12. Journeying with Shakespeare with Dr Islam Issa

Writer and broadcaster, Islam Issa of Birmingham City University, talks to Paul about his own Egyptian identity and Shakespeare, and how this relates to his teaching, career, and life.

Transcript

Paul Edmondson:

Hello everybody and welcome to Shakespeare Alive, a podcast of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. My name is Paul Edmondson. I'm joined today by Islam Issa, who is a reader in literature and history at Birmingham City University. He's also a multi-award-winning writer, curator, and broadcaster. He's presented two BBC documentaries, ‘Cleopatra and Me’ for BBC Four and ‘Shakespeare and Terrorism’ for BBC Radio 3, and he's curated special exhibitions for the Muslim Heritage Centre and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Paul Edmondson:

His students really appreciate the way he makes them think for themselves and how he makes this subject matter relevant. He always asks, "How do we as people who are different to each other read literature differently?" Birmingham City University named him their researcher of the year for two consecutive years and his other awards include the Times Higher Education Research Project of the Year Award, the Milton Society of America First Book award, and the Muslim News Award for Excellence in Community Relations. Islam, welcome to Shakespeare Alive; it's great to have you here.

Islam Issa:

I'm very happy to be here and thank you for such a generous introduction.

Paul Edmondson:

How are you journeying with Shakespeare in your career right now?

Islam Issa:

I'd say it's a more personal story than a career. I think career is one aspect of who we are and what we do, I think it goes beyond that for me. Shakespeare has been integral really in my journey from the Egyptian child who knew no English whatsoever on his first day of school to what I'm doing today. And he died four centuries ago but he seems to follow me wherever I go. My first memory is probably age five or six when my dad came home with the complete works. The portraits on the front sort of captivated me for Shakespeare, and I feel like it's part of who I am, it's part of that puzzle of my identity. It's one of the pieces of that puzzle if you like and that feeds into the career.

Paul Edmondson:

Did it determine which career path you chose?

Islam Issa:

I think it did. There's an element of identity here trying to navigate between the Egyptian identity and the British identity and Shakespeare seems to be at the intersection of that in my career. I like to ask questions in life generally. I think anyone interested actually in history and society, that wants to learn from historians and literary critics, needs to ask questions, basically to ask why. I feel like I ask that question of many things and try to understand the world around me.

Islam Issa:

But Shakespeare is very enigmatic in that sense. It's a phenomenon. And I feel that’s what my journey has been about. Do you use the term journey, or are we just asking questions? It's more generally ‘Why Shakespeare?’: why is Shakespeare so important? And more precisely: ‘why is Shakespeare a global sensation’? What does looking at Shakespeare outside of the UK setting for instance tell us about him and his works and about a history and culture of different people? And perhaps in terms of journeying starting to differentiate between the text and the work. I've only just begun to realize how different they are from one another…

Paul Edmondson:

Could you explain that a bit please?

Islam Issa:

Yeah. The text is the actual text, the words, the closer reading, the stage directions, the work that Shakespeare puts from the quil to the page. And the work is the historical phenomenon, if you like, the baggage, maybe the performance history associated with it, the legacy, the impact on popular culture. And I'm very interested in that because it tells us sometimes it's the text that's doing the job and sometimes it's the work, sometimes it's the biography, sometimes it's the characters. I guess I'm questioning this idea of Shakespeare's universalism, not questioning whether he is universal, I think his topics are entirely, but just not being too lazy about what kind of universalism is not, not taking it for granted. Treating the myth of his universalism is something that needs renewal.

Paul Edmondson:

I deliberately phrased the question as journeying with rather than journeying towards and I wonder if you'd like to react to that difference in light of what you've just been saying about universalism. You're journeying with Shakespeare instead of, as it were, or maybe at the same time, journeying towards; but if he's with you, you can't journey towards him, can you?

Islam Issa:

I'd say journeying with Shakespeare has been the story of ancestry for me, not just me, I think it's the story of my parents arriving in the UK in the '80s, first generation migrants. Being pooled by different currents that the current on one hand is preservation and then another current that's adaptation. And that provides me with an identity that's simultaneously kind of dual, a dual identity.

Islam Issa:

That's a good thing but also a torn identity, and I think that's where Shakespeare comes in. And Shakespeare comes in as someone who's inspired me through his language. He's inspired me through his plots and characters that I love. And he's inspired me to understand both British and Egyptian culture more.

