You might have thought that some of Britain’s most sacred cultural items might be sacrosanct and immune from the wave of ‘decolonising’ hysteria and self-loathing that has seeped across the nation like mustard gas, asphyxiating everyone and everything in its path.
Think again. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has joined in the fun, according to the Telegraph:
Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust owns buildings linked to the Bard in his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. The trust also owns archival material including parish records of the playwright’s birth and baptism.
It is now “decolonising” its vast collection to “create a more inclusive museum experience”.
This process includes exploring “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”.
The trust has stated that some items in its collections and archives may contain “language or depictions that are racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise harmful”.
The process of “decolonising”, which typically means moving away from Western perspectives, comes after concerns were raised that Shakespeare’s genius was used to advance ideas about “white supremacy”.
The claims were made in a 2022 collaborative research project between the trust and Dr Helen Hopkins, an academic at the University of Birmingham.
The research took issue with the trust’s quaint Stratford attractions, comprising the supposed childhood homes and shared family home of Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, his wife, because the Bard was presented as a “universal” genius.
This idea of Shakespeare’s universal genius “benefits the ideology of white European supremacy”, it was claimed.
This is because it presents European culture as the world standard for high art, a standard which was pushed through “colonial inculcation” and the use of Shakespeare as a symbol of “British cultural superiority” and “Anglo-cultural supremacy”.
Veneration of Shakespeare is therefore part of a “white Anglo-centric, Eurocentric, and increasingly ‘West-centric’ worldviews that continue to do harm in the world today”.
Belonging to a wider phenomenon of the talentless woke trying to make themselves relevant and important by slagging off those who are – or were – far more able than themselves, this latest development has some precedents:
The Globe Theatre in London ran a series of seminars titled ‘Anti-Racist Shakespeare’ which promoted scholarship focused on the idea of race in his plays.
Academies taking part in the series made a number of claims, including that King Lear was about “whiteness”, and that the character of Prince Hamlet holds “racist” views of black people.
According to one book (Don Jordan’s The King’s City, Abacus 2017), Shakespeare was responsible for coining or providing the first ever recorded use of 1,582 English words. The Birthplace Trust puts the total at over 1,700. Perhaps those should all be on a decolonising list so we can stop using them too. They include ‘worthless’ – no price for guessing what that could be applied to here – and ‘we have seen better days’, which we certainly have.
Worth reading in full. You can also read about the story here.
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I hate change and I hate illogicality (probably on the spectrum). That only makes me wish to get back more urgently, staying where we are now is disgusting to me, and that’s saying something, I was mostly miserable before 2019.
Yeah me too. I see revolt, even with armed methods, as logical and justified because of the complete abuse of power and complete ineffectiveness of the measures. If the UK had 1000 deaths per million or less, maybe it would have been kinda worth the year spent under house arrest. But it wasn’t, and the collateral damage only adds to the sheer toll that has been taken. I would never want anyone to have this kind of power over me ever again.
Thanks Dan, I’ve always liked what you have to say. You ask
‘why am I saying this (about lockdowns being disproportionate) now ?’
I don’t know Dan but, apart from the vaccine issue, we’ve known that for the past twelve months.
Well, not to split hairs (ooops – I suppose I am) thirteen months now and, very sadly, counting.
We’re still in lockdown because our leaders are a combination of incompetent and wicked, exact proportions of each debatable.
People tolerate it because of the unprecedented, unopposed global propganda effort, and because fear is a powerful motivator, and because of sunk cost fallacy.
Yes – there a lot of syndromes going into this. But, for sure, the fundamentals are not getting better.
We’re still in lockdown because of an Agenda.
“Are We Being Kept in Partial Lockdown by Status Quo Bias?”
No. We’re being kept in partial lockdown because there is now a huge global industry dependent on lockdown, masks, distancing, vaccines, testing and fear remaining in the longer term. An industry which has deep pockets and is financing the media to keep the fear going.
That too.
It’s a cross between political ideology and financial gain for a very few people.
Yup, plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
Economic melt down, Masks, tests, PPE and fear all advantages for China.
Not just China, though they are arguably benefitting the most as a country. Look at who the partners of the WEF are and you will see they benefit too, which includes a lot of companies and organisations based in the UK, USA, Canada and Germany, to name a few others.
Perhaps we’re still in lockdown because this is meant to be the new normal, and will “help with climate change” and the destruction of Western capitalism and a new socialist one world order so favoured by political leaders across the world.
We might be allowed a few summer months to enjoy ourselves and be grateful for it, before another winter of restrictions.
Boris said early last year, as lockdown was first imposed, that there’d be no return to normal, and there’ll be a new normal instead. Everyone should have taken notice of that.
Isn’t it interesting that the people who seem to shout the loudest about climate change are the biggest personal users of resources. Just take our own Boris – 6 or more children, then bill gates with 3 or more children and jets and yachts I think. Is it just for the poor to stop having children and cut back on their meagre homes and cars?
You forgot Al Gore, the biggest hypocrite of all, who has made billions from the scam, owns several massive properties and travels the world in private jets.
I certainly picked up on Boris’s warning pronouncement, along with him quoting phrases out of Klaus Schwab’s publications and wearing a WEF lapel badge at one of the coronavirus briefing sessions.
Klaus’s Agenda.
Long felt they are trying to transfer this to so called “climate change”.
Anybody who has become comfortable with the present status quo is insane.
And guilty of supporting and complicity in crimes against humanity.
That is the majority it seems.
Yes – the saddest exposure about humans that has come to light in my lifetime.
To be precise – it’s induced mass psychosis.Only relative ‘comfort’ – a retreat from fear.
It’s quite scary to think there are actually people out there who are not only evnjoying every minute of this insanity but would be quite happy for this madness to carry on indefinitely – I’m convinced that there are some who would actually welcome curfews and even more restrictions than before … .
Hannan :
“To say “just another couple of weeks” is much easier if you are a government official at home on full pay”
… or saying anything as a privileged establishment journo-politician on the Lords gravy train?
Cynic, you are as bad as me!
It’s not about a virus. It’s about a bunch of amoral war criminals controlling your life
A young man in my village who doesn’t bother to work and has hair down to his waist, last March in the very early days told me “there is no virus, this is about the economy”. I often think about that.
To answer the question at the top of the article: we are being kept in lockdown because certain influential members of SAGE want to continue with it and the government is happy to oblige. The BBC’s attempt to portray Johnson as a lockdown sceptic is truly laughable.
Leave Francis Rossi out of it please.
The Status Quo is probably better than the WHO