Don’t Say Gay, the law that restricts instruction of LGBTQ+ identities and sexual content in schools, was expanded in March to cover a greater age range. As a result, Hillsborough County School District has announced it will now only teach excerpts from some of Shakespeare’s most famous works, such as Macbeth, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet, to avoid any violation of the law. Saraya Haddad, a Ph.D. researcher at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, has warned that teaching only excerpts from Bard’s works will take Shakespeare out of context and rewrite literature history. It’s been reported that the “raunchy” content of Shakespeare’s works drove the decision by Hillsborough County to teach only extracts. But Haddad notes that queerness is also very much present in his plays. She said, “They often call it early modern drag or Elizabethan drag because it was men on the stage dressing up as women.” Haddad believes queer youngsters must study Shakespeare in full for them to see that gender fluidity and diversity have always been present. She believes this decision will have an “elitist effect” as despite the school district suggesting students can read Bard’s works in their full in their own time – they will remain in school media centers – many won’t be able to understand Shakespearean language without the help of a teacher.
