Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil WarWhat 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. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 7 | |
Abraham Lincoln | 59 |
Interior Life in Washington DC | 94 |
The Battle of Bristoe Station | 137 |
Castle Murray Fauquier County Virginia | 161 |
The Death of Colonel Thomas Ruffin October 17 1863 | 180 |
Nature in Virginia | 200 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 227 |
NOTES | 229 |
| 267 | |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS | 285 |
| 289 | |
Other editions - View all
Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War Alexander Nemerov No preview available - 2010 |
Common terms and phrases
Abraham Lincoln acoustic shadows actress aesthetic Alexander Dallas Bache American Atlantic Monthly audience Bache battle battlefield blank Boston Bristoe Station Cambridge Castle Murray Charles Charlotte Cushman Civil comet culture Daily National Daily National Republican dark David death Dedlow described effect Emily emptiness Fanny Seward diary Fauquier County flame Ford's gathered George gesture Gouverneur Kemble Warren Grover's Theatre Gurowski Harper's Herman Melville Historical Society History Holmes House Ibid interior James John Joseph Henry Julia Ward Lady Macbeth letter Library Library of America light Macbeth on October Massachusetts Museum of Art night North Carolina noted Nydia October 17 onstage painting person photograph play poem poetry Polk County scene sculpture sense Shakespeare shape slave slavery soldiers sound space speech spot spread Stebbins story telegraph theater Thomas Ruffin tion tree Union University Press Virginia voice Ward Washington Whitman William witches words Wright writing wrote Yale University York