Folger Shakespeare Library: James L. Swanson’s non-fiction bestseller, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, brought a page-turning energy to the facts of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the subsequent hunt for John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices. The first few episodes of Apple TV’s adaptation have just dropped, and while the simply-titled Manhunt doesn’t have the same strict adherence to the facts — nor, as I’ve argued before, is it required to — both the book and the miniseries provide an eerie reminder of the deep connections the president and his murderer share with William Shakespeare.
1 comment:
This is one of those real life stories that is so intricate and thematically sound it doesn’t seem like it can possibly be true, and yet it is. Even Secretary of State William Seward sounds eerily familiar to Young Siward, a character who faces Macbeth the tyrant. It seems like John Wilkes Booth got a little too into the idea of method acting, and certainly committed a bit too hard. I’m fascinated to learn more about his motivations and the smaller details of the story––I had never heard before that Lincoln actually had seen Booth act and would’ve recognized him if he had seen him coming, and while we will never know exactly what that moment was like, I’m curious how it is dramatized in the series mentioned (Manhunt). It’s definitely an intense and poetic story, and I wonder how the course of history would’ve changed if Booth had failed, or never been inspired by the play Julius Caesar to take such drastic actions.
Post a Comment