"A study funded by the British government to the tune of almost a million pounds claims that William Shakespeare, one of foremost the literary icons in history, has been disproportionately represented and has enabled “white, able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgender male narratives” to dominate theatre.
The study, by academics at the University of Roehampton, was funded by the government’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and essentially claims that Shakespeare is not diverse enough.
The Telegraph reports that the overseer of the study, Andy Kesson, complains that “masculinity and nationalism were crucial motivating factors in the rise of Shakespeare as the arbiter of literary greatness” adding that “[w]e need to be much, much more suspicious of Shakespeare’s place in contemporary theatre”.
There are not enough black and brown disabled queer transgender migrants in Shakespeare’s plays apparently.
As a counter to Shakespeare’s lack of diversity, the researchers are staging a production of a play by John Lyly, a playwright around at the same time as Shakespeare but who wasn’t as successful.
The researchers claim that the Lyly play Galatea offers “an unparalleled affirmative and intersectional demographic, exploring feminist, queer, transgender and migrant lives”.
Given that basically none of those things existed when the play was written, anyone in their right mind would conclude that they are not themes in the play, and instead have been crowbarred into it by the ‘academics’ obsessed with pushing their identity nonsense agenda.
Responding to this complete tripe, author Lionel Shriver noted “In Shakespeare’s day, half the European population was white and male. They didn’t have rainbow flags. Being disabled like Richard III was a matter of character rather than politics, and luckily for them no one had ever coined the linguistic abomination ‘cisgender’.”
Shriver further urged that “Still germane because his themes are timeless, Shakespeare will survive even this dogmatic mangling, and his plays will continue to be enjoyed long after today’s ‘intersectional’ performances have foreshortened into a freakish comical footnote in theatrical history.”
Comedian and author Andrew Doyle also commented “There’s a very good reason why Shakespeare is performed frequently and John Lyly barely at all. Shakespeare was by far the superior playwright. Yet again, ideologues are reducing great art to mere mechanisms for the promotion of an ideology.”
“A production of Galatea would be welcome,” Doyle continued, adding “but given that those behind it are already using anachronistic pseudo-religious terms such as ‘cisgender’ suggests that it will be a tedious affair. They evidently believe what they are doing is radical, but virtually all theatre companies today are obsessed with identity and gender, and so this is likely to be just more conformist and insipid propaganda.”
Conservative MP Jane Stevenson of the government’s culture, media and sport committee, said “I’m not sure reducing Galatea to a celebration of all things woke, or knocking Shakespeare for being pale, male and stale is much more than cultural click-bait.”
“Shakespeare’s works have been translated into 100 languages and clearly still resonate with people all over the world. Love, hate, ambition, loss, jealousy – all universal emotions we all still identify with,” Stevenson further declared.
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