Shakespeare in a Divided America

by James Shapiro

  This would be no replay of the Astor Place riots, though tension remained high for the final two nights. During the last performance, first one and then another young man tried rushing the stage, but by now the cast knew the drill and security tackled them and quickly escorted them out. Other potentially dangerous threats were dealt with out of sight. I was told by Ruth Sternberg, who oversaw security at the Delacorte, that a protester who had tried to smuggle in paintballs was caught and denied admission; he left, but not before dripping a long trail of red paint on the ground outside the theater. Had he succeeded in firing paintballs at the actors—or even other playgoers—it could well have ended the show. Someone could have lost an eye. Closing night was extremely tense because of ominous threats on social media that the police took seriously: “Wait till you see what happens tomorrow.” “Just wait until the end of the show, the real fireworks are going to come at the end of the show.” There was considerable relief as theatergoers headed to the exits after the final curtain call.

  Even then the threats didn’t stop. Eustis told me about a letter sent to his home address after the run had ended: “It was handwritten and from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And the return address just said: ‘Othello’ . . . The message itself basically said, ‘You liberals have not understood the thing called blowback. I would advise you to be more circumspect in your choices in the future. Because you may think of us as crazy gun nuts, but there will be blowback coming.’” Eustis didn’t tell me—I only learned about it from reading the New York Post—that his wife and daughter had received threatening phone calls at home.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE DELACORTE PRODUCTION and the angry protests revealed deep connections between the four-hundred-year-old play and Donald Trump’s America—just not those Eustis had anticipated. Hillary Clinton, the Democrats, and mainstream Republicans had assumed that the presidential election of 2016 was about differences in policy. And Eustis had assumed that while his production was likely to stir up controversy, the ensuing debate would turn on competing views of how his Julius Caesar dealt with contemporary political concerns: the choices confronting those on the losing side, the threats facing our democracy, the ways in which people could be swayed. But, like those who lost in November 2016, he turned out to be wrong. The divisions within America were more visceral and tribal; Trump himself didn’t have much investment in any particular ideology and never had. What had provoked those on the Right infuriated by the Delacorte production was much simpler: outrage at how a Trump-like Caesar was portrayed.

  Like those who lost in November 2016, the Public Theater had badly underestimated the power of social media in enabling the Right to mobilize this anger. There was also a failure, shared by the FBI, to take seriously enough the extent to which Facebook and Twitter—companies that professed to be advocates of free speech and essential to the preservation of democracy—had allowed themselves to be co-opted. It was only well after the run of Julius Caesar had ended that a wave of newspaper stories broke detailing how Russians had exploited social media sites to influence the presidential election and sow division. But anyone who witnessed the concerted attacks on the Delacorte production by the right wing through social media would have seen that this was the new normal and how political battles were now being waged, at least by those willing to play to win.

  Julius Caesar had anticipated the times. Even as Brutus cannot bring himself to act as rapaciously in pursuit of victory as Antony and Octavius (or even Cassius), so too the controversy over the Delacorte production confirmed what was already clear to many: that the Far Right was willing to display a ruthlessness—going so far as to threaten bodily harm to actors, their director and his family, and fellow Americans out to see a play—that those on the Left could rarely match. Everybody knew it, so much so that it was taken as a given, and so went largely unremarked.

  The influence of technology on public behavior had also been underestimated. Even a few years earlier, playgoers at the Delacorte would turn off their phones and pocket them when asked to do so. No longer. Many, despite this request, needed to leave their smartphones on during the show, as they did everywhere else, and occasionally check them. Which meant that it was next to impossible to prevent the illegal filming of the performance or stop protesters from coordinating disruptions at the Delacorte. During the final, fraught days of the run of Julius Caesar, the Public Theater staff—who were now monitoring the posting of video in real time and could even identify where those immediately uploaded links were shot from in the house—still couldn’t act fast enough to intervene.

