Rebels with a Cause: The Political Use of Shakespeare in the Early Jeffersonian America
"Teacher, no! Not Shakespeare!"
...was the response from my junior high students last year, on the morning I
told them that we would soon be reading William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
But the worst was yet to come - I told them we going to read it out loud.
There was a palpitating silence for a few seconds after I told them this new
bit of information. For a class of not-quite-teenage boys and girls, the sudden
realization that they were going to be forced to act out lines from a play,
especially one written by Shakespeare, was disarming and disorienting. For
them, William Shakespeare was a wrinkled old man from an age far removed, who
wrote dusty old plays with words not even in the dictionary.
However, it wasn't always so. A hundred and sixty years after Shakespeare
was dead and buried in the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford upon
Avon (yes, that's a real name for a city), the English-speaking world had
elevated William Shakespeare to the pantheon of literary heroes, alongside John
Milton, John Dryden, Samuel Johnson, and Homer. Children not only studied Shakespeare;
they memorized his lines as they would verses from the Bible.
At the Bard's death, Pocahontas was arriving with her husband John Rolfe to
England and the idea of America began to grow in the hearts of American
colonists. By the time George Washington was born a little more than a hundred
years later, privileged children were reciting Shakespeare as part of their
grammar school educations and pressing their noses against books from printing
presses. In 1710, the American colonies had one printing press, but by 1832,
they had constructed hundreds and Boston became an even more powerful
disseminator of information than London ever could dream to be. In 1810, Isaiah
Thomas explained the prophetic nature of the power America had suddenly grasped,
with a passage from none other than Shakespeare:
"For Shakespeare, in his Henry VI, part second, scene seventh, introduces the rebel, John Cade, as thus upbraiding the lord treasurer Say--"Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm, in creating a grammar school; and whereas before, our fathers had no book but the score and tally, thou has caused PRINTING to be used; and, contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou has built a paper mill."[1]
Thomas was indicating here a streak of the rebel in the American spirit, or
in the newly minted United States. Twelve years earlier, James Callender (the
same potboiler who would, in six years, accuse Jefferson of siring children
with his slave, Sally Hemings) told a curious story in his Sketches of the
History of America when discussing the importance of paper money - then a
new innovation only brought about because of the increased proliferation of the
printing press in post-Revolutionary America. Callender quoted a full-page
advertisement included in an American printing of Shakespeare's latest edition,
showering the power of the United States along with the new power of the paper
mill.
"We no longer fend for hob-nails, because, by a late ingenious invention, we make nails better, quicker, and cheaper than any other people; and we may soon expect other discoveries of utility."
"As paper itself is made out of rags, and as this is the only use to which they can be put, the price of paper manufactured in America, is, in a great measure, clear gain to the country. This is one reason why the erection of paper mills claims patronage from every friend to the United States."[2]
Early Jeffersonian America exhibited other qualities of the Bard. For
example, in the same year 1810 that Thomas spoke of the rebellious nature of
the paper mill, John Lowell proclaimed that the United States possessed the
unique personality traits of Mercutio: "that even Shakespeare, in his
Mercutio, has given us but a tame sketch of our sense of honor."[3]
A year prior in 1809, Thomas Northmore wrote an epic poem exploring the
pathos of the American Revolution titled: Washington, or Liberty Restored.
In his ten-book volume of poetry, Thomas included a footnote to indicate the
quality of what he termed the rebellious colony, using a quote from Henry Vth
to describe the inner nature of the young country:
"We give express charge--that none of the French be upbraided, or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentlest gamester is the soonest winner."[4] Northmore explained the significance of the passage by explaining that America was not rebelling from Britain because of treason but because of the cruelty exhibited against them.
Using Shakespeare's reasoning as justification for their cause, Northmore pushed for a just war reasoning against Great Britain, something embedded even within the greatest writer England had ever produced.
[1] Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America: with a Biography of Printers, and an Account of Newspapers : to which is Pre-fixed a Concise View of the Discovery and Progress of the Art in Other Parts of the World, Vol. 1, From the press of Isaiah Thomas, Jun.; (Isaac Sturtevant), 1810. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926, p. 445, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0104161954/SABN.
[2]
Thomas Callender and James Thomson, Sketches of the History of America.
Philadelphia: From the press of Snowden & M'Corkle, no. 47, North
Fourth-street, 1798. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926,
p. 207, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0101351885/SABN.
[3]
John Lowell, Interesting Political Discussion: The Diplomatic Policy of Mr.
Madison Unveiled: in a Series of Essays Containing Strictures Upon the Late Correspondence
between Mr. Smith and Mr. Jackson ... [n.p.]: n.p., [1810]. Sabin
Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926, p. 23, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0100760910/SABN.
Comments
Post a Comment