Shakespeare in a Divided America

by James Shapiro

  For the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy, see Edward Alfred Pollard, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates (New York: E. B. Treat and Co., 1866), esp. pp. 744–52, as well as Pollard’s The Lost Cause Regained (New York: G. W. Carleton and Co., 1868); Rollin G. Osterweis, The Myth of the Lost Cause (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1973); Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Noland, eds., The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); William C. Davis, The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996); and Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865 to 1913 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). For Henry Timrod, see Christina Murphy, “The Artistic Design of Societal Commitment: Shakespeare and the Poetry of Henry Timrod,” Shakespeare and Southern Writers: A Study of Influence, ed. Philip C. Kolin (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985). Henry Timrod’s poem circulated widely in the Confederacy, appearing in the Southern Literary Messenger, the Charleston Daily Courier, the Southern Illustrated News, and the Magnolia Weekly. For Mary Preston, see her Studies in Shakspeare: A Book of Essays (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger, 1869). For the (apparently only) review of Mary Preston’s book, see the Aegis and Intelligencer for Friday, May 7, 1869, written by “C.” from “Vineyard, Harford C., Md.” I have also drawn on William R. Taylor, Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character (New York: Braziller, 1961; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

  For Booth’s formative experience of Shakespeare, see especially Alford, as well as Asia’s recollections in John Wilkes Booth: A Sister’s Memoir; for Edwin’s view of his brother, see his letter to Nahum Capen of July 28, 1881, quoted in that volume. And for Alfriend’s recollections, see “John Wilkes Booth: The Recollections of Him by an Early Acquaintance,” Baltimore Sun, October 13, 1901, rpt. in Edward M. Alfriend, “Recollections of John Wilkes Booth,” The Era 8 (October 1901), pp. 603–5. For more on Booth’s affinity for the role of Brutus, see George Alfred Townsend, The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth (New York: Pick and Fitzgerald, 1865), p. 40. And for praise of Booth as a Brutus, see as well Portland (Maine) Daily Eastern Argus, April 17, 1865, and the Evening Star, April 20, 1865.

  For the background to the benefit for Shakespeare’s statue in Central Park in 1864, see Asia’s and Edwin’s recollections as well as the New York Daily Tribune, April 25, 1864; “A Notable Performance,” Castle Square Theatre Magazine, June 2, 1913; “Memorable Night on the American Stage,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 9, 1899; and for Chester’s remark, the New York Herald, November 26, 1864. For John Wilkes Booth’s belief that Lincoln would be king, see Asia’s Memoir. See too Edwina Booth Grossman, Edwin Booth: Recollections of His Daughter (New York: Century Co., 1902), pp. 167–72. And for the arson that night, in addition to the New York Times, November 27, 1864, see Nat Brandt, The Man Who Tried to Burn New York (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986). On Sic Semper Tyrannis, see Edward Steers Jr., “Sic Semper Terrible!,” Surratt Courier 24 (1999), pp. 5–6. On disagreements over what Booth actually cried out, see Timothy S. Good, We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), pp. 20–22.

  For Booth’s earlier words and threats against Lincoln, in addition to Right or Wrong, God Judge Me: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth, see Personal Memoirs of Edwin A. Ely, ed. Ambrose E. Vanderpoel (New York: Charles Francis Press, 1926), p. 231, and https://boothiebarn.com/2012/05/31/booth-at-lincolns-second-inauguration/; and for Con Murphy, see Vincent Starrett, “Lincolnana: The Assassination Premeditated,” Reedy’s Mirror 27 (February 8, 1918), pp. 77–78. Alford quotes a friend of Booth’s—the actor John M. Barron—who also blamed the assassination on the theater: “the characters he assumed, all breathing death to tyrants, impelled him to do the deed” (p. 246). For Booth’s racist response to hearing that Lincoln admired his acting, see George A. Townsend’s recollections in the New York World, April 19, 1865, cited in John Hay, Inside Lincoln’s White House, p. 325.

  For accusations that Lincoln was a tyrant, and for support for Booth after the assassination, see John McKee Barr’s illuminating Loathing Lincoln: An American Tradition from the Civil War to the Present (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014), including, from p. 2, the Texas Republican, May 5, 1865. And for the poetic tribute to Booth, see Alfred W. Arrington, “A Tribute to John Wilkes Booth,” rpt. in Francis Wilson, John Wilkes Booth: Fact and Fiction of Lincoln’s Assassination (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929), p. 304. See too Thomas Reed Turner, Beware the People Weeping: Public Opinion and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), p. 97, for the poem “Our Brutus.” For Ford’s recollections, see “Wilkes Booth’s Crime: Story of the Great Tragedy as Told by John T. Ford,” Louisville Courier Journal, June 20, 1878. For Lincoln as Brutus, see Southern Illustrated News 2 (October 31, 1863), pp. 135–36; from the August 15, 1863, issue of the London Punch.

