eBook

Acting in the night

Nemerov, Alexander

2010

Overview

What can the performance of a single play on one specific night tell us about the world this event inhabited so briefly? Alexander Nemerov takes a performance of Macbeth in Washington, DC on October 17, 1863—with Abraham Lincoln in attendance—to explore this question and illuminate American art, politics, technology, and life as it was being lived. Nemerov’s inspiration is Wallace Stevens and his poem “Anecdote of the Jar,” in which a single object organizes the wilderness around it in the consciousness of the poet. For Nemerov, that evening’s performance of Macbeth reached across the tragedy of civil war to acknowledge the horrors and emptiness of a world it tried and ultimately failed to change.

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Subject: 19th century / Civil War, 1861–1865 / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh / European / History / Language & Literature / LITERARY CRITICISM / Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Stage history -- United States / Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Macbeth / Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616 / Social aspects / Social conditions / Stage history / Theater / Theater - Washington (D.C.) - History - 19th century / Theater and society / Theater and society -- Washington (D.C.) -- History -- 19th century / Theater and the war / United States / United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Social aspects / United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Theater and the war / Virginia / Virginia -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Social aspects / Virginia -- Social conditions -- 19th century / Washington (D.C.) / Washington (D.C.) -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Social aspects / Washington (D.C.) -- Social conditions -- 19th century
• ISBN: 9780520251861, 9780520947443, 0520947444, 0520251865