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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
James Fenimore Cooper regarded Shakespeare as “the great author of America.” For most frontier readers, this distinctly American Shakespeare was disseminated within the pages of the ubiquitous McGuffey Rhetorical Readers, and Hamlin Garland speaks for several generations across the Ohio frontier when he writes, “I got my first taste of Shakespeare from the selected scenes which I read in these books.” This Oxford (Ohio) canon draws generously from the Roman and English history plays, including scenes from the surprisingly popular King John and Henry VIII, and students were encouraged to memorize, and read aloud, classic orations such as “Antony's Oration over Dead Caesar's Body” and “Henry V. to His Troops.” The tragedies were most frequently represented by “The Hamlet Soliloquy,” and the more problematic comedies were virtually ignored, with the exception of brief appearances by a much sanitized John Falstaff. By the close of the century, the McGuffey canon had contributed to an American belief in Shakespeare's authority as second only to the Bible's, a point of view reflected in Emerson's judgment that Shakespeare is “inconceivably wise.”
1 James Fenimore Cooper, Notions of the Americans: Picked up by a Travelling Bachelor (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey 1833), 2, 113.
2 Van Orman, Richard A., “The Bard in the West,” Western Historical Quarterly, 5 (Jan. 1974), 29–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 29.
3 Gene Smith, American Goethic: The Story of America's Legendary Theatrical Family – Junius, Edwin, and John Wilkes Booth (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 53–54.
4 Tim McCoy, with Ronald McCoy, Tim McCoy Remembers the West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), 53–54.
5 David D. Anderson, Ohio in Fact and Fiction: Further Essays on the Ohio Experience (Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 2006), 27–30, discusses the importance of the McGuffey Readers to book publishing in nineteenth-century Cincinnati, Ohio.
6 Richard David Mosier, Making the American Mind: Social and Moral Ideas in the McGuffey Readers (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965; first published 1947), 168.
7 Henry Hobart Vail, A History of the McGuffey Readers (Cleveland: Private Printing, 1910), 11.
8 Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 172–74.
9 Hugh S. Fullerton, “That Guy McGuffey,” Saturday Evening Post, 26 Nov. 1927, as quoted in Harvey C. Minnich, William Holmes McGuffey and His Readers (New York: American Book Co., 1936), 82.
10 Henry Steele Commager, Foreword to McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader (New York: New American Library, 1963; first published 1879), xvi.
11 Vail, 64–65.
12 John H. Westerhoff III, McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Education in Nineteenth-Century America (Milford, MI: Mott Media, 1982; first published 1978), 24, writes that the early Readers “may have been the last witness to the orthodoxy of the nation's religious past.” See also Adam Neil Saravay, “Religion and the Teaching of Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century American Public Education (bachelor's honors dissertation, Harvard University, 1986).
13 Arnell Morgan Gibson, The West in the Life of the Nation (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath & Co., 1976), 213.
14 The Wild West (New York: Time-Life Books, 1993), 198.
15 Dorothy P. Sullivan, William Holmes McGuffey: Schoolmaster to the Nation (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994), 91.
16 Elliot J. Gorn, ed., with introduction, The McGuffey Readers: Selections from the 1879 Edition (Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998), 16.
17 See, for example, “The Folly of Intoxication,” from Othello 2, 3, in McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader (1879), 348–49.
18 Kathy Jean Schneider, “Role Models in Representative McGuffey Readers, 1836–1907 (master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 1976).
19 McManaway, James G., “Shakespeare in the United States,” PMLA, 79, 5 (Dec. 1964), 513–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 513.
20 Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1962), 94.
21 William Scott, Lessons in Elocution, or, A Selection of Pieces, in Prose and Verse, for the Improvement of Youth in Reading and Speaking (Montpelier, VT: E. P. Walton, 1820).
22 Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 36.
23 Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's America: Selections from the Writings of the Oyster Bay Naturalist, ed. Farida A. Wiley (New York: Devin-Adair, 1955), 45.
24 Bayard Taylor, Shakespeare's Statue, Central Park, New York, 23 May 1872.
25 Owen Wister, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992; first published 1902), 298.
26 McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader (1879), 184.
27 Ibid., 186 (see Henry VIII 3, 2, 384–85).
28 Friedenberg, Robert V., “America's Most Widely Read Speech Teachers: the Brothers McGuffey,” Speech Teacher, 21, 2 (March 1972), 79–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 85, writes: “This criterion is no doubt responsible for the disproportionately high number of speeches included in the advanced readers.”
