John F. Kennedy |
During John F. Kennedy’s time in office, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy organized two glittering evenings full of Shakespeare. The first followed a state dinner for Ibrahim Abboud, the president of Sudan. Actors from the American Shakespeare Festival Theater of Stratford, Connecticut put on five different scenes, from the “O, for a muse of fire” prologue in Henry V, to Prospero’s farewell to magic in The Tempest. The president jokingly referred to “the American playwright, Shakespeare” in his remarks. Described in Shakespeare Quarterly, the evening was apparently a smashing success; one commentator said it placed Kennedy on a par with other Shakespeare-loving presidents such as Adams and Lincoln.
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum has suggested on its website that the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V may have been President Kennedy’s favorite Shakespeare speech, noting that Jacqueline Kennedy had the actor Basil Rathbone recite it at another White House dinner, this one for Nobel Prize winners. The president was also known to use an apt Shakespeare quotation from time to time in his comments to the press or notes on reports and memos.
The assassination that cut short the Kennedy administration gave rise indirectly to the best known association between John F. Kennedy and Shakespeare. Speaking at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Robert Kennedy quoted Juliet in speaking of his late brother:
When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out into stars
And he shall make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
Library of Congress