Mick Hartley

Titania McGrath at The Critic:

A recent book has revealed that William Shakespeare was actually a black woman. Predictably, historians and literary critics have been demanding “proof”, but do they have any proof that Shakespeare was white and male? These evidence-fetishists are such hypocrites.

The book is called The Real Shakespeare by feminist scholar Irene Coslet and contains a genuine picture of the great bard which shows clearly that she was black. True, the author drew the picture herself, but photography wasn’t invented back then. Drawing her own evidence strikes me as the most sensible solution to that problem.

The smoking gun comes in an exciting new discovery. Through painstaking research, Coslet has discovered that “Shakespeare” is an anagram of “A She Speaker”. That cannot be a coincidence. The same rigorous analytical method can be used to determine that Eric Clapton suffers from a sleeping disorder because his name is an anagram of “narcoleptic”.

As Coslet insightfully argues in her book: “Shakespeare was well aware of sounds, and how sounds can be used to convey meaning.” This radical re-reading explodes every misconception we have ever had. Up until now, we had assumed that Shakespeare was unfamiliar with the concept of the spoken word or communication.

The insistence that Shakespeare must have been white and male is an example of how our understanding of history has been distorted by fascistic revisionism. For instance, very few people know that Aristotle was a Punjabi transwoman. Or that William of Orange was a Taiwanese sex worker with a missing foot.

Even if these facts are not true, that does not make them false. Reality is a social construct. The designation of an individual as “white” and “male” has no authentic material basis but is rather an interpretative imposition to reinforce racist patriarchal power structures….

Yes, the book is real enough – “The reader will leave this book with a sense of wonder, transformation, and will experience a paradigm shift.” Can’t ask for more than that.