Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Sierra Leone: Thomas Decker’s Juliohs Siza, Roman Politics, and the Emergence of a Postcolonial African State

This project examines the manner in which the Sierra Leonean playwright and political figure Thomas Decker, in 1964, during the African decade of independence, translated and appropriated Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar into the Krio lingua franca of Sierra Leone. The Shakespearean English of Julius Caesar was transformed into the Krio of Juliohs Siza by Decker, a nationalist and pioneer, who understood the great potential and power of language as a unifying force of a nation and its people. The act of translation and appropriation of Juliohs Siza amounts to both an assertion of a sovereign linguistic identity after having gained independence from England in 1961, as well as an appropriation of the powerful democratic message carried by the political legacy of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar for a newly independent Sierra Leone.