  The best book on Lincoln’s Shakespeare is Michael Anderegg’s Lincoln and Shakespeare (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015). I have also found helpful: Tim McNeese, “‘I Must Have Some Relief or It Will Kill Me’: Abraham Lincoln’s Reliance on Shakespeare,” Journal of the Wooden O Symposium 11 (2011), pp. 113–29; Fred Kaplan, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer (New York: Harper, 2008); Robert Berkelman, “Lincoln’s Interest in Shakespeare.” Shakespeare Quarterly 2 (October 1951), pp. 303–12; Stephen Dickey’s wonderful “Lincoln and Shakespeare,” in Shakespeare in American Life, Folger Shakespeare Library, http://www.shakespeareinamericanlife.org; Joseph George, Jr., “The Night John Wilkes Booth Played Before Abraham Lincoln,” Lincoln Herald 59 (Summer 1957), pp. 11–15; Roy P. Basler, A Touchstone for Greatness: Essays, Addresses, and Occasional Pieces About Abraham Lincoln (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973); Paul F. Boller Jr., “The American Presidents and Shakespeare,” White House History 30 (Fall 2011); Robert N. Reeves, “Abraham Lincoln’s Knowledge of Shakespeare,” Overland Monthly 43 (1904), pp. 336–42, which must be cited with caution, as Reeves has a tendency to embellish; R. Gerald McMurtry, “Lincoln Knew Shakespeare,” Indiana Magazine of History 31 (1935), pp. 265–77; John C. Briggs, “Steeped in Shakespeare,” Claremont Review of Books 9 (Winter 2008/2009); and David Bromwich, “Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Ambition,” New York Review of Books, April 11, 2014.

  For general studies of Lincoln and the Civil War that have also shaped my thinking, see Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010); Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1962); Joshua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005); Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005); Adam Gopnik, Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life (New York: Knopf, 2009); and Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Six Encounters with Lincoln: A President Confronts Democracy and Its Demons (New York: Viking, 2017).

  For what Lincoln is recorded as saying, see Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln, eds. Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), and for his speeches, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy Prentice Basler, 11 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1990). For what was reported to Herndon, see Douglas L. Wilson, Rodney O. Davis, Terry Wilson, William Henry Herndon, and Jesse W. Weik, Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements About Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998); and Herndon on Lincoln: Letters, eds. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis (Urbana: Knox College Lincoln Studies Center and the University of Illinois Press, 2016); and William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great L
ife (Chicago: Belford, Clarke, and Co., 1889). See Anderegg, Lincoln and Shakespeare (p. 114) for what Secretary of State Seward reported about Lincoln telling Charlotte Cushman in 1861 of his admiration for Macbeth.

  For recollections of Lincoln’s reading Shakespeare aloud, see Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay, ed. Tyler Dennett (New York, Dodd, Mead and Co., 1939); Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, eds. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999); John Hay, “Abraham Lincoln: Life in the White House in the Time of Lincoln,” Century Magazine (November 1890), pp. 33–37; At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings, ed. Michael Burlingame (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000); F. B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln (1866), rpt. as The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln: Six Months at the White House (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1868); James Edward Murdoch and J. Bunting, The Stage: Or, Recollections of Actors and Acting from an Experience of Fifty Years (Philadelphia: J. M. Stoddart, 1880); Egbert L. Viele, “A Trip with Lincoln, Chase and Stanton,” Scribner’s Monthly (October 1878), pp. 813–23; John W. Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1881), vol. 2, pp. 180–81; Adolphe de Pineton, Marquis de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner’s Account (New York: Random House, 1952), pp. 82–86, and his “Personal Recollections of Mr. Lincoln,” Scribner’s Magazine (January 1893), pp. 26–39; David Homer Bates, Lincoln Stories (New York: William Edwin Rudge, 1926), pp. 44–45; Auguste Laugel, “A Portion of the Diary of August Laugel,” translated in the Nation 75 (July 31, 1902), p. 88, as well as Laugel, The United States During the War (New York: Ballière Brothers, 1866), pp. 278–79; Le Grand B. Cannon to Herndon, October 7, 1889, in Herndon’s Informants; William O. Stoddard, Inside the White House in War Times: Memoirs and Reports of Lincoln’s Secretary, ed. Michael Burlingame (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), pp. 105–6; and for John McDonough’s visit to the White House, see William D. Kelley, in Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time, ed. Allen Thorndike Rice (New York: North American Review, 1888), pp. 262–66.

