This play is a fantasy of imagination and emotion, as if taking place in the shadow-mind of Abraham Lincoln between the time he was shot on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, and when he was pronounced dead the following morning. Within the scenes, Lincoln is sometimes impersonating himself, sometimes having events control him, sometimes both at once. Now he is attempting to take care of some of his ‘unfinished business’ in life; now he is bewildered at who and where he is. Always is he dreaming, but not always does he know he is. While each scene is based on the historical Lincoln, and there is good reason for every characteristic he is represented as having, Lincoln in Limbo is a fiction: intentionally and necessarily so.

Characters:
Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States
Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, dressmaker for Mary Todd Lincoln
Francis Bicknell Carpenter, painter

Robert Bray is the R. Forrest Colwell Professor of American Literature at Illinois Wesleyan University. Peter Garino is the Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Project of Chicago.