Anne, Check out Lawrence Levine's book High Brow/Low Brow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. He makes an excellent case that Shakespeare, along with the Bible, was the best known literary text in nineteenth-century America, and it was widely performed to mixed-class audiences. Some evidence he gives of this (from memory): Newspapers routinely quote Shakespeare without attribution and made constant reference to characters from the plays. Think of Nast's potrayal of Andrew Johnson as Iago. Major actors, such as the Booths, toured America's major cities but also performed in every little town in the American hinterland. Sometimes locals would perform the minor characters. Audiences were very "interactive," yelling the correct lines at actors who made a hash of their part. Working-class people heavily attended the theatre, as evidenced by the Astor Place riot against the English actor--I believe Forest. If you look at typical theatre broadsides from the 1850s, you will see what we understand as "high" culture (Shakespeare, opera, Ole Bull, etc.) mixed in with a plethora of things we would consider "low" culture: comedic routines, minstrelsy, etc. Levine argues that the change to Shakespeare as "high brow" culture didn't happen until the late nineteenth century. Gregg Kimball -----Original Message----- From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Anne Pemberton Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2007 8:33 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [VA-HIST] Shakespeare in Virginia On an online forum, we are discussin the book The Shakespeare Riots, and a discussent who is either British or Australian, seems surprised that Shakespeare was so well attended in the "antebellum" period. He was under the impression that after the Revolutionary War, Americans tended to discard Shakespeare and consider his works unworthy of study. Can anyone elighten me as to whether the works of Shakespeare were typically a part of libraries in Virginia between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars? Thanks muchly for shedding any light on this issue! Anne Anne Pemberton [log in to unmask] http://www.erols.com/apembert http://www.educationalsynthesis.org