Shakespeare the African

I hadn't known that Shakespeare was African, until my students taught me.

My Form Five girls were studying literature for their West African School Certificate. We'd plowed through Acebe's Things Fall Apart, grappled with aspects of negritude in a selection of West African poetry, and analysed Ama Ata Aidoo's play about an interculture marriage Dilemma of a Ghost.

But reading Julius Caesar with the class was something I dreaded. I railed against the setters of the syllabus in the staffroom. Weren't my kids finding it hard enough already to cope with even modern English, and what could a British playwright born centuries earlier possibly have to say to them?

I soon found out.

Julius Caesar is an African play.

Nigerians know all about coups and their aftermath. Superstition and black magic, soothsayers, omens and prophetic dreams is part of the currency of everyday life in West Africa. Great oratory is loved and valued.

Mark Anthony stirred the class into action in the last lesson of the day, with the girls taking turns to read his part. The atmosphere in the classroom was electric - I'd never seen my students so enthusisatic about a text before.

The bell for lunch rang. The class seemed not to have heard it. I let them read on for a while. The rest of the school streamed out of classrooms towards the canteen.

"Let's continue, Ma," said one of the girls seeing that I looked worried about holding them back.

We went on for a few more minutes until my conscience got the better of me: "Right," I said "you'd better go for your lunch."

"Ohhhhhh, so it's lunchtime is it, Ma?" said someone and the class laughed but made no move to close their books. It was a mutiny!

It was only when we finished the scene some twenty minutes later that they finally packed away their things and left the classroom. They'd missed their lunch, but no-one seemed to mind.

The story of Julius Caesar seemed to pass into legend around the school compound, being told and retold even by girls who weren't in my class. Someone composed a song for Brutus which had the words "Farewell, Brutus, farewell," sung to the tune of Two Lovely Black Eyes. (Now where on earth had they got that from?) I heard it being sung around the school compound for weeks afterwards.