A Book Behind Bars: The Robben Island Shakespeare

A Book Behind Bars: The Robben Island Shakespeare, one of the Exhibitions at the Folger, opened on May 25, 2015 and closed on October 2, 2013. The exhibition highlights a 1970 edition of The Alexander Text of the Complete Works of Shakespeare that circulated throughout the Robbin Island prison in South Africa from 1975 to 1978.

Contents of the exhibition

The Robben Island Shakespeare is a 1970 edition of The Alexander Text of the Complete Works of Shakespeare—probably the most widely sold and read scholarly edition of Shakespeare’s texts in the twentieth century. It belongs to former political prisoner Sonny Venkatrathnam, who chose it as the one book he was permitted when first imprisoned.

Covering the volume in colorful, religious Diwali cards, celebrating the Hindu festival of lights, Venkatrathnam convinced a gullible warder that it was his bible, and when he was transferred to the small single-cell section where Nelson Mandela, among others, was kept, he took it with him. He then circulated the book to his fellow prisoners in the single cells, asking them to mark their favorite passages from Shakespeare with their signature and the date. Between 1975 and 1978 thirty-three of Venkatrathnam’s fellow prisoners signed the book.

It is impossible to know from the signed passages in the Robben Island Shakespeare why those lines from Shakespeare might have made an impression, or might have spoken to a prisoner in a particular moment. Indeed, some passages seem to shout their relevance to the hardships of imprisonment, or of political unrest, or of injustice. Other signed passages do not, and instead may have been familiar, learned in school, or read for the first time. Some readers may have been struck by fantasy, in the way that any good book removes you from your present circumstance.

The images of signatures that follow, and their accompanying descriptions, offer some speculation about what passages may have meant. These are drawn from David Schalkwyk’s book, Hamlet’s Dreams, in which he writes that making sense of the signatures in the Robben Island Shakespeare “is an impossible task. But it is also irresistibly compelling.”

Sonny Venkatrathnam and Kadir Hassim, Front Matter

Sonny Venkatrathnam and Kadir Hassim signed the Robben Island Shakespeare on the title page and p. ix of the introduction, respectively. By not selecting a favorite passage, they signified a solidarity with other signers or readers or—in Hassim's case—with the book's owner, but they did not connect themselves to the meaning of any certain speech or sonnet.

Venkatrathnam brought the volume of Shakespeare to Robben Island as the one book he was allowed when he was arrested for conspiring against the state. Although the book was taken away from him on more than one occasion, he managed to keep it over the course of his time in prison, and in the late 1970s, he asked his fellow prisoners in the single cell block to sign and date passages in the book, while he himself signed a mark of ownership on the title page. Hassim, who signed the introduction for reasons that are not known, was arrested in 1971 with twelve others for conspiring to overthrow the government of South Africa. He was imprisoned at Robben Island until 1978.

Billy Nair, The Tempest, Page 6

Billy Nair was a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). He was arrested on July 6, 1963 and sentenced to twenty years in Robben Island prison. Although he was punished for his efforts at reforming conditions in the prison, he was ultimately successful in bringing about positive change. He was released from prison in February 1984, and continued to protest the Nationalist government, eventually becoming a member of parliament for the ANC in 1994. He died on October 27, 2008.

Nair signed his name near Caliban’s speech:

CALIBAN: I must eat my dinner.

This island’s mine by Sycorax, my mother,

Which thou tak’st from me. When thou cam’st first,

Thou strok’st me and made much of me, wouldst give me

Water with berries in ’t, and teach me how

To name the bigger light and how the less,

That burn by day and night. And then I loved thee,

And showed thee all the qualities o’ th’ isle,

The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place and fertile.

Cursed be I that did so! All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you,

For I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own king; and here you sty me

In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o’ th’ island.

PROSPERO: Thou most lying slave,

Whom stripes may move, not kindness, I have used thee,

Filth as thou art, with humane care, and lodged thee

In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate

The honor of my child.

CALIBAN: O ho, O ho! Would ’t had been done!

Thou didst prevent me. I had peopled else

This isle with Calibans.

