“Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!” Shakespeare’s Birthplace To Be “Decolonized”

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

In Hamlet, William Shakespeare famously wrote, “To thine own self be true.”

The problem is when others want to present a different “truth” long after you are gone.

Shakespeare is under an unrelenting attack in the United Kingdom from trigger warnings to censoring his prose.

Now, Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust has announced that it will “de-colonise” the Bard.

In the name of creating “a more inclusive museum experience,” the Trust is moving away from Western perspectives to avoid the dangers of “white supremacy.”

A prior research project between the trust and Dr Helen Hopkins at the University of Birmingham raised concerns over just praising the writer. 

Even recognizing Shakespeare’s genius “benefits the ideology of white European supremacy.”

The new push at the Trust follows The Globe Theatre’s previous move to “decolonise” Shakespeare’s famous plays.

Again, while many of us denounce this type of revisionism, it appeals to this community of cultural overlords.

It is personally advancing for these academics and experts to seek to change or cancel such works.

The same voices are being heard in the United States. As we previously discussed, in a column in the School Library Journal, Minnesota librarian and journalist Amanda MacGregor questioned why teachers were even still exposing their students to this harmful influence: “Shakespeare’s works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism and misogynoir.”

Lorena German, National Council of Teachers of English Anti-Racism Committee chair and a co-founder of the Disrupt Texts forum, insisted “everything about the fact that he was a man of his time is problematic about his plays. We cannot teach Shakespeare responsibly and not disrupt the ways people are characterized and developed.”

It is time for the dwindling population of sane Brits to step forward and fight for their culture and heritage. These advocates have used academia and the media to attack the foundations of British culture. It is not enough to foster diversity in other areas, they must change and reframe how historical figures and works are presented.

They recognize this as a culture war, but have met little resistance. It is time, as the Bard himself wrote, to “Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war.”