This anthology traces the surprising story of how Americans made Shakespeare their own through a wide range of genres. The writers included range from the 1800s to the present day, and offer testimony to Shakespeare's profound and enduring influence.

The pausing American loyalist / Anonymous -- Epilogue to Coriolanus / Jonathan M. Sewall -- The tragic genius of Shakspeare: an ode / Peter Markoe -- Letter to John Quincy Adams / John Adams -- Stratford on Avon / Washington Irving -- Prize ode / Charles Sprague -- The Character of Desdemona / John Quincy Adams -- Hazlitt's characters of Shakspeare / Edgar Allan Poe -- First impressions of Miss Cushman's Romeo / J. M. W -- Indians of North America / Maungwudaus -- Account of the terrific and fatal riot at the New-York Astor Place Opera House / Anonymous -- Shakspeare, or, the Poet / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Hawthorne and his Mosses / Herman Melville -- Ira Aldridge / William Wells Brown -- Recollections of a gifted woman / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Drama's vitallest expression is the common day / Emily Dickinson -- Address delivered at the opening of the New Theatre at Richmond / Henry Timrod -- Letter to James H. Hackett / Abraham Lincoln -- The killing of Julius Caesar localized / Mark Twain -- Shakespeare Tercentennial Celebration, April 23, 1864 / Oliver Wendell Holmes -- Letter to the National Intelligencer / John Wilkes Booth -- The Coming storm / Herman Melville -- Shylock, a burlesque / G. W. H. Griffin -- Othello / Mary Preston -- In the Old Churchyard at Fredericksburg / Frederick Wadsworth Loring -- What lurks behind Shakspeare's historical plays? / Walt Whitman -- The art of Edwin Booth: Hamlet / William Winter -- Shakespeare / William Dean Howells -- From Between the acts: Antony and Cleopatra / Willa Cather -- Shakespeare's Americanisms / Henry Cabot Lodge -- A modern Lear / Jane Addams -- The Hiartville Shakespeare Club / Belle Marshall Locke -- The birthplace / Henry James -- Autobiographical dictation / Mark Twain -- Shakespeare: made in America / George Santayana -- Out, Out / Robert Frost -- Shakespeare's heroines as human beings / Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- Heart of the race / Charles Mills Gayley -- Hamlet and his problems / T. S. Eliot -- To Mark Anthony in heaven / William Carlos Williams -- Shakespeares of 1922 / Lorenz Hart and Morrie Ryskind -- John Barrymore's Hamlet / Stark Young -- Shakespeare for America / George F. Whicher -- Shakespeare and American culture / Joseph Quincy Adams -- The Macbeth murder mystery / James Thurber -- Orson Welles's Julius Caesar / Sidney B. Whipple -- Japanese Hamlet / Toshio Mori -- Shakespeare in Harlem / Langston Hughes -- Paul Robeson's Othello / Samuel Sillen -- Laurence Olivier's Henry V / James Agee -- Preface to G. I. Hamlet / Maurice Evans -- Brush up your Shakespeare / Cole Porter -- The abuse of greatness / Hollis Alpert -- The immortal bard / Isaac Asimov -- Shakespeare's last word: justice and redemption / John Berryman -- Hipsters, flipsters, and finger-poppin daddies / Lord Buckley -- Carlus / Hyam Plutzik -- General Macbeth / Mary McCarthy -- After dark / Adrienne Rich -- Orson Welles: there ain't no way / Pauline Kael -- From Run-through / John Houseman -- But soft ... real soft / Woody Allen -- Caliban in blue / Walter McDonald -- Cora Lee / Gloria Naylor -- West Side Story / Dramatists Guild Landmark Symposium -- The Shakespeare marathon / Frank Rich and Joseph Papp -- Address to the Royal Society of Arts / Sam Wanamaker -- Shakespeare in Iceland / Jane Smiley -- Actors / Cynthia Ozick -- Daily grind / B. J. Ward -- From NETS / Jen Bervin.