Islam Issa:

But on the other hand someone who can very easily be used for a kind of neocolonialism, for a kind of imposition not forgetting that Egypt was occupied by Britain, for example, but also just in my own day-to-day life. I mean, I remember coming into the UK once and being profiled at the passport control and being asked not about my British passport, but asked what I do for a living. I was a PhD student and I was asked who my favorite early modern playwright was because they didn't believe me. And another instance in Tel Aviv airport where the interrogators there... She asked me, "What's your favorite Shakespeare play?" And I think that was again a way of just ensuring that I am who I am saying I am. But it's a very strange memory for me and I remember saying Love's Labour's Lost just to make things confusing.

Paul Edmondson:

Had they heard of it?

Islam Issa:

I'm not sure. I don't think it was the answer they were expecting. I guess that is an example of saying Shakespeare for me is not fully good or really bad; it's a complicated relationship. Journeying with Shakespeare is complicated but it's also presented me with wonderful opportunities. I've delivered the Radio 3 essay called ‘When Shakespeare Travelled With Me’, which is all about the wonderful experiences I've had seeing Shakespeare in the most unexpected places in the Arab world. So they're all things that add to one's identity, the good and the bad, and I'm grateful for that.

Paul Edmondson:

What if you might just describe briefly one of those performances you saw of Shakespeare as you say in the Arab world? Because I think the complication I'm hearing is he's inspiring you on one hand with his plots, his characters, and his language. And then on the other hand you're feeling this post-colonial baggage and this weight of universalism that you're not going to accept just because someone tells you.

Islam Issa:

Yeah, that's another great question. The encounters with Shakespeare can be in performance where some interesting things happen. In Egypt for example there are performances that are led by the biggest actors. Some of the most famous actors have been Hamlet. I'm thinking there’s many more tragedies than comedies being performed there in Arabic. I think something is lost in the comedies a little, perhaps the puns, perhaps culturally.

Islam Issa:

Tragedies for example, Romeo and Juliet with Arabic props and Arabic dress: that's wonderful, and the idea of the balcony as something that's so real in that part of the world. Something like the balcony scene isn't a strange thing at all over there, it really is something from which people do talk to their loved ones, particularly forbidden love – from a balcony, or from under a balcony. Those are the kinds of things that can actually get enhanced when Shakespeare is performed in that part of the world.

Islam Issa:

But there's also aspects of popular culture, so phrases from Shakespeare or scenes from Shakespeare, or characters from Shakespeare, finding their way into Arabic movies, into Arabic songs. And these are all different types of responses to him and his literature. And the key is that they don't falsify one another, they're part of an ongoing struggle for interpretation if you want to phrase it that way, or part of the inclusivity of interpretation. And for me inclusivity of interpretation is one of the things that highlights how important literature and the arts are because that's part of global citizenship when we appreciate one another's interpretations.

Paul Edmondson:

I picked this up on some of your students' comments when they talk about how much you value their unique contributions. It's an obvious thing to say but they're different identities one from another. But that literature and the study of literature is part of that. We do partly what we do in reading books and talking about them because we're interested in each other. We want to hear what each other thinks about Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet or King Lear.

Islam Issa:

For sure. I mean, the idea with teaching for me is conversation, engagement. I say to the students quite bluntly don't leave your identity at the door on their way into the first Shakespeare session and actually I don't do that for the other modules. It's particularly for Shakespeare because I think Shakespeare invigorates personal responses and I want to know those responses, and I want them to think of what those responses are. Because the issues that are being dealt with in Shakespeare if we're going to go down the universalism route are entirely important, real issues from the bigger things like love and hate to the more complex relationships that exist in his works.

Islam Issa:

The other thing is for me this idea of the past you've kind of alluded to now, but I find literature from the past really to just be blunt, particularly early modern literature to be entirely more fascinating than anything being written today. And I think of what's being written today almost like a mirror, like I know it, I can see myself in it too easily. Whereas the writing of the past creates a different kind of response. You see something slightly different and you begin to relate to the world around you in different ways.

Paul Edmondson:

Thinking about your own unique identity, how have you been working with Shakespeare in recent times and what would you say you've learned from that?

Islam Issa:

In terms of the question why I'm finding myself increasingly edging towards history, really, looking at the links between literature and history, not just looking at a text but looking at reception. How have people responded to the text in light of their cultural setting, in light of their faith, in light of their politics and social situation and how literature and history inform one another. I think there's a chicken and egg situation going on there with literature and history. Is it literature that's informing history or is it history that's informing what's being written and how it's being read?

Islam Issa:

And as a result I'm really starting to see how Shakespearean life or identity like we said are so interlinked, thinking about British identity for example, and how integral he is. We saw that with the birthday celebrations but also being such an integral part of British history how we approach him differently when it comes to reception to other writers because we assume this authority and assume this universality.

