By PAIGE ARCANO
Reporter

(WARRENSBURG, Mo., digitalBURG) — A group of some 25 people gathered at the Trails Regional Library in Warrensburg Tuesday, Jan. 17, to learn about the connection between outlaw Frank James and William Shakespeare.

The talk, titled “Shakespeare and Frank James: Outlaw Scholar of the Jesse James Gang,” was presented as a part of the Lifelong Learning program at UCM.

The guest speaker, Darlena Ciraulo, is a Renaissance literature scholar specializing in William Shakespeare and an English professor at UCM.

Ciraulo said she visited the James Farmhouse in Kearney, Missouri, with her mother and noticed a plaque that said Frank James was a Shakespearean scholar. She said she was intrigued by this and pursued the topic, though the research proved to be challenging.

“Frank James did not like to talk about himself and his past,” Ciraulo said. “You can sort of understand why. He was a famous outlaw.”

Ciraulo said Frank James came from an educated family. James’ father, Robert, attended Georgetown College in Kentucky and his mother, Zerelda, was educated at Saint Catherine’s Female School in Kentucky. Ciraulo went into detail about how Robert James was able to accumulate books for his personal library, which was difficult at the time.

“We know from the bill of sale after he died, when much of his estate was being auctioned off, that his bookcase was crammed full of very prominent textbooks, Greek and Latin grammars, classical dictionaries, books on theology, books on chemistry and geometry, so he was a very well educated person,” Ciraulo said. “More than likely, he was instilling the importance of education to his sons.”

Ciraulo said Robert James died at the age of 32 while the James brothers were still relatively young. She said this would mean they wouldn’t have the tutorial education at home that they most likely would have had if their father would have still been alive. Zerelda James did buy some of his books back after the estate sale, with some of those books quite possibly being Shakespeare’s.

“Shakespeare would be part of an educated man’s library at the time,” Ciraulo said.  “(Frank) had access to those books at home.”

Ciraulo said Frank James attended a grammar school near Kearney, Missouri, and experienced Shakespeare there as well.

“A lot of the readers at the time had Shakespeare in them,” Ciraulo said. “Students would be getting Shakespeare through these McGuffey readers, but also they could be learning Shakespeare at home. That was not unusual, to be educated at home, at that time.”

Frank James joined the Confederate militia for the Civil War in 1861 at the age of 18. He soon after became a bushwhacker, or guerilla militant.

“When he was out with the bushwhackers, he was reading,” Ciraulo said. “He was known for liking his books.”

Ciraulo said Frank James sought to be pardoned of his alleged crimes in 1882. He had turned himself into the governor, and was therein acquitted for an alleged murder he had committed during a train robbery.

“He really wants to give up his life of crime, and there’s a sense that he doesn’t want to talk about his past and with that, his likes, such as his love of Shakespeare,” Ciraulo said. “We don’t know first-hand information about his relationship to Shakespeare. We know it through secondhand sources. It’s sort of tricky following these sources because they’re not exactly easily available.”

Ciraulo said the first Missouri train robbery was in Gads Hill, Missouri, in 1874 and was orchestrated by the James brothers, with Frank James quoting Shakespeare to the passengers on the train the whole time. The head prosecuting attorney in Frank James’ case is quoted as saying, “To say that ‘it is nothing uncommon for a train robber to go through the land spouting Shakespeare’ is preposterous.” Ciraulo said Frank James became known as the “Shakespeare-Quoting Bandit.”

“In newspaper reports, those who were on the train say one of the bandits who was masked was quoting Shakespeare,” Ciraulo said. “We don’t really know what lines he was quoting, but it’s interesting because Gads Hill has literary significance.”

Gads Hill was a famous thieving place in Shakespeare’s “1 Henry IV” and was the name of Charles Dickens’ home.

Ciraulo also spoke about the significance of Frank James and his love of art.

“On the one hand, (Frank) is probably involved in murders,” Ciraulo said. “On the other hand, he is very much interested in the arts and literature and theatre. He is a complicated individual.”

Kyle Constant, chair of the Lifelong Learning Board and digital services librarian at Trails Regional Library, said this topic was chosen as a program because there are people interested in both Frank James and Shakespeare, making this subject something a wide swath of the community would enjoy.

“It’s an intermingling of two very well-known but seemingly disparate historical figures,” Constant said. “Most people in modern times associate William Shakespeare’s work with intellectualism and theater. There’s a preconceived notion about who is interested in Shakespeare and it’s generally not thought to be criminals. For that reason, the juxtaposition immediately piques the interest of many who might not otherwise be interested in either figure independently.”

The next Lifelong Learning event, “Is it all in your genes? Nature vs. Nurture” with speaker Susie Miller, is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 9 at the Western Missouri Medical Center, Classroom 1.