Chapter - I
SHAKESPEARE FASCINATES INDIA
Shakespeare himself never came to India, but in his
times India was known in many parts of the world for its
opulence, art and culture.
That India did dwell in
Shakespeare's mind is evident from more than twenty refe­
rences to India in his works.
It is interesting to note
that most of the references to India are complimentary rather
■i
than spiteful.
If India held a special fascination for Shakespeare,
India also did not fail to exnress its deep admiration for
Shakespeare and so assimilated him in its life as to make him
an integral part of her cultural heritage.
In fact,
Shakespeare has been so incorporated in the fabric of our
thought and the texture of our feelings that in our literary
world he constitutes the Trinity with Valmiki and Vyasa p as
he has become in Germany the third classic after Goethe and
Schiller and in America the third "god of idolatory" after
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.^
The glory of every empire vanishes, but the glory of
Shakespeare's kingdom is perennial; like a Keatsian thing
of beauty
"its loveliness increases, it will never pass
into nothingness."
Works of Shakespeare are like the glow
2
of the moon that illumines dark minds, enlivens dying hearts
and rejuvenates withered branches of love; it is the Love
that moves the stars, flows through human heart and has become
a part of the innate joy;
existence.
"joie de vivre" that animates our
Life in all its variety;
humility and sublimity,
vulgarity and refinement, beauty and ugliness, strength and
weakness, foolishness and sagacity, laughter and tears finds
its manifestation in the works of Shakespeare and delights
the young and the old, the epicureans and the ascetics, the
materialistic fools who simply lose their life in daily
routine and the sages who care only for the "inward glories.”
This kingdom of Shakespeare abides and will abide this
literary-cultural ambassage of Shakespeare echoes a standard
Sanskrit tribute to the revered Indian epic The Ramayan:
f*
"Yaavat sthqyanti giryah, saritas cha mahitale" i.e., its fame
will be as enduring as the mountains, the rivers, and the
fields.
In his Sonnet 55 Shakespeare says, as if with a deep
inner confidence:
Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this oow'rful rhyme
The words of Thomas Carlyle that if he were to choose between
Shakespeare and the Indian Empire, he would rather lose the
latter because 'we cannot give up our Shakespeare', have been
quoted very often, but they cannot be quoted too often, for
they signify a vital choice before Man, a choice as vital as
it is between pleasure and happiness, thrill and blessedness,
moment and Eternity. 'Physical and secular empire* says Mr.
Sitaramaiah 'is won and held with force and guile; fear and
favour sustain it; whereas the empire over the human heart is a
5
strength built with affection and is one of spiritual kinship.
3
In India some of us read our scriptures daily and
though the views of a well-read Indian that he has 'found
nothing in Vedanta and Upanlshadas that I have not found in
Shakespeare and said as beautifully'
6
may appear to be an
exaggeration, it is true that if Shakespeare be regarded as a
'Passion', there is many-a-slave to this magnificent obsession.
There are indeed several of Shakespeare's admirers who read
their Shakespeare daily, if not with a religious dedication,
perhaps with a
Keats .-like sense of wonder who in his half-
charmed state exclaimed:
Shakespeare and Milton are everyday
a wonder to me!
Every good thought is precious for mankind and in the modern
world of fast-fading entities and declining values, the price­
less treasures of joy and wisdom that we have received from
Shakespeare become all the more valuable.
Sometimes some over-
zealous grammarians and the half-visioned votaries of linguis­
tics raise a cry for the abolition of Shakespeare studies from
the under-graduate courses and very enthusiastically ask:
Is
Shakespeare relevant to us?
Shakespeare, says
Ben Jonson, was not of an age but
'for all time,' not of England only but of the whole world.
Not that we cannot ignore him; but to ignore him is to ignore a
significant part of the human heritage of Thought and Culture.
Also to ignore him is to miss our chance to understand the
basic impulses and emotive forces of life:
Truth, Beauty,
4
Goodness and Love.
Writers like Shakespeare are the benefac­
tors of mankind and we can only ignore them at our own peril.
As Croce'' says,
we recognise.
