In this great country, with its vast mixture of races, all thrown into the melting pot of American traditions, climate and surroundings, there is all the raw material of a splendid artistic development. Every kind of talent is latent here. All that is required is opportunity, inspiration and guidance. (Kahn [1916] 20)  

3Clearly, the organisers saw the Shakespeare Tercentenary as an occasion which could provide “opportunity, inspiration and guidance” for the heterogeneous masses to integrate into “American traditions,” through engagement with art. However, their project invites further questions as to what constituted “American traditions,” how and by whom the “raw material” of the immigrants should be guided to achieve “splendid artistic development,” and what role Shakespeare should play in that process.

5Moreover, both Cartelli and Coppélia Kahn argue that this concept of democracy is heavily biased in favour of the allegedly superior Anglo-American cultural norms, seeking to “interpellate Caliban, the cultural – and racial – Other, into Anglo-American culture” (Kahn [2000] 268). Cartelli suggests:

Apparent both in [Otto] Kahn’s and MacKaye’s efforts to bridge the distance between Fifth Avenue and Avenue A, Republican and Socialist, economic aristocrat and indigent immigrant, is the desire to sustain the myth of America’s democratic sufficiency and a corresponding anxiety about how that myth might be sustained given the distance America had traveled from colony to postcolony to burgeoning imperial power with more huddled masses on its doorstep than it knew how to accommodate. (Cartelli 75)  

7However, this interpretation of the American Shakespeare Tercentenary is coloured by the almost exclusive critical focus on MacKaye’s New York centrepiece, which arguably was to some extent driven by the metropolitan social elites. An examination of the 1916 Shakespeare celebrations other than Caliban by the Yellow Sands reveals a rather more complex picture. While some of the organisers and patrons of the Tercentenary indeed hailed from the old, “Anglo-Saxon” stock, the celebrations throughout America were too widespread and popular to be dismissed offhand as an affair staged by the members of the elite in order to force the masses to accept their vision of culture. A stunning range of large and small-scale Tercentenary projects was carried out across the country. In preparation for the anniversary, the Drama League of America put forward suggestions for the appropriate kinds of celebratory activities: “plays, masques, festivals, pageants, music, dancing, chorus, lectures, sermons, art and craft exhibitions, club programs, library exhibits, study courses, story telling, tableaux, planting of trees, and developing of Shakespeare gardens” (Roberts 354). An examination of publications from the period reveals that those suggestions were widely acted upon. For example, in Atlanta, the Shakespeare Study Class – a local society active since 1896 – organised the planting of an oak at Piedmont Park, combined with “an address on Shakespeare by Dr Henry Alford Potter and another appropriate address by Robert Loveman” (“Shakespeare Class” E8). The Thalian Club of Cordele, Georgia – a study club consisting of only twelve members – studied Julius Cesar and King Lear and held a Shakespeare pageant with some “wonderful” floats (Moore A2). University of Texas prepared a five-day programme of events, including “pageants, esthetic [sic] dancing, revels, fairs, lectures, plays and pageants again” (“To Commemorate Shakespeare” 5). The Dallas Shakespeare Club’s contribution was an “al fresco Shakespearean festival” involving, among other attractions, placing garlands on Shakespeare’s bust and the recitation of an original ode by a local poet (Periwinkle 13). In Wellesley, Massachusetts, a pageant in honour of Shakespeare was “originally planned by the parishioners of St Andrew’s Episcopal Church, but the affair grew until practically every citizen [...] became interested” (“All Wellesley” 10). These are just a few examples, indicating that the nation’s involvement in the Tercentenary was widespread and immensely varied. Besides large-scale municipal events, such as MacKaye’s Caliban, thousands of celebrations were initiated by private individuals, educational and religious institutions, and other non-governmental organisations.

12Thus, the “Colored Organizations” are segregated from the mainstream festivities and assigned a marginal space in Caliban’s Program. Similar segregation seems to have occurred in Tercentenary observances elsewhere, as New Orleans’ Times-Picayune reported: “in Washington, D.C., the celebration will be made part of the commencement exercises, and different schools will co-operate. Three white schools will combine on one Shakespeare pageant, and two colored high schools together will produce another” (Haskin 9A). Clearly, the co-operation of “different” schools did not cross racial divisions, and educational segregation in Washington, D.C., extended to Shakespearean celebrations. Overall, it seems that African Americans did participate in the Tercentenary, but they did so in limited and restricted ways, remaining to a large extent detached from the mainstream events.  

