823 Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, and Shakespeare in a Divided America (with James Shapiro)

United States President Abraham Lincoln and his assassin John Wilkes Booth were both deeply immersed in Shakespeare's works. And yet, the conclusions they reached about how best to end tyranny--a feature of both Macbeth and Julius Caesar--could not have been more different. As James Shapiro (Shakespeare in a Divided America) explained to Jacke in a conversation they had in 2023, reading Shakespeare from opposing vantage points is not unusual in American history. What does this mean for our understanding of the past--and our hopes for the future?

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