Description
Book SynopsisExplores the uses of Shakespeare in Manhattan’s Lower East Side as part of a cultural exchange among non-Anglo and Anglo-identified groups from the 1890s to 1920s. Examines these groups’ ideas about what Shakespeare, race, and national belonging should and could mean for Americans.
Trade Review“Kinsley’s work is rich in detailed examples, and calls into question claims that Shakespearean performance in America had become, by the early twentieth century, the domain of ‘highbrow’ culture. Rather, by carefully drawing upon the multitude of Shakespearean performances in New York’s immigrant communities, this book shows that ‘Shakespeare’s meaning—and the terms of American belonging—was always in flux.’ Students of theatre, American studies, urban studies, and history will all be interested in this text.””
—Lisa Merrill,author of When Romeo Was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and Her Circle of Female Spectators
“While intrigued by this historical mystery, the author embraces rather than kicks against the unknown. Drawing on Diana Taylor’s contrast between repertoire and archive, Kinsley challenges us to concern ourselves less with the fixed data points that archival sources help us to establish and more with the larger canvas of connections we can make between this set of Shakespearean performances and the social forces that shaped them and were in turn shaped by them.”
—Joel Berkowitz Theatre Journal
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A Note About Translation and Transliteration
Introduction: Shakespeare and American Culture
1. Shakespeare and the Myth of the Melting Pot
2. Shakespearean Translations, Immigrant Adaptations, and Community Formations
3. Slumming with Shakespeare
4. The Profit of the City Consisteth of All Nations
Conclusion: This Island’s Mine
Notes
Bibliography
Index
