What do we owe to Shakespeare?

There is a peculiar ambivalence in the Indian attitude to the European models – be they of artistic expression or of material achievement. In public, for instance, we heartily endorse the aesthetic judgement of our African brethren that “Black is Beautiful”; while in private, we would like our dark brown daughters to be light-skinned as Desdemona to have a high premium in the marriage market. In public, we, or many of us, flaunt the spiritual values of Indian culture, in season and out; while, in private, our mouths water at the thought of the fleshpots of Con­necticut and Colorado. In literature too, many of our Pandits too easily assume the intrinsic superiority of the Indian aesthetic tradi­tion (Alamkaara Sastra);while all the time, many of our creative writers, especially in the Indian languages, are busy looking up to the trail-blazers in the West for inspiration in their experiments.

Now, coming to Shakespeare, there is, likewise, a tendency to speak too highly of our Sanskrit playwrights like Bhasa, Kalidasa and Sudraka in one breath; and hail our regional Shakespeares in Telugu. Tamil, Kannada, Bengali and the other Indian languages, which, no doubt, reveals our innate pride in the native tradition, along with more than a sneaking admiration for a foreign play­wright, who is no longer really foreign. There is nothing that our patriotic Pandits can do, here, in any case, now that Shakespeare has long been acknowledged as a world classic.

Though English education was officially introduced in this country some 150 years ago, after Macaulay's famous: (or infamous, if you will) minute in 1835, it was not until the latter half of the century that the classics of English literature, like Shakespeare, began to have an impact on the aesthetic consciousness of the Indian literati. Perhaps, it came a little earlier in cultural centres like Calcutta, because of their political advantageous situation, than elsewhere. Scholars refer to certain Shakespeare plays being staged on the Calcutta stage, like Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice and Othello, in 1854 and thereabouts.

Oriental scholars, with a degree of objectivity, began to note the differences between classical Indian drama, as represented by Kalidasa, and modern European drama, as represented by Shakespeare, appreciating them both in the proper perspective. Pandit Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar observed in a lecture in 1853, that there was nothing that presented the terrible as an object of beauty in Sanskrit literature. He was obviously thinking here of Shakespearean tragedy. Two decades later, Bankim Chandra Chatterji developed this idea further in recognising the sublimity of a tragic universe in Othello.

Some of Bankim’s most perceptive observations occur in his comparative study of Shakuntala and Desdemona. He said:

“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. Compare 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.”

As balanced an estimate of the two great masters as one could think of then, a hundred years ago, or even now, for that matter.

Inmost of the regional literatures of India, we had the Margatradition of classical Sanskrit drama, or adaptations thereof and the Desitradition of the folk theatre, sometimes dominated by the heroic ballads, Yakshagana and Kuravanjiduly dramatised, but nothing like the realistic drama of Shakespeare, in his histories, Roman plays and tragedies. It is possible to see that in the cross­-fertilisation of these various traditions lay the seed of modern Indian drama, as it emerged in the last century.

As far as Telugu is concerned, the plays of Shakespeare began to be translated or adapted in the ’Seventies of the last century. It was in 1876 that Julius Caesar was translated by Vavilala Vasudeva Sastri – the first play ever to be rendered in Telugu. The metre chosen by the author was considered by him to be corresponding to Shakespearean Blank Verse. It was not, however, a literal translation, as the author gave Telugu versions of the original names of the characters, and also tried to introduce “Hindu customs and manners”, wherever he could. Some four years later The Merchant of Venice was translated by Gurazada Sriramamurti, with the original names intact, and the text in both prose and verse, but with some liberties taken, where found necessary.

A more sustained dialogue with Shakespeare, at whatever level it might be, was attempted by Kandukuri Veeresalingam Pantulu, who is considered by many as the maker of modern Telugu literature. To acquaint the Telugu reader with the content of Shakespeare’s plays, he translated the Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb. But he too did not desist from altering the names of the plays and the characters or even from radi­cally changing the incidents and situations on rare occasions. The Comedy of Errors becomes Chamatkara Ratnavali and Romeo and Juliet turns into Malati Madhukaramu and King Lear is transformed into Chitraketu (God knows why?). The Merchant of Venice alone retains its identity as Venisu Vartakudu.

This dubious exercise of Indianisation of the names continues even into the early years of the present century. As late as 1909, Othello is presented as Pulinda Susheelan in one translation. May be Pulinda is the Telugu or Sanskrit name for an African or Spanish moor) More amusing still, one writer goes to the extent of giving a literal rendering of the name “Shakespeare” itself as ‘Sulapani’(though it is not clear what the original Sulapani had to say on the subject).

A few translations, like these, there were, followed by more of them in the early ’Sixties of this century, in connection with the quarter-centenary of the bard. At least ten of the better-known plays were sponsored by Sahitya Akademi. They include the four great tragedies – Othello, Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet; the Roman plays – Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest. Venus and Adonis was translated earlier as “Premakala” (1954).

