Me at Shakespeare’s Birthplace Museum in 2023.
On 16/3/2025, The Telegraph reported:
“William Shakespeare’s birthplace is being “decolonised” following concerns about the playwright being used to promote “white supremacy”.
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”.”
Here is the full email I have just sent to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust:
Dear Sir/Madam,
My name is Hai-Di Nguyen.
I’m contacting you regarding the recent report in the Telegraph that Shakespeare’s birthplace is going to be “decolonised”, over concerns that the idea of Shakespeare’s genius “benefits the ideology of white European supremacy”.
I’m sure I’m not the only person reaching out to you about this subject. I myself come from Vietnam (a country never colonised by Britain) and lived for several years in Norway (also never colonised by Britain) before moving to the UK—English is not even my first language—but Shakespeare speaks to me. And I always say (perhaps to the annoyance of my friends) that Shakespeare is the greatest writer of all time, because of the language, the poetry, the imagery, the characterisation, the psychological depth, the ideas, the range of characters and perspectives, and so on.
You don’t have to apologise for Shakespeare’s status and reputation because of some discomfort over history and colonialism. You don’t have to look at Shakespeare through the lens of identity politics, intersectionality, or Critical Race Theory. Colonialism may have spread the English language and introduced the world to Shakespeare, but couldn’t make people love his plays and create new works based on them. Colonialism alone couldn’t explain his influence on the English language, on literature, on painting, on opera, on cinema, on other arts. Colonialism alone couldn’t explain his reputation as the greatest writer of all time, and his popularity through the ages. Colonialism definitely couldn’t explain the reason 400 years later, Shakespeare’s words sometimes come to my head, a Vietnamese woman, such as “Is man no more than this?” or “Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?” or “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world”.
It is true that nationalists and colonisers have promoted Shakespeare’s works, but it is also true that colonised people, people post-colonial, and people from countries never colonised by Britain (such as me) have loved and cherished these plays and poems. They resonate with us all. And they don’t need to be “decolonised”.
Kind regards,
Hai-Di Nguyen
I blog about Shakespeare and literature at https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com.
What in the... you're so measured and amiable in this letter! Well done, girl
ReplyDeleteFabulous letter!
ReplyDeleteBrava, Di! This is a perfect letter. It should be published in a paper of wide circulation.
ReplyDeleteHahaha, thank you. Share it then.
ReplyDeleteI was horriffied to see this in the news a few days ago, not it untrue, but a slur on England's greatest writer, ye he was white, but not an imperialist, was empathetic to the cosmopolitan attitudes of the contemporary London of his day. Elizabethan England was not allowing slavery and captured Spanish galley slaves were released. Yes some of the British privateers indulged in slaving, but minimal in comparison to Spain, which had slaves 100 years before Britain, and banned it after we did. Anyway, Shakespeare was not involved nor at that stage could he be an imperialist, so basically the slur comes down to the fact he was a white male. Like much of this sort of nonsense, it is based on a skewed outlook on historical facts, or as in some instances, a total ignorance of facts.
ReplyDeleteWell done for a measured sane letter.
I really hope that the report exaggerates things, or that the Trust rethinks this.
DeleteThe Globe is already ruined by ideology, everything they do is dictated and distorted by ideology that I no longer want to go anywhere near them. It would be such a shame if Shakespeare's Birthplace Museum goes down that same path.
And the plays upon words, the metaphors, idioms, use of irony, rhythms, textures .... Brilliant, measured, erudite, articulate letter. Put those absurd, monochrome, self-congratulating cultural vandals in their place!
ReplyDeleteNailed it. Very well said, but sadly I doubt it will resonate with the postmodernist commissars.
ReplyDeleteI'm hopeful as the website and twitter account of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust don't use a certain kind of language, if you know what I mean, compared to the Globe, say.
ReplyDelete