Shakespeare in American Life

It’s been 60 years since Duke Ellington recorded Such Sweet Thunder, a jazz suite based on Shakespeare’s plays. Eleven songs are linked to Shakespearean characters like Othello and Lady Macbeth, and the final number is a tribute to Shakespeare himself.

While Shakespeare musicals borrowed plots, characters, and situations from England’s best-known poet, they remained essentially “American.”

This 1934 Shakespeare atlas from the Folger collection contains 19 hand-drawn maps of places (both real and imaginary) from scenes in Shakespeare plays.

That’s a hot ticket! (Photo Credit: Library of Congress) Can you feel the feverish excitement in the air? This photograph from April 14, 1936, shows the crowded streets outside the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem on opening night for the Federal Theatre…

Abraham Lincoln. Copyright 1894 by H.W. Fay. Folger Shakespeare Library. Growing up on the frontier, Abraham Lincoln had few books to read in his early days—but among them were the works of Shakespeare, which Lincoln cherished throughout his life. The…