What is *Shakespeare in a Divided America* about?

*Shakespeare in a Divided America* by James Shapiro explores how Shakespeare’s plays have mirrored and shaped America’s unresolved conflicts, including racism, immigration, class warfare, and political polarization. Through historical case studies—from John Quincy Adams’ debates on interracial marriage to Trump-era controversies over *Julius Caesar*—Shapiro reveals how Shakespeare’s works expose cultural tensions and ideological divides.

Who should read *Shakespeare in a Divided America*?

This book appeals to history enthusiasts, Shakespeare scholars, and readers interested in the intersection of literature and politics. It’s particularly valuable for those analyzing how cultural icons like Shakespeare reflect societal conflicts, offering insights into America’s past and present divisions.

Is *Shakespeare in a Divided America* worth reading?

Yes. Shapiro’s meticulous research and engaging narrative illuminate how Shakespeare’s plays remain relevant to American discourse. While some critics question its political conclusions, the book offers a unique lens to understand historical and modern tensions through literature.

How does *Shakespeare in a Divided America* analyze immigration debates?

The 1916 chapter examines debates over restricting immigration, linking Shakespeare’s *The Tempest* to fears of “foreign” influence. Shapiro shows how nativists and reformers alike invoked Shakespeare to justify opposing views on national identity, underscoring the playwright’s role in framing America’s immigration discourse.

What role does the Astor Place Riot play in the book?

The 1849 Astor Place Riot—a deadly clash over rival performances of *Macbeth*—highlights class conflict and anti-English sentiment. Shapiro frames it as a pivotal moment where Shakespeare became a battleground for issues of equality and cultural ownership in a rapidly changing America.

How does the book address *Julius Caesar* in modern politics?

Shapiro analyzes a 2017 Trump-inspired *Julius Caesar* production that sparked outrage, arguing such controversies reveal how Shakespeare’s exploration of power and tyranny remains potent. However, he questions whether shared engagement with the plays can still bridge ideological divides in polarized times.

What criticisms exist about *Shakespeare in a Divided America*?

Some critics argue Shapiro overstates Shakespeare’s unifying potential in earlier eras and underestimates systemic inequities. Others note the book’s focus on elite interpretations, neglecting broader populist engagements with Shakespeare’s works.

How does Shapiro connect Shakespeare to presidential history?

The book traces how figures like Lincoln and John Quincy Adams turned to Shakespeare’s tragedies to grapple with leadership crises. For example, Lincoln’s fascination with *Macbeth* and *Richard III* mirrored his fears about ambition and moral compromise during the Civil War.

Shakespeare numa América Dividida

O que Suas Peças nos Dizem sobre Nosso Passado e Futuro

James Shapiro

4.09(3172 Reviews)

Visão geral de Shakespeare numa América Dividida

As peças de Shakespeare revelam a alma da América na exploração reveladora de Shapiro sobre as divisões mais profundas da nossa nação. Do assassinato de Lincoln às controvérsias da era Trump, descubra como o Bardo tanto refletiu quanto moldou as tumultuadas lutas de identidade da América por mais de dois séculos.

Escolha como a história é contada

Um livro. Muitas maneiras de ouvi-lo.

As mesmas ideias de Shakespeare numa América Dividida. Escolha a voz, a profundidade e o ritmo ideais para você. Mude quando quiser.

Capítulo 1

When Shakespeare Speaks to America's Soul

What makes Shakespeare so quintessentially American? Though born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, his plays have become deeply woven into the fabric of American identity, serving as a battleground where Americans wrestle with their most divisive issues. From race relations to immigration, from gender roles to presidential assassination, Shakespeare's works have provided the language through which Americans articulate their deepest conflicts. As Barack Obama once observed, "Shakespeare speaks to me in a way that no other writer does." This sentiment crosses political divides-Ronald Reagan quoted Shakespeare more than any other president before him. Even today, when Americans find themselves unable to directly address controversial topics, they often turn to Shakespeare as common ground, a cultural touchstone that allows them to explore what cannot otherwise be spoken. James Shapiro's exploration of this phenomenon reveals how Shakespeare has functioned as America's national playwright, offering a mirror in which Americans see their struggles reflected across centuries.

