A SOUTH AFRICAN SOCIAL JUSTICE ALTERNATIVE 191 educating, rehabilitating and thus intellectually (even if not actually) re-enfranchising an ever-growing prison population that, as Elizabeth A. Hull suggests, continues to suffer the consequences of political and societal fearmongering by those who see punishment and retributive justice as ill-served by such socially aware activities (Hull 2006: 129–37).‘Shakespeare in prison’now slips trippingly off the tongue. Few who read this Arden Research Handbook would question the validity of these ventures. Few would dare.

This chapter, however, commits the ultimate heresy: it does question the validity of certain ‘Shakespeare in prison’initiatives. In so doing, it engages in ongoing criticism of arts outreach projects and their effectiveness, while highlighting the role of anti-mass-incarceration activists who denounce these well-meaning efforts as unwittingly abetting the ongoing commodification of detainees. It also offers an alternative South African ‘Shakespeare in prison’educational experience, which consciously seeks to de-commodify the incarcerated by empowering inmates to confront their fear of Shakespeare, not as an intellectually superior literary or dramatic construct, but as a very real counter to the ‘fear’of their violent day-to-day existence.