Shakespeare in Swahililand: Adventures with the Ever-Living Poet. Edward Wilson-Lee

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Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       WilliamCollinsBooks.com

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2016

      Copyright © Edward Wilson-Lee 2016

      Edward Wilson-Lee asserts the moral right

      to be identified as the author of this work

      The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright

      holders of material reproduced in this book, but will be

      glad to rectify any omissions in future editions.

      A catalogue record for this book is

      available from the British Library

      Cover design by Anna Morrison

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008146214

      Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780008146207

      Version: 2017-01-24

Dedication

      For my parents

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       PRELUDE – Beauty out of Place

       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

       Picture Section

       A Note on Sources and Further Reading

       Acknowledgements

       References

       Index

       About the Publisher

PRELUDE

      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 СКАЧАТЬ