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Chapter Two q q q Thou Lovest Me, My Name is Will Smitten by Shakespeare Make but my name thy love, and love that still, And then thou lovest me, for my name is Will. Sonnet 136.13–14 British boots, not books, made imprints in North America only a few years before Shakespeare died in 1616. Virginia was settled in 1607, Bermuda in 1609, Newfoundland in 1610. More than a century passed before an amateur acting company put on the first Shakespeare play in America, a performance of Romeo and Juliet in New York in 1730, after which interest in the Bard grew quickly. Virginia and Alden Vaughan write that the first production of Shakespeare in America by a professional acting company occurred in 1750.1 America’s founding fathers shared the growing ardor for Shakespeare. In 1744, Benjamin Franklin was responsible for a six-volume set of the Bard’s works to be delivered to the library company of Philadelphia. In 1772, John Adams hailed Shakespeare as “that great Master of every Affection of the Heart and every sentiment of the Mind as well as all the Powers of Expression.” In 1787, George Washington attended a performance of TheTempest in Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson wrote that a “lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the volumes of ethics and divinity that ever were written.”2 A copy of Shakespeare’s 1623 First Folio slipped into the country first in 1791. By the early 1800s, editions of Shakespeare’s works were being printed in Philadelphia. Especially in New England, reading Shakespeare was acceptable, but performing him was tempting the devil. Baptist, Quaker, Presbyterian, and Lutheran pastors adjured parishioners to avoid the theater, which could lead to debauchery. In the Puritan atmosphere of mid-eighteenth-century Massachusetts, fines were levied on both theater owners and actors, a stigma that lasted more than a century. Groups gathering for a serious reading of Shakespeare, however, escaped recrimination. The 28 Collecting Shakespeare Shakespeare Society of Philadelphia was founded in 1851, principally by lawyers, who gathered in formal attire for evening readings and literary discussion after the remains of an elegant dinner were cleared from the table. Early Shakespeare in America often appeared in altered, highly popularized versions . New characters and dialogue were introduced. Dance and music were added. In some performances, texts were bowdlerized to refrain from offending prudish audiences. In the not-always-friendly rivalry between American and British actors, some dialogues became burlesque. Some plays suffered extensive cuts. Ethnic stereotypes arose when Shakespeare was performed in blackface with plantation dialect. Some plays were interpreted as pantomimes or minstrel shows. Shakespeare’s works gradually permeated the country, until the playwright was idolized like no other writer. As scholar Michael Bristol noted in 1990, “Shakespeare is an American institution.” Bristol perceives a “massive transfer of authority and cultural capital to American society,” where “Shakespeare has been identified with general or universal human interests, or to put it another way, with social and cultural goodness.”3 Emerson turned Shakespeare into a verb: “Now literature, philosophy , and thought, are Shakespearized.”4 The Folgers, together, would cement the identification of Shakespeare with a newly confident American culture—“our national thought, our faith and our hope,” as Emily put it later.5 q Emily and Henry Folger grew up in the mid-nineteenth century, when many American family bookshelves held only two volumes: the Bible and Shakespeare. Eliza Folger sang Shakespeare songs to Henry in his infancy. Although Shakespeare did not figure in his grade school curriculum, Henry likely was first exposed to the Bard by Homer Sprague, an English teacher at Adelphi Academy. When he was only seven years old, Stephen Lane Folger gave his oldest brother, Henry, his first Shakespeare. Homesick Henry was eighteen when the freshman first returned from Amherst to Brooklyn for vacation. The thick single volume of Complete Works was fresh off the press that same year at the Philadelphia publisher’s, Lippincott.6 Had any other seven-year-old brother ever chosen such a consequential present? On an end paper the recipient inscribed in a large hand in dark pencil, “Henry C. Folger Jr, from his brother, Xmas 75.” While the pages with plays and poems are practically unmarked, Henry filled the title page and the blank pages at the beginning and end of the book with quotes about Shakespeare, as he would...

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