Dead White Males

That’s not at all surprising, Joseph. Shakespeare, like so many of those dead, white males, was a sexist and a racist, who makes fun of the mentally ill, and an elitist who defended the hierarchical class system. And no wonder you feel small: that’s precisely what these so-called experts in academia want you to feel. The whole idea of ‘art’ and ‘literature’ is to intimidate ordinary people and keep them in their place while the elite mock popular culture (which is far more valid than any of that fusty poetry and dull painting and complicated music). Our new meritocratic age has no room for the likes of Shakespeare; we’ve moved on. Though we’ve retained some of the British heroism of that first Elizabethan era, with its struggles—so similar to ours—against fanaticism and intolerance. In the second Elizabethan age, enormous gains have been made against old-fashioned patriarchal values, led by heroic women such as Princess Diana. But perhaps we can see her ancestor in Elizabeth the First herself, one of the great feminists of all time, who was also worshipped by the community and who united the British nation against a common threat.