OXFORD SHAKESPEARE TOPICS General Editors: Peter Holland and
Stanley Wells Oxford Shakespeare Topics provide students and
teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare
criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in
its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion
of its subject. This book traces Shakespeare's contributions to
America's cultural history from the colonial era to the present,
with substantial attention to theatre history, publishing history,
and criticism. It identifies four broad themes that distinguish
Shakespeare in the United States from the dramatist's reception in
other countries. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
Americans in search of self-improvement took a utilitarian approach
to the plays, mining them for moral insights and everyday wisdom;
beginning in the nineteenth century, American entrepreneurs
collected, edited, and adapted Shakespeare for their own pleasure
and profit; while America's public schools and theatre
practitioners sought to make the works widely accessible; and
throughout American history, Americans have had fun with
Shakespeare in spoofs, parodies, and other appropriations and the
collection of Shakespeare kitsch. Shakespeare in America also
examines America's evolving awareness of Shakespeare, initially
through the importation of his writings in the early eighteenth
century, the staging a few decades later of English adaptations of
the plays, and in the nineteenth century and beyond, through the
promotion of Shakespeare and his works at Lyceums, Chautauquas,
Shakespeare Clubs (both scholarly men's associations and more
socially-oriented women's clubs), and America's literary
'renaissance' as championed by Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Whitman,
and others. The nineteenth century also witnessed growing attention
to Shakespeare in schools, especially in William H McGuffey's
Readers, and later in colleges, while simultaneously American
familiarity with Shakespeare encouraged burlesques on stage,
including the popular 'black' minstrel shows of the 1840s through
1870s. The twentieth century witnessed new organizations for
promoting Shakespeare, such as the Shakespeare Association of
America, and new venues for amateur and professional performances,
such as Shakespeare summer festivals beginning in the 1930s and
still going strong; and in new media for enjoying Shakespeare, such
as feature films, Broadway musicals, and, toward the end of the
twentieth century, radical adaptations of the plays on stage, on
film, and in fiction, often aimed at persuading American youth that
Shakespeare speaks to them. The story of Shakespeare in America is
ever-changing.
General
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