Capítulo 2

Shakespeare and the American Racial Imagination

The story of Shakespeare in America begins with a shocking revelation: John Quincy Adams, one of America's most prominent abolitionists, found Shakespeare's Othello deeply disturbing-not because of its portrayal of jealousy or betrayal, but because it depicted an interracial marriage. In 1833, Adams publicly declared that Desdemona's passion for Othello was "unnatural" solely because of Othello's race, and that her murder represented "her deserts." This position seemed wildly contradictory for a man who fought against slavery, opposed Texas annexation on anti-slavery grounds, and would later defend African captives in the famous Amistad case. The origin of Adams's published views traced back to an uncomfortable dinner party with celebrated actress Fanny Kemble. When Adams expressed that Othello was "disgusting," Kemble was shocked into silence. Two years later, when Kemble published her recollections of this exchange, Adams felt compelled to defend himself in print, leading to public criticism that only fueled his determination to elaborate on his views about the dangers of interracial marriage. Adams's opposition to interracial relationships dated back to his Harvard undergraduate days in 1786, when Massachusetts reenacted its law against racial intermarriage. Even as a nineteen-year-old, Adams had rejected Othello as Shakespeare's "most perfect" play, finding its premise "injudicious, disgusting, and contrary to all probability." He questioned both Venice's trust in Othello and the believability of Desdemona's attraction to him. His mother Abigail Adams shared similar discomfort, writing candidly to her sister that "I could not separate the African color from the man, nor prevent that disgust and horror which filled my mind every time I saw him touch the gentle Desdemona." Unlike her son, however, Abigail questioned whether her reaction stemmed from "prejudices of Education" or "natural antipathy," revealing her conflicted position as someone who opposed slavery yet felt revulsion at seeing a black man touch a white woman. After marrying Pierce Butler in 1834, Fanny Kemble discovered her husband owned Georgia's second-largest slave plantation. During her 1838-39 visit there, she kept a journal documenting the horrors of slavery and sexual exploitation of black women. Reflecting on a slave named Morris, Kemble recalled her conversation with John Quincy Adams, who had shockingly referred to Othello as a "nigger." She powerfully challenged the hypocrisy of men like Adams who claimed interracial relationships violated natural law while white masters regularly engaged in sexual relations with enslaved women. By 1820, Adams foresaw that abolition might lead to civil war, followed by "the extirpation of the African race on this continent, by the gradually bleaching process of intermixture." His antislavery stance strengthened in 1836, the same year his "Character of Desdemona" essay was published. Yet even as his abolitionist convictions grew, Adams remained fixated on the "unnatural" marriage between Othello and Desdemona, revealing his inability to reconcile racial equality with his opposition to amalgamation.

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Capítulo 3

Manifest Destiny and American Masculinity on Stage

In summer 1845, as the U.S. Army deployed 4,000 troops to the Mexican border, Captain John Magruder organized an Army Theater to improve morale. Among their productions was Shakespeare's Othello, with Lieutenant Theodoric Porter as the lead and the slight, "girlish" Ulysses S. Grant cast as Desdemona. This curious casting choice reveals much about American conceptions of gender and power at a pivotal moment in the nation's expansion. The "Army of Occupation" stationed at Corpus Christi transformed the small coastal trading post into a raucous military encampment plagued by gambling and brawling. To combat demoralization, officers built an 800-seat theater where they performed plays including Shakespeare's tragedy. The officers' choice to stage Othello was significant-contrary to expectations, the play about a black man marrying a white woman was regularly performed in slave states, with white actors in bronzed makeup playing the lead. Grant, future Union general and president, was cast as Desdemona because of his slight 135-pound frame, "girlish" features, and mild voice that "spoke like a lady almost." His friend James Longstreet, who would later become a Confederate general, recalled that Grant "used to do the girl's parts" and "looked very like a girl dressed up." This youthful Grant contrasts sharply with the grizzled commander Americans would later know. The year 1845 marked a pivotal turning point in American history with the emergence of "Manifest Destiny." Even when Congressman Robert Charles Winthrop invoked Shakespeare's King John to mock warmongers who "spits forth Death and mountains, rocks and seas," his literary shaming of politicians whose "manhood was all talk" ultimately failed to halt America's imperial ambitions. The technological revolution of telegraphs and steam engines, coupled with demographic shifts from immigration, upended traditional American life. Manifest Destiny embodied a belief in manly superiority-Mexico needed to be "taught to respect us" like a headstrong wife. Though Grant rehearsed the part of Desdemona, Lieutenant Porter ultimately objected, claiming he "could not pump up any sentiment with Grant dressed up as Desdemona." This revealing moment exposed anxieties about white masculinity at a time when "all white men would be equal, but no one else would be the equal of a white man." Eventually, professional actress Gertrude Hart replaced Grant. Shortly after, the previously clean-shaven Grant grew a beard, perhaps to counter his reputation for girlish looks as his first military campaign approached. While Grant was being replaced as Desdemona, actress Charlotte Cushman was revolutionizing American theater with her portrayal of Romeo. Cushman mastered masculine performance while still maintaining her female identity. Critics noted how she didn't try to hide her "ample and majestic bust" yet presented a figure that "might have been that of a robust man." Her London debut as Romeo in 1845 came during tense Anglo-American relations over territorial disputes, yet she succeeded where other Americans failed by making her passionate American style acceptable through her gender-crossing performance. As a female performer playing male roles, Cushman carefully managed her public image. She maintained a reputation as a churchgoer who wasn't seen consorting with men, while privately maintaining relationships with women. When she first performed Romeo in London, she strategically cast her sister Susan as Juliet to diminish "any unpleasant feeling" about the romantic scenes. Once established as a star, Cushman felt freer to dress in masculine attire publicly, appearing in "a man's hat and coat, a man's collar and cravat, and wellington boots." By the war's end in 1848, the Mexican-American War had claimed roughly a sixth of the 100,000 American soldiers who fought. America gained Texas and vast territories that would become Nevada, Utah, California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. But as Ulysses S. Grant foresaw, this "wicked war" led inexorably to the Civil War, which claimed over 700,000 lives by 1865. The fires of Manifest Destiny were extinguished, along with any glorification of martial manliness. This period also marked the end of female Romeos-after the war, only one woman is recorded as having played Romeo on the New York stage.

