Becoming "American" through Shakespeare and Elizabethan Folk Dancing

MARGARET KNAPP: One of the interesting phenomena in the early twentieth century was, as people moved to the cities, and particularly as immigrants came to the United States and moved into the crowded ghetto areas of cities, people started to create ways to help them acculturate, to become Americans. And strangely enough, Shakespeare was one of the ways that you became American.

So that, in the settlement houses they would have drama circles and they would do Shakespeare plays, but they also encouraged children to learn folk dancing. And of course when Shakespeare's anniversary came around, Elizabethan folk dancing was very popular and a man named Sharp went around the country teaching everybody about Elizabethan folk dancing and putting out books, how-to books, so that teachers could use that with their children.

There was also, in that period, a great interest in the outdoors. There was a belief that fresh air, sunshine, were really important to the growth, particularly, of children, and it's the beginning of the playground movement. And playgrounds at that point were highly regimented. You didn't just turn the kids loose in the playground and let them be creative and imaginative, you taught them drills and certain things, and so folk dancing was a natural activity to take outdoors so that they could have a maypole and learn Elizabethan folk dancing.