Why America loves Shakespeare

In this week’s books podcast I’m joined from across the Atlantic by the eminent Shakespearean James Shapiro to talk about his new book Shakespeare in a Divided America, which discusses the myriad ways in which America has taken Britain’s national playwright up as its own; and then used him as a lightning-rod for the deepest issues about its own national identity – issues of masculinity, race relations, immigration and assassination. Jim talks about why a country founded by theatre-hating, Brit-hating Puritans fell in love with a British playwright; how Lincoln was the greatest reader of Shakespeare in American history; about whether America is the purest repository of Shakespeare’s language; about how a beef between two Shakespeare actors once led to light artillery being deployed in downtown Manhattan – and how Ulysses S Grant may have been the greatest Desdemona the theatre never quite had.