Capítulo 4

Class Warfare at the Astor Place Opera House

The Astor Place riots of May 10, 1849 resulted in unprecedented bloodshed when the New York State militia fired on protesters outside the Astor Place Opera House, killing more than twenty people and wounding a hundred others. The violence erupted when a crowd of 10,000-24,000 gathered to protest British actor William Macready's performance of Macbeth. Though newspapers reported the violence stemmed from a feud between actors, the riots actually channeled deeper social divisions through a theatrical controversy. The roots of the conflict traced back to March 1846, when American actor Edwin Forrest publicly hissed during Macready's Edinburgh performance of Hamlet. The incident occurred when Macready performed a dainty "fancy dance" at Hamlet's line "I must be idle." Forrest, representing a more masculine acting style, found this effeminate interpretation a "desecration" and hissed loudly. Macready later denounced this as something "no Englishman would have done," framing the dispute in nationalist terms. The backdrop to this theatrical feud was New York's dramatic transformation. Between Macready's first American tour in 1826 and his return in 1848, the city had quadrupled in population from 123,000 to over half a million. Nearly half were now immigrants, mostly German and Irish. Theaters were democratic spaces where classes, races, and sexes shared common ground, though segregated by price-working class in the pit, wealthy in boxes, and African Americans and prostitutes relegated to upper tiers. By the late 1840s, income inequality had increased dramatically. The wealthy "Upper Ten Thousand" grew richer while immigrants struggled in poverty. Street gangs formed among the working class, exploited by politicians. Class divisions sharpened without unionization or labor protections. These social strains typically only became visible during riots-which frequently originated in theaters. New York's elite responded to these democratic theatrical spaces by building the Astor Place Opera House in 1847, financed by 150 wealthy subscribers. The theater broke with tradition by introducing fixed numbered seats, relocating traditional pit benches to a small "cockloft" with obstructed views, excluding prostitutes and unaccompanied women, and instituting a dress code requiring formal attire. Critics condemned these changes as fundamentally undemocratic, with one "American Citizen" complaining that requiring laborers to wear formal attire effectively barred them entirely. The Astor Place riot culminated in bloodshed as protesters outside hurled cobblestones at the Opera House while Macready performed inside. When police were overwhelmed, militia arrived but were initially attacked by the crowd. After warning shots failed, soldiers fired directly into the mob, killing more than twenty people. By morning, New York resembled a city under siege, with wealthy citizens packing valuables and cleaning pistols while authorities deployed thousands of troops to prevent further violence. The riots exposed America's growing class divisions, with one newspaper noting they left behind "an opposition of classes-the rich and poor" in a country that had considered itself classless. The Opera House eventually closed, later becoming Clinton Hall, though the site remains contested territory to this day-from Joe Papp establishing the Public Theater nearby to provide "free Shakespeare for all" to modern protests against wealthy interests in the area.