  Eustis had challenged his mostly liberal audiences to confront where their desires to rid the country of a potentially autocratic leader might lead. But in doing so, and in inviting them to register both sides of the argument, he had failed to see that while the idea might work inside the playhouse, it no longer had much force beyond that in a deeply divided and angry America. As Eustis ruefully admitted after the run was over, his staging of Julius Caesar, and the ensuing controversy, played “exactly into the great cultural divide we have right now”:

  Part of that divide is between those of us who believe in this democracy and those of us who believe that this democracy has utterly failed. And those that believe that it has failed believe they are victims, they are oppressed by the intellectuals, by the liberals, by the elite, and that that’s the source of their problem. And of course it isn’t the actual source of their problem, but they are being fed constantly a lie in order to protect the interests of the ultra-rich. And it drives me crazy.

  Eustis had wanted a dialogue, even a heated one, while those offended by his memorable production opted for silencing him and his theater company. His production, however inadvertently, had shown how easily democratic norms could crumble.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE FUTURE OF Shakespeare in America, like the future of the nation itself, would appear secure. No writer’s work is read by more Americans. The last time anyone counted was back in the 1980s, when it was determined that 91 percent of American high schools taught his plays. With the establishment of national Common Core standards in 2009, subsequently adopted by almost every state, that percentage has likely risen, for Shakespeare alone among all writers was named as one whose works ought to be studied by every young American. Yet his future also seems as precarious as it has ever been in this nation’s history. There has always been a tug-of-war over Shakespeare in America; what happened at the Delacorte suggests that this rope is now frayed. When one side no longer sees value in staging his plays, only a threat, things can unravel quickly.

  It has happened before. In the early years of the seventeenth century, playgoers from all walks of life crammed the Globe Theatre, turning to the plays of Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists to understand their fast-changing and unsettling world. A few decades later that great experiment came to an end. The divisions had grown too great. Few of those attending a performance of Julius Caesar back then could have predicted that the fault lines in their political culture would lead to civil war and the public beheading of their ruler. In 1642 Parliament declared that “public stage-plays shall cease,” and the Globe, along with London’s other theaters, was closed, then torn down.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m deeply indebted to the friends and colleagues who have read early versions of this book and challenged me to make it a better one: James Bednarz, Alvin Snider, Mary Cregan, Richard McCoy, Ross Posnock, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, Robert Griffin, Daniel Swift, and David Scott Kastan. Michael Shapiro and Harold Aram Veeser have patiently heard out my ideas over the years, and I am grateful for their input. My son Luke Cregan, a better historian than I, has also helped out through many conversations.

  I am grateful, once more, for the exceptional advice and support of my friend and literary agent Anne Edelstein. And I have been fortunate to work with two outstanding editors, Ann Godoff (at Penguin)
and Alex Bowler (at Faber). I am also indebted to the editorial assistance of Casey Denis and to the copyediting of Jean Hartig at Penguin Press.

  A yearlong Public Scholar award from the National Endowment for the Humanities provided the time I needed to conduct much of the research for this book; the NEH asks that I confirm that the views expressed in these pages “do not necessarily reflect those of the NEH.” I was also fortunate to have been awarded a Bogliasco Foundation fellowship, which allowed me to write a section of this book in remarkable surroundings, and get feedback from an exceptionally generous group of artists and writers.

  Much of what I know about Shakespeare in America I have learned from my extraordinary students—both graduate and undergraduate—at Columbia University. I am no less indebted to the actors, directors, and staff at the Public Theater, and at the Theatre for a New Audience, from whom I have learned so much about what it means to perform Shakespeare in America.

  I am also indebted to the staff at various archives where the research for this book was conducted: the Columbia University Libraries, the New York Public Library (especially the Library for Performing Arts), the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

  My greatest debt is to Mary Cregan, without whose wisdom, insight, and support this book could never have been written.

  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS

  What follows is intended to serve the needs of those searching for a particular source as well as those interested in a broader guide to the stories explored in this book. Quotations in the preceding chapters from Shakespeare’s plays, unless otherwise noted, are cited from David Bevington, ed., The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 6th edition (New York: Pearson, 2008). Except for titles, I have silently modernized spelling throughout.

