Yep, it was inevitable that the greatest writer in the English language, but one who wrote several centuries ago, would have to be “decolonized.” You know, of course, that Shakespeare’s plays are full of stereotypes, dirty jokes, and filthy words, and that can’t be allowed to stand. But it’s worse than that: he’s made out to be a white bigot: a sixteenth-century Nazi.
And so, according to this new piece in Spiked (click below to read), the Pecksniffs have decided to place the Bard in perspective for the public, including the fact he adhered to the ideology of white supremacy. But read Johanna Williams’s article below, largely riffing on a Torygraph article that seems credible:
Some excerpts:
What is it with Britain’s cultural custodians and their hatred of everything British? National self-loathing drips from curators and directors alike, revealed in a Tourette’s-like compulsion to blurt out ‘Decolonise!’ at everything they see. They are currently getting hot under the collar [JAC: archived here] in the sleepy town of Stratford-upon-Avon, where they have Shakespeare’s birthplace in their sights.
The links above and in the three paragraphs below the next excerpt go to a Torygraph piece (archived here) that says this:
The claims were made in a 2022 collaborative research project between the trust and Dr Helen Hopkins, an academic at the University of Birmingham.
The research took issue with the trust’s quaint Stratford attractions, comprising the supposed childhood homes and shared family home of Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, his wife, because the Bard was presented as a “universal” genius.This idea of Shakespeare’s universal genius “benefits the ideology of white European supremacy”, it was claimed.
This is because it presents European culture as the world standard for high art, a standard which was pushed through “colonial inculcation” and the use of Shakespeare as a symbol of “British cultural superiority” and “Anglo-cultural supremacy”.
Veneration of Shakespeare is therefore part of a “white Anglo-centric, Eurocentric, and increasingly ‘West-centric’ worldviews that continue to do harm in the world today”.
. . . The project recommended that Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust recognise that “the narrative of Shakespeare’s greatness has caused harm – through the epistemic violence”.
The project also recommended that the trust present Shakespeare not as the “greatest”, but as “part of a community of equal and different writers and artists from around the world”.
And as the Pecksniffs kvetch, so the Birthplace Trust follows:
. . . The trust will continue looking at updating the “current and future interpretation” of objects in its collection. It will also explore how objects could be used as the focus for new interpretations which tell more international stories, in order to appeal to a more diverse audience.
It has additionally pledged to remove offensive language from its collections information, as part of a “long, thoughtful” process.
. . . The Globe Theatre in London ran a series of seminars titled Anti-Racist Shakespeare which promoted scholarship focused on the idea of race in his plays.
Academies taking part in the series made a number of claims, including that King Lear was about “whiteness”, and that the character of Prince Hamlet holds “racist” views of black people.
Back to Spiked:
Where normal people admire timber-framed houses and marvel at the schoolroom where Shakespeare learnt the classics, our cultural elites see ‘white supremacy’. Where you and I see genius in plays like King Lear, Hamlet and Othello, they see a symbol of ‘British cultural superiority’. They seem to imagine that racist thugs have swapped sharing memes on Telegram for watching Macbeth at the local theatre. Labelling the Bard as a vehicle for white supremacy really is that insane.
With hatred comes flagellation. As such, Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust – the charity tasked with preserving Shakespeare-related heritage sites in historic Stratford-upon-Avon – is now ‘decolonising’ its vast collection. This means that, just as in practically every other museum and art gallery across the UK, exhibits will be labelled to make clear ‘the continued impact of Empire’ or the ‘impact of colonialism’. In Stratford-upon-Avon, the special twist will be to show how Shakepeare’s legacy has allegedly played a part in this litany of sin.
Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust has also warned visitors that some items in its collections may contain ‘language or depictions that are racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise harmful’. Of course they will. The past was a different time, with different attitudes and values. Shakespeare was not subjected to training in diversity, equity and inclusion. Nor was he presented with a style guide advising him as to the correct pronouns to use for his many crossdressing characters. Thank goodness.
