Shakespeare and the Making of America

Our three weeks together will be a journey of discovery. The path? A close look into a crucible that contains two Shakespeare plays, pre-American history, early American history—and the use and appropriation of all. Against traditional belief that attributes Shakespeare’s national impact to England and that dates America’s foundation to the Declaration of Independence, profound discoveries await us when we consider the “there and here, then and now.” The connections between The Tempest and Jamestowne are historical, literary, and deep. Those between The Merchant of Venice and the founding of the republic are perhaps less evident, but clear nonetheless. Shakespeare’s rhetoric and his language were in the mouths of the Founding Fathers in ways that were at once uplifting and divisive. In addition to the earliest printed versions of the plays, our journey will include unprecedented live, real-time access to the archeology and history of Jamestowne site and Jamestowne’s most brilliant staff . . . as well as the examination of other compelling documents:  

• William Shakespeare, The Tempest
• Richard Rich, The Lost Flocke Triumphant, 1610 
• William Strachey, excerpt from For the Colony Virginea Britannia (c. 1610-1612)
• John Smith, The Capture and Release of John Smith Including his Rescue from Death by Pocahontas, from The Generall History of Virginia, 1624 
• William Symonds, A Sermon Preached for the Adventurers and Planters of Virginia, 1609 
• William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
• Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence 
• Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIV (on Slavery)
• Thomas Jefferson, Farm Book
• The Remonstrations and Petition of the Free Inhabitants of Halifax County, 1775
• Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, 1852 
• Isaac Jefferson, Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, as dictated in the 1840’s to Reverend Charles Campbell
• Runaway Advertisements + Colonial Williamsburg ephemera

We will examine all of the various perspectives through various means: conversation and seminar with nationally recognized scholars, hands-on work with the language of the plays and these documents, reflection on our own perspectives. The ways in which scholars and historians have typically considered The Tempest and Jamestowne have drastically changed. Whose stories are not told? Whose stories have only begun to be told recently? Engagement with The Merchant of Venice and America’s founding documents makes visible the tension between prejudice and treasure. All of this is, of course, with our eyes on your classroom, bringing your students into this expanded world of literature and history, and to what these plays might mean for them now.