The bard responds to news that he has been cancelled

In Competition No. 3191 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy reflecting on the news that the Bard has been cancelled by some US academics.

Teachers in the States have called into question the centrality of Shakespeare in the English curriculum given that his works are, according to Amanda MacGregor, writing in the School Library Journal, ‘full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism, and misogynoir’. Some have seen this as yet another example of the tyranny of wokeness; others as a perfectly reasonable attempt to re-evaluate the role the Bard’s works should play in a 21st-century classroom.

But what would the man himself have made of it all? Over to the excellent winners below, who take £25 each. Commendations go to Iain Morley, Philip Roe and Basil Ransome-Davies.

Rumours reach me from the AmericasOf clerks who scan my plays to seek offence.’tis claimed I calumny the innocent,And should no more be read.