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HistoryExtra podcast

Shakespeare and America

HistoryExtra podcast

HistoryExtra

History

4.34.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Acclaimed author James Shapiro considers why England’s foremost playwright has had such a profound impact on the United States, and how his words speak to contemporary concerns. Historyextra.con/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:04.3

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From the Compact 2008, the stylish 3008 to the Rumi New 5,08.

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2025. Personal contract purchase subject status and availability. T's and Zs 18 plus

0:27.5

excludes plug-in hybrids, Delantis Financial Services. Hello and welcome to the History Extra podcast from BBC History Magazine, Britain's best-selling history magazine.

0:50.5

I'm Ellie Cawthorne. Today's podcast guest is James Shapiro. James is Professor of English

1:01.0

and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and his new book, Shakespeare in a

1:06.4

Divided America, looks at the role that Shakespeare's plays have held in American life and how they shaped

1:12.1

the nature's culture and politics. World History's editor Matt Elton spoke to James down the line

1:18.2

to find out more. Is there a moment or a particular staging of a play that inspired you to write

1:23.7

this new book on Shakespeare and America? There was a moment and there was a production.

1:29.6

The moment was the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

1:36.4

And that November, I woke up, that November morning,

1:41.0

I woke up and realized that living in my blue bubble in New York City,

1:46.2

I misunderstood something fundamental about my country.

1:50.6

And I realized that I had better get to work figuring out what that was.

1:56.1

And having spent the past quarter century or so investigating London in Shakespeare's Day, two years,

...

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