The War of the Words is upon us.
William Shakespeare – the most brilliant playwright and poet of the English language. His plays are performed and studied in schools all over the world, his language is magnificent, his plays immortal. But hark! What sulphurous stench from yonder window breaks? It is the Globe Theatre, and the Woke brigade is the darkest hole of hell that threatens to extinguish the light of Shakespeare’s dazzling Sun.
We watch the scene unfold:
Upon the Southbank of the Thames, in fair old London Town, the splintering sound of cackling voices rude, the very air turns black in shame. A plot begins to stir within, the game’s afoot, a spell is cast, fair is foul and foul is fair, “Shakespeare must fall!” the witches shriek…
How now, dear reader; gather close and let not the ears of hell list to our whispered words…the immortal Bard has been besmirched and demonised as a white supremacist, a 16th century Nazi, yet! How falls the vainglorious scribbler, the despicable degenerate, how ignoble shall be his end, from the lofty heights of Olympus he is dragged to be shat upon and immolated in the fires of ignorance, stupidity and hate by the black-hearted legions of self-righteous cunts and cocksuckers. So what’s afoot?
The thespian zealots within the magnificent edifice that is the Globe Theatre and a plague of third-rate academics from far, far away, have decided that the plays of William Shakespeare are actually not plays at all, but are instead manifestos of racism. I kid you not.
A certain Aldo Billingslea – sometime bit-part actor of third-rate movies and full-time teacher of ‘American theatre from the black perspective‘ says: “His work is ‘problematic’ for linking whiteness to beauty” How so? because Lysander, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, says: “Who would not trade a raven for a dove?”, which, in the befuddled and twisted mind of Aldo means “the playwrite is giving ‘value’ to the birds ‘because of their colour.” Obviously Mr B doesn’t study literature or art or mythology otherwise he would know that ravens are symbolic of ill-omens, in other words, bad news – I refer you to Edgar Allan Poe – whilst Doves are symbolic of good news, hence the biblical story of Noah sending out a dove to find land and it returns with a branch in its beak. But that doesn’t fit the oppressed black person narrative, no. So instead we get a deluded interpretation, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Or perhaps the Bible and Poe’s epic poem are racist diatribes too.
According to another world famous Shakespeare scholar (not), Amanda MacGregor, a Minnesota-based librarian: “Shakespeare’s works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism and misogynoir (a clunking synthetic word invented by an idiot)”. She also demands that Shakespeare be dropped from the curriculum because: “I have come to the conclusion that it is time to set Shakespeare aside and downplay creating room for a modern, diverse and inclusive voice”, or to put it another way, Shakespeare is much too difficult for her limited intellectual capacity so let’s put him down as a racist.
Another clever bastard, who shall be named Jeffrey Austin, a no-account secondary school teacher from Ann Arbor, declaimed: “There’s nothing you can get from Shakespeare that you couldn’t get from exploring the work of other writers. When all cultures have transcendental writers who are not included in our curriculum or classroom libraries, it is worth objecting to the idea that Shakespeare is somehow independent as a lonely genius.” So ALL cultures have writers – and not just writers but transcendental ones – as good as, or better than, Shakespeare? Fuck me, some cultures haven’t even developed a written language, never mind a fucking play. There is a very good reason why some books are not included in the curriculum or libraries. They’re shit. Clearly, this man has studied Shakespeare’s oeuvre in depth and is a genius. Or just another intellectually bereft, band waggon jumping mountebank. If anyone from Ann Arbor is reading this, keep your kids well away from Jeffery Austin.
Meanwhile, over in Michigan, the highly esteemed and virtually unknown Dr Vanessa Corredera, another American expert (irony), stated unequivocally: “Every Shakespeare play is a ‘race play’ as ‘whiteness’ is part of all of the plays”. Her opinion is based upon her belief that: “In context with other plays and even the Sonnets, this language is all over the place, this language of dark and light… there are these racialising elements.” Fuck me sideways. That Shakespeare, what a rotter, eh? And there was I, thinking that old Bill was scratching out the most wonderful words ever to grace the English language onto parchment, sharpened quill guided by a poetic love of language, a genius with inky fingers, when all along he was just a mouthpiece for the Nazi party and a the KKK, wearing a pointy white hat festooned, no doubt, with tinkling swastikas. Forsooth! Good job the zealots are keeping us all safe in our beds.
But the stupidity isn’t all coming from the direction of the Land of the Free. Back in dear old Blighty, Professor Farah Karim-Cooper, co-director of education at Shakespeare’s Globe, said: “We have started anti-racist seminars to discuss ‘decolonising’ Shakespeare’s esteemed plays.” So the plays are both esteemed and racist at the same time? Methinks the esteemed professor speaks with forked tongue! Furthermore, she is obviously a bit light in the history department, otherwise she would have understood that there were no British Colonies in Africa and no British Empire until the 18th century. So plays written by our beloved Bard can have no colonial connections or references whatsoever. But don’t let truth get in the way of your esteemed, fascist polemic. Like so many of the professional witch finders she will brook no debate about her miserable opinion, saying: “To suggest that we are saying Shakespeare was racist is just food for a superficial culture war that frankly we are not interested in participating in.” No, of course not dear. What you mean is that anyone who disagrees with you is a racist. The enemy. The worn out old tactics of cancel culture, the Labour party and the Gestapo.
And so, here we are, almost a quarter of the way through the 21st century and the ignorant minority try to drag us all down to their small-minded, medieval domain. They howl and squeal about their imaginary victimhood, creating a cult that sees things that are not there to be seen, whilst invading everywhere and burying everything beautiful under mountains of shit, both actual and metaphorical. Are these yapping fascist turds going to be allowed to impose the Triumph of their Will on the rest of us? I can hear the crunch of marching jackboots and the guttural bellowing of slogans echoing in the floodlit stadiums already. Are you ready Leni? Action!
In the rarefied kingdom of ill-educated, self-righteous, hateful, half-baked cunts, these people take the biscuit. They are bereft of intellect, they are without heart, they are the emptiest vessels making the loudest sounds. Where there is beauty, they see only shit. They create nothing but shit. They are snivelling third-rate actors and they play the Dane oh, so well.
“I have of late – but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of excercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems 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 appears no other thing to me but 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, in 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? Man delights me not, nor woman neither.”
In other words, everything is shit.
And now we must take our leave of this depressing entertainment, this circle of shit, this realm of dark agendas…
“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
I urge and emplore you to read Shakespeare, love Shakespeare, perform Shakespeare and defend Shakespeare and send the black-hearted devils back to hell before we are all buried beneath their mountains of shit.