(The Tempest, 1.2.331–350)

Among the thirty-four signatures in the Robben Island Shakespeare, Nair’s seems most strikingly resonant with his own imprisonment: Caliban the dispossessed, incarcerated upon an outcrop of rock and sand and heather that is rightfully his, is subjected to tortures, and forced into slave labor. Perhaps Nair registered Caliban’s claim simply: as his own, and as that of all the dispossessed inhabitants of South Africa.

Elias Motsoaledi and Kwedi Mkalipi, Midsummer, Page 222

Elias Motsoaledi, a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC, and Kwedi Mkalipi, a member of the opposing PAC, were both detained in the same B-section isolation cells of Robben Island as Nelson Mandela. Both signed their names by Puck’s apology at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

PUCK: If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumber’d here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream.

(A Midsummer Night's Dream, Epilogue, 1–6)

There is little in this passage to suggest a connection to politics or personal circumstance in Robben Island. More likely, the story here is one of familiarity. Did they each study this play in school, and memorize Puck’s final speech? Perhaps the lighthearted nature of the play was a warm contrast to cold years of confinement.

The passage no longer appealed to Mkalipi when he was interviewed in 2008. Reflecting on his time in Robben Island, he preferred Lady Macbeth’s lament:

"All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand," (Macbeth, 5.1.49),

taking it to mean that the damage done by Apartheid could never be repaid—a far more revolutionary selection than Puck’s whimsical farewell.

Walter Sisulu, Merchant of Venice, Page 227

Walter Sisulu was a member with the ANC Youth League, along with Nelson Mandela. He played an active political role, and was arrested and jailed numerous times in the 1950s and 1960s. Following the Rivonia Trial, in which ten ANC leaders were tried for sabotage against the South African government, Sisulu was sentenced to life imprisonment and spent 26 years at Robben Island. He died in 2003.

Sisulu signed next to Shylock’s speech in The Merchant of Venice, a speech about shared humanity:

SHYLOCK: Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?

(The Merchant of Venice, 3.1.52–9)

This passage is particularly compelling to consider because, taken alone—as here—it reads as a call to and for equality and commonality. But Shylock goes on in the next line to say

"and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" (3.1.60).

There is no way of telling whether Sisulu, or any of his fellow signatories, read or viewed the plays as a whole, or what portion of a passage spoke most loudly to them in which moment.

Sandi Sijake, As You Like It, Page 254

Sandi Sijake, an Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadre who became a Major-General in the new South African National Defence Force, signed his name by Orlando’s opening complaint in As You Like It.

Like Orlando, Sijake was a soldier. He chose a play steeped in questions of the arbitrary exercise of power, disinheritance, relations between master and servant, and access to land. These complaints are quite parallel to conditions on Robben Island, and furthermore, the rebelliousness of the younger son in Orlando’s speech is resonate with rebellion against Apartheid’s forced servitude.

Mobbs Gqirana, As You Like It, Page 260

Mobbs Gqirana, who disappeared without a trace in 1983, is presumed dead, perhaps killed by police following his release from Robben Island. From Venkatrathnam’s Shakespeare, Gqirana selected a passage from As You Like It: the Duke’s celebration of the “sweet…uses of adversity” in the exile of the forest. The conditions enumerated in the Duke’s speech could be parallel, again, to conditions on Robben Island, in particular the biting cold of the winters there. In the speech, Duke Senior highlights the moral rigor that grows from hardship:

DUKE SENIOR: Now my co-mates and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?

Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,

The season’s difference. As the icy fang

And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,

Which when it bites and blows upon my body,

Even as I shrink with cold, I smile and say…

Sweet are the used of adversity;

Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

I would not change it.

(As You Like It, 2.2.1–18)

J.B. Vusani, As You Like It, Page 266

The third prisoner to sign within the text of As You Like It was J. B. Vusani.

Vusani selected Jacques’s famous account of the seven ages of man, in which the phases of life are enumerated: infant, school-boy, lover, soldier, justice, aged, and extreme old age.