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Capítulo 5

Lincoln, Booth, and Shakespeare's Fatal Influence

On April 26, 1865, John Wilkes Booth was killed by Union soldiers twelve days after assassinating Lincoln. In his final days, Shakespeare remained central to Booth's thoughts, as he compared himself to Brutus in his diary, justifying his actions through the lens of Julius Caesar. Despite his limited formal education, Lincoln developed a profound connection to Shakespeare. Growing up with few books, he first encountered the Bard through "Lessons in Elocution" and became devoted to specific plays, particularly Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear. Friends noted he could recite passages for hours, often finding solace in Shakespeare's words during personal tragedy, as when his son Willie died. John Wilkes Booth's theatrical heritage came through his father, Junius Brutus Booth. Growing up, he was known for dramatically reciting heroic speeches while riding horseback. By his teens, Booth had developed strong racist views and joined anti-immigrant "Know-Nothing" meetings. While Lincoln rarely quoted Shakespeare in official capacities, he frequently recited passages privately, especially to his secretary John Hay. From 1863 until his death, Lincoln became a regular theatergoer at both Grover's and Ford's theatres. In November 1864, the three Booth brothers performed together in Julius Caesar at the Winter Garden, with John Wilkes as Antony. This occurred amid growing criticism of Lincoln, with opponents accusing him of tyrannical actions. Shortly after, Booth abandoned acting to plot Lincoln's kidnapping, which eventually evolved into assassination plans. Booth's theatrical career revealed his preference for villainous roles, particularly Richard III, which he performed over a hundred times. When cornered in a barn on April 26, 1865, he attempted a dramatic final stand but was denied his theatrical death when shot without warning, dying with the words "Useless, useless." Days before his assassination, Lincoln read passages from Macbeth aboard the River Queen. He had earlier shared a prophetic nightmare about his own death, comparing himself to Macbeth haunted by visions. After his murder, Americans processed their grief through Shakespearean imagery, particularly Macbeth, likening Lincoln to the virtuous Duncan. These parallels helped a divided nation find collective catharsis by viewing the assassination through the lens of Shakespearean tragedy.