Islam Issa:

I mean, Richard III is a great example, wasn't it? When the bones were found in Leicester a few years ago, and everyone started writing about how Richard III is presented in Shakespeare rather than in any history books. I've also been working on Shakespeare and his link to terror and it's been a fascinating book to write. And what it's told me about society, I think Shakespeare's lens into society in history. Without fail one states, "one terrorist is another's freedom fighter." And that becomes even more apparent in Shakespeare plays because of the complexity of his characters.

Islam Issa:

So some extremists I found have hated Shakespeare and as a symbol of the West for example or some have been entirely fascinated and even inspired by him. And it's also helped me understand Shakespeare and the idea about what I've learned. It's helped me understand that Shakespeare understood the human mindset very, very well, including the extremist mindset.

Paul Edmondson:

Of course we can flip that round and say that all those who say they love Shakespeare don't love him as much as they think they do. The safe Shakespeare, as it were of the British Empire who needs to give ground, has given ground to a much darker, richer, complicating Shakespeare I'd say. There's nothing safe about Shakespeare, is there?

Islam Issa:

I always remember if you want people to read a book you ban it, but I think on that note if you want people to hate something you impose it. And I remember being in school actually and in Christmas they'd put on movies and stuff or you wouldn't do the same kind of work. And I remember Blackadder, one of the movies, Blackadder, Rowan Atkinson he meets Shakespeare and gets him to sign his manuscripts, maybe it's Hamlet or something. And then he punches him to the ground and everyone cheered. And he says, "This is for all the school children in the UK for the next 400 years," or whatever. And I remember everyone cheering and really celebrating.

Anjna Chouhan:

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is the charity that promotes the life work and times of William Shakespeare in his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon. We look after five houses associated with Shakespeare and his family. We make freely available an internationally important library archive and museum collection. We lead new research and we run an award-winning education program. In light of this podcast, please consider making us a donation. You can do this by visiting shakespeare.org.uk/podcast-support. Your support and goodwill really matter to us and we hope you'll recommend our podcast to your friends.

Islam Issa:

That classroom is a microcosm if you like for the empire and the way in which Shakespeare was imposed on so many countries. And for example in Egypt there was a resistance to translating Shakespeare for a very long time. The first translation is only in 1899, I think. And it's because you have to preserve your own culture and language and prove that your own culture and language can stand sufficiently without-

Paul Edmondson:

Without a cultural import, as it were, of the scale that could be an entire takeover bid on the Shakespeare's part.

Islam Issa:

Exactly.

Paul Edmondson:

Talking of Egypt. You've recently been doing some fascinating work, bringing your interests of literature and history together on Cleopatra. Can you tell us a bit about your work on Cleopatra, Islam?

Islam Issa:

I'm always happy to talk about Cleopatra. I mean, my parents, grandparents were born in Alexandria, lived in Alexandria like Cleopatra, so she was a source of pride for me growing up. I was hearing tales about her in Egyptian households these little models of little pyramids and the papyrus paper and stuff is everywhere. So I grew up hearing all these wonderful stories about Cleopatra.

Islam Issa:

In fact, quite a funny thing, I'm not sure if I mentioned this before. I remember going to the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery where they have an ancient Egyptian exhibition, and just like walking in and my dad saying, "What are you doing?" And I said, "Well, we're Egyptians, we shouldn't have to pay." But as a little kid, what I learned about Cleopatra was very different to what I ended up knowing later. So I learned that she aspired to have a huge library, had a huge library. She was an intellectual, she debated powerful men. She was well-read in philosophy, she spoke a dozen languages. Business woman, created fashion trends. She wrote medical books or beauty product books.

Islam Issa:

And I really started to think, as I got more interested in Shakespeare, about how this was different in many ways from the presentation in Antony and Cleopatra, where she's, to me anyway, more sexualized, more orientalised, depicted as kind of exotic and in some ways inferior to the man or to the Europeans. And that's really what the tension was. I only really started to think of the possibilities of turning about tension, a personal tension between what I learned as a kid and what I saw as I developed my Shakespeare knowledge. I only really started to think of the possibility of turning that into the work, really public-facing work. When you invited me, in 2017 it must've been, to a series of exhibition curating opportunities for ‘Shakespeare Connected’, and I just had the thought there, I was like, "Well, why don't I use this opportunity, because it's public-facing, to think about Cleopatra?"

Paul Edmondson:

‘Shakespeare Connected’ is a series of online exhibitions that involved at least a dozen universities working with the Birthplace Trust's own collections. And yes, you chose Cleopatra in our collections as a subject for your online exhibition. These can be still viewed via our website shakespeare.org.uk.

