This is a timely and valuable study, for the story of Shakespeare in America is inseparable from that of the nation’s capital. It was in its theaters that President Lincoln went to see, time and again, the greatest Shakespeare actors of his day (and where his assassin knew where to find him). It is there that the Folger Shakespeare Library, the most important hub in the world for early modern scholars, now stands. And it is there that a tradition of staging plays animated by their proximity to power, law-making, and protest, has informed decades of productions, some groundbreaking, others forgettable, at the Folger’s theater and then the Shakespeare Theatre Company, under the leadership of Michael Kahn and his successor, Simon Godwin (both interviewed at length). It’s a fascinating history, with many twists and turns, and Drew Lichtenberg and Deborah C. Payne do a superb job of bringing it to life.

James Shapiro, Professor of English, Columbia University, USA, and author of Shakespeare in a Divided America.

Rarely is a theater’s history redolent of such a rich interplay of political figures and venerable institutions and written with both sharp prose and subtle wit. Lichtenberg and Payne detail the forces that culminate in STC’s rise to preeminence and Shakespeare’s role in forging the character of Washington, DC.

Carla Della Gatta, University of Maryland, USA