Capítulo 6

Shakespeare, Immigration, and American Identity

The Tempest, now frequently staged in America, was rarely performed in the country from before the Civil War until after World War II. In 1916, it briefly captured American attention through Percy MacKaye's adaptation Caliban by the Yellow Sands, the centerpiece of national celebrations marking the tercentenary of Shakespeare's death. This massive community drama featured seven thousand performers from diverse ethnic backgrounds in New York and Boston, drawing over three hundred thousand spectators. The production, focused on Prospero's attempts to educate Caliban, spoke to one of the era's most divisive issues-immigration-as Congress debated legislation that would soon redefine American citizenship. America's self-image as a haven for immigrants seeking religious, economic, and political freedom began shifting in the 1880s when 5.2 million foreigners arrived, raising the foreign-born population to nearly 15 percent. Anxieties intensified in the 1890s as immigrants from eastern and southern Europe outnumbered those from northern Europe, reaching 85 percent of all arrivals by 1907. Between 1880 and 1920, an unprecedented 24 million immigrants reached American shores. Shakespeare's comedies, with their pattern of creating new social orders by including some and excluding others, were appropriated by those opposing immigration. In The Tempest, Caliban alone is excluded at the end, left on the island while everyone else departs. This pattern of community-building through exclusion made Shakespeare's works surprisingly useful to immigration restrictionists. The irony of positioning Shakespeare as anti-immigrant is striking given his own writing about refugees in Sir Thomas More, where he crafted a powerful speech admonishing nativists who would "put down strangers" and urging empathy for "wretched strangers" with "their babies at their backs and their poor luggage." Yet rather than being seen as an advocate for refugees, Shakespeare's supposed "Anglo-Saxon identity" was marshaled by scholars and politicians seeking to restrict immigration. Henry Cabot Lodge, the leading Congressional voice for immigration restriction for over twenty-five years, was particularly instrumental in this effort. Born in Massachusetts in 1850 to a family with English ancestry, Lodge earned one of Harvard's first doctorates in history with a thesis on Anglo-Saxon law. Lodge's political shift from supporting open immigration to opposing it reflected his racial views. In 1891, he published three linked essays arguing that recent immigrants posed both economic threats and "threatened deterioration." His solution was a literacy test requiring immigrants to read and transcribe passages from the Constitution in their native language. The notion of Shakespeare as an American hero emerged gradually. In 1877, Joseph Watson claimed Americans could better appreciate Shakespeare's works "untrammeled by monarchical surroundings," though British actors rejected Americans' claim to Shakespeare, calling them "a race of yesterday, mere upstarts." By century's end, however, the concept of racial inheritance had shifted-Americans were now considered racially Anglo-Saxon from their founding, making Shakespeare's inheritance rightfully shared. Charles Mills Gayley of UC Berkeley, alongside Lodge, did the most to connect Shakespeare to America's racial identity and immigration restriction. His 1917 book Shakespeare and the Founders of Liberty in America authorized the xenophobic version of American history that Lodge had been promoting in Congress. Gayley's work portrayed new immigrants harshly as "superstitious," "grasping," and potentially "anarchists," while insisting America was and must remain Anglo-Saxon. By 1916, Shakespeare's Caliban had become a common metaphor for immigrants in American discourse. Sociologist Edward Alsworth Ross, after observing immigrants in New York's Union Square, wrote that "the Caliban type shows up with a frequency that is startling," describing them as "hirsute, low-browed, big-faced persons of obviously low mentality." In his 1914 book The Old World in the New, Ross claimed these "sub-common" immigrants had physical defects in every face and warned that admitting them was "racial suicide." In 1915, playwright Percy MacKaye was commissioned to create Caliban, a large-scale outdoor masque for Shakespeare's tercentenary. MacKaye saw The Tempest as the perfect vehicle for his didactic approach, with its four main characters-Prospero, Miranda, Caliban, and Ariel-offering a framework for celebrating literary culture while demonstrating Caliban's education. Yet MacKaye's interpretation was problematic. He portrayed Caliban as a bestial Missing Link, casting the six-foot-four Lionel Braham who appeared in production photos as fanged and subhuman, with blackened skin, thick body hair, and clawlike fingers. On May 24, 1916, ten thousand New Yorkers filled Lewisohn Stadium to witness MacKaye's Caliban. The production portrayed Caliban's journey from primitive beast to civilized being through exposure to great cultural works, particularly Shakespeare's plays. In his first entrance, Caliban crawls on his belly, barely able to speak, hissing and stuttering. The production concludes with Shakespeare himself replacing Prospero onstage. Caliban prostrates himself at Shakespeare's feet, urging the audience to join him: "You millions that are me...Bow down, bow down, and on this bed of clay/Together let us dream another world." As the orchestra breaks into "The Star-Spangled Banner," the production seamlessly shifts from bardolatry to patriotism. Shakespeare continued to be implicated in American immigration debates long after MacKaye's production. At the 1932 opening of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the institution's first director of research, Joseph Quincy Adams, delivered a lecture celebrating Shakespeare as a bulwark against immigration. He lamented how the "first great wave" of northern Europeans had begun "to alter the solid Anglo-Saxon character" of America, while later immigrants from southern and eastern Europe "swarmed into the land like the locust in Egypt." Fortunately, Adams claimed, compulsory education and the required study of Shakespeare's works had stemmed this tide.

