{"id":650094,"date":"2026-10-18T11:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T11:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/650094\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T11:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T11:32:11","slug":"shakespeare-was-a-black-woman-the-playwrights-under-recognized-connection-to-black-culture-exhibitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/650094\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Shakespeare was a Black woman\u2019: the playwright\u2019s under-recognized connection to Black culture | Exhibitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWilliam Shakespeare was a black woman.\u201d In 1985, Maya Angelou<\/a> spoke these words as part of a keynote speech<\/a> at a convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.<\/p>\n

There, she spoke of the role poetry played in her transition from muteness as a child and how she fantasized herself triumphantly delivering Portia\u2019s speech from William Shakespeare<\/a>\u2019s The Merchant of Venice in front of her entire community at church. Though she never got the chance to perform that rendition, Angelou acknowledged her desire to deliver that rendition as part of a lifelong kinship with Shakespeare, a connection she continued to seek out throughout her life whenever she needed heartening or solace. In her eyes, Shakespeare wrote his emotionally desolate Sonnet 29<\/a> \u201cfor\u201d her; how else could he have so aptly described the harsh realities of the Black feminine condition?<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course he wrote it for me,\u201d Angelou declared. \u201cOf course, he was a Black woman. I understand that. Nobody else understands it, but I know that William Shakespeare<\/a> was a Black woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Angelou would likely be proud to know that many other Black women \u2013 including Dr Patricia Akhimie, the director of the Folger Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC<\/a> \u2013 do understand. The Bard may not have been a Black woman in the literal sense, but his resonance and centuries-long rapport with Black culture is one area of study that Akhimie has spent her career examining.<\/p>\n

Installation view of To Hear Her Speak: Black Women and Shakespeare. Photograph: Tim Tiebout. Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library<\/p>\n

In the Folger\u2019s newest exhibition To Hear Her Speak: Black Women and Shakespeare<\/a>, curated by Akhimie, more than 400 years of Black women\u2019s engagement with Shakespeare is collectively explored for the first time, illuminating the ways in which Black women have claimed and reimagined the works of Shakespeare through scholarship and craft. \u201cIt\u2019s a performance [and theater] history but it\u2019s also an intellectual history about Black women as writers and artists pulling from Shakespeare to do new and amazing things,\u201d said Akhimie, speaking in a warm conversation in early October.<\/p>\n

The history of Black women\u2019s connection to Shakespeare is long, but not necessarily storied \u2013 To Hear Her Speak reveals just how far back that history goes and under how many layers it\u2019s hidden. There\u2019s likely no better place to begin such an investigation than at the Folger, home of the world\u2019s largest Shakespeare collection.<\/p>\n

The exhibit, which is the product of more than two years of research, is both immersive and interactive. It contains nearly 100 items including photographs, playbills, books, diaries, illustrations and costumes; there are video displays of notable Black actresses throughout history performing Shakespeare; and within a set replica of playwright Lorraine Hansberry\u2019s living room (based on a 1959 Vogue<\/a> photo spread of the writer in her New York City apartment), visitors can sit on the couch and watch a television set screening clips of Hansberry and other Black women discussing Shakespeare, or browse through the \u201clibrary\u201d of that same living room set, where there are shelves of books that serve as a mini-archive of writing related to Shakespeare and Black women\u2019s artistic and intellectual endeavors.<\/p>\n

Dr Patricia Akhimie. Photograph: Brittany Diliberto\/Shoot Authentic<\/p>\n

To Hear Her Speak also invites visitors to become participants through other immersive aspects such as writing activities throughout, its exhibit-themed playlist<\/a> (hitting shuffle will play tracks from Aretha Franklin, Lauryn Hill, Billie Holliday, SZA and more), and its audioguide narrated by Bridgerton star, Shakespearean actor and exhibition chair Adjoa Andoh<\/a>. The exhibition was designed to be a three-dimensional, multi-sensory experience that can appeal to all ages and its full-color exhibit catalog, created by the To Hear Her Speak research team, was intentionally made for both print and digital consumption for wide accessibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about standing back and looking at something behind glass, but rather about what happens when inspiration strikes, and then you become the maker and the thinker and the dreamer,\u201d said Akhimie.<\/p>\n

