Review: The Great White Bard by Farah Karim-Cooper

The Great White Bard captures the zeitgeist of the 2020s as we begin to really question what we (think) we know about history. It combines textual analysis and historical context that will enrich any teacher's knowledge and support pupils studying the work of Shakespeare at A Level or undergraduate level.

Essential questions about race, gender, colonialisation and representation in Shakespeare's plays and how this has shaped cultural Britain need to be asked. We must question how we read, teach and experience the theatrical canon. Readers are asked to reconsider or reframe pieces of art that we had accepted as being just so. Particularly provocative is the chapter ‘The Making of the Great White Bard’, in which readers are asked to confront the discomfort that embracing truths about our ‘national treasure’ may bring. ‘Being truthful about the past can't do any more harm that hiding from it has already done,’ writes author Farah Karim-Cooper.