Generations of schoolchildren have been saying it for years but finally it is official: Shakespeare is boring, unlikely and ridiculous.
At least that is the view of a committee of teachers appointed by the education department of South Africa's most important province, Gauteng, which wants to ban some of the Bard's works from state school reading lists because they have unhappy endings, lack cultural diversity and fail to promote the South African constitution's rejection of racism and sexism.
Julius Caesar never had a chance of making it past the sexism criteria, with the committee condemning the work because it "elevates men". Antony and Cleopatra and the Taming of the Shrew fared little better, both being described as undemocratic and racist.
Hamlet was declared persona non grata on the grounds that the play is "not optimistic or uplifting". But it was the "too despairing" King Lear that fared the worst. "The play lacks the power to excite readers and is full of violence and despair. The plot is rather unlikely and ridiculous," the committee concluded.
Those that slipped through included Romeo and Juliet (presumably not for its happy ending), The Merchant of Venice, (anti-semitism not being considered racism?) and Macbeth.
Shakespeare was not alone. Gulliver's Travels is to be pulled because its humour is deemed foreign to South Africans. Even the country's Nobel laureate and Booker prize winner, Nadine Gordimer, is to be removed from school libraries as her writing is allegedly "deeply racist," even though three of her books were also banned by the apartheid regime.
The Gauteng education department, which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, is ready to ban Mrs Gordimer's July's People, which has been set reading in schools for seven years, because it is "deeply racist, superior and patronising. The novel seems one-sided and outdated".
"To be called a racist as a white South African and as someone who stayed here through all of the worst time and as someone who identified closely with the struggle - that is just very insulting," Mrs Gordimer said.
Some of South Africa's most prominent writers and artists plan to send a letter of protest to the ruling African National Congress accusing it of "political correctness gone mad".
Not the thing
Hamlet Not optimistic or uplifting. Characters not appealing to modern pupils as royalty is no longer fashionable
King Lear Not exciting. Full of violence and despair. Ridiculous and unlikely plot
Julius Caesar Sexist because it elevates men
Antony and Cleopatra Racist and undemocratic
Othello Racist and sexist. A bleak and pessimistic tone