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Capítulo 7

Marriage, Gender, and Broadway's Taming of Shakespeare

Even in Shakespeare's time, The Taming of the Shrew troubled audiences with its portrayal of Katherine's subjugation. Shakespeare's contemporary John Fletcher wrote a sequel, The Tamer Tamed, giving Petruchio his comeuppance. The play fell out of favor for centuries, returning to British stages only in 1844 and to American theaters even later. When Augustin Daly finally staged something approaching Shakespeare's original in 1887-as American women were organizing for voting rights-conservative critic William Winter praised Ada Rehan's transformation from "shrewishness to loveliness." A half-century after Daly's production, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne-America's leading theatrical couple-staged a groundbreaking Taming of the Shrew in 1935. They emphasized the farcical elements with acrobats, dwarfs, and horses, distracting from the plot's ugliness. The performance grew physically violent-Fontanne's Katherine broke a lute over Lunt's head and bit him, while Lunt's Petruchio smacked her bottom and dragged her around. Critics noted that Fontanne's final submission seemed ambiguous, possibly "more mock than real," with the production ending on a unicorn-drawn chariot suggesting the fantasy nature of marital bliss. In February 1940, Lunt and Fontanne revived their production for a one-week benefit. Among those involved was 21-year-old Arnold Saint Subber, who observed the couple "screaming at each other in rage" backstage before appearing "cuddly, sweetly" onstage. This frontstage/backstage contrast inspired him to transform The Taming of the Shrew into a musical. Eight years and a world war passed before Saint Subber's idea became Kiss Me, Kate. The war had dramatically changed gender dynamics, with women entering the workforce in unprecedented numbers-from 11.9 million in 1940 to 18.6 million by war's end. These gains were almost entirely erased after the war, as women faced pressure to step aside for returning veterans. The government message shifted from "We Can Do It" to "a mother's primary duty is to her home and children." Post-war America saw divorce rates skyrocket-from one in six marriages ending in divorce in 1940 to one in four by 1946. With returning husbands and shifting gender expectations, the time was ripe for a Broadway show that enacted this battle between sexes. In 1947, Saint Subber persuaded designer Lemuel Ayers to coproduce his musical. After Thornton Wilder declined to write the book, they approached Bella Spewack, one of few women writing for Broadway. Cole Porter, though considered past his prime, was recruited to write the lyrics. The Shakespeare musical was a distinctly American genre dating back only to 1938's The Boys from Syracuse. Kiss Me, Kate struggled to find backers, was budgeted at just $180,000, and booked into a second-tier theater with producers expecting failure. Bella Spewack's breakthrough came when she decided to set the musical on "opening night of the tryout of a musical version of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew at Ford's Theatre in Baltimore." The backstage plot involved recently divorced couple Lilli Vanessi and Fred Graham, with complications from Lois Lane (Fred's "discovery"), Bill Calhoun (Lois's sometimes boyfriend), and Harrison Howell (Lilli's wealthy fiance). The creative tension behind Kiss Me, Kate reflected the outsider status of its creators. Cole Porter was gay, closeted, and married, while also disabled from a horse-riding accident that crushed his legs. These outsiders-all standing outside the idealized American family of the 1940s-created a musical juxtaposing a frontstage Shakespearean world reflecting patriarchal, all-white America with a backstage reality where black and white performers mingled and women had agency over their desires and careers. The musical's most controversial elements came at moments when frontstage and backstage worlds collided. The first was when Fred, as Petruchio, puts Lilli over his knee and spanks her-a scene that became iconic in advertisements despite having no precedent in Shakespeare productions. This reflected a broader cultural moment: at least twenty-eight Hollywood films had featured similar spanking scenes in the decade before, coinciding with rising domestic violence as servicemen returned home from war. The second crucial collision came with Katherine's submission speech at the play's end. Spewack struggled with this problematic scene, initially trying to eliminate the speech almost entirely. After several rejected versions, Porter created "Brush Up Your Shakespeare," a brilliant vaudevillian number sung by two thugs that simultaneously celebrates Shakespeare's cultural currency while normalizing violence against women with lines like "If she says your behavior is heinous / Kick her right in the Coriolanus." Four million Americans saw Kiss Me, Kate during its initial Broadway run and national tour. The show won Tony Awards for best musical, composer/lyricist, and author. By the time it was adapted for film in 1953, America had changed significantly. The film version featured an all-white cast, unambiguous reconciliation between the leads, fixed gender roles, censored lyrics, and eliminated same-sex references. The frontstage conventionality of Shakespeare's taming plot had triumphed over the grittier 1948 original that had briefly shown struggles for sexual freedom, racial integration, and women's choice.

