Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

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In the final essay in our series Shakespeare and Love, the writer and journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown recalls how her own heart was captured by Shakespeare as a child growing up in Uganda, East Africa, where his plays were performed at her school on a regular basis. Though Shakespeare may never have left England, he had a global outlook on love. Racial pride and prejudice had a strong presence in many of his plays. From Titus Andronicus and the Merchant of Venice to Othello, the plays are full of rebellious lovers; mixed race couplings whose complex lives are portrayed with such moral clarity and moral ambivalence that they resonate today.