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What Is Lincoln Like Shakespeare

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There is a famous story of a young Abraham Lincoln who bought a barrel from a farmer for 50 cents but that barrel turned out to be worth so much more then 50 cents. What Lincoln found at the bottom of that barrel was as good as gold to him. He found a copy of Blackstone’s Commentary on English Law. This one book forever changed his life without this book he wouldn’t have been able to study law where he couldn’t prominent lawyer that later helped launch his political career it is all do to one barrel.
Everybody has a form of escapism from there day to day lives for Lincoln it was reading and going to the theater. Lincoln loved Shakespeare plays in fact one of his most favorite play was Macbeth and that is thanks to Jack Kelso introducing him to these works. Lincoln was like any other person today except for when we seek entertainment we go to the movies and play video games he read books and saw plays. …show more content…

We know that he read Macbeth, Hamlet, Henry the VIII, The Merchants of Venice and other of Shakespeare works. I think Lincoln in many ways was almost a Shakespearean characters the parallels between himself and Macbeth are striking, but the difference is that Lincoln did not want his ambition to over shadow his sense of justices. These plays were a form of escapism for him but they also acted as cautionary tales for him.
The conclusion that I want people to take away from this is that Jack Kelso was a doorway for Abraham Lincoln to Burns and Shakespeare and looking at the world in a different way. That all of New Salem in one way or another helped shape Lincoln into the man that he will become, that this little town and all the sum of its parts created

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