Emmanuelle Ducros 9:53 a.m., March 26, 2024

Every morning after the 8:30 a.m. news, Emmanuelle Ducros reveals to listeners her “Journey into absurdity”, from Monday to Thursday.

A British controversy this morning. With a notable accused, William Shakespeare, whom researchers are trying to knock off his pedestal.

A juicy story, told by the daily The Telegraph. It takes place in a London university; Roehampton. A group of academics is conducting a study there whose aim is to “refocus theatrical reading on marginalized communities in the contemporary representation of early modern plays”

I'll keep the conclusions short: Because of Shakespeare's cultural place, theater is too “white, male, heterosexual and cisgender”. After King Lear, the king is delirious

The affair is raising eyebrows across the Channel.

Yes, we still have open doors, namely that Shakespeare was a man of his time. What is most annoying is that public money was invested in this study, a lot of public money. 800,000 pounds, 950,000 euros, donated by a taxpayer-funded Arts and Humanities Research Council. Which is now accused of making “cultural putaclic”.

What do the detractors say about this research project?

That in Shakespeare's time, the European population was white, society was male and homosexuality was repressed. Wanting at all costs to make him responsible for what he conveyed is a contradiction. Wanting to deny its historical context, stupidity. But obviously, you can't do Hamlet without breaking eggs.

The taxpayer will not have lost everything.

No, the story doesn't end there... The team of researchers set out to prove that if Shakespeare's contemporaries had been a little more open to gender issues and LGBTQIA+ concerns, they would not have moved to alongside another playwright, one John Lyly. He had understood everything. His play Galatea features characters disguised as people of the opposite sex. A work that offers “unprecedented affirmative and intersectional demographics, exploring feminist, queer, transgender and migrant lives.” Anachronism alert. No luck, this brilliant gem hasn't been performed since 1558. The team is going to bring it back to theatrical life.

According to you, it will lead to serious disillusionment.

Yes. there is an unacceptable observation for the intersectional and woke world. If Shakespeare lasts, it is because he depicts universal themes, with which we can always identify. Love, hate, ambition, loss, jealousy. The common language of Humanity. That, when we see the world through the navel of identity, it's unbearable.

But all that we have found to oppose to Shakespeare in this affair is a minor author, forgotten, exhumed because we can pin contemporary obsessions with gender and identity on his back. The worst part is that it's meant to be a deconstruction... when it has become incredibly banal and conformist. A lot of noise for nothing.