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Thursday
I figured it was only a matter of time before MAGA went after Shakespeare. Reports out of Florida’s Education Department are that Macbeth, Hamlet, and especially Romeo and Juliet are on its target list. The Tampa Bay News reports that
some Florida school districts are shying away from Shakespeare, along with other classic and popular materials. They say they’re attempting to comply with new state law restricting books with and instruction about sexual content.
So Shakespeare is going the way of AP psychology—I guess Florida disapproves of how the field of psychology no longer regards same sex attraction as a disorder—and historical accounts of slavery being bad. And the Christian right has long had problems with mentioning evolution in biology classes.
But back to Shakespeare. We’re being told not to worry because teachers will still be allowed to teach excerpts. This way, the schools “can teach about Shakespeare while avoiding anything racy or sexual.” The Tampa Bay News says that Tanja Arja, a spokeswoman for the Hillsborough County school district, attributes the changes to
the newly expanded Parental Rights in Education Act. The measure, promoted and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, tells schools to steer clear of content and class discussion that is sexual in nature unless it is related to a standard, such as health class.
I’ve been anticipating that, sooner or later, Shakespeare’s cross-dressing comedies (Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Merchant of Venice) would end up in MAGA’s crosshairs. I didn’t foresee, however, that the tragedies too would be facing bowdlerization.
For the record, Thomas Bowdler was a 19th century physician who, in 1807, published The Family Shakespeare, a version that “cleaned up” the Bard so that he would be acceptable to women and children. To cite some examples (I owe these to Wikipedia), in Bowdler’s Hamlet the death of Ophelia is called an accidental drowning, not a possibly intended suicide; prostitute Doll Tearsheet is omitted from Henry IV, Part II; and “God!” as an exclamation is replaced throughout with “Heavens!”
Bowdler has been a figure of derision ever since, and it appears that Ron DeSantis and Florida’s Education Department are about to join him. As Gaither High School reading teacher Joseph Cool noted when interviewed,
I think the rest of the nation — no, the world—is laughing at us. Taking Shakespeare in its entirety out because the relationship between Romeo and Juliet is somehow exploiting minors is just absurd.
Cool also took issue with the assault on Macbeth, but this makes perfect sense when you think about Ron DeSantis’s own Macbethian aspirations. Perhaps the play cuts a little too close to home with a man who will trample immigrants, Black voters, LBGTQ+ folk, women who want abortions after 15 weeks, and others to gain the presidency. As Cool described the impact of the play on his students,
It gave them a sense of connection between stuff that happened in the past and things that are not necessarily in the past. The choices that we make, power struggles, delusions of grandeur. It is so rich in content and things that you can have discussions about, academic and scholarly discussions.
The article concludes,
When asked if students could have that caliber of experience through excerpts, [Cool] said, “absolutely not.”
Imagine all the sex talk excised from Romeo and Juliet, from the young bucks at the beginning of the play (whose badinage resembles that exchanged daily in America’s high school locker rooms) to the nurse, who mentions Juliet nursing at her teats and foresees her, in years to come, having sex with a man (“Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age, wilt thou not Jule?”). Imagine leaving out Hamlet’s sexual (and nasty) comments to Ophelia: “[I]f thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them.”
Or imagine the Scottish play without Lady Macbeth’s famous declaration as she works herself into a mindset to kill Duncan:
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief.
Actually, perhaps it’s Shakespeare’s very power that frightens MAGA parents. Perhaps they want the Bard to be presented to students as nothing more than a dusty museum piece, in which case he’s been neutered and rendered harmless. In the hands of a good teacher, however, Shakespeare explodes into life and has students addressing life’s biggest questions. Romeo and Juliet is filled with everything that teenage parents fear, with testosterone and hormones ready to blow everything apart. As Friar Lawrence observes,
These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume…
Take, for instance, Juliet as she’s anticipating a night of lovemaking with Romeo. While she’s certainly in love with him, she’s just as much in love with the new sense of power that love has awakened in her. Suddenly her passion is as big as the sky, which is why she can command the sun to “gallop apace”:
Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus’ lodging: such a wagoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway’s eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk’d of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties…
Is Florida going to eliminate the following passage, where Juliet imagines having sex with her lover? Keep in mind that “die” is a reference to the “little death” experienced after sexual intercourse:
Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
I recently watched the Netflix documentary on Toni Morrison, whose works have been banned as much as any author’s in recent years, especially her masterpieces The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. Yet rather than be upset, she regards this as a compliment. If her novels shake people up, it’s because her words have power.
MAGA America doesn’t want its sons and daughters to be moved by books because then it can’t control them. It doesn’t want them to know their history or to understand their psychology or to be empowered by literature. It prefers authoritarian indoctrination.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you William Shakespeare, leader of the resistance.