining moments in American history - drilling into issues of race, miscegenation, gender, patriotism and immigration; encountering Presidents, activists, writers and actors - Shapiro leads us to fascinating answers and uncovers rich and startling stories.
But perhaps most pressingly, we learn how, in Trump's America, the staging of his work has provoked threats of violence and has become a battleground for freedom of speech.
'With the lightest touch and the most formidable scholarship, James Shapiro, once again, proves himself to be an irresistible storyteller. And what an exhilarating and disturbing tale he has to tell. Here is proof that Shakespeare's power remains undiminished in our divided world.'
Simon Russell Beale
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Columbia University English professor Shapiro (The Year of Lear) explores how Shakespeare's plays have provided a framework for confronting America's "social and political collisions" in this richly detailed episodic history. Starting in the 19th century, Shapiro contends, Shakespeare's oeuvre helped to shape popular opinion through turbulent periods of growth, war, and political partisanship. He examines John Quincy Adams's 1836 essay vilifying Othello heroine Desdemona for marrying a black man in light of the former president's evolving abolitionism, contrasts Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth's interpretations of Macbeth, details how early-20th-century anti-immigration activists retrofitted The Tempest to their purposes, and places 1998 Academy Award winner Shakespeare in Love against the backdrop of the Monica Lewinsky affair and contemporaneous attitudes toward same-sex love. Most strikingly, Shapiro relates how a 2017 Shakespeare in the Park staging of Julius Caesar in which the title character resembled Donald Trump fanned right-wing outrage and inadvertently revealed "how easily democratic norms could crumble." Shapiro's wit (Lewinsky and Bill Clinton are referred to as "Starr-crossed lovers") and well-sourced anecdotes enliven his incisive analysis of more than a century's worth of American history. Written with broad appeal and expert insight, this sparkling account deserves to be widely read.
