Shakespeare in America

There was a time when Shakespeare was standard reading. When I was clearing out my grandmother's storage bin a few years back I came across an 8-volume leather-bound edition of Shakespeare's complete plays for actors. It dated from 1895. Recently, I had the volumes restored, as a couple of the backs were broken. An heirloom I can pass along if only my kids took as much interest in Shakespeare as I did. Maybe in the future they will develop an appreciation for the bard.

Library of America has released its latest anthology, Shakespeare in America, which is loaded with anecdotes like Longstreet commenting on U.S. Grant's portrayal of Desdemona, while the troops were biding time during the Mexican War. It seemed everyone was doing Shakespeare, as William Grimes notes in his NY Times review of the book.

Shakespeare had a profound influence on writers like Melville, who apparently rewrote Moby-Dick after reading Shakespeare for the first time, recasting his characters and giving it a much more fatalistic air.

Even in this day and age you can find Shakespeare reproductions on both the stage and movie screen, and the bard continues to be taught in schools, influencing a whole new generation whether they like it or not. The language can be a bit daunting in this modern age, which is why you see so many adaptations that try to give this themes greater relevancy for today's youth by setting his plays in modern times.

Probably one of the most compelling adaptations I read as a kid was Frank Herbert's Dune, which reset MacBeth in the distant future on a dry desolate planet called Arrakis. You might call it "Shakespeare in Space."

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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