  For Lincoln’s early life and interest in reading Shakespeare, I draw on: “Mr. Lincoln’s Early Life,” New York Times, September 4, 1864 (for his limited schooling); David J. Harkness and R. Gerald McMurtry, Lincoln’s Favorite Poets (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1959); Earl Schenck Miers, et. al., eds., Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology, 1809–1865, 3 vols. (Dayton, OH: Morningside, 1991); for his use of Scott, see, in addition to Anderegg: Louis Austin Warren, Lincoln’s Youth: Indiana Years, Seven to Twenty-One, 1816–1830 (New York: Appleton, Century, Crofts, 1959), p. 76; Robert Bray, Reading with Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010); and for the anecdote about Lincoln’s bookseller, see the New York Herald, February 20, 1861. For Lincoln as theatergoer: see Leonard Grover, “Glimpses of Lincoln in War Time,” Century Magazine (January 1895), pp. 457–67, as well as his “Lincoln’s Interest in the Theater,” Century Magazine (April 1909), pp. 943–50; Bogar, American Presidents Attend the Theatre; and for the story of Lincoln’s reaction to Forrest’s criticism in the theater, see William J. Ferguson, “I Saw Lincoln Shot! And Here Is My Story—Told Now for the First Time,” American Magazine (August 1920). On Lincoln’s visit to Richmond, see Margarita Spalding Gerry, ed., William H. Crook, Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, pp. 58–59; Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln, pp. 256–57; Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (1868: rpt., Buffalo, NY: Stansil and Lee, 1931), p. 168; and Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1894). And to discover what plays were staged in the nation’s capital on any given night, see that day’s Washington Evening Star.

  For Lincoln’s afterlife and Shakespeare’s role in it, see Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Martha Elizabeth Hodes, Mourning Lincoln (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015); Richard Wightman Fox, Lincoln’s Body: A Cultural History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015); and Benjamin Brown French, Witness to the Young Republic: A Yankee’s Journal, 1828–1870, eds. Donald B. Cole and John J. McDonough (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989), p. 52. See too Rev. Pliny H. White, A Sermon, Occasioned by the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, April 23, 1865, Coventry, Vermont (Brattleboro: Vermont Record Office, 1865); Alexander H. Stephens, Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens: His Diary Kept When a Prisoner at Fort Warren, Boston Harbour, 1865, Giving Incidents and Reflections of His Prison Life and Some Letters and Reminiscences, ed. Myrta Lockett Avary (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1910), p. 552; William R. Williams et al., Our Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln: Voices from the Pulpit of New York and Brooklyn (New York: Tibbals and Whiting, 1865); John Carroll Power, Abraham Lincoln: His Life, Public Services, Death and Great Funeral Cortege (Chicago: H. W. Rokker, 1889), p. 145; B. F. Morris, Memorial Record of the Nation’s Tribute to Abraham Lincoln (Washington, DC: W. H. & O. H. Morrison, 1865), p. 183; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, online edition, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 2: chap. 36, p. 4055, http:// www.knox.edu/about-knox/lincoln-studies-center/burlingame-abraham-lincoln-a-life; and “Fanny Seward’s Diary,” transcript, p. 195, “Lincoln and His Circle,” University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/lincoln/fanny-seward-diary/entry?Print=436.

  For Jefferson Davis’s alleged echo of Macbeth, see John Armor Bingham, Mary E. Surratt, David E. Herold, Lewis Payne, George A. Atzerodt, Michael O’Laughlin, Samuel Alexander Mudd, Edward Spangler, and Samuel Arnold, Trial of the Conspirators, for the Assassination of President Lincoln (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865). For the quotation about Duncan from Holinshed’s Chronicles, see Raphael Holinshed, The First and Second Volumes of Chronicles, “The Historie of Scotland” (London, 1587), p. 168. Booth’s claim that America was formed for the white man appears in an undated letter from around November 1864, “To Whom It May Concern,” that he wrote justifying the kidnapping plot, in Right or Wrong, God Judge Me, pp. 124–30.

  CHAPTER 5: 1916

  I’m indebted to the pathbreaking work of two friends on Percy MacKaye’s Caliban by the Yellow Sands in the context of immigration: Thomas Cartelli’s Repositioning Shakespeare, and Coppélia Kahn’s “Caliban at the Stadium: Shakespeare and the Making of Americans,” Massachusetts Review 41 (2000), pp. 256–84.

  For the stage history of The Tempest in America and Britain, see Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan, eds. The Tempest, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Thomas Nelson, 1999); David Lindley, ed., The Tempest, The New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, Shakespeare’s Caliban: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Mary M. Nilan, “The Tempest at the Turn of the Century: Cross Currents in Production,” Shakespeare Survey 25 (1972), pp. 113–23; Christine Dymkowski, ed., The Tempest, Shakespeare in Production (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Charles H. Shattuck, Shakespeare on the American Stage, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1987); and Trevor R. Griffith, “‘This Island’s Mine’: Caliban and Colonialism,” The Yearbook of English Studies 13 (1983), pp. 159–80. And for the few productions across America, see the Chicago Times, June 24, 1889; the Louisville Courier Journal, November 11, 1902; the Washington Post, May 19, 1906; the New York Times, May 7, 1916; the New-York Tribune, March 27, 1916; and the Boston Globe, November 18, 1928. For an influential Darwinian take on Caliban, see Daniel Wilson, Caliban: The Missing Link (London: Macmillan and Co., 1873). Benson’s trip to the zoo is recounted in Lady Benson, Mainly Players: Bensonian Memoirs (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1926), p. 179.
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