I guess this should happen sooner or later. Now that progressive activists and BLM have completed all the founding fathers and Confederate leaders for their cancellation, they will finally have to dig deeper into history to seek new goals. So why not Shakespeare? According to the teachers who founded the #DisruptTexts group, it’s definitely a good idea. They believe that the Bard of Avon should be completely withdrawn from school curricula or changed in such a way as to set aside important criticisms of his work as a symbol of white supremacy and colonialism. I know. (Washington Times)
For the new race of teachers, William Shakespeare is seen less as an icon of literature and more as a tool of imperial oppression, an author who should be dissected in class or completely banished from the curriculum.
“It’s about the supremacy and colonization of whites,” said the professors who founded #DisruptTexts, a group that wants the basic elements of Western literature to be removed or subjected to slender criticism.
Anti-Shakespeare professors say fans of the plays ignore the author’s problematic conception of the world. They say that Shakespeare’s readers should demand that they address the “whiteness” of their thinking.
One of the teachers of St. Paul, Minnesota, is said to give Marxist theory to his students when he reads “Coriolanus.” Another New Jersey high school teacher boasted that she issued “toxic masculinity analysis” to her students when she read Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare died in 1616. England was certainly a colonial power at the time, but the vast majority of Shakespeare’s play was not rooted in any kind of celebration of colonialism or “whiteness.” He wrote about royal families and common people. What makes these activists angry is the fact that Shakespeare was white and manly. So that means you have to go.
I will confess to not being a big fan of the Bard’s work. I had to read it at school, but it never seemed particularly convincing to me. I was never a fan of poetry and his plays were written in an earlier form of English that did not follow exactly the language of a child who grew up working on a farm. But it’s part of history and basic knowledge of the classics never hurts anyone looking for a complete education.
As for Shakespeare’s lack of “cultural sensitivity,” give me a break. It was a product of his times and the society in which he grew up, like the rest. If these professors want to point out some specific examples of Shakespeare’s work that are supposedly offensive, I would be happy to take a look at them. But the fact is that they are trying to judge a man who has been dead for over 400 years against standards that have only been called out of the air in the last generation.
If you really want to criticize Shakespeare for something, try to solve the mystery of whether or not he actually wrote all his plays and sonnets. For a long time there has been a slow debate about who was the real author of these classics. If you could somehow prove that he stole the work of others or if history has incorrectly attributed any of the works to you, you may have a reason to cancel it. But it seems unlikely that such an ancient mystery will be definitively solved.