I suppose this had to happen sooner or later. Now that progressive activists and BLM have rounded up all of the founding fathers and Confederate leaders for cancellation, they should eventually dig even further back in history for new targets. So why not Shakespeare? That’s definitely a good idea, according to the teachers who founded the #DisruptTexts group. They believe that Avon’s Bard should either be completely removed from school curricula or be renamed in a way that throws significant criticism of his work as a symbol of white supremacy and colonialism. I know(Washington Times)
For the new generation of teachers, William Shakespeare is seen less as an icon of literature, but more as an instrument of imperial oppression, an author to be dissected in class or banned from the curriculum altogether.
“This is about white supremacy and colonization,” declared the teachers who founded #DisruptTexts, a group that wants the foundations of Western literature to be removed or subjected to devastating criticism.
The anti-Shakespearean teachers say fans of the plays ignore the author’s problematic worldview. They say Shakespearean readers should be required to address the “whiteness” of their thinking.
A teacher from St. Paul, Minnesota, says she teaches Marxist theory to her students when reading “Coriolanus.” Another New Jersey high school teacher bragged that she gave “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 work was not rooted in any celebration of colonialism or “whiteness.” He wrote about royal families and common people. What these activists are upset about is the fact that Shakespeare was white and male. So that means he has to go.
I will confess that I am not a huge fan of the Bard’s work. I had to read it in school, but I never found it particularly interesting. I was never a fan of poetry and his plays were written in an earlier form of English that didn’t exactly roll off the tongue of a kid growing up on a farm. But he’s a part of history, and a basic understanding of the classics never hurts anyone looking for a well-rounded education.
As for Shakespeare’s lack of “cultural sensibility”, give me a break. He was a product of his time and the society he grew up in, just like everyone else. If these teachers want to point to specific examples in Shakespeare’s oeuvre that are supposedly offensive, I’d like to take a look. But the fact is, they are trying to judge a man who has been dead for over 400 years by standards that have only been evoked from scratch in the last generation.
If you really want to criticize Shakespeare for something, try to solve the mystery of whether or not he wrote all of his plays and sonnets. There has been a lingering debate for a long time as to who the real author of those classic works actually was. If you could somehow prove that he stole other people’s work or if history falsely attributed some of the work to him, then you may have a reason to cancel it. But it just seems unlikely that such an ancient mystery will ever be finally solved.