A Sign that History is Happening: Shakespeare in 20th‐Century South African literature

Abstract

AbstractThis article makes use of the notion of cultural hybridity as developed by Homi Bhabha in order to come to terms with the ways in which specific writers in 20th‐century South Africa incorporated Shakespeare as an icon and as a collection of texts into their work. I explore how the parameters of, particularly, gender and class impact on the identity positions that are both enabled by and developed in defiance of colonial and apartheid knowledge systems and institutions. In this context, extracts from the work of Solomon Plaatje and William Bloke Modisane are briefly discussed. Shakespeare's putative universalism is invoked by both these writers who, positioned at different points in South Africa's pre‐democratic history, make use of the texts, and the cultural and humanist associations that accrue to “Shakespeare.” The hybrid textual inscriptions that result need to be understood in terms of the local conditions of production, the subject positions they in part enabled, and the changing socio‐political climate which made its own demands on the writers who had access to Shakespeare. I locate this discussion within a post‐colonial framework in order to unravel some of the cultural complexities at work in the presence of Shakespeare in 20th‐century South African literature, and the connections with specific political and social conditions.