13While the Shakespeare Tercentenary thus failed to integrate a vast proportion of American citizens belonging to ethnic minorities, evidence presented above suggests that public interest and participation extended beyond the narrow circles of Anglo-American, Protestant elites. Furthermore, what is striking is that most Tercentenary initiatives in the United States did not originate from governmental institutions and bodies, but rather from the grassroots: members of the public, clubs and associations, individual educationalists, churches, schools and colleges. The chief promoter of the celebrations was the Drama League of America, a voluntary organisation which arose from women’s club activities and spread throughout the U.S.A. in the early twentieth century, attracting one hundred thousand members by 1915 (Blair 148-60). The League’s idea for the Tercentenary was not to engineer a centrally controlled, official affair on the national scale, but to encourage local interest: to “organize local celebrations all through every city, in the local groups that already exist, and then bring them to a focus in some large municipal festival in which the whole city can have a part” (“New York Gets Ready” SM12). This is clearly evidenced in the inclusion of the extensive list of small-scale, city-wide events in Caliban’s Program, as discussed above. As a result of this approach, the American Tercentenary celebrations acquired a strong local focus, engendering communal involvement rather than becoming an official “diet” of Shakespeare fed to the populace by the central government.

14Local pride is evident in the newspaper report on the preparations for the Tercentenary in the mining city of Butte, Montana, which announced: “Mining City Will Not Be Behind Other Cultured Centers in Observing Occasion” (“Plans Are Maturing”). Similarly, the press coverage of the celebrations in Atlanta emphasised their local nature. One newspaper proudly stressed that the city’s main Tercentenary event was being prepared by the inhabitants of Atlanta themselves: “Other cities which have presented similar pageants this year have, in nearly every case, had to import their talent, [...] but the Drama league has worked out the Atlanta pageant entirely as a home affair” (“Over 2,000 People” C10). And, similarly to MacKaye’s goal expressed in the Preface to Caliban, both Butte and Atlanta aimed to unite all walks of life in the celebrations. The Butte Miner wrote: “Butte [...] hopes to draw from all interests and from all phases of its population in its presentation” (“Plans Are Maturing”). And the Atlanta Constitution explained:

Just as the day laborer and the college president alike find enjoyment in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ or ‘Macbeth,’ so all classes of Atlanta’s social and business life will be drawn upon for the support of the pageant [...]. Shop girls and clerks will be called upon to fill the roles of actors and dancers as well as those wealthy young men and women who have had special advantages along these lines. (“Atlanta Children” C2)

15After the event, the Atlanta Constitution reported that “it was due in great extent to this splendid and harmonious co-operation of everybody that the affair was such a wonderful success” (“Thousands Witness” D8). The festivities were clearly seen as an expression of local identity, solidarity and civic spirit and not as something imposed from the outside by the U.S. authorities.

16Moreover, the Tercentenary in America was, on the whole, not financed by the federal or state governments. Instead, the organisers of Shakespearean events had to mount their own fundraising campaigns, as the leaflet issued by the New York City Shakespeare Tercentenary Celebration Committee in the months leading to the jubilee demonstrates:

The current expenses of the Committee are heavy and it is necessary to have the performance of the Masque underwritten. There is immediate need of funds. Those willing to contribute funds or solicit them are asked to communicate with Mr. W. Forbes Morgan, Jr., 71 Broadway. (New York City Shakespeare Celebration)

Certificate of support for Caliban, issued as part of the fundraising campaign. From “Papers of MacKaye Family”, ML-5 (294), Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH. Reproduced with kind permission of Rauner Special Collections Library.

17The scarcity of tangible support from official institutions is further illustrated by the fact that the Shakespeare Tercentenary enthusiasts could not even rely on the Board of Education to subsidise materials designed to support nationwide celebrations in schools. In April 1916, activists of the Drama League of America reported on their involvement in producing and disseminating The Tercentenary Pamphlet for Schools and Colleges:

Our members are earnestly requested to do everything in their power to swell the sales of this pamphlet. The material was to have been published as an official document by the United States Bureau of Education; but the Bureau’s funds ran out, and the League had either to print at its own expense or to let the material go unused. We hope that our members will agree that the Directors decided wisely in determining to risk the large outlay (Drama League 6).

19This demonstrates that, while ideologically loaded in its promotion of Shakespeare and English-language culture as the unifying forces for American society, the Tercentenary was not a state-sponsored or government-led affair. President Woodrow Wilson sent Percy MacKaye a letter explaining his absence on the opening night of Caliban, to which he seems to have been invited: “I wish with all my heart that it were possible for me to go up and see the Shakespeare Masque, but, alas, pleasures of this sort are denied me during these hurried and troublous [sic] times. I am nonetheless warmly obliged to you” (Wilson). The President clearly considered the Tercentenary to be “pleasure,” rather than crucial state business, in which the U.S. government would need to be involved. Instead, the initiative, organisation, and, crucially, financing of the celebrations fell to non-governmental groups and enthusiastic private individuals.

