“The Boers or the English… that is not the Question”: The Shakespearean Tragedy in Herbert Dhlomo’s “Dingane”

In his historical plays, Zulu writer and journalist Herbert Isaac Ernest Dhlomo (1903-1956) made reference to Shakespeare’s dramatic works in more than one way. “Richard III”, “The Merchant of Venice”, “Julius Caesar”, “Hamlet”, “Othello”, “Macbeth”, and “The Tempest” are present in Dhlomo’s plays either through unattributed quotations or as structural, albeit thoroughly re-contextualised, models. After an introduction to the cultural context in which the author wrote, the line of investigation proposed here provides a reading of Dhlomo’s “Dingane” (1936-1937) as a representative text, useful to explore both the extent and the typology of Shakespearean echoes in the Zulu writer’s works. This article offers a literary analysis of the play, as well as an interpretation of the political significance of the British canonical tradition in the writer’s literary output.