This article is taken from the March 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £25.
A recent book has revealed that William Shakespeare was actually a black woman. Predictably, historians and literary critics have been demanding “proof”, but do they have any proof that Shakespeare was white and male? These evidence-fetishists are such hypocrites.
The book is called The Real Shakespeare by feminist scholar Irene Coslet, and contains a genuine picture of the great bard which shows clearly that she was black. True, the author drew the picture herself, but photography wasn’t invented back then. Drawing her own evidence strikes me as the most sensible solution to that problem.
The smoking gun comes in an exciting new discovery. Through painstaking research, Coslet has discovered that “Shakespeare” is an anagram of “A She Speaker”. That cannot be a coincidence. The same rigorous analytical method can be used to determine that Eric Clapton suffers from a sleeping disorder because his name is an anagram of “narcoleptic”.
Even if these facts are not true, that does not make them false
As Coslet insightfully argues in her book: “Shakespeare was well aware of sounds, and how sounds can be used to convey meaning.” This radical re-reading explodes every misconception we have ever had. Up until now, we had assumed that Shakespeare was unfamiliar with the concept of the spoken word or communication.
The insistence that Shakespeare must have been white and male is an example of how our understanding of history has been distorted by fascistic revisionism. For instance, very few people know that Aristotle was a Punjabi transwoman. Or that William of Orange was a Taiwanese sex worker with a missing foot.
Even if these facts are not true, that does not make them false. Reality is a social construct. The designation of an individual as “white” and “male” has no authentic material basis, but is rather an interpretative imposition to reinforce racist patriarchal power structures.
Ultimately, we cannot read history through the lens of verifiable claims. The past is only valuable to the extent that it reinforces the needs of the present. Shakespeare’s actual race and gender is unimportant when weighed against the priorities of diversity and representation. To put it bluntly: Shakespeare should have been black. Therefore, she was.
