Wednesday, August 14, 2013





"Hamlet" is Banned in the British Library

On Monday, I was sitting in the British Library frantically trying to write my new book in a shturmovshchina [desperate hurry]. I had to quickly check a particular line in Hamlet, so I Googled Hamlet MIT, because the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has put the entire works of Shakespeare up on the Internet. (It takes 70 mins to order a physical book). I clicked on the link and...

A message came up from the British Library telling me that access to site was blocked due to "violent content".

Now, Hamlet is a violent play. I see that. When the curtain comes down there's a lot of bodies on the boards. But...

I took my computer over to the information desk, and after I had explained to them what MIT stood for (really), they called the IT department and told them about the webpage that I had been blocked from. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/full.html

They had to spell out Shakespeare letter by letter. Really. Ess. Aitch. Ay. Kay...

I asked them if they were surprised that Hamlet was now banned in the British Library. They shrugged. I asked them how it was that I could still access youtube, facebook and twitter. I asked why the girl at the next desk to me had been able to spend the last half hour on Guardian Soulmates, while the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's website was banned. They shrugged.

I asked if they saw the problem, perhaps just the symbolism, of Hamlet being banned in the British Library. They shrugged.

Source

UPDATE: Twitter worked a lot better than talking to library staff.  When he got home the writer tweeted about it.  Shortly thereafter the library tweeted back that it had lifted the block



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

More an observation on the quality of people they hire because of political correctness quotas.

stinky said...


Empirical observation: the British Library does not respond to argument, but does respond to social pressure. Noted.

Anonymous said...

I'd weep for humanity if they were worth weeping for.

Anonymous said...

Librarians suffer from a superiority-complex vis à vis the general public they are obliged to deal with! (and sorry to use a preposition to end a sentence with - oh sh*t, done it again!).