Asian Interventions in Global Shakespeare 'All the world's his stage' 9780367615154, 9780367615192, 9781003105329

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Introduction: Asian Interventions in Global Shakespeare: ‘All the World’s His Stage’
Part I The Asian ‘Global’ and Its Discontents
1 Making Meaning between the Local and the Global: Performing Shakespeare in India Today
2 How Could We Present a ‘A Non-localised’ Shakespeare in Asia? Colonialism and Atlantic Slave-Trade in Yamanote-Jijosha’s The Tempest
3 ‘We Will Perform in Measure, Time and Place’: Synchronicity, Signification and Cultural Mobility in Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio’s Cantonese-Language Macbeth
4 From Cultural Mobility to Cultural Misunderstanding: Japanese Style of Love in Akio Miyazawa’s Adaptation in the Cardenio Project, Motorcycle Don Quixote
5 Something Rotten in the State of Dankot: Hamlet and the Kingdom of Nepal
Part II The Asian Cinematic and Digital Sphere: Democratising the ‘Global’
6 Globalising the City: Kolkata Films and the Millennial Bard
7 Shakespeare’s Uses in Chinese Media and Trans-Sphere
8 Bardolators and Bardoclasts: Shakespeare in Manga/Anime and Cosplay
9 Shakespeare on the Internet: Global and South Asian Appropriations
10 The Performance Archive and the Digital Construction of Asian Shakespeare
Part III Historicising the Asian Global: Shakespeare as a World Poet
11 Global Shakespeare and the Question of a World Literature
12 Beyond Bardolatry: Rabindranath Tagore’s Critique of Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Afterword: All the World’s His Stage, 2016
Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Shakespeare’s Plays and Adaptations

Citation preview

ASIAN INTERVENTIONS IN GLOBAL SHAKESPEARE

This volume critically analyses and theorises Asian interventions in the expanding phenomenon of Global Shakespeare. It interrogates Shakespeare’s ‘universality’ from Asian perspectives: how this has been modified or even replaced by the ‘global bard’ as a recognisable brand, and how Asian Shakespeares have contributed to or subverted this process by both facilitating the worldwide dissemination of the bard’s plays and challenging and resisting the very templates through which they become globally legible. Critically acclaimed Asian productions have prominently figured at premier Western festivals, and popular Asian appropriations like Bollywood, manga and anime have created new kinds of globally accessible Shakespeare. Essays in this collection engage with the emergent critical issues: the efficacy of definitions of the ‘local’, ‘global’, ‘transnational’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ and of the liminalities and mobilities in between. They further examine the politics of ‘West’ and ‘East’, the evolving markers of the ‘Asian’ and the equation of the ‘glocal’ with the ‘Asian’; they attend to performance and archiving protocols and bring the current debates on translation, appropriation, and world literature to speak to the concerns of global and transnational Shakespeare. These investigations analyse recent innovative Asian theatre productions, popular cinematic and manga appropriations and the increasing presence of Shakespeare in the Asian digital sphere. They provide an Asian standpoint and lens in rereading the processes of cultural globalisation and the mobilisation of Shakespeare. Poonam Trivedi is currently the vice-chair of the Asian Shakespeare Association and has taught English at Indraprastha College, University of Delhi, India. She received her doctorate from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK, and was the secretary of the Shakespeare Society of India from 1993 to 1999. Paromita Chakravarti is Professor, Department of English, Jadavpur University, India, and has been Director, School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University. She completed her doctoral studies on early modern discourses of madness from the University of Oxford, UK. Ted Motohashi is Professor of Cultural Studies at the Tokyo University of Economics, Japan. He received his DPhil in literature from the University of York, UK, in 1995. He is a leading translator into Japanese of the works by Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Rey Chow, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy, among others.

ASIAN INTERVENTIONS IN GLOBAL SHAKESPEARE ‘All the World’s His Stage’

Edited by Poonam Trivedi, Paromita Chakravarti and Ted Motohashi

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Poonam Trivedi, Paromita Chakravarti and Ted Motohashi; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Poonam Trivedi, Paromita Chakravarti and Ted Motohashi to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-61515-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-61519-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-10532-9 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

List of Figures Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction: Asian Interventions in Global Shakespeare: ‘All the World’s His Stage’ Poonam Trivedi, Paromita Chakravarti and Ted Motohashi

viii x xi

1

PART I

The Asian ‘Global’ and Its Discontents 1 Making Meaning between the Local and the Global: Performing Shakespeare in India Today Poonam Trivedi 2 How Could We Present a ‘A Non-localised’ Shakespeare in Asia? Colonialism and Atlantic Slave-Trade in Yamanote-Jijosha’s The Tempest Ted Motohashi 3 ‘We Will Perform in Measure, Time and Place’: Synchronicity, Signification and Cultural Mobility in Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio’s Cantonese-Language Macbeth Mike Ingham

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33

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Contents

4 From Cultural Mobility to Cultural Misunderstanding: Japanese Style of Love in Akio Miyazawa’s Adaptation in the Cardenio Project, Motorcycle Don Quixote Mariko Anzai 5 Something Rotten in the State of Dankot: Hamlet and the Kingdom of Nepal Andronicus Aden

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PART II

The Asian Cinematic and Digital Sphere: Democratising the ‘Global’

107

6 Globalising the City: Kolkata Films and the Millennial Bard Paromita Chakravarti

109

7 Shakespeare’s Uses in Chinese Media and Trans-Sphere Lingui Yang

128

8 Bardolators and Bardoclasts: Shakespeare in Manga/ Anime and Cosplay Yukari Yoshihara

146

9 Shakespeare on the Internet: Global and South Asian Appropriations Thomas Kullmann

160

10 The Performance Archive and the Digital Construction of Asian Shakespeare Judy Celine Ick

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PART III

Historicising the Asian Global: Shakespeare as a World Poet 11 Global Shakespeare and the Question of a World Literature Supriya Chaudhuri

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Contents

12 Beyond Bardolatry: Rabindranath Tagore’s Critique of Shakespeare’s The Tempest Swati Ganguly Afterword: All the World’s His Stage, 2016 Michael Dobson Bibliography Index of Names Index of Shakespeare’s Plays and Adaptations

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232 244 248

FIGURES

I.1

1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 3.1 3.2 3.3

‘All the World’s His Stage’: the Globe as stage/crystal ball. Poster for the Asian Shakespeare Association’s Delhi 2016 Conference. Graphic illustration by Trinankur Banerjee The closet scene in K. Madavane’s Hamlet, courtesy Madavane Rosalind and Celia go to the Forest in I Don’t Like It/As You Like It, courtesy Rajat Kapoor Yuki Ellias in her solo improvisational show Dying to Succeed, courtesy ASA Delhi Fairies and sailors representing the storm scene in the Yamanote Tempest. Photo by bozzo Ferdinand and Miranda carrying a ‘Log’ with Prospero watching on in the Yamanote Tempest. Photo by bozzo Caliban and his slave counterpart in the Yamanote Tempest. Photo by bozzo Prospero in a coffin within his nightmarish vision in the Yamanote Tempest. Photo by bozzo The departure of Ariel and Prospero in the Yamanote Tempest. Photo by bozzo Macbeth visits the witches (Guangzhou production); note the parasol, courtesy Tang Shu-wing Banquet ghost scene: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, courtesy Tang Shu-wing Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in second half after role/gender swap, courtesy Tang Shu-wing

5 20 24 27 35 37 40 42 45 52 56 63

Figures

4.1 Promotional poster for Motorcycle Don Quixote, courtesy Akio Miyazawa 4.2 Tadao supports wounded Lucinda – that is, Machiko – in Tadao’s mystical vision. Courtesy Miyazawa 4.3 Sakazaki wants to know Machiko’s past history, but Machiko remains mum about it. After the brief eye contact, Sakazaki disappears into the wing curtain and Machiko follows after him. Tadao, bestriding his motorcycle, feigns sleep. Courtesy Miyazawa 4.4 Machiko helps Yuka practise Natasha’s lines in Chekhov’s play Three Sisters. Courtesy Miyazawa 5.1 Title page of a copy of Shri Atal Bahadur (1906) 5.2 Scene from the staging of the Nepali Hamlet (2015); courtesy of the British Council in Nepal. A Hindu Hamlet (Divya Dev) in mourning contemplates the killing of Claudius (Kamalmani Nepal) at prayer. Courtesy Himalayan Times 6.1 Parvathy Baul in Arshinagar 6.2 Zulfiqar, a Kolkata noir

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70 75

77 81 96

101 118 123

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This collection of essays emerges largely out of the presentations made at the second biennial conference of the Asian Shakespeare Association held in Delhi, 1–3 December 2016. The editors would like to thank all those who made the conference, and hence the book, possible: the partners – Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Shri Ram Centre for Performing Arts and National School of Drama – and the sponsors – Indian Council of Cultural Relations, Prakriti Foundation, Raza Foundation, Sahitya Akademi, Sangeet Natak Akademi and Shakespeare Association of America. We are also grateful to the Executive of the Asian Shakespeare Association and the band of enthusiastic volunteers for their organisational support.

