A Treacherous Secret Agent: How Literature Spoke Truth to Power During the Red Scare

In 1938, when the Federal Theater Project was accused of being subversive by the House Un-American Activities Committee, comments by its director—that the theater operated with “a certain Marlowesque madness”—prompted Alabama congressman Joe Starnes to inquire if “Marlowe” was a communist. Such is one of many ways that, as this whip-smart study from Shakespeare scholar Garber (Shakepeare in Bloomsbury) finds, literature and poetry unexpectedly reared their heads during HUAC proceedings. Garber explores how the durability of works by Shakespeare, John Donne, Christopher Marlowe, and others allows them to be taken up and used to exact “revenge” in the present. For example, Edward R. Murrow’s investigative reporting on McCarthy drew heavily from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, giving Murrow tools to critique McCarthy’s power. Elsewhere, the author spotlights contemporaries like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Paul Robeson, who wrote new lyrics to battle HUAC, and the bastardization of the Pledge of Allegiance, an originally rhyming poem from 1892 that was transformed by anticommunist Cold Warriors into a bulky mouthful at the height of HUAC persecution. Along the way, Garber herself exacts some poetic revenge against McCarthy, such as in a segment comparing his waffling on how many communists were employed by the federal government—first 205, later 57—with the blustering of Shakespeare’s Falstaff. Though somewhat academic in its presentation, this densely woven analysis still packs a punch. (Mar.)