Publisher:
University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif
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...
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Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt / Zentrale
Inter-library loan:
No inter-library loan
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 Introduction: a drop that dyes the seas -- A stone's throw : Charlotte Cushman -- The flame of place : Abraham Lincoln -- The glass case : interior life in Washington, D.C. -- Acoustic shadows : the Battle of Bristoe Station -- Center of echoes : Castle Murray, Fauquier County, Virginia -- Ghosts : the death of Colonel Thomas Ruffin, October 17, 1863 -- Sound and fury : nature in Virginia
