A Response: [Lady] Macbeth | Presented by Twelve Angry at Tuxedo Cat

It’s Shakespeare’s 400^th birthday, which seems like a good a time as any to take stock of his ongoing legacy. Spoiler: he’s still relevant. Good for him. Good for us too. It gives theatre companies a back catalogue of rights-free repertoire to remount and schools a seemingly endless number of texts to study — even if they tend to stick to a couple of tried and true favourites. So, to begin with, Happy Birthday Shakespeare, you’ve had a pretty big impact on our culture old mate—particularly in terms of language and narrative—and it doesn’t look like you’re going anywhere.

However, there are those who are suggesting that we take a break from the Bard — although, right or wrong, it must be noted that these two articles are written by playwrights with vested interests (full disclosure, I am similarly invested). The arguments are: let’s support local stories—which arguably have more resonance with contemporary audiences—and that a break would give those who love him the time to miss him. The latter point is somewhat erroneous; arguably, people will ‘miss’ him or not as much as they please, regardless of a hiatus. In regards to a ban, everyone naturally gets uppity when you try and censor art in general; no one wants an irl Cahoot’s Macbeth. And so while an outright ban is (obviously) and overstep, the suggestion opens the debate up to the relevance and prevalence of Shakespeare, which leads to a discussion about cultural imperialism, fitting nicely in with the first argument there, that we should support local stories. Without defending and actively supporting new work, the pall of international influence that Australians take from their colonisers will continue to lead to a problematic internalising of the commodities’ themes and messages — more on that later.