How Shakespeare Lost the American West

Abstract

Shakespeare was among the first European settlers in the American West. He first hitched rides in the packs of fur traders in the 1830’s and then stuck around, hanging out through the cattle drives of the 1890s. Considering Shakespeare’s large role in the Wild West of history, his absence from the Wild West of popular culture is glaring. While fictions of the Wild West are not beholden to the facts, the reasons a particular fictitious narrative has dominated the genre deserves interrogation—particularly when that narrative forms a cornerstone of national identity. A key reason for Shakespeare’s disappearance, or erasure, from the myth of the Wild West is his association with upper-class women and their civic reforms. As the “wildness” of the west became idealized, Shakespeare was remembered as a sign of refinement and his wilder and woollier past forgotten.