'In a great work of art it is ourselves that
Art, or for that matter literature, has no
territorial boundaries; men and women the world over find
light and delight in the works of this great dramatist.' 7
Shakespeare was neither born in India, nor did he come to
India, but the whirl of centuries has brought him so near to
us that we feel him as an integral part of our cultural evolu­
tion, a "harmonized" part of Indian sensibility.
India has
had dedicated teachers of Shakespeare like
Professors Manmohan Ghosh, P.C. Ghosh, H.M. Percival, Tarak
Nath Sen, N.C. Menon, P.K. Guha, S.C. Sengupta, A.N. Jha*
poets and writers like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Rabindranath
Tagore, Sir Mohammad Iqbal, Michael Madhusudan Datt, Sri
Aurobindo and R.K. Narayan; educationists like Srinivas Iyengar,
V.K. Gokak, Sarup Singh and Krishna Kriplani; theatre persona­
lities like E. Alkazi, Balwant Gargi, B.V. Karanth, Mohan
Maharshi;
heroes of our National Freedom Struggle like
Mahatma Gandhi,
Rajgopala Chari, Jawahar Lai Nehru and the
like have also been
inspired and enlightened by Shakespeare.
To our pleasant surprise spiritual luminaries like Swami
Vivekananda and Maharshi Raman, also admire Shakespeare immensely.
Besides, there are numerous people at lower echelons in the
various spheres of life for whom Shakespeare has become a part
5
of their feelings, thoughts and emotions.
The myriad-minded
Shakespeare means many things to many people.
As such
Shakespeare remains 'the best loved, most performed, most
translated, transformed and experimented upon playwright in
India today.'?
From a favourite subject for national and international
seminars and conferences,Shakespeare has been a delight of the
masses even in the villages.
Habib Tanvir, the noted stage-
director, is reported to have presented a few portions of
Hamlet on the popular folk stage of Chhattisgarh.
Professor
C.D. Naraslmhaiah tells us about one Oxonian David Horsborough,
who,settled with his family among the tribals,used to teach
three to four plays of Shakespeare to children and produced
one or two plays on the stage for so many years.
David, a
discerning critic, found 'both teaching and producing
Shakespeare a most rewarding experience.' 9
Late Utpal Dutt, a noted stage and film actor of Bengal, was
one
of the most ardent and active propagators of Shakespeare
in Bengal.
He claimed that Macbeth
was
staged by his
troupe nearly a hundred times — in Calcutta and far-flung
places of rural Bengal. He added that the 'reception of
Shakespeare's plays had been widely enthusiastic among the
villagers.'
6
In his preface to Shakespeare's England,
Sir Walter
Releigh doubts the capacity of the people of other countries
to strike an emotional bond with Shakespeare; their responses,
he felt, could at best be intellectual.
He says;
'Shakespeare's
admirers abroad do credit to him and to themselves but they
cannot teach the love of him to his friends at home.
Their
public homage is an empty thing to those who celebrate him
more intimately, who love him best not for his power, but for
his humanity.'^
The most authentic rebuttal of this arrogant and chauvi­
nistic assertion can be found in the deeply appreciative
emotion-charged homage that Rabindra Nath Tagore, Sir Mohammad
Iqbal and Sri Aurobindo pay to Shakespeare.
In his poem written
for The Book of Homage to Shakespeare brought out on the occa­
sion of the tercentenary of Shakespeare's death in 1916^Tagore
says:
(a) When by the far-away sea your fiery disk
appeared from Behind the unseen, 0 poet,
0 sun, England's horizon felt you near
her breast, and took you to be her own.
(b) She kissed your forehead, caught you in
the arms of her forest branches, hid
you
behind her mist mantle and watched you in
the green sward where fairies love to play
among meadow flowers.
7
(c) A few early birds sang your hymn of
praise while the rest of the woodland
choir were asleep. Then at the silent
beckoning of the Eternal you rose higher
and higher till you reached the mid-sky,
making all quarters of heaven your own.
(d) Therefore at this moment, after the end
of centuries the palm groves by the
Indian sea raise their tremulous branches
to the sky murmuring your praise.11 1
Surely, 'the palm groves by the Indian sea
raising
their tremulous branches to the sky murmuring your praise'is
not the homage of a dry-intellect but of a heart full of deep
admiration*
and
reverence.
