Michael P. Jensen’s The Battle of the Bard

This book is a little gem: less than 44,000 words in length, it is packed with detailed research on a fascinating and neglected area of Shakespeare Studies. Michael Jensen has published before on US radio broadcasts of Shakespeare, notably on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Radio Series (Shakespeare Survey, 2013), and in this book he is able to provide a fuller context to US Radio Shakespeare and to tell the story of a crucial year in its history.

The book is part of the series Recreational Shakespeare which aims to examine a range of contemporary forms of media, and to discover how these new iterations refresh our understanding of Shakespeare.

The author admits that this is not a theorized book (and it is all the better for that), but it does contribute to that important discussion on why Shakespeare has acquired such significance in cultural and political terms. For example, the work of Gerwin Srobl and, more recently, of Rodney Symington has demonstrated how the Nazis appropriated Shakespeare as cultural capital and powerful propaganda during World War Two.

The book’s full title articulates its focus: this is specifically concerned with radio (and other broadcast media) in the USA. Thus, when the author refers at an early stage to newspaper distribution, it must be borne in…