And Williams’s conclusion, the first paragraph of which is spot on:
Just as Shakespeare is integral to being British, his work also absolutely has universal value. He portrays emotions such as joy, grief and anger, and experiences like being young, falling in love and growing old that are fundamental not to being British or even European, but to being human. This is why his legacy endures. His genius is to transcend racial, national and generational differences and point to what we have in common, rather than what divides us. That Shakespeare is English is incidental to the common humanity in his work, but it is entirely relevant to the historical circumstances that made his prodigious talent possible. To boil all this down to ‘white supremacy’ is ridiculous.
The Birthplace Trust’s real concern is to stop British people taking pride in Shakespeare and seeing his work as a symbol of ‘British cultural superiority’. It wants him to be viewed not as the ‘greatest’, but as ‘part of a community of equal and different writers and artists from around the world’. But if academics and curators really cannot say that Shakespeare’s plays are better than a Nigerian soap opera or a Brazilian drag-queen performance, then we really are in trouble. If even Shakespeare’s custodians cannot say that his work is the pinnacle of human achievement, then the Bard has no need of enemies. The barbarians are not at the gate, they are sitting in the stalls.
There is no older work that cannot be scrutinized for violations of wokeness, and they inevitably find it. Now Shakespeare must always be put in “context” when his works are taught in schools—if they’re taught at all. After all, do we really want our kids to read plays written by a Nazi?
h/t: Ginger K.
If Shakespeare was merely “part of a community of equal and different writers and artists from around the world,” there would be no need to preserve his home as a landmark. Members of the Birthplace Trust are engaged in a deception. They were drawn to work on behalf of such a group because they recognized Shakespeare’s genius and his ongoing effect on people worldwide. However, they also want to pander to those obsessed with identity politics by dismissing Shakespeare’s influence and legacy. Very sad.
Where was this community of equal and different writers, and presumably contemporaneous, from around the world? Their published works, please, that prove the point? Will these be collected for show at Shakespeare’s birthplace museum to rub his nose in it? As another, far older writer, put it in another famous book – Jesus wept!!!
Another reason someone like Trump was elected. This stuff will never appeal to anyone but a crazed minority.
My late father is turning in his grave. He was ardent Shakespeare fan. He would read out texts to us (his children) when we were barely knee-high.
The whipping up of self-loathing seems to be an important part of the overall process—and not just in Britain. Once we all hate ourselves sufficiently, it’s just a short step to tearing down everything that we have built. How far will the West go in its campaign to dismantle itself?
+1
it is so weird that narcissism has found a way to express itself through self loathing.
Very astute. What appears to be self loathing is actually a form of self aggrandizement: “See, I’m not one of the bad ones, I am enlightened!”. In this context also known as virtue signalling. Long on form, short on substance.
This is not the case. The idea is to induce self loathing in other people and then give them a plan for the way back that involves them submitting to the ideology and joining the movement.
The MO is identical to the way that Christianity works. We are all sinners. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under God’s table*, but, if we turn to Christ, we can be saved (and please donate generously to the Church).
*quoted from the Prayer of Humble Access – part of the Anglican liturgy.
It’s ironic that Canada, which has been telling its schoolchildren since 2012 that we are an illegitimate racist transphobic post-national genocidal settler colonial state that can redeem itself only by decolonizing, (which seems to mean giving all its land back to the descendants of the original inhabitants and us taking to small boats), is now trying to whip itself into a patriotic frenzy of defending precious Canadian national values from Donald Trump.
This isn’t entirely tangential. Ontario has removed the Shakespearean play usually taught in Grade 11 English in favour of literature by indigenous authors. (Which is cultural appropriation because they didn’t have literature.)
The Liberals see an opportunity for re-election. That’s all it is.
Heh, heh, ho, ho! Western Civ has got to go!
HAHHAH, Indeed Michael. Don’t forget: Fwee fwee Pawethtine! From River to Mass-Jewish Graves! Decolonize our societies, our white guilt, our staplers (I identify as a stapler and I’ll truck NO staplerphobia!).
Pawethstinians are the magical victim Ewoks our Marxist professors all told us were sacred. And the Houthis!
D.A.