—
Tagore took pains to
explain how Shakespeare has laid bare all the humanity of man
by stirring him to the deepest depths.
Indeed, as Tagore says,
there is in Shakespeare 'a high observatory from which can be
seen a most comprehensive scene of human nature.'
one.
Coming from
; great artist to another great artist these words are
indicative of the affinity that is born out of appreciation
bordering on reverence.
Sri Aurobindo's knowledge of world literatures and his
comparative assessment of various literary geniuses, is wellknown.
After defining the various criteria that determine great
poetry, Sri Aurobindo places Shakespeare among the top four
supreme poets of the world, the other three being the epic
poets Homer, Vyasa?and Valmiki; and adds that on his own chosen
8
ground of poetic-drama Shakespeare out-tops everybody.
Describing him 'as equal to the host', Sri Aurobindo defines
how life itself has taken hold of him in order to recreate
itself in his image ...
It is the sheer creative Ananda of
life spirit which is Shakespeare.
13
To render such a tribute
is a courtesy that transcends appreciation,
more so coming as
it does from Sri Aurobindo who is no bardolator.
Sri Aurobindo
is a discerning critic and a visionary who knows that despite
the preeminent
genius of Shakespeare, there remain greater
things to be seen by the poet than Shakepeare saw and greater
things to be said in poetry than Shakespeare has said.
future', Sri Aurobindo says,
'The
'may find for us a higher and
profounder, even a more deeply and finely vital aim for the
dramatic form than any Shakespeare ever conceived, but until
that has been done with an equal power, grasp and fullness of
vision and an equal intensity of revealing speech Shakespeare
keeps his sovereign station.
The claim made for him that he is
the greatest of the poets, may well be challenged — he is not
quite that — but that he is first among the dramatic poets
\
-J4
cannot well be questioned.
Another great homage to Shakespeare from the Indian
shore has been paid by the famous Urdu poet Sir Mohammad Iqbal.
In his poem entitled Shakespeare written in 1908 Sir Iqbal
praises Shakespeare's enlightened genius as "the pinnacle, the
be all and the end all, the summum bonum of human creation,"
9
since the very grandeur and significance of the world is by
virtue of the flights of his fancy.
nature,
which
Sir Iqbal further says that
is so possessive about her secrets, revealed
all the secrets of the human heart to Shakespeare and it is un­
likely that she will ever endow anybody else with so much love
and talent"to speak of her secrets with such felicity and
'
"15
skill.
Very close to Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and Iqbal in their
appreciation of Shakespeare
are Michael Madhusudan Dutt and
f
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.
study
‘Desdemona,
Bankim Chandra made a penetrating
Miranda and Shakuntala'
and
Michael Madhusudan was greatly influenced by Shakespeare's art
and skill and constantly kept Shakespeare’s mould while writing
his plays.
Because of this mental affinity with Shakespeare
people often applied to his works
the canons of criticism that
had been given forth by the master-pieces of William Shakespeare,
though Madhusudan often resented the application of such harsh
standards to his works.
16
*
It is said that Madhusudan Dutta was an expert in the
art of reciting the poetry of Shakespeare.
The Indian poet,
had in fact, so much of kinship with Shakespeare that it would
not be an exaggeration to say that he often lived in
‘Shakespearean moments'.
It is reported that when the news of
his wife's death was brought to him, he muttered to himself
10
the memorable words of Macbeth though he himself was on his
death bed;
Tomorrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
This shows how Shakespeare has become not only the inalienable
part of our cultural processes, but the very life-breath of
our intellectuals.
The phrase 'to be or not to be' comes to
our mind when we are caught in a serious dilemma of life.
Even in
our intensely personal moments of joy or sorrow, agony
or ecstasy, crisis or confidence,we recall Shakespeare's words
and find consolation and wisdom in them.
It is said that
Professor Manmohan Ghose, the legendary Shakespearean scholar
of Presidency College Calcutta, 'had Lear and Macbeth read
„
, .
aloud to him as he lay dying in January 1924 *.
'17
Shakespeare's influence, in fact, has been wide and
pervasive like the Wordsworthian joy that is spread in 'the
widest commonalty.'
