Lincoln with the Bard, feat. Ted J. Richards | Episode XLI

Send us Fan MailAbraham Lincoln spent less than 1 year of his life going to school. Nevertheless, he became a lawyer, a surveyor, and one of the greatest statesmen in American history. He also carried on correspondence with one of the country's leading Shakespearean actors about the relative merits of different plays and speeches in Shakespeare's dramatic oeuvre. In no speech is the self-educated Lincoln's close attention to the Bard more in evidence than in his political comeback speech, the Peoria Address denouncing the Kansas-Nebraska Act. What do the veiled Shakespearean references in that speech reveal about Lincoln and the crisis that slavery posed to free government?Abraham Lincoln's Peoria Speech: https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/peoriaspeech.htmTed J. Richards's Lincoln and Shakespeare at Peoria: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10457097.2021.1983355?journalCode=vpps20Lewis E. Lehrman's Lincoln at Peoria: https://amzn.to/3WXKW6pLord Charnwood's Abraham Lincoln: A Biography: https://amzn.to/3wXmTdwFolger Shakespeare Library's Hamlet: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780743477123Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69379/an-essay-on-criticismHarry Jaffa's Crisis of the House Divided: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226391182Harry Jaffa's A New Birth of Freedom: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781538114322John Channing Briggs's Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered: https://amzn.to/3xnDyqVDiana Schaub's His Greatest Speeches: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781250763457New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.comSupport the show