American national myth and tradition, from its genesis during the War of Independence, identified anyone fighting against ‘tyranny’ as a hero and patriot. At the same time that the mythology of the heroic pilgrim settlers and frontier pioneers developed, the popularity of the yeoman playwright, together with his numerous robust and individualist protagonists, increased. The imagery of the death of tyrants and regicide in plays such as Julius Caesar, Richard III, Hamlet and Macbeth found a receptive audience in republican America, perhaps affirming the idea that acts of heroic rebellion were necessary to secure freedom. From presidents to ‘political activists’, men chose to invoke Shakespearean imagery to engender the spirit of American patriotism.

LEADERS AND HEROES

The early American heroes who had helped to found colonies prior to the heady days of the nineteenth-century republic were not immune from posthumous association with Shakespeare. Retrospectively, commentators attempted to forge links between the colonial writers and the playwright. For some Americans, intellectual credibility was reaffirmed by any apparent appreciation of Shakespeare, and many were therefore prepared to go to great lengths to show that several (if not most) important Americans felt a common bond with this naturalised playwright. To suggest a relationship scholars searched through personal library catalogues and correspondence noting anything that could indicate knowledge of Shakespeare.