Culture and Shakespeare

Philip Kennicott, the Post's general purpose critic, whom I find a taste difficult to acquire, had an article today on a Shakespeare/America exhibit at the Folger Library, part of this year's DC Shakespeare festival. I mention it because I just started reading a book, "Highbrow, Lowbrow", on American culture, by Lawrence Levine. His first chapter is on Shakespeare in America, particularly the 19th century. Shakespeare was popular, and part of the "popular" culture as well as highbrow. (Though Levine's thesis here seems to be that culture wasn't subdivided into those categories, at least before the Civil War.) He has multiple quotes and cites--Walt Whitman of course. But also that U.S. Grant played Desdemona while waiting for action in the Mexican War. He cites a New Orleans paper, the Picayune, in 1840+ as observing the "playing going habits of our negro population" (that's close to verbatim); a striking quote on many levels--that New Orleans had theaters, that blacks went to the theater, that the paper would write on this, and finally that the language would be politically correct, 21 years or so before emancipation.

I hope the rest of the book is as good as the first 20 pages.