CONTRIBUTORS

Andronicus Aden is currently pursuing a MPhil. in English on ‘Shakespearean

Adaptations in Nepali’ from the Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He has also received his MA in English from Jadavpur University. His areas of interest include postcolonial Shakespearean studies, Nepali literature and Lepcha folklore. He is currently working as a project fellow in the departmental project “Narratives of Faith: Devotional Poetry in the Diverse Traditions of Eastern Regions of India”, under RUSA 2.0. Mariko Anzai is currently a PhD student at the Graduate Institute of Cross-

Culture Studies Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan, where she has taught Chinese to Japanese translation classes for 12 years as an instructor. She is also a professional translator from Chinese to Japanese and was a senior editor for the biggest translation agency in Taiwan. Her main research interests are translation activities in Taiwan under Japanese rule and Shakespeare translations and adaptations. Paromita Chakravarti is Professor, Department of English, Jadavpur Univer-

sity, and has been Director, School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University. She completed her doctoral studies on early modern discourses of madness from the University of Oxford. She teaches Renaissance drama, women’s writing, queer and film studies. She has been a visiting fellow at the universities of Oxford, Liverpool, Amsterdam, Birmingham, Hyderabad and Delhi. She has published widely on Shakespeare and early modern studies in Renaissance Studies, Shakespearean International Yearbook, Shakespeare Bulletin and other international journals and edited volumes. Her book Women Contesting Culture, coedited with Prof Kavita Panjabi, was published in 2012. Her latest publication,

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co-edited with Poonam Trivedi, is Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas: ‘Local Habitations’ published by Routledge (2019). Supriya Chaudhuri is Professor (Emerita) in the Department of English, Jadav-

pur University. She works on European renaissance literature, modernism, philosophy, theory and Indian cultural history. Her recent publications include chapters in The Cambridge Companion to Rabindranath Tagore (CUP, 2020); Eastern Resonances in Early Modern England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Blind Spots of Knowledge in Shakespeare’s Plays (De Gruyter/ Medieval Institute Publications, 2019); The Cambridge History of Travel Writing (CUP, 2019); Celebrating Shakespeare: Commemoration and Cultural Memory (CUP, 2015); and Renaissance Shakespeare, Shakespeare Renaissances (Delaware UP, 2014). Her translations appear in the Oxford Tagore Translations series. Michael Dobson is Director of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-

Avon; Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Birmingham; an executive trustee of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust; and an honorary governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He trained at Oxford, where he won the Charles Oldham Shakespeare Prize in 1981, and has worked and held visiting fellowships at institutions, including Oxford, Harvard, University of California, Los Angeles, Peking University and the University of London. He holds honorary degrees from Craiova University in Romania and Lund University in Sweden. Among many book chapters, reviews and scholarly articles, his publications include The Making of the National Poet (1992), The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2001, 2015), England’s Elizabeth (with Nicola Watson, 2002), Performing Shakespeare’s Tragedies Today (2006) and Shakespeare and Amateur Performance (2011). Swati Ganguly is Professor of English at the Department of English, Visva-

Bharati. Her doctoral dissertation was on gendering the grotesque in Renaissance drama. Her areas of active engagement include Renaissance theatre and culture, feminist studies, women’s writing, translation studies and Rabindranath Tagore and his times. Swati received the Charles Wallace Fellowship for translation studies in 1996 at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, and the New India Fellowship for writing a book on the history of Visva-Bharati. She has translated and coedited The Stream Within (1947–1997), a collection of Bengali women’s short stories (Kolkata: Stree, 1999). She has co-edited two anthologies of essays on Rabindranath Tagore: Rabindranath Tagore and the Nation: Essays in Politics, Society and Culture (Kolkata, Punascha, in association with Visva-Bharati, 2011) and Towards Tagore (Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 2014). Her book on Tagore’s University (1921–1961) is forthcoming from Permanent Black.

Contributors xiii

Judy Celine Ick is Professor at the Department of English and Comparative

Literature at the University of the Philippines and current Vice-Chairperson of the Asian Shakespeare Association. She is also an actor and dramaturg for several professional theatre companies in the Philippines. Her most recent book, Shakespeare’s Asian Journeys: Critical Encounters, Cultural Geographies, and the Politics of Travel (co-edited with Beatrice Lei and Poonam Trivedi), was released by Routledge in 2017. Mike Ingham is Professor in the Department of English Studies at Lingnan

University, Hong Kong. Mike is a founder member and director of Theatre Action drama company in Hong Kong. He has published on Shakespearean adaptation, performance studies and stylistics and has had numerous publications in adaptation studies and cinema studies, as well as in Hong Kong creative writing in English (City Voices and City Stage and Hong Kong: a Cultural and Literary History). His contribution on ‘Shakespeare and Jazz’ featured in the 2016 Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare and his monograph for Routledge, Stageplay and Screen: The Intermediality between Film and Theatre, was published in 2017. He has also worked as a teacher educator in Hong Kong, specialising in language arts. He is currently working on a Shakespearean intermediality and intertextuality project and, with his brother Richard, on a cutting-edge syntax and stylistics Shakespeare study. Thomas Kullmann is Professor of English Literature at the University of

Osnabrück. His main research interests are Shakespeare and Renaissance culture; English children’s fiction and British-Indian discourses. His publications include two books on Shakespeare: Abschied, Reise und Wiedersehen bei Shakespeare (Parting, Travelling and Reunion in Shakespeare) and William Shakespeare: Eine Einführung (An Introduction to Shakespeare). He also published a monograph on landscape and weather in the nineteenth-century English novel and an introduction to English children’s and young adults’ fiction as well as numerous articles on English renaissance literature, Victorian and twentieth-century literature and culture, and children’s literature. Ted Motohashi is Professor of Cultural Studies at the Tokyo University of Economics. He received his DPhil in literature from the University of York, UK, in 1995. His publications include several books on drama and cultural and postcolonial studies, and most recently he co-wrote with Tomoka Tsukamoto an essay on Miyagi Satoshi’s theatre, “Deconstructing the Saussurean System of Signification: Miyagi Satoshi and His Mimetic Dramaturgy in Miyagi-Noh Othello” (in Graham Holderness and Brian Loughrey eds., Critical Survey, forthcoming). He is a leading translator into Japanese of the works by Homi Bhabha,

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Gayatri Spivak, Rey Chow, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy, among others. Poonam Trivedi taught English at Indraprastha College, University of Delhi. She received her doctorate from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK. Her latest publications (co-edited) are Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas: ‘Local Habitations’ (Routledge: New York, 2018) and Shakespeare’s Asian Journeys: Critical Encounters, Cultural Geographies, and the Politics of Travel (Routledge: New York, 2017). She has also co-edited Fields of Play: Sport, Literature and Culture (Orient Blackswan: New Delhi, 2015), Re-playing Shakespeare in Asia (Routledge: New York and Delhi, 2010) and India’s Shakespeare: Translation, Interpretation and Performance (Delaware: 2005 and Pearson: Delhi, 2006). She has authored a CD-ROM ‘King Lear in India’ (2006) and has published articles in The Shakespearean International Yearbook, Shakespeare Survey, Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage, Borrowers and Lenders, Literature and Film Quarterly, Hamlet Studies and other national and international journals on Shakespeare in India, performance and film versions of Shakespeare, on women in Shakespeare and on Indian theatre. Poonam Trivedi is currently the vice-chair of the Asian Shakespeare Association and was the secretary of the Shakespeare Society of India from 1993 to 1999. Lingui Yang is Professor of English, Donghua University. He has published

several dozen essays on Shakespeare and Shakespeare reception and edited books on Shakespeare studies, including Shakespeare and Asia (2010), an issue of Edwin Mellen Press’s Shakespeare Yearbook and Shakespeare in Old and New Asias (University of Lodz Press, 2013), a volume of Multicultural Shakespeare. He is the general editor of Shakespeare Studies in China, a series of seven books (Changchun: Northeast Normal University, 2012), and another series of five (Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2019). He is currently working on a monograph on materialist criticism and reception of Shakespeare and a new series of three books on Shakespeare studies for the Commercial Press. Yukari Yoshihara is an Associate Professor at the University of Tsukuba. Her

publications include ‘Ophelia and Her Magical Daughters: The Afterlives of Ophelia in Japanese Pop Culture’ in Shakespeare and the Supernatural (2020) in Victoria Bladen and Yan Brailowsky eds., ‘Manga and Shakespeare’ in Fusami Ogi et al. eds., Women’s Manga in Asia and Beyond (2019), ‘“Raw-Savage” Othello: The First Staged Japanese Adaptation of Othello (1903) and Japanese Colonialism’ in Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin eds., Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation (2014), ‘Is This Shakespeare?: Inoue Hidenori’s Adaptations of Shakespeare’ in Poonam Trivedi and Minami Ryuta eds., Re-Playing Shakespeare in Asia (2010) and ‘Popular Shakespeare in Japan’, Shakespeare Survey vol. 60 (2007).

