Shakespeare and the American Nation

by Kim C. Sturgess

• ISBN13: 9780521035767
• ISBN10: 0521035767
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-05-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Why do so many Americans celebrate Shakespeare, a long-dead English poet and playwright? By the nineteenth century newly-independent America had chosen to reject the British monarchy and Parliament, class structure and traditions, yet their citizens still made William Shakespeare a naturalized American hero. Today the largest group of overseas visitors to Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Bankside's Shakespeare's Globe Theatre come from America. Why? Is there more to Shakespeare's American popularity than just a love of men in doublet and hose speaking soliloquies? This book tells the story of America's relationship with Shakespeare. The story of how and why Shakespeare became a hero within American popular culture. Sturgess provides evidence of a comprehensive nineteenth-century appropriation of Shakespeare to the cause of the American Nation and shows that, as America entered the twentieth century a new world power, for many Americans Shakespeare had become as American as George Washington.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Introduction

The Paradox

Manifest consumption of Shakespeare

America: a proudly anti-English -idea-

The Appropriation

Beginning the appropriation of Shakespeare and the 'First American Edition' of his works

Jacksonian energy - Shakespearean imagery

Context for appropriation in nineteenth-century America

The American heroic and ownership of Shakespeare

Shakespeare as a fulcrum for American literature

The American Scholar and the authorship controversy

Last scenes in the final act of appropriation

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index

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