ABSTRACT
The ambivalence and contradictions inherent in South Africa's relationship to William Shakespeare have been scrupulously investigated in a range of literary criticism, notably in books by Martin Orkin, David Johnson and Natasha Distiller. These stories, some closer to Haresnape's own experiences than others, construct and comment upon the strange hybrids formed when Shakespeare and Africa are intertwined by writers. The diversity of the contexts that Haresnape uses make the book not just a collection of creative exercises but a whole work expressing an argument that Shakespeare is alive and well in Africa, and relevant in diverse African contexts. In his introduction to the volume Haresnape argues that Shakespeare still has a place in post-apartheid South Africa if the emphasis can be shifted from the Elizabethan Englishman and the legacy of colonial oppression and reinvested with an international, liberatory message.