His appeal moves the young and the old,
teachers and students, artists and poets, scholars and saints,
leaders and masses and brings to all of them an opulence of
of satisfaction —sensuous, emotional, intellectual, and to
some, of course, spiritual. It delights us the most because as
Swami Vivekanand says:
there is greater resemblance between
11
the dramas of Shakespeare and the Indian Drama.
Maharshi
Raman, we are told 'used to listen like a child, to passages
from Shakespeare's plays'
because they contained the
universal truths of human nature.
Professor K. Swaminathan
tells us that on hearing Keats's letter on "negative capabi­
lity",
Maharshi commented 'So there are Upanishads in English
as in Sanskrit. '
Maharshi Raman also adds that Shakespeare^,
like Indian seers,believed in the existence of self as joy.
Professor Gokak admired Shakespeare for the expression of
almost all impulses and attitudes of human life in his plays.19
Shakespeare thus has influenced almost all creative writers,
critics and thinkers of India who read and re-read his works
with a view to interpreting and re-interpreting them from
Indian perspectives time and time again.
Therefore, efforts
are here made to point out how Indians have looked at
Shakespeare's works in general and his great tragedies in
particular.
True, some Indian academics have analysed
Shakespeare's plays with the tools of Western Literary
Criticism.
Yet there are many Indian critics who judge
Shakespeare's men and women against the background of India's
social, moral and ethical values.
Such assessments have
resulted in comparing Hamlet with Arjuna, Ariel with Hanuman
and description of Desdemona as the eternal feminine cast in
the mould of Shakuntala, Sita and Savitri, and presenting Lady
Macbeth as an ideal woman possessing all the six qualities of
a typical Hindu wife: that of an advisor, a maid, a mother,
12
a courtesan, a philosopher and a saint.
A few of them adopt
a philosophical view-point and explain
all of Shakespeare's
works - histories, comedies and tragedies - as the manifesta­
tion of the Divine pattern of'Lila*(glamour), 'Maya' (action)
21
and 'Mukti' (liberation).
They concentrate on the spiritual
quest of Shakespeare's characters and find Vedic and Upanishadic echoes in his works.
The message of self-awareness,
the readiness on the part of the tragic heroes to die* the in­
sight and wisdom that generates moral fortitude, the freedom
and enrichment of spirit and the like are some of the out­
standing features, they say, that have affinity with the wisdom
propounded by the ancient sages of India.
Obviously, Indians
have a number of approaches to examine Shakespeare's works.
It is neither possible nor desirable to consider all of them
in detail.
In brief, the thesis is written withathreefold
purpose. Firstly,it aims at highlighting and recording what
leading Indian scholars have been thinking about Shakespeare's
works in general.
To some scholars, these viewpoints might
seem to be laudatory
but they are not.
They, in fact, are
very comprehensive in the sense that they indicate the overall
achievements of Shakespeare.
expressed in emotive language.
Of course, these viewpoints are
Secondly, it is to stress what
Indian critics think of tragedy in order to deduce some common
features of tragedy and to show how they are applicable to
Shakespeare's great tragedies.
Finally, it is to illustrate
how Shakespeare's tragedies echo
the Indian thought of Avidya
13
811111 v idva. adharma and dhai ma. Karma and Moksha. Dukkha
Ananda^etc.. Here the purpose is not to prove that Shakespeare
has borrowed these ideas from Indian scriptures; it is Just to
stress that like Indian sages, Shakespeare has contemplated on
life and arrived at similar conclusions.
Also, the objective
is to emphasise that Shakespeare is not merely the dramatist of
the Renaissance.
In reality he is the genius of all time and
clime.
II
First of all, I would like to examine the viewpoints
of Tagore, who compares Kalidasa's Shakuntalam with Shakespeare's
The Tempest.
Talking of the relationships between man and
nature, man and fellowmen, in The Tempest and Shakuntalam.
Tagore says that they are not 'half as tender and sensitive as
in Shakuntalam ...
Shakuntalam.
There is might in the Tempest and peace in
There is in the Tempest conquest through force,
while in Shakuntalam.
there is success through bliss,' 22
Displaying Shakespeare's all-inclusive and open-minded
approach towards life,Tagore exonerates Shakespeare from the
charges of immorality and obscenity
against him by Tolstoy.
but "plainly Immoral"
which had been levelled
Shakespeare is not only non-moral
was Tolstoy's assertion.
