Shakespeare in Swahililand: Adventures with the Ever-Living Poet
Investigating the literary culture of the early interaction between European countries and East Africa, Edward Wilson-Lee uncovers an extraordinary sequence of stories in which explorers, railway labourers, decadent émigrés, freedom fighters, and pioneering African leaders made Shakespeare their own in this alien land.Whilst travelling in Luxor, Edward Wilson-Lee encountered a man who called out to him from the summer shade with lines from Shakespeare's Macbeth: 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow….' Unable to resist the temptation, Wilson-Lee responded with the next line and so began a fascination with unexpected cultural encounters, especially those made memorable by the poignancy of discovering beauty out of place.Shakespeare may have heard of Luxor (although he would have known it as Thebes) but it is unlikely that he imagined his lines ever being spoken there, close by the feluccas sailing on the Nile and the acres of pharaonic ruins beyond.This radical, breath-taking book combines travel, history, biography and satire in an ode to Shakespeare. Wilson-Lee teaches Shakespeare at Cambridge but grew up in East Africa and Shakespeare in Swahililand explores Shakespeare’s global legacy like no other book before it. In these pages explorers stagger through Africa's interior accompanied by Shakespeare; eccentrics live out their dreams on the African Savannah with Shakespeare by their side; decadent emigres, railway labourers, Indian settler communities, African intellectuals and rebels all turned to Shakespeare and adapted his plays to fit their needs. The book examines how Shakespeare influenced the first African leaders of independent nations, Cold War intrigues and even Che Guevara.With its extraordinary sequence of stories and momentous travels from Zanzibar, through Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan, this literary adventure throws high culture and the wild together in celebration of Shakespeare's legacy as a poet of the world.
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William Collins
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2016
Copyright © Edward Wilson-Lee 2016
Edward Wilson-Lee asserts the moral right
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Cover design by Anna Morrison
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Source ISBN: 9780008146214
Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780008146207
Version: 2017-01-24
For my parents
Contents
1 THE LAKE REGIONS – Shakespeare and the Explorers
2 ZANZIBAR – Shakespeare and the Slaveboy Printworks
3 INTERLUDE: THE SWAHILI COAST – Player-Kings of Eastern Africa
4 MOMBASA – Shakespeare, Bard of the Railroad
5 NAIROBI – Expats, Emigrés and Exile
6 KAMPALA – Shakespeare at School, at War and in Prison
7 DAR ES SALAAM – Shakespeare in Power
8 ADDIS ABABA – Shakespeare and the Lion of Judah
9 PANAFRICA – Shakespeare in the Cold War
10 JUBA – Shakespeare, Civil War and Reconstruction
APPENDIX – A Partial List of Theatrical Performances
Beauty out of Place
Once on a visit to Luxor in southern Egypt I was stopped by a man who called out to me from where he sat, crumpled in the shade of an August afternoon, with a famous line from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow …’. It was the summer at the end of my first year of reading English at university, and though it was uncomfortable to stand in the throbbing heat swapping iambic pentameters, I was sure I was more than a match for this stranger with his long white kanzu shirt and papyrus mat. I responded with the next line, and he in turn; and, after that speech, we migrated on to others, though now I cannot remember which ones, and would almost certainly exaggerate my recitational prowess if I were to try to recall them. After a few minutes, we fell silent. I, at least, was probably out of breath (and lines) in the thick desert air, and panting like a lizard; I had no Arabic other than swearwords I learned at school, and if the man did have conversational English he showed no inclination to use it. We grinned at each other and I moved on, in search of another sweating glass of fresh iced lemon juice.
Odd as it seemed at the time, I am now very glad that I did not break the spell by drawing the encounter out. For although later I sometimes thought about what this moment might have been – an act of cultural comradeship or a defiant exhibition of superiority over the presumptuous tourist – it has more recently occurred to me that its poignancy was in part owed to its being out of place and unaccounted for. Shakespeare may have distantly heard of Luxor – though he would have known it as Thebes, from the ancient Greek romance Aethiopica which was popular in his day – but it is unlikely that he imagined lines written for performance in Shoreditch or Southwark would ever end up being spoken there, close by the feluccas sailing on the Nile and the acres of pharaonic ruins beyond. The poignancy was, I suppose, the experience of one’s own culture as something exotic, like Tarzan finding a relic of the jungle in an English country house. The fact that I was so unprepared for this, however, seems to be in retrospect the most remarkable thing. After all, I had been brought up in Kenya, and had lived my life in a jumble of African places filled with things from elsewhere. These had, of course, included Shakespeare, though it seems to me now that I had always managed to keep his plays separate from the place in which I lived. It was as if his words, wherever spoken, were a foreign soil, like an embassy.
Many years later – now settled and teaching Shakespeare’s works for a living – I happened upon the unexpected fact that one of the first books printed in Swahili was a Shakespearean one. Not a play, mind you, but a slim volume of stories from Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, published as Hadithi za Kiingereza (‘English Tales’) on the island of Zanzibar in the 1860s. Once again I felt that odd stirring of a beauty out of place. I began a small research project into this volume, its translator (the Missionary Bishop of Zanzibar Edward Steere), and the fascinating milieu in which he printed his books, with the help of former slave boys off the African coast. What I discovered during the momentous travels that followed, through Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan, was a hidden history that brought both Shakespeare and the land I thought familiar into richer focus than I had ever known them.
