How to decolonize Shakespeare?

If you are worried that Shakespeare contributes to White Supremacy, the Internet Right has produced your man.

From Yahoo News:

Shakespeare's birthplace to be 'decolonized' after British researchers say his work enables 'White supremacy'

Alexander Hall

Wed, March 19, 2025 at 5:26 PM PDT3 min read

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The organization overseeing museums celebrating English playwright William Shakespeare’s life is reportedly working to "decolonize" his legacy in the name of battling White supremacy.

The Telegraph reported that Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust, a British nonprofit in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, is working toward "decolonizing" its collection of Shakespeare-related artifacts to "create a more inclusive museum experience."

… The process of decolonizing Shakespeare’s work reportedly includes researching "the continued impact of colonialism" on world history and the ways in which "Shakespeare's work has played a part in this." The effort, which roughly means distancing work from western perspectives, reportedly began after concerns were raised that celebration of Shakespeare enables "White supremacy."

The trust has also warned that some items in its collections and archives relating to the iconic 16th century playwright may contain "language or depictions that are racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise harmful."

Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust reportedly worked on a research project with the University of Birmingham's Dr. Helen Hopkins, and concluded that praise of Shakespeare as a "universal" genius "benefits the ideology of White European supremacy." Their research concluded further that "colonial inculcation" spread European ideas about art and used Shakespeare as a symbol of "British cultural superiority" and "Anglo-cultural supremacy."

The folks who did the most to establish Shakespeare’s reputation as a universal genius comparable to Homer and Michelangelo were perhaps late 18th Century Germans, such as Goethe. Germans didn’t do a lot of colonizing, but I guess Goethe was a Nazis by descent. Or something.

Celebrating Shakespeare’s work, the research argued, was part of a "White Anglo-centric, Eurocentric, and increasingly ‘West-centric’ worldviews that continue to do harm in the world today."

All over the world, theater kids love Shakespeare.

One of the solutions proposed by the project is for the trust to "present Shakespeare not as the ‘greatest,’ but as ‘part of a community of equal and different writers and artists from around the world.’"

My bride and I went to Stratford-Upon-Avon on July 4, 1987. It was 85 degrees F, which is about like 110 degrees in Palm Springs since not only haven’t the English invented air conditioning, but they hadn’t invented the concept of not nailing their windows shut to keep out cold drafts.

So, we bailed out of visiting the Shakespeare tourist attractions and drove to the Cotswolds,

where there was balloon race going on and hot air balloonists were dropping out of the sky all around us.

Which I would strongly recommend.

But, there wouldn’t be much reason to go to Stratford if Shakespeare were merely “part of a community of equal and different writers and artists from around the world.”

The Telegraph also reported that the trust has worked to make Shakespeare’s legacy more international by organizing events like "celebrating Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet, and a Romeo and Juliet-inspired Bollywood dance workshop."

It’s almost as if people all over the world like Shakespeare.

But it drives intellectuals crazy that Shakespeare was better than them. For example, Richard Hanania contends:

… I could copy Shakespeare’s style and produce something just as appealing …

And yes, I’d be happy to test this theory myself. If someone wants to do this study with me, reach out.

To prove it, Hanania emitted what he assumed was a Shakespeare-like rhyming doggerel, not realizing that Shakespeare’s greatest works are written in unrhymed iambic pentameter:

Man so powerful yet so weak.
Conqueror of stars yet farts and squeaks.
Oh man! An ape we know it is true.
Darwin has revealed me and you.
Yet we go on, forward still.
For if not us, then who will?

Oh, dear.

Most of Shakespeare’s greatest efforts were in unrhyming blank verse, but Shakespeare also wrote in prose, such as Hamlet’s stupendous prose soliloquy:

I have of late, (but wherefore I know not) lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition; that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o'er hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire: why, it appeareth no other thing to me, than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

If you want to decolonize Shakespeare, Richard is your man.