Why decolonise Shakespeare when all the world’s a stage for his ideas on injustice? | Kenan Malik

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has been criticised for seeking to “decolonise’s’ Shakespeare .

It is difficult not not to see it as a reconsideration of Shakespeare , writes Andrew Hammond .

The project's core theme is a critique of the claim that there is a “universal” quality to Shakespeare ’s work.

To decolonise used to mean winning national independence from colonial rule.

It was universalism the belief that equality, democracy and self-determination belonged to all rather than the property of a privileged few that fuelled the great radical movements that have shaped the modern world.

The argument also conflates the imposition of western power with ideas that might have emerged from within western tradition but are essential to challenging such power.