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A review by neilrcoulter
Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future by James Shapiro
3.0
James Shapiro’s Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future is a really interesting way to look at Shakespeare through the lens of American history—and actually, it’s much more a book of vignettes from American history than a book about Shakespeare’s works. The chapters are independent from one another, so readers could easily skip to whichever sections they’re most interested in. Each chapter gives a snapshot of a moment in American history that in some way connects to one or more Shakespeare plays.
Where the book is good, it’s thoroughly fascinating. I especially learned a lot in chapter 3, about the 1849 Astor Place riot; chapter 4, about John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln; and chapter 5, about immigration issues in the early twentieth century. Some other chapters seemed to me much less insightful—chapter 6 is mostly a summary of the musical Kiss Me, Kate, and chapter 7 of Shakespeare in Love, neither of which I’m particularly interested in. Those chapters had less nuanced engagement with the broader culture.
What comes through in all of the chapters together is the idea that America has always been basically as it is now. We see in one chapter after another that every era of America, not just our own, has been “a divided America.” There’s nothing new under the sun of our current political debates—which is, I suppose, either somewhat relieving or utterly demoralizing.
The book’s subtitle—“What his plays tell us about our past and future”—is overly grandiose and never quite realized. In his final chapter, Shapiro considers the 2017 Delacorte Theater production of Julius Caesar in Central Park, in which Caesar was portrayed to look like then-president Donald Trump. The production attracted a lot of outraged, angry attention from people who misunderstood it (though, to be fair, it’s easy to see why) as encouraging violence against the president and, perhaps, conservative values generally. Shapiro gazes at representatives of the far Right from a distance, never able to see further than a kind of “Wow, these people are just insane, not like me and my literary, artistic friends” perspective. I don’t skew politically conservative myself (I tend toward that most challenging and incomprehensible position of “moderate”; in other words, I don’t fit in anywhere), but I think a deeper understanding of conservative Americans requires something more than just tuning in to Fox & Friends and other conservative media. Shapiro-as-researcher/ethnographer really disappointed me in the conclusion of the book.
On the last couple of pages, Shapiro blithely presumes that “The future of Shakespeare . . . would appear secure. No writer’s work is read by more Americans. . . . Shakespeare alone among all writers was named [by the national Common Core standards] as one whose works ought to be studied by every young American” (220). I think he vastly underestimates the effects of a cultural mindset that sees Shakespeare as a “dead white male” and therefore at least irrelevant, if not harmful, for students to spend time with. And Shapiro overestimates public school teachers’ familiarity with and affection for Shakespeare’s works. That perspective on literature—quick to discard established “dead white male” works in the canon in favor of works by underrepresented authors, under the assumption that the dead white males have little to contribute—is something that I believe comes more from a liberal than a conservative stance. So Shapiro needs to consider more seriously the possibility that it’s not the “deranged Right-wingers” who are removing Shakespeare from America; it may in fact have a lot to do with Tenured Professor World, of which Shapiro is obviously a proud denizen.
Where the book is good, it’s thoroughly fascinating. I especially learned a lot in chapter 3, about the 1849 Astor Place riot; chapter 4, about John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln; and chapter 5, about immigration issues in the early twentieth century. Some other chapters seemed to me much less insightful—chapter 6 is mostly a summary of the musical Kiss Me, Kate, and chapter 7 of Shakespeare in Love, neither of which I’m particularly interested in. Those chapters had less nuanced engagement with the broader culture.
What comes through in all of the chapters together is the idea that America has always been basically as it is now. We see in one chapter after another that every era of America, not just our own, has been “a divided America.” There’s nothing new under the sun of our current political debates—which is, I suppose, either somewhat relieving or utterly demoralizing.
The book’s subtitle—“What his plays tell us about our past and future”—is overly grandiose and never quite realized. In his final chapter, Shapiro considers the 2017 Delacorte Theater production of Julius Caesar in Central Park, in which Caesar was portrayed to look like then-president Donald Trump. The production attracted a lot of outraged, angry attention from people who misunderstood it (though, to be fair, it’s easy to see why) as encouraging violence against the president and, perhaps, conservative values generally. Shapiro gazes at representatives of the far Right from a distance, never able to see further than a kind of “Wow, these people are just insane, not like me and my literary, artistic friends” perspective. I don’t skew politically conservative myself (I tend toward that most challenging and incomprehensible position of “moderate”; in other words, I don’t fit in anywhere), but I think a deeper understanding of conservative Americans requires something more than just tuning in to Fox & Friends and other conservative media. Shapiro-as-researcher/ethnographer really disappointed me in the conclusion of the book.
On the last couple of pages, Shapiro blithely presumes that “The future of Shakespeare . . . would appear secure. No writer’s work is read by more Americans. . . . Shakespeare alone among all writers was named [by the national Common Core standards] as one whose works ought to be studied by every young American” (220). I think he vastly underestimates the effects of a cultural mindset that sees Shakespeare as a “dead white male” and therefore at least irrelevant, if not harmful, for students to spend time with. And Shapiro overestimates public school teachers’ familiarity with and affection for Shakespeare’s works. That perspective on literature—quick to discard established “dead white male” works in the canon in favor of works by underrepresented authors, under the assumption that the dead white males have little to contribute—is something that I believe comes more from a liberal than a conservative stance. So Shapiro needs to consider more seriously the possibility that it’s not the “deranged Right-wingers” who are removing Shakespeare from America; it may in fact have a lot to do with Tenured Professor World, of which Shapiro is obviously a proud denizen.