  INTRODUCTION

  The best overview of America’s Shakespeare is Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan’s concise survey, Shakespeare in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), which I draw on for details about the early reception of Shakespeare in America; see as well their edited collection, Shakespeare in American Life (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2007). Charles H. Shattuck’s two-volume Shakespeare on the American Stage, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1976–1987) is another excellent resource. See too Michael D. Bristol, Shakespeare’s America, America’s Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 1990); Thomas Cartelli, Repositioning Shakespeare: National Formations, Postcolonial Appropriations (New York: Routledge, 1999); Kim C. Sturgess, Shakespeare and the American Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Frances Teague, Shakespeare and the American Popular Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Also noteworthy is Robert McCrum’s two-part BBC radio program, “Shakespeare and the American Dream” (April 2016), https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b077gd52. See as well Frank M. Bristol, Shakespeare and America (Chicago: Hollister, 1898), and Esther Cloudman Dunne, Shakespeare in America (New York: Macmillan, 1939).

  For appropriations of “To be, or not to be,” as well as citations of John Adams, “G.I. Hamlet,” Jane Addams, Paul Robeson, Mary McCarthy, and Toshio Mori, see my Shakespeare in America: An Anthology from the Revolution to Now, foreword by Bill Clinton (New York: Library of America, 2014). For the Bakersville controversy, see https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/11/11/offended-pastors-and-parents-pray-for-high-schoolers-who-saw-shakespeare-play/. For Alexis de Tocqueville, see Democracy in America, Part the Second, trans. Harry Reeve (London: Saunders and Otley, 1840), vol. 3, chapter 19, “Some Observations on the Drama Amongst Democratic Nations,” pp. 163–73. For Karl Knortz, see Lawrence Levine’s important study, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).

  For Justice Ginsburg on Shylock, see https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/theater/ruth-bader-ginsburg-rbg-venice-merchant-of-venice.html. For Stephen Greenblatt’s op-ed, see “Shakespeare Explains the 2016 Election,” New York Times, October 8, 2016. It formed the basis of his subsequent book, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2018). See too my review of it in the New York Review of Books, December 6, 2018.

  Much of my information in this introduction about the Delacorte production of Julius Caesar in 2017 is based on firsthand observation, information shared with me by the Public Theater, and extended interviews I conducted with Oskar Eustis. Candi Adams—director of communications at the Public Theater—was also exceptionally helpful. For Eustis’s remarks in New York magazine, see Boris Kachka, “What Oskar Eustis Has Learned from 30 Years of Friendship with Tony Kushner,” New York magazine, October 24, 2017. His speech from opening night is available on YouTube. Eustis’s reflections during rehearsals are quoted from the Leonard Lopate Show, June 2, 2017, hosted by Jonathan Capehart.

  For the history of Julius Caesar on the American stage, see John Ripley, Julius Caesar on Stage in England and America, 1599–1973 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Maria Wyke, Caesar in the USA (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Andrew James Hartley, Julius Caesar: Shakespeare in Performance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014); Andrew James Hartley, ed., Julius Caesar: A Critical Reader (London: Bloomsbury, 2016); and Richard Halpern, Shakespeare Among the Moderns (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). For Orson Welles’s landmark production, see John Houseman, Run-through (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972); Simon Callow, Orson Welles: Road to Xanadu (New York: Viking, 1996); the 1974 interview with Richard Marienstras, in Orson Welles: Interviews, ed. Mark W. Estrin (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002); and The Mercury, A Weekly Bulletin of Information Concerning the Mercury Theatre, n.d. Most critics believe that Welles was aware of a recent and little-known Delaware Federal Theatre modern-dress production directed by Robert C. Schnitzer.

