ISBN-10: 1598533169
ISBN-13: 9781598533163
Additional contributors: Sam Wanamaker, Cynthia Ozick, B. J. Ward, Jen Bervin
“The background of Shakespeare in America,” writes James Shapiro in his creation to this groundbreaking anthology, “is additionally the heritage of the USA itself.” From our beginnings as a country, Shakespeare has been a crucial, inescapable a part of our literary history, a determine so largely respected that, as Tocqueville famous within the 1830s, there has been “hardly a pioneer’s hut” and not using a quantity or . Shakespeare in America unearths how, for over centuries, the performs were a prism by which the most important American issues—revolution, slavery, conflict, social justice—were refracted, debated, and understood.
Shapiro lines the wealthy and wonderful tale of the way americans made Shakespeare their very own via quite a lot of genres—poetry, fiction, essays, performs, memoirs, songs, speeches, letters, motion picture experiences, and comedy routines—and a notable roster of yank writers: from Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Mark Twain, and Henry James to James Agee, John Berryman, Pauline Kael, Isaac Asimov, Adrienne wealthy, and Jane Smiley. American statesmen and presidents from John Adams to invoice Clinton (in a foreword written for this quantity) supply their very own stories to Shakespeare’s profound and enduring influence.
The anthology additionally tracks the multitude of the way within which American theater and movie were indelibly marked by means of Shakespeare: actors from Charlotte Cushman and Edwin sales space to John Barrymore, Paul Robeson, and Marlon Brando reinterpret Shakespeare for every new period; the mythical productions of latest York’s Yiddish theater come to mind in Cynthia Ozick’s tale Actors; within the melancholy years, Orson Welles revolutionizes Shakespearean functionality together with his landmark productions of Macbeth and Julius Caesar; the creators of Kiss Me, Kate and West facet tale write Shakespeare into the heritage of the vintage American musical theater; and Joseph Papp, renewing a once-flourishing well known style for the performs, establishes a brand new York culture with Shakespeare within the Park.
Internationally acclaimed Shakespeare pupil James Shapiro introduces every piece with a full of life and informative headnote to lead the reader during the attention-grabbing list of our 250-year-long engagement with Shakespeare and his works—from the perennial curiosity within the birthplace at Stratford-upon-Avon to the uniquely American obsession with the query of who rather wrote the plays—and supplementations the texts with a sixteen-page representation insert.
James Shapiro, quantity editor, is Larry Miller Professor of English at Columbia college. His books comprise Rival Playwrights, Shakespeare and the Jews, Oberammergau, 1599: A 12 months within the lifetime of William Shakespeare, and Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? so much lately, he was once co-author and presenter of the three-part BBC sequence Shakespeare: The King’s Man.
NB: during this e-book version, Woody Allen's But Soft...Real Soft, which looks within the hardcover variation, has been deleted.
Source: Amazon.com Retail AZW3 (via library)