"A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia" - this was the opinion of Lord Macaulay, member of the Supreme Council of India, in a now infamous 'Minute on Indian Education'. Whether or not we agree that Shakespeare was the Greatest Briton ever (he actually came in 5th on a recent BBC survey!), he was certainly one of the British Empire's most influential cultural exports.

As this Empire expanded over the 18th and 19th centuries to include India, the West Indies, South Africa and Nigeria, English literature itself became one of the means by which 'English' values were to be spread among subject peoples. The goal of Macaulay, and others like him, was to create a group of people who, through the study of Western science and English literature would be 'Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect'. Not surprisingly, Shakespeare was at the heart of this civilising mission. But, in a twist to the colonial tale, his work came to represent, at one and the same time, both quintessential Englishness and universal human values.

In this essay, I will offer a post-colonial perspective on Shakespeare and the ways in which his writings were used and understood in the British colonies. However, I'll begin with a brief account of what post-colonial criticism might be, and what questions it might ask.