Islam Issa:

Yeah, and I agree. I'd recommend listeners looking at them. Mine was one called ‘Ageless Cleopatra’ where I had a look at some of the items in the collection and just got some messages across about that tension.

Paul Edmondson:

What did you discover apart from the... I mean, the obvious contradictions that you mentioned a moment ago in between the historical figure and Shakespeare's portrayal? What else did you discover when working with Cleopatra? Because he very much takes it to that complication, doesn't he? Here's a Shakespeare character, Shakespeare's words, a historical subject, and it's complicated because of your own ancestry and your own sense of cultural identity.

Islam Issa:

I discovered something empowering from a personal level, which is that I had a right to my opinion about Cleopatra and to hold on to that opinion. I also discovered something humbling for want of a better word, which is that that’s my perception of Cleopatra, and there are many perceptions of Cleopatra. More practically I think two things, one related to sources. But I'll start with another which is that she's really effectively a conduit for people's own agendas and Shakespeare does play a part in that because he's so integral to our popular cultural view and because he is one of the ways that many people encounter Cleopatra.

Islam Issa:

So for centuries though, it's not just him, artists, authors, they've been using the story, I mean, chose a bit before him, and they've been using stories from history as vehicles for their own ideas and for ideas about their own societies. So as I discovered in the documentary in the Middle Ages, their beauty ideals, so she's painted as a blonde woman. Or during colonialism she becomes passive, she lies down and she needs saving by the Europeans. Or during the slave trade, there's a fascinating painting where she's an object like a slave being examined by Caesar. So she's effectively used for people's agendas.

Islam Issa:

The other thing I'd say is the sources, the importance of sources. The question of writers as readers or how reception doesn't begin with the reader, the reception actually begins with the writing process. Shakespeare was trying to entertain. I strongly believe that Shakespeare was a good businessman, the Globe Theatre suggests that, created a more public model, a model in which they could make money and he wanted to fill the theaters, and so he provides his audiences with things they enjoy and things that would interest them like those settings: oriental settings for example, or interesting characters. And the sources here I think require context.

Islam Issa:

So Cleopatra makes a deal with Caesar. She wants Caesarian, her son from Caesar, to be the next Cesar after Caesar's assassination. That provokes the wrath of Octavian who was the heir-apparent. And though she starts this alliance with Mark Antony she's ultimately defeated by Octavian. And it's this Roman enemies subsequent writing that leads to her reputation today. In other words all of our main sources are Roman sources predominantly written after her death that made her out to be rather a natural because how else could a woman have influenced these two heroes, Cesar and Anthony, apart from seduction?

Islam Issa:

Plutarch writes about her as a manipulator of power. She's I think Cassius writes that she's capable of insatiable passion and so on. So there are political motivations to those sources. I'd even go as far as saying perhaps a smear campaign. They're obviously gendered, she's a temptress, she's a beautiful drunk, it's eroticized. That propaganda plus the fact that Ptolemaic Alexandra is underwater and the Alexandria Library is burnt down, Plutarch is dead – it means that we've lost the information about how she would have liked to present herself. And Shakespeare then uses Plutarch and uses those Roman sources and obviously adds his own spin to them, so it's a question of sources as well.

Paul Edmondson:

As part of the inspiration, do you find yourself, as it were, being fed by Shakespeare's politics? Because I'm also thinking about another writer who looms equally if not larger for you is Milton, who is very political but in a very different way to Shakespeare. Do we become the politics of the writers we most like?

Islam Issa:

Milton it's a lot more clear in his politics. He takes very clear views, to speak about liberal politics. There is something relatively inspiring about what Milton does which is to say I'm not going to be confined by rhyme, and the monarchy isn't absolute, and maybe we should listen to Satan's case if you take that view. So, yeah, personally I've learned from both. When it comes to reception there's a lot more visible reception to Shakespeare because his plays can be performed. I mean, even the even some say this is a closet drama it's not really supposed to be performed, from Milton.

Islam Issa:

So if Shakespeare's plays are being performed they're translated. Every Shakespeare play for example is translated into Arabic but Milton's sonnets aren't, to give an example. So there's a lot more at stake with Shakespeare for me when it comes to understanding cultural history and understanding societies. I think Paradise Lost, I find something new every time I pick it up, but Shakespeare is a new, is a complete works, he just has some unbelievable weight, doesn't he?

Paul Edmondson:

So bearing this inspiration in mind perhaps both for Shakespeare and Milton, that difference of politics and how we characterize them or we find ourselves struggling to characterize them, how does this feed into your current and future work?

