Do We Really Need to Trans Shakespeare?

For some bizarre reason, some on the hard left insist on transing all the things. Now, they are coming for William Shakespeare’s works.

An academic in the United Kingdom claims all of the main characters in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” were gender-fluid. The play is a tragedy about a Scottish nobleman who resorts to skulduggery to seize the kingdom with the help of his wife, Lady Macbeth.

But, apparently, all the major players in the story are transgender or non-binary, according to British lecturer Ruth Fernando, who claims Shakespeare used the titular character and his wife to “disrupt and contrast the conventional ideas of masculinity and femininity, examining them in the form of androgyny.”

In a paper titled “Man, Woman, or Both? Shakespeare’s Treatment of Androgyny and Lady Macbeth’s Disempowerment,” she also suggests the “Weird Sisters,” who issue the prophecy that inspires Macbeth to take power, could be male because they had beards.

She further posits that Lady Macbeth’s penchant for acknowledging masculine traits within herself, especially through her famous “unsex me here” soliloquy, is a form of “verbal androgyny” that destabilizes her identity, disempowering her. “Lady Macbeth’s androgynous nature reduces her role in the play and disables her empowerment,” Fernando writes.

The lecturer further explains that Lady Macbeth’s supposed gender confusion results in internal conflict, which leads to her downfall, as well as her husband. Shakespeare portrays her as a “fiend-like queen,” who assumes violent masculinity, but is unable to carry out a murder herself. “Her conscience is compressed with feminine guilt instead of masculine ambition,” Fernando writes.

Fernando is not the only one to try shoehorning gender ideology into Shakespeare’s works. Sir Ian McKellen, who played the wizard Gandalf in the “Lord of the Rings” films, is set to participate in a production of “Twelfth Night,” which features a cast of transgender and non-binary performers.

McKellan is joining a theatre group called “Trans What You Will” to participate in the July performance. "Twelfth Night is perhaps the funniest and most moving of Shakespeare's plays. This is achieved through the complexity of gender and sexuality from first to last,” the actor said, according to a press release.

The play is about a woman named Viola, who disguises herself as a man to work for a duke with whom she eventually falls in love. Of course, this means that Shakespeare was exploring transgenderism, according to folks on the hard left.

It’s enjoyable to explore the various themes that run through the works of Shakespeare and other literary legends. In some ways, the character Iago can be seen as a homosexual who eventually brings about the fall of Othello because he had a massive crush on him.

But what’s the point of trying to force gender ideology into these works when they are clearly not present? Yes, there are gender-related themes in his plays, but this does not necessarily mean he was promoting a form of gender ideology. It seems this is just another way to persuade people to embrace progressive ideas on gender and sexuality using Shakespeare.