Capítulo 8

Shakespeare in Love and America at the Millennium

A month before its December 1998 release, Shakespeare in Love still lacked a satisfying ending. Test audiences scored it 85 out of 100, but producers wanted to push past 90. Director John Madden and screenwriter Tom Stoppard faced pressure from Harvey Weinstein and Miramax executives to create a happier ending, despite limited time and resources to reshoot. Miramax had even considered changing the title, fearing Shakespeare's name would harm box office potential. Despite these challenges, by February 1999 the film was playing in nearly two thousand theaters and would win seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. It grossed over $100 million domestically-remarkable for an R-rated film without action sequences. Approximately 20 million Americans (10% of the adult population) saw it during its theatrical run, a record for Shakespeare-related films. No other Shakespeare adaptation has achieved comparable success, making it uniquely influential in shaping how Americans imagined Shakespeare at the millennium's end. Shakespeare in Love proposes that an extramarital affair with Viola de Lesseps, a wealthy merchant's daughter, transformed Shakespeare from the mediocre author of Two Gentlemen of Verona into the brilliant creator of Romeo and Juliet. Set in 1593, a period with few biographical details about Shakespeare, the film shows Will struggling to complete "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter" while under pressure from competing theater managers. Viola, passionate about theater but forbidden to perform as a woman, disguises herself as a young man to audition. She falls for Shakespeare's words before falling for the man himself, becoming his muse and transforming his uninspired comedy into the timeless tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Marc Norman's original 1991 screenplay was significantly more progressive than the final film. His script featured Shakespeare falling in love with "Thomas" (Belinda in disguise) before discovering her true gender, creating genuine sexual ambiguity. Will initially struggles with his apparent homosexual attraction before embracing his feelings. When Belinda later asks if he would have loved her as a boy, Will replies he prefers she's a girl "Only because it allows us to make love face to face"-suggesting he might have pursued the relationship regardless of gender. Tom Stoppard was brought in to overhaul Norman's screenplay, finding it "too embarrassingly cavalier about the historical context." He eliminated most of the "gay angle," made Belinda (later renamed Viola) more demure, and created a more conventional heterosexual romance. Stoppard struggled with the ending through multiple drafts-first having the lovers part amicably, then keeping them together with Belinda becoming an actor, and finally creating a Casablanca-inspired farewell with Viola sailing to America. Harvey Weinstein's role in shaping the film appears disturbing in retrospect. Three years earlier, he had allegedly invited the 22-year-old Paltrow to his hotel room and suggested "she give him a massage." When she refused and told boyfriend Brad Pitt, Pitt confronted Weinstein. Weinstein reportedly warned Paltrow "not to tell anyone" and later lied to other women that he had slept with her, claiming it was "the best thing you can do for your career." The filmmakers struggled with depicting adultery in a culture deeply uncomfortable with infidelity. Polling showed only 7-8% of Americans considered extramarital affairs morally acceptable-lower than approval ratings for human cloning, suicide, or abortion. By contrast, 40-63% found same-sex relationships morally acceptable. The film ultimately took a cautious approach, establishing early that Will's marriage was "cold" and that he had been "banished" from his wife-language echoing Romeo's exile to justify Will's freedom to pursue Viola. The film's production coincided with the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, which created an uncomfortable parallel. In February 1998, as rehearsals began, news broke of Lewinsky's Valentine's Day ad in the Washington Post quoting Romeo's lines to "Handsome" (Clinton): "With love's light wings did I o'er perch these walls..." When Shakespeare in Love opened in December 1998, impeachment proceedings against Clinton had just begun. Despite these coincidences, critics never connected the film's adulterous themes with the national scandal consuming headlines. The film's conclusion underwent multiple revisions, ultimately settling on Viola sailing to America while inspiring Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Earlier versions included a more explicit American connection-Viola encountering Native American and African men on shore, or even a final shot revealing the Manhattan skyline. Director John Madden explained they wanted to convey "Viola walking away into history," but the encounter with indigenous and Black men "seemed to take us somewhere we didn't want to go"-likely avoiding America's troubled racial history. While the film flirted with adultery, it retreated from Marc Norman's original draft suggesting Will might fall in love with another man. Despite Shakespeare's comedies often exploring same-sex attraction through cross-dressing characters, the filmmakers clearly felt 1990s American audiences weren't ready for a gay or bisexual Shakespeare. This decision reflected the cultural climate-homosexuality had only been declassified as a disease in 1992, Clinton had signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1997, and Matthew Shepard's murder occurred just before the film's release.

