Shakespeare is all around us. From nightclubs to Broadway musicals, in voting booths in the American South and the trees of Central Park -- William Shakespeare’s literary power is so intense and widespread that it intrudes into the material world. Esquire columnist Stephen Marche takes us on a delightful tour through the continuous stream of Shakespeare’s influence, summoning up the Bard in the most unexpected places:

• In 1890, as part of a plan to introduce every bird mentioned by Shakespeare to North America, Eugene Shieffelin imported and released a bunch of pesky starlings into New York’s Central Park.
• The Nazi Party issued a pamphlet entitled “Shakespeare—a Germanic Writer,” and in 1936 there were more productions of Shakespeare in Germany than in the rest of the world combined.
• Shakespeare coined approximately 1,700 words, including lacklustre, fashionable, auspicious, bandit, glow, hush, dawn, gnarled, hobnob, traditional, and the name Jessica.
• In 1930, Paul Robeson became the first black actor to play the part of Othello in England after being rejected for the role in the United States Robeson famously said of his performance, “Othello has made me free.”

Stephen Marche is a novelist and culture columnist. Marche received his Ph.D in Early Modern Drama in 2005 from the University of Toronto. He went on to teach Renaissance Drama at City College in New York. He is the author of two novels — Shining At The Bottom Of The Sea (2007) and Raymond and Hannah (2005), which was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award in 2006. His recent non-fiction project, How Shakespeare Changed Everything (2011), uncovers the sometimes hidden influence of Shakespeare in modern culture. He currently writes “A Thousand Words About Our Culture,” a monthly column for Esquire magazine, which was a finalist for the 2011 American Society of Magazine Editors National Magazine Award for commentary. Marche also writes a weekly column for the National Post and has written about literature and politics for Salon.com, The New Republic, The Toronto Star, The Globe & Mail, Maclean’s, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Walrus. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two children.

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