Brush up your Sheik Zubair

The results can sometimes be impressive when the resources available to a head of state are turned to scholarly pursuits. We have all heard, no doubt, of the contributions of Chairman Mao and James I of England to literary theory. Now, evidently, Muammar Gadhafi has discovered that Shakespeare was an Arab. From the New York Sun:

In the mid-1980s, I had an eight-hour session with Colonel Muammar Gadhafi that began at midnight at an encampment by the Gulf of Sidra in Libya.

Like several press interviews before and after, it essentially consisted of an uninterrupted monologue about his "Green Book" — a thin volume of platitudes he authored — along with his theories on human evolution, relations between males and females, and his belief that Shakespeare was an Arab Bedouin whose original name was Sheik Zubair. (No kidding.) [...]

(Hat Tip: Martin Kramer)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Tags: Shakespeare, Gadhafi, Mao, James I