“Shakespeare was a black woman” - now I’ve heard it all!

I think some people today just hate the fact that a fairly ordinary young man from a fairly ordinary background and from a Midlands town could actually have had the brains, wit and intellect to have written all those plays and sonnets.

It has to have been a member of the nobility, or now, more "woke", a black Jewish gentlewoman.

Allira I wasn't talking about any particular book or author. I know there must be long histories stories and forms of drama passed down by people of African origin. Why are these not written about and dramatised? Why the focus on inserting black people into white dramas?

Considering White Male Supremacists have been domination (sic) the world forever, I think it's entirely possible

How do you come to this conclusion? .

Aveline

Allira I wasn't talking about any particular book or author. I know there must be long histories stories and forms of drama passed down by people of African origin. Why are these not written about and dramatised? Why the focus on inserting black people into white dramas?

As I understand it, some Black peoples didn’t have any form of written recording, so apart from passing it down orally, there would be no easy way to disseminate their culture such as the West had when writing and then printing press, especially, was invented.

In Nigeria, where I lived for five years, their own traditional culture continues as it did in the past, with various celebrations, gatherings and rituals and so on. There’s an event dedicated to Osun, the Yoruba goddess of fertility, a fishing festival, durbars with horses, the celebrate Islamic holidays, the yam festival, to give thanks for the harvest, and the Eyo festival, a drama performance with masked players. That’s just a few of their events.

They are spectacular events and it would be wonderful if they were more widely known to the world. It’s not for a white westerner to interpret them, of course. Maybe they prefer to keep their culture to themselves, though.

It makes me think of the controversy about Zelda Fitzgerald and her husband, amid claims that he stole whole chunks of prose from her writing.
And that it was the two Einsteins who developed the theories and not just him.

It may well be that a black woman could have dramatized Taming of the Shrew or Midsummer Nights Dream, but Henry VI or Richard III probably not.
There have been many theories about Shakespeares authenticity, none gained any credibility, this one wont either.

But they are all fascinating, and keep his work alive.

Aveline

Allira I wasn't talking about any particular book or author. I know there must be long histories stories and forms of drama passed down by people of African origin. Why are these not written about and dramatised? Why the focus on inserting black people into white dramas?

Yes, I do agree (perhaps I didn't make that clear).

It seems as if any achievements by an ordinary young white man from that era must be ignored and taken over by someone who was from an ethnic minority and a female too.

Is it not enough that this woman wrote her own poetry? Why not publicise her own achievements?

There are other people from ethnic minorities who achieved in various fields over the centuries - why not make more of these?

Aveline

Allira I wasn't talking about any particular book or author. I know there must be long histories stories and forms of drama passed down by people of African origin. Why are these not written about and dramatised? Why the focus on inserting black people into white dramas?

There are written and visual art works as well as the rich oral tradition.

But in answer to the "why dont we know"

They havent been funded or featured, or even recognised as Valid art/culture.

Only recently they have been published, shown in exhibitions, discussed on book programmes, read inbox clubs.

Just like whole bodies of Womens cultural input has changed beyond recognition in the last 50 years: it didnt happen without people "doing the leg work"

The different cultural inputs are at last but relatively recently being brought into mainstream art and writing funding, publicity, time on TV and Radio, into book groups, and more.

I suggest a good start is to listen to R4 "Front Row": half an hour every weekday evening - over time you get a real idea of the richness out there.

Have a read of this page to kick you off

lithub.com/multicultural-london-a-reading-list-of-displacement-diaspora-and-diversity/#:~:text=Winner%20of%20the%20Booker%20Prize,of%20his%20country's%20Indian%20minority.

Correct""read in book clubs".

Also as in BBC R4 programmes like "Book Club" these days.

Wyllow3

I just feel the theories enrich us. Some like the Emilia Lanier have a good deal of credibility there. Others, are, well, a stretch.

But firstly, no one has to read it, and secondly, different cultural takes on what we have assumed to be "Reality" or "the Truth" are always fascinating and sometimes incredibly valuable and settle into the "Accepted" variety of views on a well known piece of art or writing or cultural theory.

Reclaiming and recovering writings and art by women that were "disappeared" by male critics, or rubbished, except for the very famous like Virginia Woolf has been a fascinating and worthwhile endeavour of the last 50 or so years.

The same goes for the cultures that make up our history and our citizenship in the UK.

This tosh doesn’t enrich anything except for the author’s bank balance.

Grannybags

Blimey whatever next?!

The play on radio 4 this afternoon portrays Shakespeare as gay.
He was married with children in the play.
Who knows 🤷‍♀️

Sounds like a huge proliferation of dramatic stories and events in Nigeria SueDonim. How would they feel if token white people were inserted in them?

Aveline

Sounds like a huge proliferation of dramatic stories and events in Nigeria SueDonim. How would they feel if token white people were inserted in them?

Yeah, just for balance and y’know….enrichment 🙄

It’s a fascinating country, I found it very boring in the UK when we came back here to live, Aveline. Nigerians are shrewd people, they’d probably weigh up whether there was a business opportunity to have white folk involved in their history.

It will cost us over 20 quid to read it .

There will always be controversial books :
I believed Peter Kurt's book ,
which claimed to have proof that Anna Anderson was Grand Duchess Anastasia.
Since discredited from DNA studies.

Then,I read Patricia Cornwell's book on Jack the Ripper in which she suggests that artist Walter Sickert was the killer infuriating ripperologists.

Now this.

petra

Grannybags

Blimey whatever next?!

The play on radio 4 this afternoon portrays Shakespeare as gay.
He was married with children in the play.
Who knows 🤷‍♀️

I just heard a loud creaking and groaning coming from a graveyard in Stratford-upon-Avon as a certain Wm. Shakespeare turns in his grave.

""Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones".

Errata -Kurth not Kurt .

Maremia

But they are all fascinating, and keep his work alive.

I really don't think one of the most well known and performed writers this world has known needs this kind of drivel to keep his work alive.

Philistines 🤫

(*no point engaging whatsoever, when you just get "drivel and tosh" but no analysis at all* - of course Shakespeare Studies and Critiques have changed ever since the man wrote his work! Its not fixed in a graveyard, its prose that is incredibly alive - on the human condition - and can be used as a basis for all kinds of discussions)

Philistines 🤫

Good description for those who come out with this tosh and deny our greatest playwright his due respect.

Somehow I suspect we won't agree. 🙂

Fair enough!

Actually, I was just wondering if Philistine was a derogatory term but the Philistines as a people died out a long time ago or were absorbed into other cultures.

I won't be wasting any reading time on this.

Allira

Fair enough!

Actually, I was just wondering if Philistine was a derogatory term but the Philistines as a people died out a long time ago or were absorbed into other cultures.

Thats the reason Philistines is used as the term it is. They failed to thrive and died out.