The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which owns buildings linked to the playwright and poet in his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon, is “decolonising” its collection to “create a more inclusive museum experience.”
Plans follow a report that ‘found’ the Bard’s genius was used to advance ideas about “white supremacy,” according to The Sunday Telegraph. The Trust then secured funding from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation—which strives for a “better understanding of the interconnected nature of racial inequity and injustice across all parts of our strategy”—to help make its collection more diverse.
Responding to the news, writer Patrick West joked in The Spectator that
It seems to have become an unspoken requirement of recent that anyone in charge of promoting or putting on the plays of Shakespeare must first of all hate him and his works.
The Trust believes that some of its items may contain “language or depictions that are racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise harmful,” and hopes in the future to explore “the continued impact of Empire” on the collection, as well as the “impact of colonialism” and how “Shakespeare’s work has played a part in this.”
“One can almost hear the collective yawn from a nation that is growing weary of this kind of faux-radicalism,” writes comedian Andrew Doyle in UnHerd.
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has responded to criticism from the press in a fairly lengthy, yet almost completely empty statement. It appears that the group will not be easily discouraged, just like other bodies set with the important task of preserving and passing down Shakespeare’s work—such as the Globe Theatre and the British Shakespeare Association.