29 Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1984), 56–57.
30 Herbert Quick, One Man's Life: An Autobiography (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1925), 280–81.
31 McGuffey's New Sixth Eclectic Reader: Exercises in Rhetorical Reading with Introductory Rules and Examples (Cincinnati: Sargent, Wilson & Hinkle, n.d.; first published 1857), 53.
32 Stuart Henry, Conquering Our Great American Plains (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1930), 98.
33 Quick, 153 ff., does not specify the Fourth. However, it is likely that he is recalling this volume.
34 Kammen, Carol, “The McGuffey Readers,” Children's Literature, 5 (1976), 58–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 60.
35 Sullivan, William Holmes McGuffey, 210.
36 William McGuffey, The Eclectic Fourth Reader: Containing Elegant Extracts in Prose and Poetry from the Best American and English Writers (Milford, MI: Mott Media, Inc., 1982; first published 1837), viii.
37 Ibid., viii.
38 Garland, A Son of the Middle Border, 95.
39 It is only with the New High School Reader that the editors introduce a speaker who is clearly female, in “The Sister's Plea,” from Measure for Measure. Although “Mercy,” from The Merchant of Venice, also appears in this volume, the speaker is not identified.
40 Schneider, “Role Models in Representative McGuffey Readers,” 71.
41 The Eclectic Fourth Reader (1838), 303–7.
42 “Antony's Oration” appears in the Eclectic Fourth Reader (1837), the Rhetorical Reader (1844) and, subsequently, the Sixth Reader (1857 and 1879).
43 Melancthon Tope, A Biography of William Holmes McGuffey (Bowerston, OH: Phrenological Era Press, 1929), 80.
44 The Eclectic Fourth Reader (1838), 334–37.
45 Revelation 18 and 19:1–8; as reprinted in John Jebb, Sacred Literature (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1820), 455–58.
46 McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader (1879), 310.
47 See McGuffey's New High School Reader: For Advanced Classes, Embracing about Two Hundred Classic Exercises (New York: Gordon Press, 1976; first published 1857).
48 Alice McGuffey Merrill Ruggles, The Story of the McGuffeys (New York: American Book Co., 1950), 97.
49 McGuffey's New Sixth Eclectic Reader (1857), 8.
50 See All's Well that Ends Well 4, 3, 226–28.
51 Ibid., 4, 3, 250–51.
52 McGuffey's New Sixth Eclectic Reader (1857), 185–95.
53 Ibid., 360–63.
54 Ibid., 136.
55 Ibid., 418–21.
56 See Henry VIII 3, 2, 359–62.
57 Ibid., 3, 2, 439–44.
58 McGuffey's New Sixth Eclectic Reader (1857), 110–11.
59 See Philip H. Christensen, “‘Shakespeare in Tombstone’: Hamlet's Undiscovered Country,” in Holger Klein and Dimiter Daphinoff, eds., Hamlet on Screen (Lewsiton, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1997), 280–89.
60 Scott, Lessons in Elocution, 373.
61 Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 48.
62 Charles H. Shattuck, Shakespeare on the American Stage: From the Hallams to Edwin Booth (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1976), 145.
63 McGuffey's New High School Reader (1857). This volume was revised as McGuffey High School Reader (Cincinnati and New York: Van Antwerp, Bragg, and Co., 1889). This edition has not yet been available to this writer.
64 Charles Carpenter, History of American Schoolbooks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963), 82, writes that publication of the McGuffey High School Reader was limited.
65 McGuffey's New High School Reader (1857), 127–29.
66 Ibid., 130–33.
67 Ibid., 318–20.
68 Ibid., 383–84.
69 Ibid., 133–40.
70 See Hamlet 3, 2, 364–69.
71 McGuffey's New High School Reader (1857), 213–17.
72 Measure for Measure 2, 2, 59–63.
73 Carpenter, 166.
74 McGuffey's New Sixth Eclectic Reader (1857), 110.
75 Fifth Eclectic Reader: Revised (1879), 340.
76 Hamlin Garland, Crumbling Idols: Twelve Essays on Art Dealing Chiefly with Literature, Painting and the Drama, ed. Jane Johnson (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960), 72–73.
77 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Shakespeare; or The Poet,” in idem, Seven Lectures: Representative Men (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1893), 202.
78 Jason Fredrick Earle, “The McGuffey Readers and Civil Religion: 1918–1963” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1994), 4.
79 Inscribed in a personal copy of Mason Weems, A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington, ed. Mark Van Doren (n.p.: Macy-Masius Publishers, 1927).