Poet William Basse wrote: My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie a little further on to make thee room. But it was not until 29th January 1741 (1740 in ...

A statue of William Shakespeare statue in Lincoln Park, Chicago, 1905 There’s no question that some early Americans were stage-struck. Consider, for instance, this bizarre episode of American ...