Johnson explores Shakespeare's scope

PREVIEW
	Prof. Lemuel Johnson Shaman Drum Tonight at 4 p.m.

The most recent "Romeo & Juliet" adaptation has received mixed reviews, but what drew many people to the theaters was the promise of a modernized Shakespearean tragedy. Audiences don't necessarily care that Verona is not Venice Beach, that guns are not swords and that Will himself died about 400 years ago. It is the modern interpretations of Shakespeare's plays that keeps them alive today.

To describe the cinematic version of "Romeo and Juliet" as "terribly American" brings up the idea that the cultural context is impressed upon a Shakespearean spine, and suggests that an American version would somehow be different than, for example, a Nigerian.

Lemuel Johnson, a professor in the English department and a native of Sierra Leone, will speak of Shakespeare's role in literature this afternoon at a reception for his new book, "Shakespeare in Africa (And Other Venues): Import and the Appropriation of Culture."

Impressively and richly produced, Johnson's book pulls the issues of Shakespeare's authenticity to a deeper level. While questioning Shakespeare's role in affecting African culture, Johnson looks at his effects upon the culture and counter-effects thereof.

As a native of Sierra Leone, Johnson was raised in a country that experienced direct affects of colonization: The harbor of Freetown was a Golden Triangle stop for slave exportation; the oldest church in West Africa is located there; and later Freetown became an haven for displaced slaves and free Africans.

Johnson's early education was at The Grammar School For Boys, a school founded by missionaries in the early 1800s where each morning his teachers were still greeted in Latin by students.

"My reading of Shakespeare's imagery was powerfully invested in the insular imagination," Johnson said in a recent interview, "and, for example, the nature of 'Henry V' that was equally invested in the world outside of England."

"Shakespeare's work reaches not only the world of Europe, but also (the global world) as in the quotation when Shylock ('The Merchant of Venice') identified the geographical spread of Antonio's investment - 'Hath all his ventures failed? ... From Tripolis, from Mexico and England, From Lisbon, Barbary and India?'."

Johnson said that there is much complexity when Shakespeare is interpreted globally, and he pushes beyond the simplicity of "Look at human nature, isn't that interesting?"

"You haven't gone to any of these places -Mexico, Egypt, India. How then do these Mexicans write?" Johnson asked. "My presence as, for example, a Mexican, is an extension of Shakespeare's glory."

But there is another reaction to the Shakespearean import: "I could do without that glory because the way in which I enter into his imagery is one in which I am reduced, forever presumably, to a demoralized other ... or am I reduced to kind of an exploited and conquered woman, like Cleopatra," Johnson said.

But people - not even Shakespeare himself - do not exist in a vacuum free of reactions. One of the subversionary plays Johnson mentioned was a retelling of "The Merchant of Venice" court scene.

The setting is apartheid South Africa and the Prime Minister has inexplicably become a black man. He did this while having sex with his wife, who has remained a white woman, and they are both on trial for possible violation of the Immorality Acts. The acts forbade sexual relations between the races.

The background noise to this impressive and elaborate book is three volumes of poetry that focus on Sierra Leone's and Johnson's intermingled lives. As he explained it, "The fact that in our heads, now, collectively, we are aware of ourselves in a complex way ... and in a very real way ...]conversation is contextualized by all these structures."

The plays that Johnson will discuss are not Shakespeare's but subversions of Shakespeare's work. Not only will Johnson mention Shakespeare's way with other folk, but "the ways of other folk with Shakespeare."

02-17-98