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When Thomas Jefferson wanted to inspire people, he looked to his literary models. None was closer to his heart than Shakespeare.
The Battle of Agincourt was fought in northern France on St. Crispin’s Day (Oct. 25), 1415, between the French and the outnumbered forces of English King Henry V. In Shakespeare’s telling, one of Henry’s lieutenants waffles on the eve of battle. Henry responds with lines that have resounded through the English-speaking world:
…we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother…
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
The fire and rhythm of those lines influenced Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the conclusion to the Declaration of the Independence:
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
That’s the view of Bill Barker, a historical actor and interpreter who portrays the third president at Monticello.
The Bard’s influence is also evident in the long central section of the Declaration, the list of grievances against King George III, Barker said in an interview.
In an age when many were illiterate, the Declaration, like Shakespeare’s work, was written to be heard, not just read. “It’s lifting the soul to noble sentiments, just as Henry V does,” Barker said. “And you feel that when you hear it read.”
Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello produced a video in which Barker, in character as the president, speaks of his early fondness for the poet.
“I grew up in the wilderness,” says Barker (as Jefferson). “I still consider myself to be a savage of the forest. Reading Shakespeare and plays and the poems of Milton was something that occupied our time delightfully. In fact my good friend from youth, Dabney Carr, and I would come up here to the mountaintop and sit under an old oak tree on the southwest side” and read to each other.
Our knowledge of Jefferson’s reading habits comes from his journals, letters and a catalog of his personal library compiled by Millicent Sowerby in the 1950s.
Jefferson didn’t just read the plays; he sought opportunities to see them. The first one he saw, Barker said, was “The Merchant of Venice,” produced by David Douglass’s American Company.
Williamsburg boasted the first theater in the Colonies, built in 1716. Professional theater in Virginia dates to 1752 with the arrival of a troupe of English actors.
During a two-week period when he was courting the widow Martha Wayles Skelton, Jefferson attended the theater in Williamsburg almost every night. Seven shillings bought a seat in a box. “Whomever you were courting, that was the ticket you would purchase,” Barker said. The less affluent bought seats in the gallery or standing room among the “groundlings” in the pit.
Theater etiquette was indecorous by modern standards. Patrons, especially those in the gallery or pit, were vocal if displeased. “The pit, they could hurl aspersions, whatever they chose to say to the actors, while the performance was continuing,” Barker said. Nevertheless, Jefferson loved the theater.
One of the first times Jefferson socialized with George Washington was at the theater in Williamsburg, around 1768. Theater season coincided with court and legislative sessions. Many who debated politics during the day gathered in the theater in the evening.
In the pre-social media era, the ability to orate from a stage was a critical skill in the politician’s toolbox.
“I doubt anyone who is engaged in politics could underestimate the effect that theater has upon their life, particularly Shakespeare and his magnificent speeches,” Barker said. “That is one of the things that so pleases me about Shakespeare, is the influence it has upon speechmaking and moving the heart and moving the conscience.”
Shakespeare has Julius Caesar say, “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.” Jefferson knew, when he wrote the Declaration, “he could be writing his death warrant,” Barker said. The other signers were also putting their lives in jeopardy. As they affixed their signatures, “[Ben] Franklin makes that extraordinary comment, ‘Gentlemen, we must now continue to hang together, because rest assured, if we do not, we are going to hang separately.’ There’s your Band of Brothers.”
Franklin’s remark has been doubted by scholars, but no one doubts the courage behind it.
In 1786, while serving as minister to France, Jefferson spent six weeks in England. He saw Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. With John Adams, also a Shakespeare fan, he visited the Bard’s home, Stratford-upon-Avon, where the worshipful Jefferson stepped out of the carriage and kissed the ground. In the house reputed to be Shakespeare’s birthplace, they were shown a chair in which the playwright had supposedly sat before dying. The future presidents sliced off a piece for a souvenir, common custom at the time.
They visited Shakespeare’s tomb inside Holy Trinity Church and pondered the curse engraved upon it (here with modernized spelling):
GOOD FRIEND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEAR,
TO DIG THE DUST ENCLOSED HERE.
BLESSED BE THE MAN THAT SPARES THESE STONES,
AND CURSED BE HE THAT MOVES MY BONES.
All the world’s a stage. When Jefferson made his own exit, he did so with a dramatist’s sense of timing. On his deathbed at Monticello, he woke up on the evening of July 3, 1826, and asked, “Is it the Fourth?”
The final curtain dropped the next day, exactly 50 years since the adoption of Declaration. Shakespeare could not have written it better.
See Thomas Jefferson (as portrayed by Bill Barker) discuss his love of Shakespeare in this video produced by Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello:
