• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Ransom Center Magazine

  • Articles
  • Sections
    • Art
    • Books + Manuscripts
    • Conservation
    • Exhibitions + Events
    • Film
    • Literature
    • Photography
    • Research + Teaching
    • Theatre + Performing Arts
  • Print Edition

James Shapiro

Shakespeare scholar explores the Bard’s role in American culture

April 29, 2014 - Gabrielle Inhofe

James Shapiro, Larry Miller Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, discusses Shakespeare in America at 7 p.m. this Thursday, May 1, at the Harry Ransom Center. A reception and book signing follow, and books will be available for sale.

 

Shapiro’s newest work, Shakespeare in America: An Anthology from the Revolution to Now, explores Shakespeare’s role in American culture.  The anthology, published by the Library of America in celebration of the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birthday, comprises 71 pieces from American poets, politicians, essayists, novelists, and more.  It includes works by Edgar Allan Poe, Woody Allen, Cole Porter, Isaac Asimov, and James Agee.

 

The anthology aims to show that, although America declared its independence from Great Britain, Americans have adapted Shakespeare for use in cultural expression.   In a recent interview, Shapiro said, “American history tends to be represented in a kind of clear-cut, steady march. What became clear to me through this book is the uses—disturbing and exhilarating in equal measure—to which Shakespeare has been put. People have used Shakespeare as a means to make arguments that are not easily made or expressed in this country about race, gender, war, social justice, identity.”  The full interview may be viewed in the above video.

 

The Ransom Center holds three copies of the Shakespeare First Folio and several quarto editions of the plays, along with prompt books, costume designs, and many other materials relating to productions of the plays from the eighteenth century to the modern era.

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts, Exhibitions + Events Tagged With: Cole Porter, Edgar Allan Poe, Isaac Asimov, James Agee, James Shapiro, Library of America, Shakespeare, Shakespeare in America: An Anthology from the Revolution to Now, Woody Allen

James Shapiro "unravels" Shakespeare’s life

March 19, 2012 - Kelsey McKinney

Portrait of William Shakespeare.
Portrait of William Shakespeare.

James Shapiro, a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, speaks Thursday night at the Ransom Center about Shakespeare’s “life” as currently written.

Shapiro specializes in Shakespeare and Elizabethan culture and is the author of Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare and 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. Cultural Compass spoke with Shapiro about his research, the sparse data on Shakespeare’s early life, and his favorite play.

In your book 1599, you focus on a year in Shakespeare’s life in which he wrote five plays. How did Shakespeare, an actor himself, find the time to write such masterful works?

Shakespeare somehow managed to finish Henry V, write As You Like It and Julius Caesar in quick succession, and draft Hamlet in the course of that year. He seemed to have written plays in inspired bursts. The pressure of drawing audiences to his company’s new theater, The Globe, must have had something to do with it as well in 1599. But we do well to remember that playwrights turned out plays then fairly quickly. Thomas Dekker either wrote or collaborated on ten plays that same year. How Elizabethan playwrights did it without caffeine—neither coffee nor tea were available yet in England—makes that achievement even more remarkable.

With relatively little information to work with from the beginning and end of Shakespeare’s life, how do you piece together his life?

It takes time—and patience. I started working on 1599 in 1988 and didn’t publish it until 2005. I started another year book—on 1606, the year of King Lear and Macbeth, five years ago—and don’t expect to finish it until 2016. Slowly but surely, over time, and with enough dogged research, the pieces of the puzzle start fitting together. It can get frustrating—and happily it’s not the only project I work on at one time, or I’d go mad.

In several interviews you have hinted that biographers of Shakespeare are drifting toward fiction in their work. What amount of theory do you think is appropriate in a biography? Where is the line?

Well, that’s the subject of my talk on “Unravelling Shakespeare’s Life.” So come to the talk where I’ll address this—and will answer any questions you might have after. It’s less about theory than fantasy and invention, what biographers have to supply when the facts of the life, especially the inner life, haven’t survived.

You said that you hated Shakespeare in grade school. What changed your mind?

What changed my mind was seeing terrific productions. I spent a lot of time backpacking overseas in my teens and twenties and ended up spending a good deal of that time in England, where it was possible to see extraordinary actors taking on Shakespeare. I was hooked. Over the course of a decade I may have seen 80 or 100 productions of Shakespeare’s plays—and much of what I know of Shakespeare derives from those formative experiences. I never did take a college class on Shakespeare, though that’s what I teach these days. I also spend a lot of time now working with theater companies and helping to train teachers to teach through performance.

Do you have a favorite play?

Usually the one I’ve seen most recently, onstage or at the movies. The recent and brilliant film by Ralph Fiennes of Coriolanus has made me want to spend more time with that often overlooked tragedy.

Filed Under: Exhibitions + Events Tagged With: 1599, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare, James Shapiro, literature, Performing Arts, playwrights, programs, theater, William Shakespeare

Primary Sidebar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4_kazYMjNM

Recent Posts

  • Celebrate with us in 2023
  • Photographer Laura Wilson delves into the lives of writers with stunning portraits
  • A childhood gift inspires a lifelong passion for India and map-collecting
  • “Dog” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  • A Greek fragment is the first-known New Testament papyrus written on the front side of a scroll

Tags

acquisition Alice's Adventures in Wonderland archive archives Art Books Cataloging Conservation Council on Library and Information Resources David Foster Wallace David O. Selznick digitization exhibition Exhibitions Fellows Find Fellowships Film Frank Reaugh Frank Reaugh: Landscapes of Texas and the American West Gabriel Garcia Marquez Gabriel Garcia Marquez archive Gone with the Wind I have seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America Lewis Carroll literature Magnum Photos Manuscripts Meet the Staff Nobel Prize Norman Bel Geddes Norman Mailer Performing Arts Photography poetry preservation Publishing Research Robert De Niro Shakespeare theater The King James Bible: Its History and Influence The Making of Gone With The Wind Undergraduate What is Research? World War I

Archives

Before Footer

Sign up for eNews

Our monthly newsletter highlights news, exhibitions, and programs.

Connect With Us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

About

Ransom Center Magazine is an online and print publication sharing stories and news about the Harry Ransom Center, its collections, and the creative community surrounding it.

Copyright © 2023 Harry Ransom Center

Web Accessibility · Web Privacy