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 Robben Island prison in South Africa from 1975 to 1978.

List of Shakespeare's works with signatures

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."

Front Matter and The Tempest

This article includes information on Sonny Venkatrathnam and Kadir Hassim who signed in the front matter of the Robben Island Shakespeare, and on Billy Nair who signed his name in The Tempest.

A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice

This article includes information on Elias Motsoaledi and Kwedi Mkalipi who signed in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and on Walter Sisulu who signed his name in The Merchant of Venice.

As You Like It

This article includes information on Sandi Sijake, Mobbs Gqirana, and J.B. Vusani who all signed their names in portions of As You Like It.

Tweflth Night

This article includes information on Govan Mbeki and Wilton Mkwayi who signed their names in Twelfth Night.

Richard II

This article includes information on Mac Maharaj and Joe Gqabi who both signed their names in Richard II.

Henry V

This article includes information on Sibusiso Bengu and Ahmed Kathrada who signed their names in pages of Henry V.

Julius Caesar

This article includes information on Nelson Mandela, Andrew Masondo, and Liloo Chiba who all signed their names in pages of Julius Caesar.

Macbeth

This article includes information on Andrew Mlengeni and Eddie Daniels who signed their names in the margins of Macbeth

Hamlet

Michael Dingake, Saths Cooper, and Strini Moodley all signed their name along passages from Hamlet.

Shakespeare's sonnets

J. Nzuza, page 1312 & Don Davis, page 1313

Six Robben Island prisoners made their signatures in the back of the Collected Works, by Shakespeare’s sonnets. J. Nzuza and Don Davies selected sonnets 25 and 30, respectively, both of which are poems celebrating the constancy of friendship:

Sonnet #25

Let those who are in favour with their stars

Of public honour and proud titles boast,

Whilst I, whome fortune of such triumph bars,

Unlook’d for joy in that I honour most.

Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread

But as the marigold at the sun’s eye;

And in themselves their pride lies buried,

For at a frown they in their glory die,

The painful warrior famoused for fight,

After a thousand victories once foil’d,

Is from the book of honour razed quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d.

Then happy I, that love and am beloved

Where I may not remove nor be removed.

Sonnet #30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up rememberance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I soughts,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste.

Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,

And moan th’ espense of many a vanish’d sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paide before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

Neville Alexander, page 1318–19

Neville Alexander spent 10 years on Robben Island, from 1964–74, following his conviction for conspiracy to commit sabotage. Highly educated, Alexander had been studying and teaching in Germany prior to his return to South Africa following the Sharpeville massacre.

In Venkatrathnam’s book, Dr. Alexander marked Sonnets 60 and 65, both poems that meditate on mortality and the relentless passing of time—a subject sure to be on the mind of any prisoner:

Sonnet #60

Like as the waves makes towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,

Crooked eclipses ‘gainst his glory fight,

And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,

And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,

Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.

And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Sonnet #65

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o’ersways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out

Against the wreckful siege of batt’ring days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

O fearful meditation! Where, alack,

Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift food back?

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O, none, unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

T. Cholo, page 1329

Prisoner Theo Cholo also marked a sonnet—his selection was Sonnet 123, a commentary on memory and a defiance of time and its transformations in the context of close relationships. Themes of friendship, love, and time are overarching themes in many of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Sonnet #123

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change.

Thy pyramids built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;

They are but dressings of a former sight.

Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire

What thou dost foist upon us that is old,

And rather make them born to our desire

Than think that we before have heard them told.

Thy registers and thee I both defy,

Not wond’ring at the present nor the past,

For thy records and what we see doth lie,

Made more or less by thy continual haste.

This I do vow, and this shall ever be:

I will be true, despite they scythe and thee.

R. Mhlaba, page 1332

The final prisoner to leave his mark among Shakespeare’s sonnets was Raymond Mhlaba, ANC member and Rivonia Trialist. He liked Sonnet 140, a “dark lady” sonnet that deals with love, and which would seem to have little to do with his time as a Robben Island prisoner.

Sonnet #140

Be wise as though art cruel; do not press

My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain

Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express

The manner of my pity-wanting pain.

If I might teach thee wit, better it were,

Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so;

As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,

No news but health from their physicians know.

For, if I should despair, I should grow mad,

And in my madness might speak ill of thee.

Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad

Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.

That I may not be so, nor thou belied,

Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.

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