As we witness monuments of white Western history fall, many are asking
how is Shakespeare still relevant?
Professor Farah Karim-Cooper has dedicated her career to the Bard, which
is why she wants to take the playwright down from his pedestal to unveil
a Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. If we persist in reading
Shakespeare as representative of only one group, as the very pinnacle of
the white Western canon, then he will truly be in peril.
Combining piercing analysis of race, gender and otherness in famous
plays from Antony and Cleopatra to The Tempest with a radical
reappraisal of Elizabethan London, The Great White Bard asks us neither
to idealize nor bury Shakespeare but instead to look him in the eye and
reckon with the discomforts of his plays, playhouses and society. In
inviting new perspectives and interpretations, we may yet prolong and
enrich his extraordinary legacy.