McGuffey's Oxford (Ohio) Shakespeare

Abstract

James Fenimore Cooper regarded Shakespeare as “the great author of America.” For most frontier readers, this distinctly American Shakespeare was disseminated within the pages of the ubiquitous McGuffey Rhetorical Readers, and Hamlin Garland speaks for several generations across the Ohio frontier when he writes, “I got my first taste of Shakespeare from the selected scenes which I read in these books.” This Oxford (Ohio) canon draws generously from the Roman and English history plays, including scenes from the surprisingly popular King John and Henry VIII, and students were encouraged to memorize, and read aloud, classic orations such as “Antony's Oration over Dead Caesar's Body” and “Henry V. to His Troops.” The tragedies were most frequently represented by “The Hamlet Soliloquy,” and the more problematic comedies were virtually ignored, with the exception of brief appearances by a much sanitized John Falstaff. By the close of the century, the McGuffey canon had contributed to an American belief in Shakespeare's authority as second only to the Bible's, a point of view reflected in Emerson's judgment that Shakespeare is “inconceivably wise.”