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Capítulo 9

Shakespeare in Trump's America: The Battle for Cultural Ownership

The conclusion examines how Shakespeare has become a battleground in America's culture wars. While academic battles over Shakespeare's place in the curriculum proved largely pointless, a more consequential cultural development was occurring: the rise of color-blind casting in American Shakespeare productions, which helped dismantle long-standing barriers in theater and beyond. By the twenty-first century, diverse casting accelerated to include transgender and disabled actors, with women playing traditionally male roles. For the first time in American history, actors speaking Shakespeare's words began to resemble the nation's diversity-a practice once supported across the political spectrum that became sharply partisan under Trump. In June 2017, a production of Julius Caesar at the Delacorte featuring a Trump-like Caesar sparked right-wing outrage. The controversy began when Laura Sheaffer, a sales manager at conservative Salem Media, saw the show and discussed it on Joe Piscopo's radio program. Though she acknowledged the production "kept the whole script true to William Shakespeare," the story quickly escalated through right-wing media channels like Breitbart, with inflammatory headlines claiming "Senators Stab Trump to Death." The controversy intensified when someone illegally filmed the assassination scene and Inside Edition uploaded it to YouTube, reducing the production to a twelve-second clip stripped of context. Rather than engaging with the production's artistic merits or themes about democracy, conservative critics focused solely on perceived disrespect toward the president. Steve Bannon's earlier attempts to adapt Shakespeare for the screen revealed his true political instincts. His adaptation of Coriolanus transformed the Roman political drama into a racial conflict set during the 1992 Rodney King riots, with Coriolanus reimagined as a black gang member. Despite claiming to address racial abuse and economic inequality, Bannon's screenplay merely caricatured blacks as violent and untrustworthy while abandoning Shakespeare's political themes. The controversy over the Trump-like Caesar exploded when Fox News ran a segment with the misleading headline "NYC Play Appears to Depict Assassination of Trump," deliberately omitting Shakespeare's name. Corporate sponsors faced immediate pressure, with Delta Air Lines withdrawing support despite having backed a similar production previously. The National Endowment for the Arts distanced itself from the production rather than defending artistic expression. Trump supporters like Mike Huckabee and Trump's sons celebrated these withdrawals on social media, while the Public Theater faced a deluge of threatening messages. As the production's run neared its end, far-right activists disrupted performances, with security dramatically increased to protect the show. During the June 16th performance, a woman rushed the stage after Caesar's assassination, shouting against "the normalization of political violence against the Right" while an accomplice filmed. Stage manager Buzz Cohen calmly instructed the actors to resume, prompting a standing ovation. The performance continued despite planted protesters causing additional disruptions throughout the theater. The Delacorte production and the protests revealed deep connections between the four-hundred-year-old play and Trump's America-but not those Eustis had anticipated. While he assumed the controversy would spark debate about democracy and political choices, the divisions proved more visceral and tribal. What provoked the Right was simpler: outrage at how a Trump-like Caesar was portrayed. The Public Theater had underestimated social media's power to mobilize anger, just as many had underestimated how technology companies supposedly championing free speech could be co-opted. The controversy confirmed that the Far Right displayed a ruthlessness-threatening bodily harm to actors, directors, and audience members-that those on the Left could rarely match. Shakespeare's future in America seems simultaneously secure and precarious. Though his works are read by more Americans than any other writer and are mandated in the Common Core standards, the tug-of-war over his relevance has reached a breaking point. When one side no longer sees value in staging his plays but only threat, things can unravel quickly. This has happened before-in early seventeenth-century England, where playgoers from all walks of life filled the Globe Theatre seeking understanding of their changing world. Few attending Julius Caesar then could have predicted that their political divisions would lead to civil war and the public beheading of their ruler. By 1642, Parliament had closed the theaters, and the Globe was torn down.

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Temas principais em Shakespeare numa América Dividida

cultural polarization
american racial imagination
national identity formation
gender performance
literary political history

Citações de Shakespeare numa América Dividida

Shakespeare speaks to me in a way that no other writer does.
Desdemona's passion for Othello was unnatural.
Mexico needed to be taught to respect us like a headstrong wife.
His manhood was all talk.
I could not separate the African color from the man.

Personagens de Shakespeare numa América Dividida

James ShapiroAuthor and historian exploring Shakespeare's role
John Quincy AdamsAbolitionist and president with complex racial views
Fanny KembleCelebrated actress and anti-slavery journal writer
Ulysses S. GrantFuture general cast as Desdemona in an army play
Abigail AdamsMother of John Quincy Adams with conflicted views

Sobre o Autor

James Shapiro, aclamado estudioso de Shakespeare e autor do best-seller Shakespeare in a Divided America, é uma autoridade líder na ressonância cultural e política das obras de Shakespeare. Professor de Inglês Larry Miller na Universidade de Columbia e Acadêmico Residente de Shakespeare no Public Theater de Nova York, Shapiro explora como as peças de Shakespeare espelham as fraturas ideológicas da América. Sua profunda experiência no drama elisabetano e jacobino, aperfeiçoada através de décadas de ensino e pesquisa, informa seu exame sobre raça, imigração e poder nesta obra aclamada pela crítica.

Os estudos inovadores de Shapiro, incluindo 1599: Um Ano na Vida de William Shakespeare (vencedor do Prêmio Samuel Johnson) e The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 (vencedor do Prêmio James Tait Black), redefiniram a erudição moderna sobre Shakespeare. Colaborador frequente do The New York Times, The Guardian e The New Yorker, ele também foi autor de documentários da BBC como The King and the Playwright.

Shakespeare in a Divided America foi eleito um dos Dez Melhores Livros de 2020 pelo The New York Times e finalista do National Book Critics Circle Award, consolidando a reputação de Shapiro como uma voz vital na conexão da história literária com os debates sociais contemporâneos.

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Capítulo 6

Shakespeare numa América Dividida

Visão GeralVisão geral de Shakespeare numa América Dividida

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