Anonymous said: Anonymous said:

Pardon my ignorance, but how is Shakespeare problematic?

i suppose the best way to explain it is that it’s not inherent to the plays themselves (with the glaring exceptions of the racism in othello and the merchant of venice, and the sexism that pervades many of his works, but both of those serve literary purposes, again, a different conversation), but more about the way that shakespeare is perceived and interpreted without considering modern intersectionality of issues. shakespeare, although it has become widely more accessible over the past century, is still a very white upper-class area of literary history associated with privilege and academia. performing his works and/or viewing them solely through that perspective is really how shakespeare is problematic, not quite as much through the works themselves, does that make sense??