Bill cancelled? Well, the bard shakes on

Ok, enough is enough. It's time to woke down and smell the coffee. Earlier this month, the New Zealand government withdrew state funding from the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival for secondary schools. And why was the festival, up and running since 1989, given the short shrift? Because Bill-bhai's works have been found to be not relevant to a 'South Pacific country that is moving away from its British roots' that 'should be instead celebrating legends from its Maori heritage'. Thank the bard that we in our South Asia country don't have to take inane measures like literally - and, as is trendy these days, symbolically - cancelling Shakespeare despite having uprooted our 'British roots' a while back.

Shakespeare may have been an Elizabethan Briton, but his works are universal. In fact, through countless productions and interpretations on stage across the globe (the reconstructed Globe theatre in London included), the world has moved away from 'Britain' and taken Shakespeare 'everywhere'. As for a particularly dramatic board member of New Zealand's art council saying that Shakespeare's works are 'paternalistic' and are a 'canon of imperialism', clearly, the person protests too much. 'Decolonists' like this are the ones who keep seeing colonialism like Banquo's ghost. The rest of us have moved on - relishing Shakespeare's genius.