Tagore can see
the basic flaw in such an apprehension of life and art as he
14
knows that the works of great poets liberate our concealed
humanity and our whole being wakes up under their impact.
Tagore regrets that we express ourselves in society in a piece­
meal fashion.
He, however, believes that if we see life stea­
dily and in its entirety, rather than in terms of particulars,
there will be no obscenity.
Tagore is really keen on revealing the naturalness
and the inner reality of things.
He warns that if there is
too much emphasis on imitative naturalism, the view becomes
clouded.
He points out how, in order to express the emotional
turmoil of a character, the actor often resorts to violent
gestures, declamation and gruelling acrobatics.
The reason
Tagore thinks,is that instead of expressing the emotion the
actor aims at imitating it;
exaggerate.'
actors.
'like the lying witness he has to
For this very fault he does not spare the English
Talking of Irving in Hamlet.
Tagore says:
see Irving in Hamlet and I was struck dumb.
I went to
The unrestrained
exaggeration of his acting completely spoiled the clarity and
inner beauty of the play.
It moved one's senses but acted as
an insurmountable barrier to one's entering the heart of the
matter.2^
The words indicate the affinity and involvement of
Tagore in Shakespeare.
No wonder even as a boy of fourteen,
Tagore translated the whole of Macbeth into Bengali.
15
Secondly, Sri Aurobindo considers Shakespeare as
one of the four supreme poets of the world because Shakespeare's
works have imaginative originality and expressive power.
remarks:
He
'It is the sheer creative Ananda of life spirit which
is Shakespeare.'
'Ananda', though a word with varied
connotationsjmay here be related to the very bliss which the
artist experiences when he is creating an object.
Coleridge believes that only that criticism of
Shakespeare is genial 'which is reverential.'
does not agree with Coleridge.
Sri Aurobindo
True, he believes that
Shakespeare's works have all the qualities of a genius.
Yet
he knows that Shakespeare's work is not free from limitations.
In brief, Sri Aurobindo believes that Shakespeare is not the
poet of all times because the Future Poets with supramental
consciousness may produce what he calls 'Overhead Poetry*.
While comparing the dramatic gifts of Shakespeare and Kalidasa,
Sri Aurobindo asserts the overall superiority of Shakespeare
in the use of words and creation of characters, but he stresses
that Kalidas is superior to Shakespeare in the depiction of
childhood and motherhood: 'Shakespeare's overbounding wit
shuts him out from two Paradises: the mind of a child and the
heart of a mother
.25
16
While we may be in broad agreement with Sri Aurobindo,
it seems, the judgment on Shakespeare is a bit too harsh.
The
dramatist who could create devoted mothers like Constance
and
patient and pious mothers like Hermione and Thaisa should
not
be deemed as totally ignorant of these emotions.
Bankim Chandra compares the qualities of "Desdemona,
Miranda and Shakuntala."
He says that Chastity has been
commended as a great virtue in India.
more powerfully
He feels that chastity is
shown in the unswerving devotion of Desdemona
than in Shakuntalam.
As an illustration he points out how
Shakuntala, on being rejected by her husband Dushyanta, abuses
him and charges him with infidelity, while Desdemona renders
ungrudging devotion to Othello
not implicating him even in her
murder and forgiving him completely.
Further, making a comparison between Shakuntala and
Miranda*Bankim Chandra says that there is a kind of "innocent
frankness" in Miranda which is not there in Shakuntala.
He
points out that Miranda is totally unaware of the worldly prac­
tices;
she does not even know whether Ferdinand is a man or
a spirit, while Shakuntala, having lived in the hermitage with
her friends and other inmates, knows the art and the power of
love.
Illustrating his point Bankim Chandra shows how^on seeing
Ferdinand, Miranda is simply overcome with a sense of wonder,
17
whereas Shakuntala behaves like a normal, sophisticated girl$
observing sly strategem to entice her lover, like letting her
garments be stuck in the thorns for Dushyanta to help her in
untangling them.
Giving a perceptive estimate of the two great
masters^Bankim Chandra states:
Shakespeare's drama is like a sea and Kalidasa's
like a garden.
