Lincoln's Favorite Play

Shakespeare Applied to Our National Bereavement
Boston: April 1865
Broadside
Rare Book & Special Collections Division (4.1)

In an 1863 letter to Shakespearean actor James Hackett (1800-1871), Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) wrote: "I think nothing equals Macbeth. It is wonderful." The president often entertained guests by quoting his favorite passages from the play. In this broadside created days after Lincoln's assassination, quotations from Macbeth about the murder of King Duncan are used to express feelings about the event. Coincidentally, just a few days before his assassination, Lincoln read some of these quotations to a group of friends. Nineteenth-century Americans were so familiar with Shakespeare's plays that the creator of the broadside did not think it necessary to provide the source of the words.