“O, Cursed, Cursed Slave!”: When Shakespeare Meets American Abolitionism

Abstract

This paper investigates the social function of William Shakespeare’s plays in nineteenth-century America, focusing on how Shakespearean eloquence served to promote the abolitionist movement. While many scholars discuss the significant contribution Shakespearean education made to the formation of early America’s cultural homogeneity and social unity, little attention has been paid to the historical fact that Shakespeare’s work also involved in fostering various political debates, especially when civic leaders criticized social injustice such as racial slavery. In this respect, this essay examines a selection of abolitionist texts from William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and William Wells Brown, suggesting that these four prominent abolitionists used Shakespeare as a means to legitimize their egalitarian ideals and, in turn, contest American democracy in its flawed state. Conceived as a symbol for egalitarian social change in the revolutionary period, Shakespeare’s plays helped facilitate the abolitionist movement that made it possible to envision the future of American democracy in a more ethical way.