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American Civil War

Men of Letters: Shakespeare's Influence on Abraham Lincoln
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Men of Letters: Shakespeare's Influence on Abraham Lincoln

Learn more about Shakespeare’s enduring influence on Lincoln—and on Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

Macbeth and the End of Slavery in the United States
Collation

Macbeth and the End of Slavery in the United States

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Author
David McKenzie

What can Shakespeare say about the original sin of the United States, slavery? As two artists in the Civil War era thought, a lot. Two cartoons in the Folger’s collections, drawn around a decade apart, allude to Shakespeare’s Macbeth to…

Up Close: Lady Macbeth, America, and the stain of slavery
Shakespeare and Beyond

Up Close: Lady Macbeth, America, and the stain of slavery

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Author
Esther French

In a famous scene from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the sleep-walking Lady Macbeth desperately attempts to scrub her hands clean of the (invisible) blood stains from the murders committed by her and her husband. “Out, damned spot, out, I say!” she says,…

War and America's Shakespeare
American soldier in Vietnam
Shakespeare and Beyond

War and America's Shakespeare

Posted
Author
Esther French

“Extremity is the trier of spirits/ Common chances common men will bear.” Quoting from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Abigail Adams praised the courage of the militiamen at the Battle of Bunker Hill in a letter to her husband, John Adams, in 1775. From the…