Shakespeare, Once and Future American

AMERICAN THEATRE: A cast of thousands—5,000, to be exact—gathered for Hollywood’s biggest production of the year. They were not there to make a movie, though. Instead, they were assembled for an even larger live audience of “thirty-five thousand persons, including notables from everywhere,” who had come to witness a “stupendous open-air” performance of Julius Caesar as part of the commemoration of the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death in April of 1916.