In Johannesburg, during the Sophiatown era of the 1950s, gangsters would routinely order a writer or journalist like Can Themba or Bloke Modisane, to recite Shakespeare to them on street corners.
For a time, Shakespeare became part of the rhetoric of the streets. One of the favourite requests was for the revolutionary funeral oration by Mark Anthony, in Julius Caesar: "Friends, Romans, Countrymen... "
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