“A South African’s Homage” at One Hundred: Revisiting Sol Plaatje’s contribution to the Book of Homage to Shakespeare (1916)

Abstract

This article aims to mark the centenary of the publication of “A South African’s Homage”, Sol Plaatje’s contribution to the tercentenary Book of Homage to Shakespeare, written in both English and Setswana versions, and published by Oxford University Press in 1916. It explores the significance of Plaatje’s piece, seeing it, among other things, as a manifesto for his project to translate Shakespeare’s plays into Setswana. I investigate the background to the publication of Book of Homage; the way its editor, Israel Gollancz, went about his task; and how it was that Plaatje came to be involved. I offer an explanation for why a significant passage, in which Plaatje upholds Othello as an example for the British Empire to follow in including its black subjects in the armed forces fighting Germany, was omitted; and why – alone of the tributes in the Book of Homage – Plaatje’s piece appears anonymously. The explanation, I suggest, can be found in Plaatje’s wish not to jeopardise the prospects of what was to him a far higher priority, his book Native Life in South Africa (protesting against the Natives Land Act of 1913), which was published a few weeks later. In the second part of the article I move beyond the immediate circumstances of the publication of “A South African’s Homage” and review its place in subsequent scholarship on the nature of Plaatje’s engagement with Shakespeare and on the Book of Homage more generally. I conclude with a brief assessment of two of Plaatje’s translations that were published – Diphosho-phosho (Comedy of Errors) and Dintshontsho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara (Julius Caesar). This article also serves as an introduction to the original typescripts of Plaatje’s contribution to Book of Homage which are reproduced here in full for the first time.