The bard responds to news that he has been cancelled

In Competition No. 3191 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy reflecting on the news that the Bard has been cancelled by some US academics.

Teachers in the States have called into question the centrality of Shakespeare in the English curriculum given that his works are, according to Amanda MacGregor, writing in the School Library Journal, ‘full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism, and misogynoir’. Some have seen this as yet another example of the tyranny of wokeness; others as a perfectly reasonable attempt to re-evaluate the role the Bard’s works should play in a 21st-century classroom.

But what would the man himself have made of it all? Over to the excellent winners below, who take £25 each. Commendations go to Iain Morley, Philip Roe and Basil Ransome-Davies.

Rumours reach me from the AmericasOf clerks who scan my plays to seek offence.’tis claimed I calumny the innocent,And should no more be read. But whom have IYet failed to vilify? Scotch kings, and ayeTheir wicked queens, and kings of England too,Greek heroes, sprites, all human life is mineAnd all can be offended or offend.I judge all men alike, all women too —A jealous general, who is a Moor,A moneylending Jew, whose daughter shouldMost roundly be condemned, worse than my Shrew!No matter! Those same clerks have ever readInto my plays things that I never said, So let them bear me ill-will if they will!When they are gone, I, Will, shall be here still. Brian Murdoch

Oh what an unwoke, peasant knave am I —But am I silent or am silencèd? For Bard in name but barred indeed am I, My books, as drown’d, interrèd with my bones — And all for nought! For words that cause offence? But soft! I say — Who gave a voice to Sprites, Empowered Cobweb, Mustardseed and Puck, Titania, Oberon and Ariel —All underrepresented and ignored? Who wrote against neraidaphobic tropes, ’Gainst those, sans teeth, who take their pillowed pay Then live their lives in airy disbelief? When Fairies fade, who takes the knee for them? Think not those woke that but seem to be so! For never was a story of more woke Than Oberon’s forgotten Fairy Folk.