Sheikh-Speare

The Globe Theatre opens its festival on Shakespeare and Islam this week, and the Guardian has a piece about the seemingly incongruous pairing.

“Shakespeare and Islam” is no more or less ridiculous than “Bard and Bush”. (…) Islam interested Shakespeare for the same reason it interests Tony Blair: it was simultaneously threatening and promising. In fact, Islam was a much more realistic and substantial threat to western Christian security in the 16th century than it is in the 21st.

Last month, I linked to an article about scholar Martin Lings’ new theory about Shakespeare, which is also going to be presented at this festival.