INTRODUCTION Asian Interventions in Global Shakespeare: ‘All the World’s His Stage’ Poonam Trivedi, Paromita Chakravarti and Ted Motohashi

Totus Mundus agit histrionem (all the world is a playground) is said to have been the motto of the original Globe theatre in London which aimed to hold the whole world in its performative ambit. Today, the literal or stricter meaning of the phrase, deriving from Petronius, ‘all the world plays the actor’ is perhaps more applicable, as it is well established that the whole world performs the works of the Globe’s best-known playwright, William Shakespeare. Indeed, the global spread of Shakespeare is no longer a point of debate. His presence in education, theatre, digital and social media, film, popular culture, blogs, vlogs, business and even sport is increasingly evident and copiously documented. He is everywhere: his words seem to speak to all people and situations. The story of this spread has also been told, though more patchily, fitfully and variously, in differing voices. The aim of this book is to fill out and augment this story foregrounding the fundamental contributions emerging in this regard, particularly from Asia, to rectify tendencies to map the ‘global’ selectively. And given the nature of the globality of Shakespeare today, one does not need to reiterate that collectively Asia is not only the world’s largest regional economy but also increasingly the centre of the world economy; it has been a motor force of globalisation and now has become a site of global interchange of some scale and inf luence in both economic and cultural spheres. That a South Korean film, Parasite, directed by Bong Joon Ho, made Oscar history by becoming the first non-English language film to win the Best Picture Award, plus three others, at the Motion Picture Academy awards in Hollywood this year (2020) is a confirmation that Asian creativity has arrived.1 We need to foreground this and read globalisation of Shakespeare through the larger Asian Shakespeare phenomenon, for the

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Asian continent has contributed in no small measure to the worldwide presence of Shakespeare. To recount some Asian milestones in the development of Global Shakespeare: it was the world tours of innovative Japanese and Chinese theatre productions by Ninagawa Yukio, Suzuki Tadashi, Miyagi Satoshi, Yasuda Masahiro, Wuo Hsing Kuo, Oh Tae-suk, Annette Leday and David Ruvie’s kathakali production since the 1990s that intrigued audiences, won critical plaudits and contributed to the reorientation of the Europhone gaze to establish the ambit of the ‘global’. Multicultural and multilingual Asian performances as well as global projects which followed – for example, Ong Ken Seng’s Desdemona (2001) and Lear Dreaming (2012), Tim Supple’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2006) and Stephen Greenblatt’s Cardenio Project (2003 onwards) – shifted and pluralised the sites of location, ethnicity and aesthetics in the engagement with Shakespeare. Popular Asian appropriations have created new kinds of globally accessible Shakespeare through films, especially from Bollywood, in the twenty-first century. Seven productions from Asian countries, including four from the Indian subcontinent, were commissioned to perform at the Globe to Globe festival in 2012 acknowledging the vitality and transportability of their versioning of the plays. Path-breaking inventions in the digital and graphic spheres, from the far East, particularly Japan, manga and anime, have enabled a different kind of circulation of Shakespeare not seen before. While the presence of Asia in the Shakespearean canon is virtually insignificant – there are only four references to it – three out of these four references to ‘Asia’ (“Roaming clean through the bounds of Asia” (Comedy of Errors, 1.i.133), “fetch  .  .  . from the farthest inch of Asia” (Much Ado about Nothing, 2.i.232), “Extended Asia” Anthony and Cleopatra, 1.ii.90)2 signify a spatial vastness and a sizeable territorial spread. Today, this same extensive, boundless dimension of the ‘Asia’ of the Elizabethan imagination may, in reverse, be seen as mapping what the Asian engagements with Shakespeare have conferred on his position. This ‘global bard’ as a recognisable brand has been not only significantly facilitated but also subverted by Asian Shakespeares: the worldwide dissemination of the bard’s plays by Asian theatre companies and films were productions which challenged and resisted the very templates through which they became globally legible. Asian Shakespeares may be seen to have intervened performatively, aesthetically and politically; they have inserted themselves in what was a predominantly Western performative practice and interfered with its protocols, unsettling modes and interpretations, disturbing with their appropriations the received wisdom, to provoke new meanings and inf lections. Asian Shakespeares may at times be seen as being subsumed by the global; however, it is the argument of this book that not only are they constitutive of the global but they have shifted the grounds of the global. They have instead been noted, especially after the Globe to Globe Festival, to have “reversed . . . the dynamic of inclusion and exclusion”3 – that is, the cultural ownership of Shakespeare.

Introduction

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If Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan needed, a decade ago, to question “Why Shakespeare”4 in Asia, and still earlier, John Gillies to wonder if Shakespeare, “part of an Englishman’s constitution (as Jane Austen put it), is . . . part of an Asian constitution too?”,5 today globalisation has made obsolete such quizzing. And though Alexa Huang in 2011 voiced apprehensions of Asian Shakespeares “remaining an ostracising label” owned neither by Asian performative studies nor by Shakespearean performance analysts,6 Asian Shakespeares have since traversed some distance. As Dennis Kennedy himself has lately acknowledged, Asian Shakespeare is “no longer an exception . . . it now seems almost naturalised. It is no longer possible for Shakespeareans to ignore it”, and more significantly, “it is not a subcategory of Shakespeare or a subcategory of performance but part of an evolving whole”.7 The discourse of Global Shakespeare too has accordingly evolved: earlier it required documentation, visibility and ethnographic detailing; now it has moved from the fidelity debate to a greater openness to ‘other’ Shakespeares, to an acknowledgement of their vitality and an interest in the new ideas and innovative forms they bring to bear on the Shakespearean canon, particularly in collaboration with the digital and technological spheres. As Mark Thornton Burnett has put it, “to view Hamlet through a global lens . . . is to reach beyond our own cultural perimeters and recognise a plurality of expressions of Shakespeare’s work” and the “significance of uncustomary positions”. And further, “to spectate from the point of view of the periphery [is to] take embeddedness of stereotypical western conventions to task”.8 While considerable work has been done in the last three decades on colonial and postcolonial engagements with Shakespeare in individual Asian countries, the idea of examining these negotiations within the collective rubric of ‘Asian Shakespeares’ is a fairly recent one, facilitated in large measure through the conferences and conversations among Asian scholars of Shakespeare. The pioneering volumes published on this topic, two anthologies entitled Re-playing Shakespeare in Asia (2010) edited by Poonam Trivedi and Minami Ryuta and Shakespeare in Asia: Contemporary Performance edited by Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan (2010), set the scene, recovering chief ly the performative contribution to Shakespeare from Asia. The more recent Shakespeare’s Asian Journeys: Critical Encounters, Cultural Geographies, and the Politics of Travel (2017), edited by Bi-qui Beatrice Lei, Judy Celine Ick and Poonam Trivedi, took a more critical and political perspective on Asian contributions. This volume builds on the substantial ideas and scholarship of the earlier works to extend the discourse, tracking the changes even while cumulatively asserting and creating a critical mass of Asian Shakespeares and thus pushing the boundaries of the accepted paradigms of what is now ‘Global Shakespeare’. As a matter of fact, the capacious and more f lexible purview of the global has been enabling for Asian Shakespeares, moving them beyond the national, colonial and postcolonial narratives to positions which can accommodate a larger and more representative

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number of localisations. The essays thus focus on the emergent critical issues of the politics of language and translation, the dividing lines between the universal/global/transnational and cosmopolitan, and how we identify and theorise the liminal spaces and mobilities in between. They extend the debate to bring the concerns of world literature to speak to the global with regard to Shakespeare. They address the continuing politics of ‘West’ and ‘East’ and foreground the radicalisation distance reading may produce. They also scrutinise the shifts produced by changed performance protocols, the opportune commercialisation in media versus political propaganda and sociological comment through appropriation. Seeming gaps in cultural translation and mobility are reckoned with, as is the destabilisation and re-purposed circulation of the bard in digital and interactive social media. To speak of ‘Asian’ Shakespeares is, however, to subscribe neither to an orientalising oneness of Asia nor to an essentialising oppositional occidentalism. It is instead to underline certain complementary dimensions of the past and the present, commonalities of history and sociopolitical struggles among Asia’s diverse constituent parts which condition its responses to Shakespeare. Asia is not a mere geographic space but a putative regional collation of tendencies of economic and cultural growth and f lows; it therefore forms a nexus of critical discursive entities and a theoretical locus. The essays in this collection will therefore explore how and to what extent this Asian phenomenon is vital in understanding the present and future shape of Shakespearean studies and industries. The poster of the Asian Shakespeare Association conference of 2016 (presentations of which form the core of this collection) imaged a hand holding up a glass globe, ref lecting the Globe theatre presided by Shakespeare, as also a crystal ball, representing simultaneously the past, present and future of Shakespeare performances. Although Global Shakespeare is a given, it would be a mistake to attribute the spread of his plays to their so-called universal qualities and to assert that all cultures value his work equally for the same qualities. Universal Shakespeare was a construct of colonialism, part of the civilising impetus of the empire, fixed and unchanging, meaning the same for all. The critical difference of Global Shakespeare is that he is distinct in different parts of the globe, speaking in different voices, responsive to different stimuli and manifesting himself in diverse, re-formed and renewed instantiations. In fact, the global has exposed the ‘constructed’ nature of the ‘universal’ as an accident of history and an imposition of political regimes. Today, Shakespeare is everywhere, but in different colours and guises and very local, which is what gives it its distinctive strength. It is no longer required to argue that the global must of necessity be a ‘collaborative’ transnational production like those of Karen Bier, Tim Supple and Ong Keng Sen. The reception history of these, in fact, shows that they were more experimental than successful experiences and, in retrospect, seem devised more to exclude than to elucidate meanings. In a world of increasing movement of

Introduction

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‘All the World’s His Stage’: the Globe as stage/crystal ball. Poster for the Asian Shakespeare Association’s Delhi 2016 Conference

FIGURE I.1

Source: Graphic illustration by Trinankur Banerjee.

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human capital, of migrations and shifting ethnoscapes, where identities are being contested and are reforming, where cultures are dynamic and not discrete, if Shakespeare does continue it is because through him and his words people can perceive, articulate and critique the shifting def lections of life.