There is no comparison between a
sea and a garden. In Kalidasa we have an excess
of whatever is beautiful, sweet-smelling, sweet­
sounding and cheering to mind and body. Compared
with this the surge and thunder, the depth and the
vastness of the sea. In this incomparable tragedy
of Shakespeare passions rage like waves of the sea;
and terrible anger, hatred and jealousy batter
minds like a stormy wind. Its terrible movement,
awful noise and rolling of passions and again its
calm, its light and its shade and its music make
it a rare thing in poetry.
Ill
One of the reasons for the deep-rooted influence of
Shakespeare on the people of India is that Shakespeare was
introduced by national and intellectual leaders in various parts
of India.
Shakespeare's works represented some of the most
cherished values of Renaissance
like dignity and worth of the
individual and a joyous exuberance generating a tremendous
sense of liberation unfolding immense possibilities before man
by making him aware of his infinite capacities.
These qualities
18
influenced the minds of many Indians during the freedom fighting
movement against the British.
Militant Nationalists like Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Raj
Guru, Chandra Shekhar Azad were college students and
Shakespeare as a part of their syllabus.
had
Their fiery resolve
to throw away the "yoke" and "sufferance" of slavery and their
readiness to make supreme sacrifices might have found its true
accent in the immortal words of Cassius in Julius Caesar:
I know where I will wear this dagger then;
Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius.
for:
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
If I know this, know all the world besides,
That part of tyranny that I do bear,
I can shake off at pleasure.
(j
80-99).
An Illustration of how such words from Shakespeare would
have suited the aspirations of many-a-young patriot and inspired
them to endure tortures and torments in the pursuit of their
avowed objective of liberating their mother-land can be found
in the following account given by C.F. Andrews.
C.F. Andrews, a close associate of Gandhiji, recounts:
*1 remember well at Delhi, teaching Wordsworth’s poetry to a,
group of young, eager Indian students, We. came to the greatest
of all the famous sonnets,
'On Liberty':
19
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spoke; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held - In everything, we are sprung
Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold.
After explaining its meaning to them, I was asked by one of
the groups whether Indians could use the same language about
themselves - when they in turn had learnt to speak the language
that Shakespeare spoke.
Without a moment's hesitation I
answered, 'yes', and I am sure that the answer was right.
When I was taking the essay work in the same class, one of
my students said to me, "Sir, that line of Wordsworth must be free or die' - haunts us!
'We
That is just what every
true Indian feels today.
Why does Great Britain keep us in
subjection?
the power of Shakespeare.
Such is
Shakespeare
inspires Wordsworth and Wordsworth, in turn, inspires millions
to seek liberty in life.
During his struggle for liberation, Mahatma Gandhi often
quoted passages from Shakespeare to stress his viewpoints.
Once he cited from Julius Caesar;
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
(II.ii. 31-32)
Gandhiji explains that "the valiant" has a deeper
meaning than is ordinarily thought; it conveys the perfect
truth.
According to the Hindu conception of salvation, it
means freedom from the wheel of birth and death.
The word
o0
20
'valiant' refers to those who are strong in their search
for God.
They die but once, for they need not be reborn and
put on the mortal coil.
One may not accept such a profound interpretation of
Caesar's words; perhaps neither Caesar nor Shakespeare meant
them to be so.
Yet we can see the impression Shakespeare
made on GandhiJi.
Besides, some of the basic principles of
his moral outlook on life have been explained by Gandhi with
illustrations from Shakespeare.
While speaking on 'Ethical
Religion',for example, Gandhiji dwells on the crux of the
tf
issue:
p
What is a moral action?
' *
Defining a moral action
GandhiJi says that no action in itself is good or bad, an
action is good if it is done with the intention to do
GandhiJi also adds that
a
good.
moral action should be free
from fear or compulsion or self-interest
He than cites King
27
Lear to show how love born out of the profit motive is no love:
Love is not love
When it's mingled with regards
Aloof from the entire point. ^
V
that stand.
i. 230-40)
Guided by these moral considerations,C. Raja Gopalachari says
that if GandhiJi were there at that time, he would have advised
Hamlet to abjure violence and leave the vengeance to God. Also,
Rajaji is of the opinion that the Ghost is either Devil himself
or a Devil-inspired spirit.