  On the censorship of the early nickelodeon film of the assassination scene, see Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio, “How Many Times Shall Caesar Bleed in Sport: Shakespeare and the Cultural Debate About Moving Pictures,” Screen 31 (Autumn 1990), pp. 246–48; Halpern, Shakespeare Among the Moderns, p. 67; and The Nickelodeon 5 (January 7, 1911). See too “Is Shakespeare Read?,” Harper’s Weekly 51 (1907), p. 152; and “A School Comment on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,” Atlantic Monthly 96 (1905), p. 431.

  For an illuminating account of how Shakespeare makes an equally strong case for and against the argument that Caesar is a tyrant, see Robert Miola, “Julius Caesar and the Tyrannicide Debate,” Renaissance Quarterly 38 (1985), pp. 271–89. For the Elizabethan training in seeing two sides of every argument, see Joel Altman, The Tudor Play of Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).

  For the Fairness Doctrine, see Federal Communications Commission, Report on Editorializing by Broadcast Licensees, 13 FCC 1246 (1949). A useful overview can be found in Steve Rendall, “The Fairness Doctrine: How We Lost It, and Why We Need It Back,” http://fair.org/extra/the-fairness-doctrine. See too, on the Obama years: Dan Fletcher, “A Brief History of the Fairness Doctrine,” February 20, 2009, http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1880786,00.html.

  For Rob Melrose’s production (with an Obama look-alike as Caesar) see “Review: Julius Caesar @ The Guthrie Theater,” MplsStPaul, December 19, 2013. See too Melrose’s own valuable reflections on the controversy: http://www.robmelrose.com/julius-caesar.html.

  CHAPTER 1: 1833

  For John Quincy Adams’s pair of essays on Shakespeare, see “Misconceptions of Shakspeare upon the Stage,” New England Magazine 9 (December, 1835), pp. 435–40, and “The Character of Desdemona,” American Monthly Magazine 7 (March, 1836), pp. 209–17. For their subsequent republication, see James Hackett, Notes and Comments upon Certain Plays and Actors of Shakespeare with Criticisms and Correspondence (New York: Carleton, 1863). To access John Quincy Adams’s voluminous writing in facsimile (as well as the writings
of his parents and son) consult the Massachusetts Historical Society digital collection: https://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/php/. For Adams’s correspondence with George Parkman, see especially his letters to Parkman of March 28, 1835; November 19, 1835; December 9, 1835; and December 31, 1835; for Parkman’s letters, see those dated March 21, 1835; October 15, 1835; November 23, 1835; December 3, 1835; and January 23, 1836. For the exchange over Cicero and Othello with his son Charles Francis Adams, see Adams’s letter of May 13, 1830. I’m grateful to Sabina Beauchard, reproductions coordinator at the Massachusetts Historical Society, for her assistance in providing copies of these materials. For published editions of Adams’s diary and letters, see John Quincy Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising of Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 12 vols. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1874–1877); Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary of John Quincy Adams, 1794–1845 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951); and Diary of John Quincy Adams, eds. David Grayson Allen, Robert J. Taylor, Marc Friedlaender, and Celeste Walker, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); and see too Andrew Delbanco’s insightful review of the two-volume Diaries, ed. David Waldstreicher (New York: Library of America, 2017), in the New York Review of Books, January 17, 2019, pp. 31–33.

  For Adams’s exchange with Ingersoll on Othello, see Charles Jared Ingersoll, Recollections, Historical, Political, Biographical, and Social, of Charles J. Ingersoll (Philadelphia: Lippincott and Co., 1861). For what he tells James Kent, see Adams’s Memoirs, vol. 8, pp. 423–24. For the reviews of his first essay, see National Gazette (December 24, 1835) and Alexandria Gazette (December 15, 1835). For his “singular” view of Othello in his letter to his son Charles in 1829, see The Diary of Charles Francis Adams, eds. Marc Friedlaender and L. H. Butterfield, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 20. For Adams’s Harvard speech of August 28, 1786, on Othello, see Founding Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses, ed. C. James Taylor (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2016). For a list of Adams’s publications, see Lynn H. Parsons, John Quincy Adams: A Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993).