NYC
AIUI, classes on “Western Civilisation” are rather out of favour these days, so to some extent it’s already gone.
The biggest threat to Western civilization? Self-loathing ethnic Westerners, and their non-Western (ethnically) allies. The former despise those like themselves, and the latter are jealous because their cultures have not made similar contributions to civilization or, if they did (which I doubt), they were unable to preserve them due to their illiteracy, et al.
We must never, ever grant them a victory.
Illiteracy hasn’t been as serious a problem as religious fanaticism/enthusiasm. The Golden Age of Islam, somewhat analogous to the European Enlightenment, bit the dust due to a resurgence of “faith”.
I do not see how anyone can claim to be a Humanist and go along with this fight against universal values and themes. An atheist could do it, sure. But not a secular humanist.
If I went to China, India, or Africa and went into a museum dedicated to one of their greatest writers, I would have no problem being informed that his or her work was “universal.” Humans care about the same basic things the world over. We respond to beauty the same way. It’s got nothing to do with “colonization.”
If activists look for something hard enough they will find it – whether it exists or not.
Just say that Shakespeare was LGBTQ+ (some people believe that he was bisexual) and that it is homophobic to criticize him.
Queer Theory is intent on uncovering the prediscursive sexual purity – a liberation of sexuality (Marcuse). So Shakespeare would be on that pathway backwards.
Whatever Trump does it’ll be pretty stupid when measured, but unmeasurably this recent Trump/Elon pioneered “vibe shift” is moving the needle a bit in our country against woke. Just a tad mind you. They give moral permission to say “No.”
What say you, our dear British friends where the mind virus seems more virulent over there in Blighty? Who is your vibe-shifter? (Farrage is your worst, most embarrassing clown.)
So… is there anybody there who can do the job?
Of course… all the legislation, executive rantings etc AND vibe shifts probably won’t cure a zoomer generation (on both sides of the Atlantic) from their post 1990s DEI /anti-colonialist woke worldview. THAT is a bigger challenge.
Days like these I almost miss Benny Hill!
cheerio-oh British friends of WEIT!
D.A.
NYC
R.I.P. England
Oh, come on, it’s not that bad. Most people in my country have never come across any of this nonsense, and if it’s drawn to their attention most of them reject it. It is unfortunate that, in the UK as in the US, a cabal of activists have managed to get themselves into positions where they can peddle their lies and distortions; but the majority of reasonable people ain’t buying it. And even in the academic world that they have colonised, the tide is beginning to turn, on both sides of the Atlantic.
The “decolonisation” of Shakespeare might in itself not matter, but it is a symptom of a more general self-hating by white people that says that a “multicultural” Britain would be way better. This means that more than a third of babies in the UK are now being born to recent immigrants.
With further immigration running at a million a year (plus 200,000 babies born to immigrant mothers; compared to 400,000 babies of born-in-the-UK mothers) the idea is to ensure that white people become a minority in the UK within only a few more decades.
Figures from the UK and the rest of Europe say that on average immigrants from poorer countries are a net fiscal cost to the taxpayer, even during their working-age life, and also that the same is true of their children.
You can see the effect of this already. GDP-per-capita in the UK has stagnated over the last 20 years and the UK is falling behind other countries, becoming poorer (in per-capita terms) than places like Poland (which doesn’t accept mass migration).
Folks should have paid heed to Enoch Powell’s concerns.
“… Now Shakespeare must always be put in “context” when his works are taught in schools”
PCC(E) – I understand the jist here – but I want to add – this is the pattern of the everything is political trope – which merely finds excuses to insinuate preconceived politics. This is IMHO a dialectical process.
Usually, the target for this dialectic are sort of time-tested classics, as here.
I have a different opinion about who is committing “epistemic violence'”. I was stuying the era of Reformation and Counter-Reformation this week. At least these folks are not destroying the objects in Stratford-upon-Avon or burning down the Globe Theater. (Or throwing tomato soup on the presentations.)