Further, Rajaji adds that even if
the ghost is the old King's spirit, it is a spirit under the
21
influence of Devil because it distracts Hamlet from the path
of the Christian forgiveness and incites him to the course of
violent
revenge, the vengeance that ’never quickly ends in
justice but ever gets involved in new injustice.'
Under the
powerful influence of the Ghost, Hamlet sacrifices his love
for Ophelia and all that a young man lives for.
It is this
vengeance that brings to rock and ruin the most innocent
Polonius family.
Rajaji concludes his observations by descri­
bing the tragedy of Hamlet as the tragedy of the futility of
human vengeance: 'It is not a mere romance of delayed retri­
bution ....
The Ghost is truly the villain of the piece.
We cannot go a long way with Rajaji in blaming the
Ghost and Hamlet.
After all, time is out of joint and villainy
has established itself on the throne of Denmark.
In such
circumstances^ a man of moral sensibilities like Hamlet himself
can take 15) arms against the sea of trouble' to set the world
right.
In his Discovery of India
Nehru talks of the two
Englands that came to India:
The England of Shakespeare and
Milton, of noble speech and
brave deeds, on the one hand and
on the other 'the England of penal code and brutal behaviour',
the
the hallmark of/imperialistic designs. Nehru concludes that
29
only the England of Shakespeare abides with us.
Nehru embarks
upon his Discovery of India with the words of Shakespeare:
A
22
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past.
Nehru seemed to be deeply conscious of the value of art
and literature in life.
life was complete
He believed that no education of
without the study of the great minds
like Plato, Aristotle and Shakespeare.
Nehru seemed to
have been deeply influenced by Shakespeare's humanism.
He,
therefore, advised his daughter Indira to study Shakespeare
for a proper training of life.
Now it is safe to say that 'myriad-minded'
Shakespeare means many things to many people as Shakespeare
remains 'the best loved, most performed, most translated...
and experimented upon playwright in India today.'
Shakespeare indeed is for all time.
What Peter Brook
says of his production of The Mahabharata can, with equal
appropriateness, be said of Shakespeare.
Brook says that
although The Mahabharata is an Indian story, its greatness
30
lies in the fact that it is also the story of mankind.
And this view can be aptly applied to Shakespeare's works
as well.
23
Notes
1.
Some of the references about India in Shakespeare are:
Midsummer Night's Dream (II.i.67-69; II.i.124; Ill.ii.
375), Troilus and Cressfcla (I.i.103: I.ii.80), Merchant
of Venice (l.iii.79; Ill.ii.99; III.ii.272|, Henry VII
(V.iv.34), Merry Wives (l.iii.79), Henry VI (III.i.169),
All's Well (I.iii.210), As You Like It (Ill.ii.93),
!
2.
Othello (V.ii.347), Tempest (Ill.ii.61).
Srinivas;_ Iyengar, Shakespeare: Hjs World and His Art
(1964Delhi: Sterling, 1984), p. 686. Valmiki
and Vyasa are the ancient sage-poets of India, the
authors of Ramayana and Mahabharatha respectively.
3.
"German Stage Today", a talk delivered by Peter Von
Becker, Editor Theater Heute. at National School of
Drama Reportory, New Delhi on 4 December 1987.
4.
Ashley Thorndike, "British Academy Lecture" (1927)
quoted in Srinivasa Iyengar, Shakespeare: His World and
His Art, p. 685.
5.
S. Sitaramaiah, "Shakespeare and Indian Imagination"
Yo.jana. (N.Delhi), May 1964, p. 34.
6.
Krishna Kriplani, Chairman, National Book Trust, quoted
from a personal interview with Vikram Chopra at N.B.T.
Office, New Delhi on 5 October, 1986.
7.
Benedetto Croce^ Aesthetics. (London: Macmillan, 1923),
p. 34.
8.
Sunita Paul, Tribute to Shakespeare (New Delhi: Theatre
& Television Associates,
1989), p.7.
24
9.
10.
C.D. Narasimhaiah, "Shakespeare and Indian Sensibility",
Functions of Criticism in India_:_Essays in Indian
Response to Literature (Mysore: Central Institute of
Indian Languages, 1986), p. 61.