To Hear Her Speak also builds on new research showing that Black women were very much a presence in Shakespeare\u2019s world while also illustrating how they were represented (and misrepresented) by storytellers of the era, across different mediums. Part of Akhimie\u2019s aim was to challenge that erasure. \u201c[The exhibition\u2019s story] starts with debunking a longstanding myth, which is that the London where [Shakespeare] lived and wrote his plays and where they were first performed was not a diverse place, when it really was,\u201d Akhimie said.<\/p>\n

Leontyne Price as Cleopatra in a 1966 publicity photograph for Antony and Cleopatra composed by Samuel Barber with libretto by Franco Zeffirelli. Photograph: Louis Melan\u00e7on\/Courtesy of Metropolitan Opera Archive<\/p>\n

Along with her research team, Akhimie quickly discovered that artefacts and records of Black women\u2019s engagement with Shakespeare disappeared around the 18th and 19th centuries. \u201cThe obvious reason for that is because that is the time period that coincides with the height of the transatlantic slave trade, when Black women\u2019s experiences are not being documented and preserved, and their humanity is being obscured,\u201d said Akhimie. This time period is arguably one of the most crucial for the exhibition\u2019s narrative, as the 18th and 19th centuries are when the transatlantic slave trade is concurrent with Shakespeare\u2019s rise as an international figure representative of British culture and culture at large.<\/p>\n

Through objects sourced from within the Folger\u2019s collection and beyond, Akhimie and her research team managed to \u201ctell a story about Shakespeare, sugar, and slavery\u201d, filling the silences of history with materials such as a copy of Shakespeare\u2019s First Folio purchased by a slave-owning British family, a record of the enslaved people forced to work on that family\u2019s sugar plantation, a pair of sugar tongs and a tea caddy both emblazoned with Shakespeare\u2019s bust, and a copybook created by Phillis Wheatley, the formerly enslaved first Black American poet.<\/p>\n

Engraving of Phillis Wheatley from frontispiece of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, 1773. Photograph: Scipio Moorhead\/Library of Congress<\/p>\n

To Hear Her Speak rallies the works of some of the most influential Black female luminaries in history in addition to Wheatley, Hansberry and Angelou, like Toni Morrison<\/a>\u2019s handwritten notes on her Shakespearean play Desdemona. The exhibition, which is named after Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnet 130 (long speculated to be written about a Black woman by historians and literary scholars), amplifies the voices of prominent Black women who have wielded and wrought the words of Shakespeare in their careers to assert their own humanity, creativity and individual power.<\/p>\n

Akhimie considers Black women\u2019s consistent return to Shakespeare strategic, describing him as \u201ca reliable partner\u201d for Black female artists of any era to turn to for \u201cinspiration and allyship\u201d; as Angelou noted in her 1985 speech, Shakespeare is one of the most effective conduits for Black female self-expression.<\/p>\n

\u201cShakespeare has cultural currency. Shakespeare is a voice that people listen to,\u201d said Akhimie. \u201cTime and again, over centuries, Black women who are themselves artists, thinkers, or educators know that linking yourself to Shakespeare, pulling Shakespeare in, referencing Shakespeare is a way to grab a hold of listeners in a world in which, often, your voice is not heard and is systematically marginalized. Shakespeare has power, and that has been true for all of [the] 400-year period that the exhibition covers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[To Hear Her Speak] is not just a chance to share Black women\u2019s voices,\u201d she continues. \u201cIt\u2019s also a chance to call people in and say: what can Shakespeare do for you? What will you do with this material to make new work, new ideas, tell new stories, and tell your story?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWilliam Shakespeare was a black woman.\u201d In 1985, Maya Angelou spoke these words as part of a keynote…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-650094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}