From the producer
by
Producer of the show
I am the producer of this documentary (along with the Folger Shakespeare Library) and thought I'd tell you a little bit about it. Shakespeare is an Englishman from 400 years ago, yet today, in high culture and low -- everywhere you turn, it seems, Shakespeare is there. How did it happen? How is it that Shakespeare has become so deeply woven into the fabric of contemporary American life? In this hour, narrated by Sam Waterston, thinkers historians and artists explain. The Father of the Man in America: Shakespeare in American Civic Life and Education will explore the ways in which Shakespeare's work has saturated American history. After the Revolution, there were serious questions about whether America should adopt British culture and literature or create its own. Enjoyed by avid theater fan George Washington, revered by Jefferson and Adams, Shakespeare becomes part of that transformation. Looking back much farther to America's beginnings, the documentary also explores a surprising colonial connection: the 1609 shipwreck (on the way to Jamestown) that may have inspired Shakespeare's play The Tempest. As we move to the late 19th century, we will look at how Shakespeare finally appears in college lecture halls and high school classes, while making an unexpected appearance in the early annals of American psychiatry. During the first generation of American psychiatry, no figure was cited as an authority on insanity and mental functioning more frequently than William Shakespeare. We will look at how outdoor Shakespeare became acceptable on the strait-laced Chautauqua Circuit. We will look at how Shakespeare influenced Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his role in the experiences of immigrants and in major movements like the push West, the establishment of cities, and the Civil War. Above all, we will discover how Shakespeare has come to be everywhere in America, from Gold Rush mining camps to modern open-air performances from Oregon to Central Park...and from the "Shakespearean" actors of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (two con-men called the Duke and the King) to the final frontiers of Star Trek and the latest teen movies.