Walter Raleigh, Shakespeare
(rot. London: Macmillan,
1928), p. 6.
11.
To pay his homage to Shakespeare, Tagore first composed
the poem in his mother tongue i.e., Bengali, and then
translated it into English. Both the versions, Bengali
as well as English, are recorded in the Book of Homage
to Shakespeare. 1916, prepared by Sir Israel Golancz
by inviting contributions from all over the world on
the tercentenary of Shakespeare.
12.
Tagore's essay "Sahitya" (Literature) in Visvanath
Chatterjee, "Tagore as a Shakespearean Critic", Aspects
of Literature, (Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1970),
p. 38.
13.
Sri Aurobindo, Future Poetry
Ashram, 1972), p. 71.
(Pondicherrv: Sri Aurobindo
14.
Future Poetry, p. 73.
15.
Sir Mohammad Iqbal, "Shakespeare" in Baang-e-Dara
(Lahore: Sheikh Mubarak Ali, 1945), p. 283. The poem
is included in the tercentenary volume The Book of
Homage to Shakespeare. The original poem in Urdu
translated by the present writer with the help of a
friend.
16.
Madhusudan Dutta's several references to Shakespeare in
the prefaces to his plays, Klssan Cumari and Meghnatha.Badh (The Fall of Meghnath), Madhusudan Granthavall
(Calcutta: Banga Sahitya Parishad, 1955).
25
17.
Mentioned by Tarak Nath Sen, Preface to Shakespeare
Commemoration Volume (Calcutta: U.N. Dhar for
Presidency College, Calcutta, 1966), p. ix.
18.
K. Swaminathan, in a personal interview to Vikram Chopra,
Madras, 22 August, 1928.
19.
V.K. Gokak, Acceptance Speech delivered at Indian Inter­
national Centre on 22 August '89 on Conferment of
"Fellowship" by Sahitya Akademi, N. Delhi.
20.
J.K. Mishra, "Lady Macbeth: A Reassessment" unpublished
article (Allahabad). An old Sanskrit verse describes the
Karyeshu Mantri Karnesu dasi
Bhojyeshu Mata Ramneshu Rambha
The English version is:
In dealing with the affairs of the state and
matters of public imnortance an ideal wife should
stand by her husband like the minister of a king;
in carrying out orders and going on errands an
ideal wife should serve her husband like a maid
servant; when a husband is taking a meal an ideal
wife should act as a mother, in sexual enjoyment
an ideal wife should satisfy her husband like
Rambha the proverbial courtesan of the gods;
she should fall in with the views and interests
of her husband; and finally an ideal wife should
have the capacity to understand, sympathise and
forgive her husband like Mother Earth; though an
ideal wife with these six qualities is difficult
to find.
Mishra provides sufficient illustration of these wifely
attributes of Lady Macbeth.
26
21.
Syed Mehdi Imam,'Preface', An Integral Approach to
Shakespeare (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1961).
22.
Tagore's Essay 'Prachin Sahitya (Ancient Literature)
excerpted in V. Chatter.jee, Aspects of Literature,
pp. 44-47.
23.
Tagore's essay "Manav Prakash" translated and excerpted
in V. Chatterjee, Aspects of Literature, p. 42.
24.
Kshitish Roy, "A Chronicle of Eighty Years," in Tagore
Centenary Volume (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1961),
p. 453.
25.
Sri Aurobindo, Collected Works. Vol. 3, (Pondicherry:
Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972), p. 225.
26.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, "Shakuntala, Miranda and
Desdemona" (1876) from Bibidh Prnbandhn (Varied Essays)
Bankim Rachnavali (Bankim Chandra's Complete Works)
(Calcutta: Patra's Publication, 1983), Vol.II, pp.189-94.
27.
Mahatma Gandhi, "What is Moral Action." Letter to
Mahadev Desai, Comnlete Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol.VIII,
(Ahmedabad: Nav/jivan Prakashan).
28.
C. Rajgopalachari,- An article on Hamlet in The Statesman.
May, 1964.
29.
Jawaharlal Nehru,
30.
Peter Brook, "It's a Miraculous Exploration", A Profile
Discovery of India.
on Peter Brook and his production of Mahabharata.
The Times of India (New Delhi), 2 November 1989, p.3.