Think back to your high school English classes. Did you read Romeo and Juliet as a freshman? What about Hamlet in your senior year? Studying Shakespeare is required in the Common Core English Language Arts standards, but the Bard secured his place on the English curriculum in American classrooms long before the Common Core was established. As Jonathan Burton explained for the Shakespeare in American Life radio documentary, sections of Shakespeare’s plays appeared in the McGuffey Readers, one of the most common “textbooks” in nineteenth-century America.
Shakespeare appears first in the McGuffey Reader, the Fourth Reader, of 1837, and this work has just two passages in it. One is a section of King John and it’s merely entitled “Prince Arthur” and the name of the play does not even appear. The same can be said of the one excerpt from Julius Caesar that’s also included, which is entitled “Antony’s Oration over Caesar’s Dead Body.” Here it’s important to note that Shakespeare’s name does not appear with these passages, nor does the name of the play.