Part I: The ‘Asian Global’ and Its Discontents The opening part of this book interrogates the common assumptions about what constitutes ‘Asian’-ness in Shakespeare productions: whether these replicate an orientalist politics, whether Asian Shakespeare performances can attain global reach without being obviously ‘Asian’ and the ways in which we understand the vexed relationships between the local, global and the glocal. It also dissects the very notion of ‘Asia’ and the geopolitics of what gets represented as Asian or Global Shakespeare in a context of unequal resources, digital divide and the fraught relationship of nations and regions. Poonam Trivedi’s essay, ‘Making Meaning between the Local and the Global: Performing Shakespeare in India Today’, sets the tone by examining three Indian Shakespeare productions staged for the Asian Shakespeare Association’s biennial conference in Delhi, 2016 (Hamlet, I Don’t Like It/As You Like It and Dying to Succeed), in contrasting performative styles and languages (HindiUrdu, English and Marathi) to demonstrate the diverse ways in which Indian adaptations intersect with localisation and globalities. Grounding its discussion on the debates about language, accessibility and belonging provoked by the Globe to Globe Festival of 2012, the essay explores how these theatre experiments complicate and are complicated by the evolving notions of the ‘national’ and the ‘ethnic’, and their entanglement with the ‘transnational’, highlighting a politics of both ‘Indian’ and ‘global’. In so doing, the essay problematises the idea of a global/Asian Shakespeare, suggesting that “Shakespeare in India today makes meaning ‘betwixt’ the reified notions of the local and the global, and through the shifting positions thereof ”. Scholars have pointed out how globalisation requires Asian Shakespeare productions to fit into internationally accessible cultural templates while demanding local colour from them, a differentiation from mainstream Shakespeare performances so that they can find a unique niche in the global market. Ted Motohashi’s essay, ‘How could we present a “non-localised” Shakespeare in Asia? Colonialism and Atlantic Slave-Trade in Yamanote-Jijosha’s The Tempest’, questions these orientalist expectations of indigenous theatrical forms from Asian Shakespeare productions. It analyses Yamanote-Jijosha’s The Tempest (2015, Tokyo), which resists this tendency and locates itself not in any obviously Japanese context but in the politico-historical site of European colonialism symbolised by its presentation of the shipwreck and Atlantic slave-trade. By doing so, it revisits the question of what constitutes being an ‘Asian’ or ‘Japanese’ production in the context of Global Shakespeares.

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Continuing this line of enquiry, Mike Ingham’s essay, ‘“We Will Perform in Measure, Time and Place”: Synchronicity, Signification and Cultural Mobility in Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio’s Cantonese-Language Macbeth’, examines how, unlike most Asian Shakespeares, Tang’s adaptations are not specific to a traditional aesthetic form or style, although like Asian theatre they generally eschew realistic representation. In this minimalistic production, the Macbeths are represented as a contemporary Hong Kong couple experiencing the 2014 umbrella revolution, subtly highlighted by bringing in parasols and actual umbrellas as props. Hong Kong’s unique position, poised as Ingham notes, “between the global and the local and between Western and Chinese traditions, offers a unique vantage-point for an Asian Shakespeare intervention that does not fall into the more clearly defined category of a national theatre or a heritage genre production”. As such, Tang’s play offers, like Trivedi’s Indian productions, an in-betweenness, a porosity of the categories of the global and the local and thus problematises the expectations of an indigenised local required of Asian productions that Motohashi’s essay highlights. In a different vein, Mariko Anzai’s ‘From Cultural Mobility to Cultural Misunderstanding: The Japanese Style of Love in Akio Miyazawa’s Adaptation in the Cardenio Project, Motorcycle Don Quixote’ illustrates the inaccessibility of some Asian adaptations to global translation, which is termed a “cultural misunderstanding”, rather than a failure of the attempt at cultural mobility in globalisation. The essay analyses the Japanese contribution to the Cardenio Project in which 12 dramatists all over the world were invited to write their own versions of Cardenio, Stephen Greenblatt and Charles Mee’s collaborative work inspired by a lost Shakespeare play and based on episodes in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, to investigate how cultural mobility works in the case of Shakespeare. Focusing on director Akio Miyazawa’s Cardenio adaptation, Motorcycle Don Quixote (2006), Anzai reveals how Miyazawa’s transformation of the play to fit Japanese mores was largely incomprehensible to the non-Japanese/Americans and thus became a site which demonstrated the complex ways in which cross-cultural encounters may produce so-called misunderstandings as mobility. Andronicus Aden’s essay, ‘Something Rotten in the State of Dankot: Hamlet and the Kingdom of Nepal’, extends the category of Asian Shakespeares, which has been overrepresented by prominent nations with resources to present their Shakespearean productions in both a real and a virtual global arena. Aden’s essay chronicles, for the first time, the history of Nepalese Shakespeare adaptations focusing on a reworking of Hamlet (and Macbeth) as Shri Atal Bahadur (1906), by Lt. Pahalman Singh Swar, a unique adaptation which used Shakespeare to critique the tyrannical regime of the Ranas (1846–1951) and propagate political change. The essay also links other Hamlets set in the Himalayan regions, Amarendranath Dutta’s Hariraj (1897), Vishal Bharadwaj’s 2014 Haider (both set in Kashmir) and Sherwood Wu’s Prince of the Himalayas (2006, set in Tibet), all of which comment on political issues urging us to think of possibilities of

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configuring Asian Shakespeares through regions transcending national borders rather than through nations.

Part II: The Asian Cinematic and Digital Sphere: Democratising the ‘Global’ The five essays in this part focus on the global mediascape, the cinematic, televisual and digital spheres, to demonstrate how this borderless space generates Asian Shakespeares using platforms, media, genres and forms which are already always globalised, using global technology with a global reach. While Asian Shakespeare films, TV shows, cyber platforms and digital pop culture creatives and archives produce new kinds of globally accessible Asian Shakespeare, they also usurp the cultural hegemony of a Western model of globalisation by infusing the local into the global, intervening by their unusual appropriations in the use of Shakespeare as a global resource. Paromita Chakravarti’s essay, ‘Globalising the City: Kolkata Films and the Millennial Bard’, discusses how some recent Bengali films, chief ly Arshinagar (Romeo and Juliet) and Zulfikar ( Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra), use Shakespeare to critique the impact of globalisation on the Kolkata cityscape and ideas of Bengali identity. In these films, Shakespearean plots are deployed to narrate the stories of disappearing Kolkata communities, the poor, the dispossessed and the minorities as the city transforms into a developed global metropolis. Chakravarti argues that in these films the bard emerges as an icon of cultural and community diversity against global homogenisation, enabling filmmakers to break the mould of bourgeois Bengali cinema to reimagine the city and discover alternate templates of intercommunity exchanges and cohabitation. Thus, these regional films are deploying Shakespeare to engage critically with the changing urban spaces of a globalising Asian economy. In ‘Shakespeare’s Uses in Chinese Media and Trans-sphere’, Lingui Yang explores the status of Shakespeare within the global media sphere in China transcending not just national boundaries but also the binaries of elite and popular cultures, enabling appropriations in both niche art cinema like Sherwood Hu’s The Prince of the Himalayas or in more commercial films like Banquet or television shows like Drama for Life to cater simultaneously to a global and a local market. Yang emphasises the f lexible use of Shakespeare’s cultural capital in China, equally harnessed for the propagation of the humanist values of his plays, but also exploited in commercial television dramas for popular appeal and for the promotion of a Chinese soft power. He references a diverse range of Shakespearean appropriations which reveal the construction of a new Asian global in the media trans-sphere which is both modern and postmodern, reinforcing yet challenging Shakespeare’s hegemonic status in world culture. Yukari Yoshihara’s ‘Bardolators and Bardoclasts: Shakespeare in Manga/ Anime and Cosplay’ deepens the analysis of Shakespeare as an international

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brand used by Asian popular consumerist forms to reinforce their own global currency. Focusing on manga/anime creators, fans and cosplayers (costuming and playing) who use Shakespeare as an easily accessible, non-copyrighted resource and not as a source of cultural authority, the essay explores how these re-versionings radically destabilise the notions of ‘adaptation’ itself. They also challenge the vertical power hierarchies of the original and adapted text, presenting instead the idea of a horizontal, weblike spread of inf luence more in line with Lanier’s notion of ‘Shakespeare rhizomatics’. This use of Shakespeare as a cultural phenomenon and popular brand helps us to re-evaluate the bard’s versatility, international currency and marketability in the global media space beyond the notions of canonical universality. And more to the purpose of the book, these manga/anime and cosplaying characters of Shakespeare, which are originally Japanese innovations emerging out of local needs, form a significant alternative paradigm of and intervention in global and Asian Shakespeare, where not Anglophone but Japanese creations are adopted and popularised in the world. Thomas Kullmann’s essay, ‘Shakespeare on the Internet: Global and South Asian Appropriations’, examines and quantifies the use of Shakespearean quotations and phrases on the internet, used for a wide range of purposes, including advertisements, newspaper headlines, titles of pop songs and names of restaurants. A large proportion of these online references emanate from South Asian, especially Indian, contexts and are used for journalistic articles, telling stories and describing phenomena which clearly have a regional, culture-specific focus. Using digital culture theory and postcolonial studies, the essay theorises how this popularisation and decontextualisation of Shakespeare demonstrate the very processes of globalisation and how Shakespeare’s translation into global media forms simultaneously reinforce and undermine the bard’s cultural hegemony. Judy Celine Ick’s essay ‘The Performance Archive and the Digital Construction of Asian Shakespeare’ consolidates the arguments of the preceding essays by addressing the question of how the category/field of Asian Shakespeares was created and is maintained through digital performance archives. Marshalling archival and digital theory, Ick questions the nature of the digital platform; its need to focus on visually distinctive material; its reliance on technological resources; the emphasis on ease of navigation; and the ways in which sourcing of material, metadata, cross-referencing and categorising works which determine what gets defined as Asian Shakespeare. Emphasising the need to ensure a more democratic, open and participatory functioning of the archive, Ick cautions against creating yet another reified canon of Asian Shakespeares.