Despite the quibbles, my heart still lifts up reading Harold Bloom’s fulsome appreciation of Shakespeare: “We have to read Shakespeare, and we have to study Shakespeare. We have to study Dante. We have to read Chaucer. We have to read Cervantes. We have to read the Bible, at least the King James Bible. We have to read certain authors.… They provide an intellectual, I dare say, a spiritual value which has nothing to do with organized religion or the history of institutional belief. They remind us in every sense of re-minding us. They not only tell us things that we have forgotten, but they tell us things we couldn’t possibly know without them, and they reform our minds. They make our minds stronger. They make us more vital. They make us alive.… Shakespeare is universal. Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage.… I don’t know who Shakespeare was. He has hidden himself behind all of these extraordinary men and women.… One cares about wisdom, and in the end one wants to be judged by wisdom. If one hasn’t got it, one has to ask the biblical question ‘Where shall wisdom be found?’ And I suppose, for me, the answer is: wisdom is to be found in Shakespeare, provided you get at it in the right way.”
Can we look forward to a campaign (perhaps at the Univ. of York) to decolonize Physics? It would insist that nothing about the works of Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, and other Europeans should be considered better in any sense than the views of the physical world found in various favored stone-age, Indigenous cultures.
Come to think of it, the greatest, perhaps defining offense of Western culture (including British Shakespeareism) is its
emphasis on the written word, i.e. text supremacism. We must surely work on decolonializing that, perhaps by elevating the virtues of illiteracy. Maybe that is what the “X Studies” departments in Academia are aiming toward.
Decolonie Science? It has already been done: https://youtu.be/0JzB4WF829E
Not to be excessively literal, but ol’ Billy wrote in PRE-colonial Britain.
But of course Shakespeare must be flogged.
I am reminded of the recent PBS series on Leonardo da Vinci, created by Ken Burns. It was excellent, and it did not shy away from describing what we know about his many quirks and shortcomings. Geniuses often don’t complete their work, for example, and this could be very annoying to his benefactors. It also covered in detail how the great man was apparently gay, with a long-term and stormy relationship with a young man thru much of his life.
Shortly after I watched it, I came across an article about the documentary in the San Fransisco Examiner. The headline and much of the content was about how the documentary did not have enough about Leonardo’s gay sex life. Because Ken and PBS had to shy away from his being gay, you know. Not enough about the gay! A great inventor and artist, sure, but the most important thing of course was his closeted sex life.
The Folger Shakespeare Library has an article on its website about the African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass and his love of Shakespeare. Some excerpts:
“[H]e was also known to many as an admirer of William Shakespeare.
“Today, tens of thousands of people visit the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site each year at Cedar Hill, Douglass’s home in Anacostia, where the library shelves hold volumes of Shakespeare’s complete works and a framed print of Othello and Desdemona hangs above the mantle in the west parlor. . .
“In an unfinished letter dated December 21, 1877 to ‘My dear friend,’ Douglass writes ‘I spoke to a very elegant audience at Mt. Pleasant Wednesday night, and read with the Uniontown Shakespeare Club last night . . . The play was The Merchant of Venice and my part [was] Shylock. This was my second meeting with the club. I find it very pleasant and entertaining.'”
During his three decades in prison, Nelson Mandela found inspiration in a collection of Shakespeare’s plays, which was smuggled into the prison and circulated among the convicts. He signed his name next to a passage from Julius Caesar: “Cowards die many times before their deaths: The valiant never taste of death but once.” (“The Smuggled Shakespeare Book That Inspired Nelson Mandela” cnn.com)
The Japanese director Akira Kurosawa based three of his movies on plays by Shakespeare: “The Bad Sleep Well” (Hamlet); “Throne of Blood” (Macbeth) and “Ran” (King Lear).
If you want to make Shakespeare more multi-cultural, you could have an exhibit showing how he has influenced writers and other artists around the world.
If Shakespeare was good enough for Douglass, Mandela and Kurosawa, he should be good enough for today’s decolonizers.
Douglass wasn’t the only African American who liked Shakespeare: https://youtu.be/KF23FG5WKY4
“[A]nd a framed print of Othello and Desdemona hangs above the mantle in the west parlor”.
