--- a/readme_renderer/markdown.py
+++ b/readme_renderer/markdown.py
@@ -99,7 +99,7 @@ def _highlight(html):
         # translate '"' to '"', but it confuses pygments. Pygments will
         # escape any html entities when re-writing the code, and we run
         # everything through bleach after.
-        code = html_parser.HTMLParser().unescape(code)
+        code = html_parser.unescape(code)
 
         highlighted = pygments.highlight(code, lexer, formatter)