The true impact of Shakespeare in Telugu literature cannot, however, be depicted in terms of the translations of his plays, which have rarely been accepted as adequate or satisfying. The English-­knowing will go only to the original and the others are unlikely to be inspired by these stilted exercises in Telugu prose and verse. The best translation is yet to be. The impact was felt, rather, in a more direct manner in the approach to playwriting itself – in the appearance of tragedy as an accepted form of drama.

Two reputed Telugu playwrights need mention in this connec­tion. Both functioned in the latter part of the last century. One was Dharmavaram Ramakrishnamacharya, lawyer by profession, and uncle of the great actor, Bellary T. Raghava. Author of 28 plays, he had the distinction of authoring the first tragedy in Telugu, entitled Vishada Sarangadhara, bearing ample traces of Shakespeare’s influences. He wrote three other tragedies also. In dividing the Acts into scenes, in the abandonment of the three unities, and in the subtle and realistic portrayal of conflicting emotions, these plays mark a bold departure from the canons of Sanskrit dramaturgy.

The other was his contemporary, Kolachalam Srinivasa Rao, who also wrote the same number of plays – 28. Probably, there was a keen, but friendly, rivalry between the two. He was also an ardent admirer and a good student of Shakespeare. One of his best-known plays, Ramaraju(more popular as The Fall of Vijayanagar) deserves mention as a powerful tragedy – exploiting the elements of history, legend and sentiment. This play attained greater celebrity because it featured the great actor, Bellary Raghava, as one of the main characters – Pathan Rustum, with all the villainy of a Richard III.

The other famous playwrights of the first three decades of this century, Vedam Venkataraya Sastri and Panuganti Lakshmi­narasimha Rao, made certain innovations in their plays, which could be traced to Shakespeare. In the former’s popular play, Prataparudriyam, the feigned madness of the political strategist, Yugandhara, reminds us of the scenes on the health in King Lear. His comic characters bear a family likeness to the clowns of Shakespeare. His Bobbili Yuddham might recall to our mind the chronical plays of Shakespeare.

The broad humour of Panuganti (in Kanthabharanamand other comedies) is not unlike the bawdy wit of some of the characters in The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Comparisons have also been made between his Prachandu Chanakya and Shakespeare’s Othello.

A few playwrights had openly acknowledged their debt to Shakespeare. Dr. P. V. Rajamannar, in one of his essays, mentions one of them, P. Srinivasacharya, who stated in the preface to his play. Kanakangi: “In writing this drama, I had before me the best tragedies of the immortal Shakespeare to guide me in the development of characters.” But such writers are few and far between, as the rest do not show much of this influence.

There has been a considerable volume of critical, or at least expository scholarship on Shakespeare – in the Indian languages as well as in English. As in the English-speaking world so in India. Early in this century, around 1910 or so, there were two sizable volumes of general, thematic interpretation and textual exegesis, devoted to the two great tragedies – Hamlet and Othello. They are titled Hamlet Unveiled and Othello Unveiled, authored by Rentala Venkata Subba Rao of Madras, a lawyer by profession and a research scholar by choice. His two volumes, appearing as they did, a few years after the publication of A. C Broadley’s Lectures on Shakespearean Tragedy, were in the nature of a “New Varorium” edition, original in approach, encyclopaedic in range and lucid in exposition.

It can hardly be argued that there has ever been a Shakespeare school in the evolution of modern Telugu drama, or Indian drama. Even in the presentation of character and the conception of a hero, the influence of Shakespeare was vague and indirect, if pervasive. A point made by Mr. Sham Lal here is that the so-­called heroes of Shakespeare are really anti-heroes (though not from the theatre of the absurd). “They are not men who are out to have the better of their circumstances”; he says, “They are creatures of their circumstances. They are redeemed not by what they do, but by the words which the poet puts into their mouths.” Describing each of them as a poet, he adds, “In fact, it is their poetry which often saves the situation from getting farcical.”

A similar note is struck by the veteran Telugu writer and journalist, Mr. V. R. Nada, himself no negligible playwright, when he observed: “The uniqueness of Shakespeare is that he is great even in his faults, and they are more than covered up by his command over words, his mastery of rhythm, his flash of phrase.” According to him, this “verbal genius” stands out in one whose appeal is “elemental, primordial.”

In his own plays, Mr. Narla makes it clear; beyond any doubt, he had never dared to go to Shakespeare for inspiration or guidance. He had other models, a wide range of them from Synge to Sartre, Chekhov to Strindberg and Ionesco to Pirandello. “As no plant can thrive under the spreading shadow of the mighty banyan, no playwright can flourish” if he were to come too much under the spell of Shakespeare. During the past 60 or 70 years we have had in my part of the country at least one Andhra Shakespeare for each generation, and by and large, their work has turned out to be sound and fury signifying nothing.”

In Telugu, as in other languages, Shakespeare has many admirers but few imitators. But there are few writers not affected by his genius for the apt word, the vivid image, the striking phrase and the unique character with a universal appeal. He is a Powerful stimulant for imaginative articulation. While remaining a closed book to those barred by the linguistic barrier or handicapped by a limited vocabulary, he continues to be a rewarding guide to new vistas for those who can use him as an open sesame in the commonwealth linked only by the ties of language and literature.