Indeed! Shakespeare envisaged a mixed-race marriage centuries before it was legal in the US. They should “decolonize” THAT! (Admittedly, the marriage didn’t end too well…)
Agreed with your last sentence, Doug, but then thought those three were giants among men, and today’s decolonisers are but miniatures scrabbling round their boots, struggling to find the ladders tall enough that they might get to stand upon their shoulders.
Shakespeare? Decolonize? Jon #15, above, has a point. Right, I’ve seen some bits in USA, Shakespeare festivals featuring “queering” the bard. It’s tedious, the self-importance of that crowd.
Pfui — let’s see how they do Milton. — checks internet — oh, it’s been done, for sure. Decolonized & queered. book on Queer Milton, courses, yes, yes, I should have known all this already.
I really dislike this “conceit of the present.” So many people got things so wrong for so many centuries. Thank goodness we live in the ethically illuminated 2020s where we have figured out everyone else’s moral failings. Damn, we are so fucking virtuous! So nice to know that 300 years from now, people will look back to our time and say, “They finally got it right. Thanks to them, we now know how people should treat one another.” Let’s all toast ourselves and our moral purity!
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite patriarchy, of most excellent White supremacy !!!
Even his bones were white, the bigot!
XCellent, both.
Before we’re all completely “Queered” – for eff’s sake… and before our British friends utterly self-immolate…
….
…….I’d like to (re) recommend (British – I note) Douglas Murray’s “War on the West” book.
It chronicles these horrors better than anything I’ve read in decades.
This isn’t just a culture war about genderwang and English Lit – it is a battle for civilization, democracy, wealth and decency. It matters a LOT even if its constituent parts seem bizarre and forgettable or petty.
D.A.
NYC
Just finished it a couple of days ago, and I heartily second your recommendation.
-Sir Francis Bacon
The irony is his work is respected the world over, regardless of anything, people seem to love it.
Go back in time and bring him here and show his work being translated and read all over the world and I’d reckon he’d be so humbled it’ll be past words.
In 1972, or ’73, Peter Daubeny’s World Theatre Season at the Aldwych Theatre in London brought in a Zulu production of Macbeth entitled Umabatha. They’d seen the links between Shakespeare’s work and their history from the times before the Dutch and the British arrived. All in their own language, with simultaneous translation via earphones should one require it, with terrific, majestic physicality that seemed to carry all before it as did their military impis in the battle scenes. And one of the funniest drunken porters I’ve ever seen. Decolonise Shakespeare? Bollocks! These people know nothing of great writing or its ability to inspire across boundaries linguistic, cultural, or time periods.
I’d have to have seen it!
I recall Akira Kurasawa’s film “Ran” was influenced by the Bard as well.
He explicitly remade MacBeth in “Throne of Blood”.
Ran was more King Lear.
Dad was in the Royal Shakespeare Company for a while (including two productions that went to the US). I’m not sure what he would have made of this nonsense.
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
I’m reminded of the line from “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”, in which David Warner, as the Klingon leader, says “You’ve not experienced Shakespeare until you’ve read him in the original Klingon”. The Bard is truly universal.
I just recently saw this video ; it’s one of those trendy “non-western watching western stuff”, watching the Lord of the Rings.
And in the comments, there was this phrase :
“When the old man said “it didn’t feel like I was watching a movie, it felt like I was in a dreamworld”, that there is what makes Lord of the rings special, and its amazing that even someone from such a different life would have the same experience.”
It perfectly illustrates the whole absurdity of the Shakespeare situation…
What crap! My favorite author was and remains Robert Heinlein. He was a misogynist and racist in his writings, but not an outlier for the time in which he wrote. Nonetheless, I was and remain sufficiently mature as to read his works and appreciate them without accepting his views on women and people of color. Are we to rewrite every piece of literature that was written before we became “woke”? Are we all too immature to differentiate between what was then and what is now? And who says that what is now is correct? I use “s/he” in my writing, have done so for decades, and have been criticized for not using “their” to represent a singular person of unknown gender. The reader is welcome to translate the pronoun to whatever s/he prefers, but I’m not changing my writing to match the latest fad.