Part III: Historicising the Asian Global: Shakespeare as a World Poet Since this book has emerged out of the presentations at the Delhi conference of the Asian Shakespeare Association, it is perhaps appropriate that the final

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part takes an excursion into a pre-history of the Asian global emerging from India by looking at the nineteenth-century discussions on world literature, Shakespeare and the characterisation of the bard as a World poet, notably by Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), who himself was Asia’s first Nobel Laureate poet internationally known for his universalist themes and who acknowledged the inf luence of Shakespeare. Supriya Chaudhuri’s essay, ‘Global Shakespeare and the Question of a World Literature’, poses the question why while Shakespeare is central to the nineteenthcentury debates on world literature (by Goethe, Marx and Tagore), he hardly figures in the more contemporary discourse on the subject despite being even more established now as a writer whose work has acquired global renown through translation and adaptation. The essay locates Shakespeare within the current world literature debate, asking how and to what extent we can read him as a travelling text, as a form of cultural capital circulated in global networks, and as exemplifying Goethe’s dream of a weltliteratur that would overcome national boundaries. Swati Ganguly’s ‘Beyond Bardolatry: Rabindranath Tagore’s Critique of Shakespeare’s The Tempest’ is a companion piece to Chaudhuri’s essay. It begins by analysing the significance of Tagore’s use of the term ‘world-poet’ for Shakespeare in a 1915 poem, Viśva-Kavi (World-Poet), and suggests that this tribute is linked to his critique of nationalism and national literatures. The poem emerges out of Tagore’s notion of ‘universalism’, which refers not only to the transcending of national boundaries in our understanding of cultures but to an expanded conception of the human intricately connected with nature which co-constitutes the universe. Ganguly then reads Tagore’s discussion of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and its treatment of the divisive effects of power in contrast to Kalidasa’s Abhijnanashakuntalam. By linking this to Tagore’s views on nationalism, Western colonialism and universalism, she finds it one of the earliest postcolonial and eco critiques of the play. The essays of this collection thus attempt to redefine the field of Asian Shakespeares and its shaping of Global Shakespeare. Not only do they impel new perspectives but also provide an Asian standpoint and lens not only in rereading the processes of cultural globalisation but also in assessing the controversial questions of both Shakespeare’s ‘universality’ and his global currency in the omnipotent economic climate of neoliberal capitalism. The variety and vitality of their enquiries call for a reformulation of the discourse on Shakespearean mobilities. As Michael Dobson observes in his ‘Afterword’ to this volume, after his extensive travels in the world and in Asia for Shakespeare events, “in Asia there is another world of Shakespeares coming into being”.

Notes 1. Parasite won the Best Film, Best Director, Most Original Screenplay and Best Foreign Language Film Awards for 2020. Earlier, in 2000, the Chinese film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon too had won four Academy Awards but not for the Best Film.

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2. Citations are from The Norton Shakespeare, eds. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katherine Eisaman Maus (New York: Norton, 1997). 3. Rose Elfman, “Expert Spectatorship and Intra-Audience Relationships at the Globe to Globe 2012” in Shakespeare on the Global Stage: Performance and Festivity in the Olympic Year, eds. Paul Prescott and Erin Sullivan (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 183. 4. Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan, “Introduction: Why Shakespeare?” in Shakespeare in Asia: Contemporary Performance, eds. Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1. 5. John Gillies, “Shakespeare on the Stages of Asia” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage, eds. Stanley Wells and Sarah Stanton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 239. 6. Alexa Huang, “Introduction, Asian Shakespeare 2.0” Special issue, Asian Theatre Journal 28:1 (2011): 4. 7. Dennis Kennedy, “Foreword” to Shakespeare’s Asian Journeys: Critical Encounters, Cultural Geographies and the Politics of Travel, eds. Bi-qi Lei, Judy Celine Ick, and Poonam Trivedi (New York: Routledge, 2017), xviii. 8. Mark Thornton Burnett, “Introduction” in ‘Hamlet’ and World Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 15, 16.

PART I

The Asian ‘Global’ and Its Discontents  

1 MAKING MEANING BETWEEN THE LOCAL AND THE GLOBAL Performing Shakespeare in India Today Poonam Trivedi

The Asian Shakespeare Association’s biennial conference in Delhi in December 2016, entitled ‘All the World’s His Stage: Shakespeare Today’, scheduled three very different stage performances: Hamlet, I Don’t Like It/As You Like It and Dying to Succeed. Performed in a Hindi-Urdu translation, Hamlet took its interpretative clue from a close engagement with the text and eschewed any conscious local colour. The second production, on the other hand, was a complete contrast: a parodic take on As You Like It. It was performed in English to hilarious effect. It has become one of the more successful recent versions of Shakespeare playing to packed houses all around the country for over four years. The third was an experimental solo piece by a female actor – in English, Hindi and Marathi – which updated characters and scenes from several plays to speak to young people’s concerns today. Although these three productions were substantially different to each other, together they are symptomatic of the current staging practices in India which are tweaking and modifying both the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ in significant ways. They are alike in the implications of their performative praxis, in that the experimentations of all three impel a reconsideration of the ‘national’, the ‘ethnic’, the ‘transnational’ and their intermeshing with these. They foreground the incipient politics of performing an ‘Indianness’, their reception forming discursive sites harnessing the f luidities and tensions of a rapidly changing country and economy. This essay will examine these productions with particular attention to their languages – both linguistic and performative – and their evolving, sliding significances in the Indian context to argue that Shakespeare in India today makes meaning in ‘between’ the reified notions of the local and the global, and through the shifting positions thereof.

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The local and the global, in the performative sphere, have been defined and discussed copiously, almost to the point of exhaustion. Discussion of Shakespeare in performance, though tacitly responsive to the debates in theatre and performance studies, largely carves its own track, and Global Shakespeare today can mean anything from the acknowledged and increasing presence of Shakespeare in almost all countries of the world, to adaptation with a transnational f lavour and accessibility, to a brand of performance that transports and accommodates itself to global tastes and audiences and to mega theatre, like the Lion King, which is outsourced to franchise productions over the world. These perspectives are usually held as binaries of the local, which has been less theorised, but most often held as site specific, historical and contextual.1 These definitions carry their ideological and political freight too, the global usually being valorised as liberated, transnational, postmodern and more democratic, while the local, more often than not, is challenged as narrow, native and parochial. From another point of view, the global signifies not a ‘globelectically’ level playing field but the ‘rest of the world’, excluding the West, seen in the many Global Shakespeare courses and archives on offer. Before the current ‘global’ buzz caught on, other preceding critical formations such as the intercultural and multicultural, and the ‘glocal’ and the transnational, which seem to persist simultaneously, have also impacted Shakespeare performance and reception. However, it is the theatre festivals of 2012 – on the occasion of the London Olympics, the Globe to Globe in London and the World Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-upon-Avon – that have stamped a seal on the idea of Global Shakespeare, of 37 plays from as many countries, in as many languages and styles, performing at the originating sites of Shakespeare, as the sign of the ‘global’. A Globe Hamlet was also organised to tour 197 countries, which was not just the world coming to the Globe but the Globe performing to the world. Shakespeare became multi-lexical, multi-spectated and multisited. These events followed by the two anniversaries of the 450th birth (2014) and 400th death (2016) have generated considerable writing consolidating the concept of Global Shakespeare. What earlier was considered Shakespeare and/ at the Globe has now collapsed into a portmanteau concept of Global Shakespeare. While much of the reviewing and critical assessment was celebratory of the extraordinary event, reservations were also sounded, gingerly to begin with, but later elaborated into theoretical positions. In this plethora of unconventional and alternative Shakespeare performances, two major critical issues pertinent to our purpose emerged – of language and of spectatorship – both of which modify and impel a rethink of the idea of the global with shades of the local. The two Shakespeare anniversary years, 2014 and 2016, did not, unlike 1964, produce any major academic fanfare in India. Although some conferences and subsequent publications in a few universities did mark the occasion, there were no big Shakespeare festivals or celebratory events organised. Some

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theatre productions, both professional and amateur, however, did accumulatively create a certain Shakespeare buzz. Two productions, of Twelfth Night and All’s Well That Ends Well, commissioned by the Globe, London, for their G2G festival gave, for the first time, an international recognition to contemporary Indian theatre and its Shakespearean redactions. The crossover success of Vishal Bhardwaj’s Shakespeare films Maqbool (2003), Omkara (2006) and Haider (2014) earlier in the decade had reignited a performative interest in Shakespeare, and the anniversaries inspired several notable stage productions, including those under review. Ratan Thiyam’s Macbeth (2014), Richard III (2015), two other versions of Hamlet (2016), one Othello (2016) and a Comedy of Errors (2016) were produced just in Delhi, not to mention other metropolitan centres like Kolkata and Mumbai. A spate of films too emerged: Hrid Majharey (Othello, 2014), We Too Have Our Othellos (Othello, 2014), Double Di Trouble (The Comedy of Errors, 2014), Arshinagar (Romeo and Juliet, 2015), Hemanta (Hamlet, 2016), Veeram (Macbeth, 2016), Natsamrat (King Lear, 2016) and Sairat (Romeo and Juliet, 2016). A feast of styles and languages was witnessed as different localities, sites and communities performed Shakespeare to express themselves and, in the process, stretch and challenge notions of a stereotypical ‘Indianness’ or even ‘Bollywoodness’. We may look at a few of these to show how they are representative of the larger local tendencies. Of these, Twelfth Night and All’s Well that Ends Well did achieve a ‘global’ exposure, being performed at the London Festival. Twelfth Night has since toured Southeast Asia, Australia and the United States too, while the transnational success of Vishal Bhardwaj’s films marked a global impact. Yet all these theatre performances and most films of Shakespeare were designed for home consumption; if they have garnered international appreciation that is a bonus. Since most of the other stage and even film productions did not travel, they raise questions about the value of the very local, which stays closely tied to its locality. What is their place in the larger repertoire of Shakespeare worldwide? While the variety of these local Shakespeares, their styles and experimentations testify to the range of the local, they also show that there is no one singular model of ‘Indianness’ or a national consensus or taste which can explain this diversity. In the developing discourse on Global Shakespeare, with its drift towards emphasising collaborative transnationality, or trans-legibility, beyond the national space, “unmarking its origins”, discursive models like “Shakespeare in India” are held to be an outmoded “unproductive shorthand”,2 provoking fundamental questions about whether the global can exist and f lourish without its contextual base. And if it de-territorialises, it must of necessity re-territorialise: for example the abiding stories of the touring Global Hamlet are chief ly of its very local and at times singular inf lections and receptions. Until there is a wider and more probing analysis of the ‘local’, its demands, compulsions and ramifications, the global too is bound to remain contested.

