From 19th century England's cruelest and most notorious prison, stuffed in wartime with hopeless American sailors, comes death, riot, and a history-making production of Romeo and Juliet.

Well, of course it does.

Thank you. Well, of course it does. From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folcher's director.

In a novel just out in the U.S., Simon Mayo, a longtime BBC radio host,

tells an unlikely story that historians say is very likely true,

that England's first all-black production of Romeo and Juliet was staged by sailors,

most of them American, in a prison called Dartmoor during the War of 1812.

The novel, titled Mad Blood Sturing, is bleak like its setting, but it also contains flashes

of friendship and a love of art that emerges out of the gospel music performances and Shakespeare

plays staged under the order of a larger

than life, but also real, African-American prisoner of war called King Dick, who ran Block

4, the prison's segregated block. Simon Mayo tells us more about the book and its history

in this podcast, which we call

to prison eyes, ne'er look on liberty.

Simon Mayo is interviewed by Barbara Bogabe.

Well, Simon, when I started your book, I realized that I hadn't known that Americans were

held prisoner on British soil during the War of 1812.

I mean, honestly, I didn't know or remember much about the War of 1812 at all.

But I thought that if American sailors were captured, they were just put to work on British ships.

They were pressed into service.

So is this just common knowledge in Britain because you're better educated than we are?

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