‘Not darkness but ignorance’ — Shakespeare in the public schools | National Catholic Register

The push to remove the work of William Shakespeare from the curriculum is a symptom of deeper ideological problems in the culture

The public school system in the United States is the ultimate proof of GK Chesterton’s prophecy that the “coming danger” facing the culture is “low-level standardization.” Nowhere is this more evident than in the removal of Shakespeare from the classroom.

A report in a recent issue of School Library Journal summarized the arrogant and ignorant rationale for such iconoclasm, embodied in the claim that “Shakespeare’s works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with much misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism and misogyny.” The final word in this litany of postmodern sins: misogynisticapparently refers to a hatred of black women.

The problem with such a sweeping rejection of Shakespeare oeuvre is that it illustrates the pride and prejudice of the person saying it. It is impossible that the person who expressed this negative judgment has ever read Shakespeare in a way that is consistent with the moral and philosophical dimension of the works. It is ignorance and arrogance that are the wicked fruit of such ignorance. It is pride and the prejudice that always accompanies such pride.

Let’s take the litany of postmodern sins one by one.

As for misogyny, Shakespeare can only be accused of this in the sense that the radical feminists consider anyone who disagrees with them to be misogynistic. According to radical feminists, those who oppose the systematic killing of children are misogynists who have declared a ‘war on women’, and this applies to the millions of women who think that killing children is wrong. It’s not just men who declare war on women, it’s also all women who disagree with the radical feminists. To be judged as a misogynist by such judgmental fascists is like being judged as a race traitor by Adolf Hitler.

Having said this, and it must be said, we must point out the strong female characters in Shakespeare’s plays, of which there are so many that we hardly know with whom to start. Cordelia has more virtue and wisdom than any male character King Leara wisdom and virtue that comes with the courage of her convictions and the suffering that such courage entails. In Julius CaesarIt is precisely the inability of the male characters to heed the voices of the female characters that foreshadows the tragedy that follows. And then there is the incomparable and indomitable Portia, perhaps the strongest and wisest character, male or female, that Shakespeare ever created.

Strength is, of course, a double-edged sword that can serve the forces of evil. Shakespeare gives us Lady Macbeth, who is much stronger than her husband or any other character in the play; he gives us Goneril and Regan, who rival the diabolical Edmund in their acts of treacherous and treacherous treachery. He gives us Cleopatra, who uses her “liberated” attitude toward sexual promiscuity for selfish purposes that end up self-destructively. (Perhaps the self-defeating consequences of selfishness are one of the “problematic, outdated ideas” for which Shakespeare should be canceled.)

Next on the list of postmodern sins for which Shakespeare must be condemned is his alleged “racism.” This accusation is downright bizarre. The most overtly racist lines in a Shakespearean play, and the lines cited ad nauseam as evidence of his alleged racism, are those of Iago in Othello. These lines are offensive, but they are put into the mouth of perhaps the most offensive character Shakespeare ever created. In short, Shakespeare illustrates the offensive nature of the character through the offensive nature of his rhetoric. To accuse Shakespeare of racism because of the words of the loathsome Iago is to accuse him of nihilism because of the words of the mass murderer Macbeth.

As for the accusation that alleged anti-Semitism in… The Merchant of Venice constitutes racism, a reading of the play shows that Shylock is mistreated more for his usury and vengeful hatred than for the fact that he is Jewish. To the extent that there is what might be called anti-Jewish rhetoric in the play, it is clear that this is a matter of theological rather than racial differences. The fact that Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, is fully accepted after her conversion makes it clear that her Jewish identity is seen as religious and not racist. At a deeper level, where space cannot expand further, the Jewish presence is present The Merchant of Venice was merely a euphemistic device to attack the Puritans, who were the moneylenders in Shakespeare’s England. Since it was illegal to attack the Puritans by name, the moneylender was given a Jewish mask to avoid censorship.

The next postmodern sin of which Shakespeare is accused is ‘homophobia’, a word and concept of which he is said to have been completely unaware. It is true that every culture throughout human history has considered the practice of homosexuality a sin, which is one of the reasons why postmoderns want to cancel the past. Shakespeare is not a child of his age in this respect, but of all ages except ours. Is this a reason to remove him from the curriculum? In the eyes of the postmodern neo-Puritans, the answer is resoundingly affirmative.

The next postmodern sin is ‘classism’. It is of course true that Shakespeare failed to see the cosmos through the eyes of Karl Marx. He would have seen kings, aristocrats, merchants and peasants, and not the rich, the bourgeoisie, the middle class and the working class. But more importantly, his plays are full of condemnations of the corruption caused by the pursuit of wealth, position and power. His sympathy goes out to those who resist the temptation and seduction of the world. His sympathy goes out to the poor. His contempt is poured out on those who sell their souls for worldly advancement and on those who use Machiavellian cynicism to gain power at the expense of the weak and the innocent.

This brings us to the latest and newest and perhaps worst postmodern sin: misogyny. For the rest of my life, I cannot remember a single reference to black women in any of Shakespeare’s plays. Am I missing something? Or perhaps the very absence of black women in Shakespeare’s plays, as they were actually absent in Shakespeare’s England, is evidence that he must be guilty of neological misogyny. Anyway, I’m baffled and therefore can’t comment.

If one thing is abundantly clear from the demands for Shakespeare’s cancellation, it is that none of those demanding his removal from the curriculum have been able to read or understand his work. If they could have done that, they would know that Shakespeare’s plays show us eternal truths that are at least as relevant today as they were in Shakespeare’s own time. They show us the difference between the selfless love that gives its life for the beloved and the selfish “love” that sacrifices the beloved on the narcissistic altar of self-gratification. They show us the corruption inherent in the desire for power and the need for the righteous and virtuous person to resist such power. They show us that the will must be subject to reason and not to desire. None of these timeless aspects of human life are ‘outdated’ and they are only ‘problematic’ in the sense that they show us the problem and challenge us to think about it and do something about it.

The tragedy and comedy of the situation is that these critics of Shakespeare cannot read the plays. They don’t understand them. They are ignorant. This would be bad enough if it weren’t for the fact that they are also arrogant in their ignorance. They can’t read and that’s why they don’t want to read. And because they are puritanical in their pride and prejudices, they are determined that not all others will read along with them. That is the spirit of arrogant ignorance masquerading as education in the public school system.

This essay was first published by The imaginative conservative and appears here with permission.