This essay, on the debate over decolonising Shakespeare, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 23 March 2025, under the headline “Why decolonise Shakespeare when all the world’s a stage for his ideas on injustice?” “My quarrel with the English language,” James Baldwin wrote in his essay Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare, had been “that the language reflected none of my experience.” And so “I condemned him as one of the authors and architects of my oppression”. Then, he “began […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Justice & Liberties • Tags: akira kurosawa, belarus free theatre, decolonisation, decolonising shakespeare, enlightenment, eurocentric, frantz fanon, helen hopkins, james baldwin, ralph ellison, shakespeare, shakespeare birthplace trust, sulayman al-bassam, universalism, vishal bhardwaj, web dubois