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Business News/ Opinion / Online Views/  Talking Shakespeare
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Talking Shakespeare

Loving an English writer in India is not colonial hangover; those who say so can strut and fret their hour upon the stage

Photo: AFP (AFP)Premium
Photo: AFP
(AFP)

William Shakespeare breathed his last four hundred years ago this week and he is perhaps in a better world than this. But it beggars all description that four centuries onward, his words are spoken, read, or memorised by someone somewhere, tonight and all other nights, not only all our yesterdays, but also tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

When I was at college and if our lecturer announced a surprise test of Shakespeare, I often worried a little, for I had studied at a Gujarati medium school. Reading his words, with the “thous" and “thines" and “wherefores" I felt faint-hearted, and it all seemed Greek to me, even as smart students from English medium schools in their flaming youth effortlessly put their best foot forward and recited his lines flawlessly before friends, Romans, countrymen. I decided I could not imitate them, realising that the better part of valour is discretion.

As I grew older, I learned to appreciate his language, its richness, and its dramatic appeal. His work continues to inspire, even in this brave new world, and his words often helped break the ice. And he taught us that brevity is the soul of wit.

Also Read: The William Shakespeare crossword on his 400th death anniversary

And yet there are still many who refuse to budge an inch and insist that Shakespeare’s plays were written by Christopher Marlowe, or by Francis Bacon, or by someone else also known as William Shakespeare. Well, Shakespeare did say What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but we must realise that such comparisons are odorous. There will always be maniacs who believe conspiracies and worship Bacon or Marlowe. They have a lean and hungry look, and they speak out of jealousy, the green-eyed monster. Come what may, they will argue till it is dark, leaving no elbow room. They will cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. After all, every dog will have his day, and they will fight till the last gasp. Well, ‘tis high time they knew that they have lost, that their rants are much ado about nothing. They are hoist with their own petard. At last, the game is up. I say good riddance to them. It was a foregone conclusion they would lose, but we did give the devil his due.

Today in India there is an ill wind which blows, insisting that only what was thought of in this ancient land, in our language, is good, and everything else that has come from far away can only be inferior. But how can a poet’s words have boundaries? That would be improbable fiction. I know that in my heart of hearts I have room not only for Shakespeare, but also for Euripides and Sophocles and Aeschylus, and Aristophanes, and Moliere and Racine and Anouilh, and Beckett and Ionesco, and Kalidasa and Bhasa and Bhavabhuti, and Rabindranath Tagore and Badal Sircar and Vijay Tendulkar, and I can go on, and why not, for all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

But they are fools too, who insist that reading Shakespeare alone is enough, for they are like Macaulay, who thought that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. Well, that is foolish too; I say, a plague on both your houses – those who shun Shakespeare because he isn’t ours, and those who read only Shakespeare as if nothing else matters.

And so I join the pitched battle, once more into the breach. Loving and rejoicing in an English writer in post-independent India is not colonial hangover; those who say so can strut and fret their hour upon the stage; they are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Their insistence upon their own truth alone turns them into laughing stock. But we should remember that though this be madness, yet there is a method in it. And I write this more in sorrow than in anger, reflecting on what has become of us in our search for authenticity and nativity, where we equate originality and goodness only with what is grown at home. That it should come to this! It is not a happy time, I’m afraid, but sweet are the uses of adversity; there will be a sea-change in attitude.

And so we must not forget that what’s past is prologue and we have yet to come a full circle. And thereby hangs a tale, but it has an end as you like it.

As good luck would have it, four centuries on, all’s well that ends well. And the short and the long of it is that every day, somewhere, someone is reading his plays, acting in them, finding new meaning in his writing, or discovering fresh ways to look at life, and so we learn something new about ourselves and our world. That is worth more than all the perfumes of Arabia.

….

Editor’s note: Every phrase in italics in this column owes its origin to Shakespeare, who died four hundred years ago on Saturday.

Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London. Your comments are welcome at salil@livemint.com. To read Salil Tripathi’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/saliltripathi

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Published: 21 Apr 2016, 12:34 AM IST
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