The audacity of ‘decolonising’ Shakespeare

It seems to have become an unspoken requirement of recent that anyone in charge of promoting or putting on the plays of Shakespeare must first of all hate him and his works. We have long grown accustomed to the Royal Shakespeare Company prefacing his plays with trigger warnings reminding us of what a terrible man he was, that his works contain all manner of bigotry, sexism and racism. So it was no surprise to read yesterday that his birthplace is now being ‘decolonised’, in response to concerns that the playwright is being used to promote ‘white supremacy’.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which owns buildings connected to his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon, together with archival material including parish records of his birth and baptism, is now ‘decolonising’ its collection to ‘create a more inclusive museum experience’. This undertaking will involve examining ‘the continued impact of Empire’ on the collection, the ‘impact of colonialism’ on world history, and how ‘Shakespeare’s work has played a part in this’.