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Linguistic Local The Hamlet, in a Hindi-Urdu translation, directed by the seasoned theatre director K. Madavane, and first performed in September 2016, was produced for the Shree Ram Theatre Repertory in New Delhi. The choice of Hamlet was unusual and significant in its locationary context because curiously directors have fought shy of staging this play in Hindi during the last few decades, preferring the other tragedies. The production edited the play to two hours (without a break), but kept close to the original, retaining names, plot and characters who were performed naturalistically, clad in a mix of historical and modern Western costumes. Madavane interpreted the play and its eponymous character as depicting the condition of a confused young man, who is called away from his studies because his father dies but is not given his patrimony, the charge of the throne, whose mother does not seem to support him and who does not know who his friends are – a state suggestive of the condition of the young of today. Hamlet wore jeans and black leather jacket to underline this equation with the modern moment (“A New Interpretation of Hamlet. In leather jacket and boots” headlined the Hindustan Times review, 10 Sept. 2016). As the director said about his choice to do Hamlet: “the play chose me”.3 In the trendy appropriative climate of today, the decision to be faithful to the text without adaptive changes, but perform in translation, may be seen as radical and postcolonial (Shakespeare had begun being performed in translation in India from 1852 onwards, and Hamlet from 1854).4 Rustom Bharucha, a well-known theatre critic who witnessed this show, expressed surprise, noting that “Shakespeare’s text was present”.5 Yet being voiced in Hindi-Urdu released more immediate contemporising political inf lexions and shifts of meaning. The translation, largely from the published version by Amrit Rai with some intermix from Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s verse translation, both of which were close to the original, provided an instant local connect as opposed to the Shakespearean language, which for many remains a schooled pleasure. The international audience comprising 80 delegates from 19 countries for this commissioned show were equally engrossed because the performative language and staging delved into the play in an innovative manner. It adopted a sparse staging style in which huge wooden boxes/blocks, of 8×3 feet dimensions, six vertical and one horizontal, functioned as the set, the props and the defining presence, at times confusing for the local audience. The production, however, opened with these blocks, painted in differing shades of grey – symbolic of the confusions and ambiguities which drench the play – arrayed around the stage in a semi-circle, representing the walls of Elsinore castle and all that keeps the characters locked in. Not just walls, they also functioned as seats, bed and the grave, but when pushed, pulled, stood up or laid horizontal, they became key mobilisers of the physical and emotional action and mood. During rehearsals, each actor had his particular box with which he/she practised how to activate

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the burdens of the play. “For me, the set is an actor too”, said Madavane. The production presented a strong visuality: a play of light and shadows spliced by the shifting blocks and their changing colours heightened the psychic movements, creating a noir mood tense with suspicion. With no blackouts, but with lights dimmed for change of scene, a f luid movement was maintained. The response of Mike Ingham, a conference delegate from Hong Kong, was: I loved the ensemble work and felt that it was a very kinaesthetic production which increased its accessibility to any non-Hindi speaking spectators. It underlined for me the absolutely transnational character and potential of Shakespeare’s play, and the intense theatricality both of Shakespeare’s play text and of the director’s and dramaturge’s interpretation.6 If a proto-Gen X angst was projected, so was there a proto-Freudianism about this Hamlet: his psychological imbroglio was enacted through the innovative performative dynamics of the key scenes: the dumbshow, the closet scene, the gravediggers’ scene and with the ghost. During the dumbshow, which was performed in a stylised dance form, Hamlet dons a mask taken from the players and joins them, doubling as Lucius and becoming his father’s killer, pouring poison squeezed from the edge of a red drape which later became the shroud of the dead king. He mourns and then offers his hand to the Player Queen, who after some hesitation throws off her black veil, and the two dance together reinforcing the Oedipal overtones. The director, Madavane, trained in French theatre and Jean Genet, exploited the metatheatrical ‘playing’ motif to expose the inner traumas and contradictions of young Hamlet, confused about his sexuality, attracted to his mother, but obeying and glorifying the father at the same time. The complexity of his conf licted shades of being is of course brought to an explosive head in the closet scene. Here, Hamlet f lush with the revelations of the dumbshow comes to Gertrude in high tension. In this production, just before entering he sees his mother’s wedding dress, caresses it, puts it on and applies red lipstick, enacting and embodying, in an extraordinary gesture, his multiple pulls and illusionary selves, possessing, ‘playing’ the mother and playing with her simultaneously, even while he berates her for her remarriage. His confusions palpable, he pushes her back on to a wooden box/wall (in lieu of a bed) and tries to kiss her, which she averts by turning her head, whereupon the ghost, almost as if jealous of the son, appears to warn him off. The production also took a proto-feminist view in its portrayal of Gertrude, who was portrayed as a strong figure who acts politically, probably marrying Claudius to safeguard the throne for her son. Significantly, she distances herself from Claudius after the dumbshow exiting separately, and after the closet scene refuses to take his hand proffered to allay the trauma of Polonius’ killing. In the closet scene, she too struggles to communicate with her son, to understand his fierce raving, pulling him on to her lap and then falling into his, when he is

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FIGURE 1.1

The closet scene in K. Madavane’s Hamlet

Source: Courtesy Madavane.

forced to assert at the end that he is not mad, delivered as a moment of a scream, tableau-like on stage with a double vision of the ghost backing him, reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Hamlet’s epiphanic moment of revelation with Yorick’s skull was here linked to his continuing sexual confusions: while digging, the grave diggers throw out not just the skull but also along with it a skirt, part of the jester’s accoutrements of impersonation. The gravedigger refers to Yorick as haramzada, which in Hindi means a bastard, but the illegitimate and trickster connotations of which are at times applied to a homosexual or transvestite also. Hamlet and Horatio drape Yorick’s skull with the female dress and, holding it between them, dance in delight, having found the childhood mate, mimicking the jester’s steps in a danse macabre, after which Hamlet kisses the skull on the mouth and then deliberates, ‘to be or not to be’. Yorick came alive fully in this production in multiple jesting, truth-telling selves, connected to his young charge’s dilemmas, which provoked the sombre deliberation of ‘to be’. Madavane said he had always felt that the soliloquy comes too early in the play and is more appropriate here, spoken to/with Yorick, Hamlet’s earliest mentor. It is clear that Madavane’s vision for this production was not guided by the expected overtly ‘Indic’ impulses; there was no use of ethnic Indian markers of masks, costumes or music. It was played as a foreign text, but in an Indian language, the most widely spoken Hindi. His interpretation was fed

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from his rootedness in French theatre (“Genet is my guru”, he has said on more than one occasion), but it was localised to speak to the contemporary audience and mood: “take out Denmark” from “something’s rotten”, he said, “and the phrase can apply anywhere”. The production foregrounded the themes of the usurpation of power, illegitimate sexuality and the suppression of the young. It eschewed any specific topical relevance, “Indianising or adapting, I feel, is being disrespectful to the audience, that they won’t understand the original”, believes Madavane. “I want to keep as close to the text as possible”, says he of his directorial inclination. His later production of Macbeth (2018) too focused on the themes of power, ambition and the sickness that attends on them. The political implications of Shakespeare’s tragedies are always available for the discerning, and when performed in the local languages, they accrue additional resonances, more accessible and immediate. Coming in the aftermath of the cinematic sensation of Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider (2014), which openly deployed Hamlet to tell the story of the political unrest in Kashmir, the decision of this Hindi Hamlet to stick to the text/original but perform it to make meaning for the local young/Gen X was a brave choice. Even though Haider was also mainly in Hindi (sprinkled with English), it was so heavily accented with Kashmiri inf lexions that the rest of India had to strain to catch the dialogues. On the other hand, the unadapted Hindi Hamlet engrossed its packed audiences, and during a post-show discussion that I witnessed, a ten-year-old boy asserted that he had enjoyed it and his parent said he found it better than Haider. Linguistic localisation had been successful in communicating the fullness of ‘Shakespeare’.

