{"id":1088,"date":"2017-06-23T13:48:37","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T17:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/source\/?p=1088"},"modified":"2017-06-27T14:38:27","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T18:38:27","slug":"cincinnati-and-shakespeare-the-bard-abides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/source\/cincinnati-and-shakespeare-the-bard-abides\/","title":{"rendered":"Cincinnati and Shakespeare: The Bard Abides"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kevin Grace.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"enoch<\/a>
Enoch Carson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Enoch Carson was enthralled with William Shakespeare. While the 19th<\/sup> century Cincinnati entrepreneur and civil servant made his fortune in the lamp and gas business, he considered his real wealth to be the hundreds of Shakespeare volumes that he accumulated. For the most part Carson was a self-educated man, attributing his intellectual development to his years spent reading the plays. So, he devoted his life to building a library of as many editions of the bard as he could afford.\u00a0 At one point Carson took his volumes of the prominent Charles Knight 1839 London edition of the plays and disbound them so he could insert the huge number of engravings he had collected, his intent to visually supplement his enjoyment of Hamlet, Macbeth, The Merry Wives of Windsor, <\/em>and all the rest.<\/p>\n

And during the Civil War, as a Lincoln political appointee to collect the tolls for the Cincinnati port, Enoch Carson decided to raise money for the benefit of soldiers\u2019 families. On February 6, 1865, just a few months before the end of the war, Carson mounted a production of Hamlet <\/em>at Pike\u2019s Opera House. He recruited many of the prominent Cincinnati military men and politicians to play the parts (Lieutenant Governor Charles Anderson assumed the role of Hamlet), and he took to the stage himself as the first gravedigger who digs up poor Yorick.<\/p>\n

\"Carson<\/a>So in 1898 when University of Cincinnati board member William A. Procter purchased the Carson collection and presented it to the university, the gift was much more than a gathering of books. Enoch Carson\u2019s Shakespeariana was the embodiment of a city\u2019s love of literature and the stage as well as a solid foundation for academic study. His hundreds of volumes constitute one of the founding collections of the University of Cincinnati Libraries.<\/p>\n

In the years that followed, the books were heavily used by UC students and faculty and additional rare works were purchased. The study of Shakespeare\u2019s plays was a prominent aspect of the English Department curriculum and often the senior class play was a Shakespeare work. The 1916 tricentennial commemoration of Shakespeare\u2019s death in 1616 was a major event on campus. That spring, a full week was devoted to staging plays on campus and in Burnett Woods. An Elizabethan market sprung up behind McMicken Hall, Morris dancers performed, there were concerts of period music, and folklorists from England were invited to lecture. Recipes of \u201cElizabethan\u201d foods were compiled and song sheets distributed. The many events were even filmed for a theater newsreel. In large measure (for measure<\/em>), the celebration was a hodgepodge of British culture and eras thought to be germane to William Shakespeare, but however accurate or not, it was lively and it was fun.<\/p>\n