JAQUES: All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

Then the whining schoolboy with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

(As You Like It, 2.7.139–136)

To which phase of life might Vusani have related most? Perhaps the lover or the soldier, but also, perhaps, the second childhood of old age, where Jacques remarks on old age’s dependency and “oblivion; sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” (2.7.165–6) Though Vusani was not in “second childhood” during his time at Robben Island, conditions at the prison were miserable, easily comparable to “oblivion” and a life “sans everything.”

Govan Mbeki, Tweflth Night, Page 349

Govan Mbeki rivaled Nelson Mandela for the position of leader on Robben Island, and he maintained a radical communist position. He was sentenced to life imprisonment after the Rivonia Trial, and served 24 years there. After his release, he served on the South African Senate from 1994-97. He is the father of former South African president Thabo Mbeki.

For a radical and active political figure, Mbeki chose what seems a surprisingly light-hearted passage. His signature appears on the opening page of Twefth Night. Although it is not clear whether there is a specific passage on the page that appealed to Mbeki, by far the most well-known passage is Orsino’s opening monologue on love, music, and desire:

"If music be the food of love, play on." (Twelfth Night, 1.1.1)

Wilton Mkwayi, Twelfth Night, Page 361

Wilton Mkwayi, like so many others at Robben Island, was a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC. He was charged with treason in 1956, and sentenced to life in prison in 1964. He was released in 1989 and died in 2004.

Mkwayi’s is the second signed passage in Twelfth Night. He included his name in Venkatrathnam’s Shakespeare by a passage in which Malvolio responds eagerly to what he supposed to be Olivia’s invitation and encouragement:

If this fall into thy hand, revolve. In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.

(Twelfth Night, 2.5.132–4)

In the play, these lines are a jab at an ambitious fool, but taken on their own, could be a serious meditation on the nature of resolve and leadership. In the context of Mkwayi’s personal situation in prison, perhaps they spoke to him of thwarted longing, something he surely felt as he was imprisoned just before he was set to be married to his fiancé.

Mac Maharaj, Richard II, Page 454

Mac Maharaj, one of the most celebrated of the Robben Island prisoners, was a close confidant of Nelson Mandela, and continues to be involved in the government of South Africa where he serves as spokesperson for President Jacob Zuma.

Maharaj signed his name by the final words of the dying Gaunt:

Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain;

For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.

(Richard II, 2.1.7–8)

In the context of life at Robben Island, these lines could resonate for any number of reasons. In one way similar to Duke Senior’s speech in As You Like It by which Mobbs Gqirana signed his name, these lines reflect the resolve of moral character through suffering. Yet it is hard to ignore the suggestion of truth achieved through torture, although accounts of torture have been suppressed or avoided.

Joe Gqabi, Richard II, Page 457

Joe Gqabi was a member of the ANC, who, like many of the prisoners who signed this book, also joined Umkhonto we Sizwe. He was arrested in the 1960s and charged under the Sabotage Act and served his 10 year sentence at Robben Island. He was a chief defendant in the 1977 Pretoria trial, and was acquitted. He was killed outside his home in Zimbabwe in July 1981 by an Apartheid hit-squad.

Gqabi selected a spare three lines from Richard II that register a tension between hope and despair – which one images was a prevalent experience amongst long-term prisoners.

NORTHUMBERLAND: …even through the hollow eyes of death

I spy life peering; but I dare not say

How near the tidings of our comfort is.

(Richard II, 2.1.271–3)

Supplemental materials

Audio

Rebecca Sheir, host of the Folger's Shakespeare Unlimited series, talks with David Schalkwyk, also a South African, about what Shakespeare might have meant to the men who signed the Robben Island Shakespeare.

In the News

Mandela's 'Robben Island Shakespeare' on Display in D.C., by Bobbi Booker, August 22, 2013 for The Philadelphia Tribune.

Shakespeare Inspired Robben Island Inmates, Including Mandala, by Suzanne Presto for Voice of America.

Shakespeare Writings Inspired South African Prisoners: Sketches by Nelson Mandela included in exhibit at Folger, by Margaret Summers, July 2, 2013 for The Washington Informer.

Related programs

Folger Theatre

• Matthew Hahn's Robben Island Bible, June 3, 2013