Parodic Local I Don’t Like It/As You Like It, as its title proclaims, was the polar opposite: if the Hindi Hamlet took Shakespeare’s text on board, this production inverted it into a free-wheeling parodic adaptation in English. Its production dynamics were also contrasted: this was a big, expensive show mounted by Cinematograph, a company set up by the theatre and film actor Rajat Kapoor, and performed by well-known professional actors from Mumbai. It was the fourth production of Shakespeare by this company, in its chosen/preferred style of clown theatre. It did not carry any distinguishing signs of localisation or Indianisation. It could have been from anywhere in the world. Yet a postcolonial edge could be noted. Though obsessed with Shakespeare, director Rajat Kapoor says, “It is important for us to puncture the existing interpretations, re-evaluate the text and learn something. That is something not often done in India.” He has found clowns the right medium to create this distance between the text and the actors, “it is a kind of stylisation”, he says explaining his preference, “if I knew kathakali or yakshagana, I would use those” (The Telegraph (Kolkata) 29 November 2008). So productive has this method been that he has subjected Shakespeare’s tragic trilogy no less, Hamlet, Lear and Macbeth,

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to this clowning treatment. All versions spring from a similar scenario: a troupe of clowns, somewhat down and out on their fortunes, are forced to perform, under protest, a tragedy (!) – Hamlet: The Clown Prince (2008), What Is Done Is Done (2016). Nothing Like Lear (2012) was a solo piece, though again by a clown. In all these broad adaptations the clowns bumble through the plays, in their ineptitude subversively burlesquing the characters, inverting hoary themes, and artfully elucidating some home truths which connect to today. Like all clown theatre, particularly Grupo Galpao’s well-known Romeo and Juliet, their aim is not merely to raise laughs but to heighten awareness, rewriting and recontextualising the plays for today; to make, as Rajat Kapoor puts it, a “shared experience for the audience” (News18.com, 23 May 2016).7 The first ‘clown’ Shakespeare, Hamlet: The Clown Prince, was perhaps the most successful, exhilarating in its novelty, parodic but celebratory (over 220 shows in 11 years).8 It worked in all the key elements of the plot into the rambling narratives of each clown’s personal stories, putting particular emphasis on the mother and son relation. Lines and even soliloquies of the original were juxtaposed with ‘gibberish’, a nonsensical clown-coding speech which surprisingly made a lot of sense after a few minutes of getting used to it. The clowning aesthetic was able to bring in both absurdity and pathos, as noted by Pete Kirwan.9 Nothing Like Lear was a long interactive monologue, marginally connected with Shakespeare: an ageing clown/actor reminisces self-pityingly and ironically reliving his past, particularly his tragic failures with his only daughter. Despite some bravura performances, the modern story of the father–daughter conf lict was not quite as compelling as the original. The third, What Is Done Is Done, was possibly the closest to the original, again updating the play into a contemporary context. Ambition and greed were the main focus, with the witches cast as socialite harridans, doubling up as three versions of Lady Mackay. After three productions emerging out of the same method, the comicality of the Spanish, Italian and French accents of the clowns, their slapstick and somewhat slapdash improvisations and interlocutions were by now beginning to wear thin. When I Don’t Like It/As You Like It, the group’s first comedy, was announced in May 2016 through its Chaplinesque poster with the iconic bowler hat, red nose and oversized splayed shoes, those who had seen the earlier ‘clown’ Shakespeares were a bit wary: how many further variants on the same tune can one expect? But I Don’t Like It did not disappoint. Like the earlier parodies, this one too was not obliged to stick to the original plot and recycled its tried and tested format: a group of clowns out of work are told by their manager that they have to do another Shakespeare play, but this time a comedy, on the theme of love. However, there is a catch; gender reversal is required and, despite the clowns’ protests, all the men have to perform the female parts and the women, vice versa. As the rehearsals begin, the actual relationships between the clowns, under strain to begin with, are further exacerbated: they fight over the casting when the clown attracted to Phoebe is not given the role of Silvius. They berate

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directorial instructions and bring in their own personal experiences about love to bear on the story. Through their fractious and bumbling but hilarious diversions, they do, however, finally manage to put up a show, transmuting the plays’ many meanings of love to the here and now, and also, in the process, learning through Shakespeare to sort out their own relationships. The show signalled comic irreverence from the beginning: it began with one of the clowns reading “All the world’s a stage”, forgetting his lines and calling for the prompter. The rest of the clowns, a familiar group by now, troop in announcing that they are joined by a French-speaking newcomer, Gigi, which immediately sets up rivalries and tensions as they practise and perform the wooing. Coco and Mimi, very obviously in love, jump to do Orlando and Rosalind. Fifi, who is playing hard to get with Fido, falls to playing Phoebe to Fido’s Silvius. Soso plays Jacques with a hand-puppet, Touchstone, chiming in. Popo is the stage manager who with his slapstick is literally smacking the recalcitrant troupe into action. The adaptation pre-supposed a knowledge of the original, for lines of the text were serendipitously worked in, but for comic effect: the sonnet to Rosalinda was warbled by Coco with some feeling, while Ganymede, wearing shades, rapped out a song on ‘What o’clock’ and ‘no clock in the forest’ and the signs of true lovers. With complete gender and role reversal, it was inevitable that ‘dressed like a man’ should provoke a heated debate on what a man and a woman are. Some other lines, relocated, had a more topical and pungent effect: when told by Popo the manager that their rehearsal space was sold for redevelopment, the troupe exclaims: “we will stand in front of the bulldozers and shout ‘Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens. . . . Wherefore do you look/Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?’” (2.1.55–57).10 Thrown out, exiled from their working space, the troupe moves to a farmhouse, the Forest of Arden. Suddenly, out of a fade-out, a spotlight tree cut-out is lowered, light effects and a bed of f lowers frontstage appear to signal a complete change of mood and space − the magic circle. The troupe arrives now in colourful touristy clothes and the deliberations and negotiations on love begin in earnest and end with a return to the real play world when they are ready to perform to ‘All the world’s a stage. . . .’ An entertaining, witty, updated version of Shakespeare, a kind of ‘holiday Shakespeare’, is created, which, though it leaves out the darker fratricidal usurpations and pasture conf licts of the play, nevertheless celebrates, even as it transmutes into the modern world, the follies of love and lovers. ‘Motley’s the only wear!’ (2.7.34). I Don’t Like It, like the other clown Shakespeares, has been extraordinarily popular (40 shows since 2016, and this is a large number for Shakespeare performance in English in India), playing to packed houses in huge auditoria across the country and making a profit. It has created something of a revolution in Shakespeare performance and viewing in India, where Shakespeare in English has always been for a select elite audience which is committed but limited in numbers. Rajat Kapoor’s clown Shakespeare has gathered crowds not seen

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FIGURE 1.2

Rosalind and Celia go to the Forest in I Don’t Like It/As You Like It

Source: Courtesy Rajat Kapoor.

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before, mainly of the young, along with the Shakespeare aficionados. He has created a ‘popular’ brand of Shakespeare where prior knowledge of the text is an asset for appreciation, but not an essential requirement for the enjoyment of the whole. His controlled direction, the actors’ polished performances, their superb rapport and timing make for a delightful show. His set and light designs, a cut above most Indian productions, provide an outstanding theatrical experience equivalent to the best anywhere in the world. As was noted before, the semiotics of this very popular Shakespeare were anything but the obviously ‘Indian’. The names of the characters, Coco, Soso, Fido and so on, their Italian, Spanish and French accents, their broad circus-like slapstick, even the theme of love, could be from anywhere in the world. Hence, this is another kind of localised Shakespeare, one that relocates the plays into a non-specific, non-ethnic, nonnational space. Appealing to crowds of Indian middle-class young lining up for the expensive tickets, this is simultaneously, a type of ‘local’ Shakespeare too, albeit acquiring shades of the global, or even the cosmopolitan, challenging and making us re-think our categories of the ‘local’.

Aspirational Local Yuki Ellias’ solo performance Dying to Succeed was built around several major characters and their stories from Shakespeare. It had evolved from her work on motivational workshops with the corporate world. Apart from being a full-time actor (she played the role of Hermia in Tim Supple’s multilingual Midsummer Night’s Dream (2006) and Portia in Vikram Kapadia’s Merchant of Venice (2015)) and director (four productions to date), Yuki also works as a corporate coach specialising in drama-based personality development and training programmes for business management executives like ‘Learning to Lead’, ‘The Hero’s Journey’, ‘Women’s Leadership’, among other topics. In 2016, on the occasion of the Bard’s death anniversary, she devised an interactive performance (scripted by Saudamini Kalra) celebrating his characters’ survival through time, who live on to tell meaningful stories for us today. This was geared particularly towards the corporate young and peppered with advice gleaned from choice Shakespearean mots justes like ‘to thy own self be true’, ‘all that glisters is not gold’, ‘some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them’ and so on. A f luid mix of workshop and solo performance techniques, Yuki began with a set of questions for the audience, homing in on some individuals for interactive responses, calling forth others to collaborate in the performative storytelling. In an energetic and witty patter, Iago was held up as a negative model of one who goes seriously astray when he does not get the promotion he felt he deserved; Macbeth was another negative role model of how unfettered ambition can get out of hand with ruthless decimation of the opposition and how selfishly he lets his wife decline to her doom. King Lear was a lesson in the disaster that can overtake one if one doesn’t change with the times and