21Cartelli calls the coming together of these elements for the production of Caliban a “wedding of New England pedigree and New York commercial energy” in service of a project “which very consciously aimed to make Shakespeare the centerpiece of an undertaking reflective of Anglo-American exceptionality and magnificence” (Cartelli 66). However, he does not comment on the paradoxical fact that Anglo-American exceptionality was being sponsored by Americans who were naturalised, rather than descended from the “old” stock. Apparently, promoting the privileged position of English-language literature, epitomised by Shakespeare, was the domain not only of the Anglo-American elites, but also of those more recent immigrants who achieved commercial success in the U.S.A. Perhaps the association with Shakespeare, a powerful cultural icon, served to enhance the social and cultural status of the latter group. As Lawrence Levine argues, “to many of the new industrialists as well as many members of the new middle classes, following the lead of the arbiters of culture promised […] an avenue to cultural legitimacy” (Levine 176). Or perhaps high culture, of which Shakespeare was by then considered a prime example (Levine 31-35, 72-81), was connected not so much with ethnic heritage but with social class, and the members of the privileged classes, whether Anglo-American, German, or Jewish in origin, had vested interest in its promotion. Whatever the reason, the situation seems more complicated than that of one ethnic group forcing their cultural norms on diverse other groups. At least some representatives of the other groups had already internalised those norms and were now involved in their dissemination.

22These issues concerning class and ethnicity bring us back to the question of the involvement of the Shakespeare Tercentenary in the debates surrounding American identity and democracy in the early twentieth century. Adopting Shakespeare as a spokesperson for democracy and as an American national icon was not a straightforward operation. As Michael Bristol points out, “Shakespeare’s centrality in American culture may be construed as a kind of anomaly,” since his work is closely involved with “the institutions of hereditary privilege,” which revolutionary America so emphatically rejected (Bristol 2). Similarly, Kim Sturgess demonstrates that American attitudes to Shakespeare from the War of Independence until the emergence of “the threats posed in the twentieth century by Communism and more recently ‘terrorism’” were marked by a paradox: a continuing admiration and gradual assimilation of Shakespeare, despite his perceived affiliation with the hated, oppressive and tyrannical “Englishness” (Sturgess 10 and passim). Some remnants of this ambivalent attitude still persisted in 1916. For example, Dr Archibald Henderson, professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina and an amateur drama critic, argued that “Shakespeare fails to have a proper appeal today [...] because he is essentially undemocratic” (quoted in “Says Ibsen” 4). However, most Tercentenary enthusiasts were at pains to “democratise” Shakespeare. A character in Denton Jaques Snider’s “dramatic epos” of 1916, The Shakespeariad, used this term to describe his desire to transform the entirety of Shakespeare’s work and thought (“Shakespearopolis”) while transferring it to America (“Atlantis”):

In young Atlantis oversea I would

Democratize great Shakespearopolis,

Transfusing all its royalty and noble stock,

Mossy with privilege of centuries,

Back to the people’s primal protoplasm [...]. (Snider 415-16)

23Similarly, Judge R. L. Batts of the Federal Bench argued: “More than three hundred years ago [Shakespeare’s plays] were written by a democrat for the public. By democrat I mean one capable of affiliating with all classes, one who gets pleasure from such association” (Batts 48). Clearly, the American Tercentenary activists were keen to make Shakespeare into, in the words of Richard Burton, “a democratic art at a democratic price” (Burton RP5).

24Some contemporary commentators felt that the price of “democratising” Shakespeare in the United States in 1916 was the sacrifice of the artistic standards: “If Shakespeare could rise in his grave and witness some of the events scheduled in his honor this year, [...] it is reasonably certain that he would go back to his shroud and consider himself fortunate to be among the departed” (Pauline Maurice, quoted in “Sisters Shine” 11). Some, like the reporter who commented on Caliban by the Yellow Sands, saw the price to be the departure from the original Shakespeare: “if there was not much Shakespeare in evidence in the only popular appeal made by the masque, there was a great deal of democracy” (“Shakespeare Community-Masque” 1701, quoting from the New York Evening Sun). Whatever the price, the gain for us, almost a hundred years later, is an insight into some of the processes and tensions involved in defining American identity and democracy in the second decade of the twentieth century. Those processes included, most notably, the negotiation of the position of disadvantaged groups such as new immigrants, African-Americans, and the urban underclasses, in relation to the privileged cultural discourses, such as English-language literature epitomised by Shakespeare.