Shakespeare and social justice: Reading ‘The Tempest’ tea leaves

As esoteric as playwright William Shakespeare was, it is possible to reimagine his work from a social justice point of view. And that’s exactly what Professor Sandra Young from the Faculty of Humanities seeks to do with her body of work. On Wednesday, 16 October, she delivered an inaugural lecture titled “Exploring the Literary Imagination in Times of Reckoning: What Might Shakespeare Have to Do with Social Justice Today?”

It was another well attended lecture at the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Neville Alexander Building. Using Shakespeare’s The Tempest as a case study, Professor Young argued that the play’s attention to slavery and colonisation reveals how theatre can serve as a platform for grappling with issues of injustice.

Young, a scholar of English Literary Studies, focuses her research on social justice questions in imaginative and historical works. Her most recent book, Shakespeare in the Global South: Stories of Oceans Crossed in Contemporary Adaptation, investigates how modern theatre practitioners adapt Shakespeare’s works to explore themes of dispossession, struggle and survival.

The 2004 Norton Critical Edition of The Tempest wrote that the book “presents some of Shakespeare’s most insightful mediations on the cycle of life – ending and beginning, death and regeneration, bondage and freedom”.

“It became possible to recognise the play’s real interest in the injustice of colonial domination.”

“Shakespeare has been taken around the world in contexts which he wouldn’t have imagined. He’s been renewed, but also invited into conversations about injustice and it is the work of innovative contemporary theatre makers who have reimagined and invited Shakespeare into that conversation and have created new pathways for imagination,” Young said.  

Turning to The Tempest and using the character of Caliban as an example, she said: “He is in some historic versions treated as half human and much maligned. The Tempest has meant different things and [has been] interpreted in different ways over the centuries of its life, where [the character of] Prospero used to be thought of as almost a spokesperson for Shakespeare himself; as a figure of civilisation and the good arts, and Caliban as a figure of savagery.”

According to Young, however, the independence movements in the Caribbean and Africa in the 20th century sought to disabuse that view, giving new perspectives of The Tempest. “It became possible to recognise the play’s real interest in the injustice of colonial domination … and to think about how post-colonial approaches have enriched Shakespeare’s work … [therefore] the question becomes ‘Are you on a boat or are you on the shore?’ and it is legitimate to make a choice about whose perspective you give attention to.”

Subject of scorn

Young added: “The Tempest deals most explicitly with the phenomenon of slavery. Archival research uncovers a fascinating detail: prior to the abolition of slavery, Shakespeare’s original version of the play was rarely performed. Instead, it was replaced by adaptations that stripped enslaved characters of their humanity. Attitudes towards Caliban as the enslaved figure began to shift as the abolishing movement gained momentum and some images found in the archive show that in a few years, Caliban moved from being imagined as this bestial creature to being recognised as a human who was unjustly saddled with the burden of coercive labour.

“It was only in 1838 – five years after slavery had been abolished by the British Parliament – that Shakespeare’s play was performed again [and] Caliban undergoes a transformation and is imagined in one illustration as someone burdened – carrying wood – and it becomes possible to think about Caliban with a sympathetic imagination, rather than the subject of scorn.”

Speaking about Young, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Professor Shose Kessi, noted: “Her theoretically incisive, innovative and bold scholarship is admired by scholars across ranks. Her ability to critically engage archive intimately, while attending to its challenges is also deeply admired. There are few distinguished scholars in any field that are this deeply connected with the centuries past in their field, while intensely engaging with its present and shaping its future.”

In conclusion, Young invited the audience to stretch their imagination in thinking about the renewal, reimagination and revitalisation of the work of Shakespeare. “The field of Shakespeare scholarship really needs to go beyond its traditional ambit if it’s going to be fully open to the impact of [renewal, reimagination and revitalisation]. It feels to me, now more than ever, that the field is needing to develop the kind of tools that will be able to recognise the impact of a creative practice that takes no prisoners in its advocacy.”