HOW TIME FLIES. It’s been just 400 years since William Shakespeare faced his final curtain, and of course we will never forget him.
No matter how many times I see the movie Shakespeare in Love – in which Will is portrayed as a young playwright with more interests on his mind than writing the perfect sonnet – I still cannot forgive him.
For, truly, I remember the long hours spent in class and at home trying to remember his plays – at least the basic plots and the best speeches – well enough to pass English Lit.
This week local British officialdom will celebrate the great poet and playwright at a special function at the residence of the British High Commissioner, Mrs Victoria Dean, who, according to a press release, “will host a garden reception at her official residence on Tuesday 21 June 2016, on midsummer night”.
Ministers, officials, diplomats, business personnel and others are being invited to “mingle under the stars and to partake of British-themed food and drink, view Shakespearean film clips and watch dramatic renditions of well-known plays,” notes the press release.
Yes, Shakespeare lives! Which, by the way, is the name of the HC’s party. Now, what does this have to do with us here in Barbados? Nothing directly except that old Will may soon “play a role” in helping put Bajan actors and other behind-the-scenes professionals on the map in a few weeks when a movie based on his comedy A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream is released. It was shot in Barbados and the cast and crew are combination of Brit and Bajan. I think it’s called A Caribbean Dream.
Shakespeare and, a little more recently, The Beatles may be two of the things that actually made Britain “great” but there are lots, lots more artists literally where they came from. In fact, they even have an actress who plays the Queen better than she does herself.
In short, the UK punches way above its weight in all things arts and entertainment and all that talent and the business acumen behind it must make it one of the country’s biggest foreign exchange earners.
Three days after the “to be or not to be” and “band of brothers” speeches have no doubt been performed here at the high commissioner’s midsummer reception, the country which brought the world all of this will decide whether to keep its huge political and trade influence in the world through remaining in the European Union, or to “take back control” of its destiny and return to a splendid isolation by leaving it.
How the referendum turns out could well affect our fragile tourism sector if it were to lead to long-term negative effects on the UK economy.
It just doesn’t make sense to me that you would give up your membership in an economic marketplace to which you currently have full access for your exports of goods and services, only to have to negotiate a deal for less access to said market afterwards. I could go on, but it’s not my place.
To paraphrase Jay-Z, I may have 99 problems but Brexit is not one of them. But if I had the chance to vote, I would vote to stay. I sometimes wonder what Shakespeare would have said, but I probably wouldn’t have understood it anyway.
Patrick Hoyos is a journalist and publisher specialising in business. Email: pathoyos@gmail.com