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Lead book review

America’s love-hate relationship with Shakespeare

Emma Smith examines the peculiarly disruptive effect of Shakespeare’s plays on American society over the centuries

14 March 2020

9:00 AM

14 March 2020

9:00 AM

Shakespeare in a Divided America James Shapiro

Faber, pp.310, 20

Shakespeare’s single explicit reference to America is found in The Comedy of Errors. The two Dromios are anatomising the unseen ‘kitchen wench’ Nell, who is ‘spherical, like a globe’: ‘I could find out countries in her,’ says one Syracusan brother. ‘Where America?’ asks his twin. The reply, ‘O, sir, upon her nose, all o’erembellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires’, embodies early colonial fantasies about the famed riches of El Dorado.The

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