Islam Issa:

In terms of specific examples, like I said he creeps in or inspires which I can't figure out which. I'm working for example on Radio 3 Sunday feature on the cultural history of balconies where Shakespeare is, that's again part of my culture and my British culture, my different cultures coming together again. More specifically my next major project seemed to be announced by a major publisher, a history of Alexandria. And again he seems to pop up unexpectedly. So with Cleopatra of course but also for instance, he gave a lot to Nasser, who led the coup that removed the monarchy and turned Egypt to a republic in the '50s. He's from Alexandria. His father was actually my grandfather's postman. How he played for example Julius Caesar at age 16 at school. And I read the most fascinating moment where as he's about to be assassinated by Brutus, that his dad was in the audience and leaped forward to rescue him.

Islam Issa:

There's a lot of links between ancient Egyptian and the kind of Greek stories as well that are important to Alexandria. Maybe the indication of that universalism but also the link that Shakespeare has to our most important notions and ideas and topics. But I hope to write a memoir one day really: Meet Shakespeare and Me, how he's crept into my life in so many ways, particularly if I can travel around in the Middle East in the process.

Paul Edmondson:

Well, with the microphone pointing directly at you and thinking about what matters most to you in relation to Shakespeare, if you were to deposit something in the collections of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, so that library archival museum collections, and it might be a fantasy something, what would you choose to deposit and why?

Islam Issa:

Okay. Actually, I think before I did deposit some stuff. I deposited a coin of Cleopatra. But to you actually she's the only woman on Egyptian currency today.

Paul Edmondson:

Yes, and you put it into the collections, thank you. That was a couple of years ago. You also deposited I think a box of Cleopatra cigarettes.

Islam Issa:

Yeah. And I hope my documentaries are in there somewhere. But I guess more Egyptian items if I were to deposit something to reflect Cleopatra, perhaps. My grandma was an exceptional painter and my most prized possession is a painting of hers of a Bedouin man on a camel with pyramids behind him. I mean, may she rest in peace, but I would commission her to paint Cleopatra as she imagined her.

Paul Edmondson:

It sounds marvellous, and we can all of us imagine what that might look like. Going back to the real from the fantastic, if you were to take something from the collections to keep and because you're from Egypt you don't have to pay to get in, what would you choose to take and why?

Islam Issa:

To keep. I mean, when I was looking at these Cleopatra items I really liked Ann Curtis’s costume designs, I think it's from the '70s. But you know what? I'm most captivated by that little Ortelius atlas. Is it late 16th-century, maybe early 17th-century? They're the first modern European atlases and-

Paul Edmondson:

The drawings of the world that Shakespeare would have known.

Islam Issa:

Yeah. And they've got little descriptions but the basically... You could spend all day flicking through it especially it's as it's a pocket version and also it fascinates me because Shakespeare probably didn't leave England and it's obviously his way of living, it's something that sparked his imagination. But I love travelling. I think it's one of the best things you can do is in exploring the world. So Ortelius' circa 1600 Atlas.

Paul Edmondson:

With a page marker in Egypt and the Arab world, Islam, you can have that atlas.

Islam Issa:

Should I hold you to that?

Paul Edmondson:

Well, ‘have’ in inverted commas for the purpose of the next moment or two.

Islam Issa:

We all have it through Shakespeare's plays, don't we? In a way.

Paul Edmondson:

Islam, it's been a great pleasure hearing you talk about journeying with Shakespeare, working with Shakespeare, imagining Shakespeare differently, thinking about Cleopatra in your work, into her historical and literary production and thinking about what you might do next with the history of Alexandria. We wish you well and thank you ever so much for taking part in Shakespeare Alive.

Islam Issa:

Thank you for having me. This latest period has really highlighted to us the importance of our cultural institutions of which the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust for me is at the very top. So I hope people can continue to support it. This podcast is a great way of still engaging people, but we can't give up on our cultural institutions and we have to appreciate them, keep appreciating.

Paul Edmondson:

Bless you for that, Islam, and thanks very much indeed.

Anjna Chouhan:

Now, if you could deposit something, what would it be? In our previous series our guests suggested diaries, alternative voices, and artworks celebrating Shakespearean pride. But now it's your turn. What would you like to see in our imaginary hoard to celebrate Shakespeare in the 21st century? Please let us know by going to shakespeare.org.uk/future and while you're there please consider completing our short survey so that we can make more of the content that you like. Thank you for listening to the final episode of Series Two or Shakespeare Alive with Paul. Please join us after Easter when we return with Series Three.