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does not try to bridge the gap, not only between the young and old, but also between oneself and others. On the other hand, Portia was a prime role model worthy of emulation: a woman in a man’s world, who breaks the glass ceiling and saves the day. With effortless improvisations, putting her training with Jacques Lequoc’s physical theatre to good use, Yuki transformed from one character to another, alternately pulling out a sword, putting on a ruff, sticking on a moustache or painting her lips. Shakespearean personae came alive, their words resonated and the audience was provoked to enter into their dilemmas, think through their own successes and failures with them, playing at times Romeo, Lady Macbeth or Banquo. Shakespeare in boardroom or locker room training programmes is by itself not new. Olympic champion and feted coach Ric Charlesworth’s book Shakespeare the Coach11 is perhaps the best-known example of this genre of motivational and aspirational learning through Shakespeare’s words and insights. That it was now being devised successfully in India too, by Indians, for Indians was what was new. Shakespeare’s words and speeches have provided a platform and a model for English language learning and articulation in India for a long time – beginning with the colonial period, when the ability to quote Shakespeare was said to get you a job with the government! Today, some Shakespeare continues to be incorporated into English language syllabi at all levels. But Yuki Ellias’ show Dying to Succeed was the first to promote management and leadership skills through the bard in India. That she used a mix of languages, English, Hindi and Marathi, for this purpose was a localising and an appropriation for a markedly promotional purpose, communicating in different linguistic registers, boldly subjecting the plays to a fragmentation, even cannibalisation of sorts. It was widely seen as one of the innovative takes on the Bard’s oeuvre in the anniversary year in India, especially as it was a solo show by a young artist. Prakriti Foundation, which holds the Hamara (Our) Shakespeare Festival in Chennai, sponsored her shows. Hence, we find that the strict delineations of the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ are being challenged from within by these performances of Shakespeare in India and reconfigured by the productions taking on shades of the other. Rather, they make meaning between the local and the global, intervening in the canonical models of easily accessible Global Shakespeares, creating a third space, of the ‘betwixt’, which may not be quite the much valourised postcolonial hybridity, or disruptive mixture, but an evolving, growing space, not as random as the ‘rhizomatic’ – the favoured metaphor for Global Shakespeare – but emerging from and subject to the demands of the immediately local, answering certain specific needs. Victor Turner’s perception of ‘betwixt’ as a liminal, f luid space enabling new formations is more appropriate to delineate the local manifestations of Shakespeare in India today, which functions as a creative dialogic space responsive to the pulse of the time. Appearing in different voices, colours and styles, the local Indian Shakespeares then pose the following questions: how

Making Meaning Between Local and Global

FIGURE 1.3

Yuki Ellias in her solo improvisational show Dying to Succeed

Source: Courtesy ASA Delhi.

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do the local and global speak, interact or interpellate? In which languages, to whom, and voicing whose positions?

Translation and the Local Language, all would agree, is the live pulse of Shakespeare. But paradoxically it is the localisation of his language and poetry through translation in myriad local languages that has had a salient role in the globalisation of Shakespeare. Though English today is a global language and is furthering its reach in all dimensions, the spread of Shakespeare has been singularly facilitated through translation, beginning with the earliest translations into Dutch and German to today being the most translated and performed single author in the world. And though colonialism did enforce the study of Shakespeare in English in many parts of the world, outside the privilege of the classroom, his words communicate mainly in translation. In India too, while the study of Shakespeare in English was mandated in the early nineteenth century, the performance was not. Translations proliferated and a localised, domesticated and even bowdlerised Shakespeare was popularised through the stage.12 His subsequent inf luence on Indian languages and theatre was immense, proving, as summed up by translator-critic Ton Hoenselaars, that “Shakespeare can only enter in translation . . . other literary cultures”.13 Global Shakespeare is translated Shakespeare, a localised Shakespeare and the Globe to Globe (G2G) festival and the World Shakespeare Festival (WSF) were the most recent proof that the local is constitutive of the global. As a matter of fact, ‘language’, foreign languages and translations were at the heart of the conceptualisation of the G2G event. As Tom Bird, the Festival Director, has revealed, three ideas of ‘language’ formed a template for the selection process: ‘London’s languages’ – those widely spoken locally which could form prospective audiences, ‘Shakespeare’s languages’ – languages which had a long tradition of performing Shakespeare and ‘big languages’ spoken widely in the world.14 And by all accounts a ‘great feast of languages’ and constituent spectatorship was successfully organised: the six-week programme was a sell-out. Its immediate and long-term critical consideration, consolidated over at least three collections of essays and several articles, however, discloses both revelations and substantial reservations about this kind of cross-cultural Shakespeare, dealing mainly with questions and issues of language, translation and spectatorship. It would be instructive to recall that the 2012 G2G festival was by no means the first collective staging of foreign Shakespeares in the United Kingdom. The Globe itself had earlier held similar, albeit smaller, festivals in 1997 and 2001, as had the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) (2006). Shakespeare in strange tongues and exotic modes was not exactly a novel experience in 2012. Intercultural theatre, exemplified by Peter Brook, Richard Wilson, Robert Lepage, Ariane Mnouchkine, had been the talking points of the late 1980s and 1990s. Many intercultural Shakespeares, which were the earlier generation ‘global’,

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embedded the plays in foreign words and stagecraft, particularly by Asian directors like Yukio Ninagawa, Suzuki Tadashi, Ong Ken Seng, Wu Hsing Kuo, Annette Leday, using Japanese, Chinese and Indian theatre forms, some with multilingual casts, who had performed at the London Globe and toured Europe and North America. These productions had provoked huge debate, referred to as the ‘intercultural wars’, which was primarily concerned with the politics and ethics of intercultural borrowing, especially of the performative practices of the Eastern theatre forms by practitioners from the West. While there was a spectrum of experimentation and differing degrees of appropriation and subjection of Shakespeare into foreign styles and tongues, the question of accessibility was not an issue, perhaps because the visuality and corporeality of the performative body languages and stylisations were deemed to be eloquent. The earlier intercultural Shakespeare was, at best, seen by most as an ocular feast, a spectacular indulgence or patronisingly othered as a piece of exotica, but was not something which decentred or dislocated the privileged Englishspeaking viewers or Shakespeare in his own home. The reactions to the G2G, on the other hand, reveal that for the first time a “decentring of Shakespeare in global knowledge production” (Bridget Escolme)15 took place, and even seasoned critics felt “estranged” and “conspicuously displaced” as experts (Rose Elfman),16 a discomfort which is voiced in the collocations of experience like the “uninformed theatre-goer” (Michael Dobson),17 the “disorientated theatre-goer” (Christy Desmet)18 or an “outsider status” experiencing an “alien-ness” (Robert Ormsby)19 in the reviews. While the earlier world Shakespeare fests were smaller scale, did not attract huge audiences, nor created a critical buzz, the 2012 event with its Olympian brouhaha had a different spectatorship and audience dynamics and consequently substantially shifted responses. The G2G was the first major confrontation with ‘Translated Shakespeare’ in all senses. Discounting the routine resistant viewer who is only able to take Shakespeare as naturalistic and pure, the average Western viewer was jangled by the unfamiliar and contrary staging, which ranged from the ethnically localised, to moderated and sanitised versions to postmodernist eclectic, to globalised variants aimed at populist connections. ‘Homeless’, belonging nowhere, was the verdict on the Polish Makbet, seen as the most “impenetrable” specimen.20 The most estranging aspect, however, as it emerges from the subtext, was the situation of viewing the plays among an audience the majority of whom understood the jokes, laughed with and at the action, while the English-only, non-native, alien to the language viewer was left literally speechless and clueless. In the end it was not the foreignness of the experience but the ‘double-show’, being in the show and outside it too, the particularity of the “constituency spectatorship” (estimated that 80% were first-time Globe spectators) and how it reacted to the action and with each other, excluding the English-only viewer, which remained the abiding impression for reviewers.21 For the first time there was an acknowledgement of the repeated disconcerting experience that certain

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local language groups, invariably subaltern and immigrant, had greater access to the plays than the average English Shakespeare viewer. As Rose Elfman puts it, “In bringing mixed audiences into sustained encounters with diverse languages, therefore, the Festival undermined non-speaking audience members’ self-sufficiency as spectators, while inviting language speakers to assume positions of authority as experts”.22 That language, not just as a linguistic system, but as a marker of identity and a cultural world view, was unfixing the familiar space and place of the Shakespearean, challenging its authority so that positions of the “insiders and outsiders” were switched.23 The subaltern localities and languages of London had unsettled and muddied the discursive dynamics of the ‘Global’ Shakespeare. “Above all else, then, the Globe to Globe Festival brought to the fore questions of language and its effects, on stage and off ” conclude Bennett and Carson in their critical collection on the event.24 Yet canonical discourse has disregarded the question of the translatability of language, which like adaptation and appropriation has the potential to unfix meanings, import other significations and subvert reception − in short, the potency and politics of the interlingual encounter.

Languages of the Local/Global Language in India too exists in a complex web of political and social tensions. With 22 officially recognised languages, including English, there are multiple markers of Indian identity and ‘localness’. The linguistic translation and domestication of Shakespeare in India, however, were problematised by the colonial situation. As literary historian SK Das has pointed out, Shakespeare in India was translated by the English-educated Indians for the lesser rest, to ‘introduce’ them to Shakespeare, not to embed or home him. This created a double exposure of Shakespeare, in elite English versus popular vernaculars. Today, the most successful stage productions are those that have consciously chosen a colloquial and performative idiom in translation, for example the two commissioned for the G2G festival: Piya Gaye Rangoon (All’s Well that Ends Well) in Gujarati and Piya Behroopiya, (Twelfth Night) in pungent Hindi and English. The ‘local’ defined by language in India is not free of politics. Close attention to the linguistic and performative languages of the three locally devised stage productions under discussion, the Hindi Hamlet, I Don’t Like It/As You Like It in English and gibberish and the multilingual Dying to Succeed is instructive in revealing how these negotiated the postcolonial and ‘globalising’ scenarios mainly by using different languages, catering to different language constituencies and audience groups cutting across class, most bilingual, many multilingual. If the clown version, I Don’t Like It/As You Like It, chose to incorporate transnational French, Spanish and Italian accents along with the Indian English, it nevertheless spoke very successfully to local audiences. A salient device of Yuki Ellias’ interactive show was her f lexible use not just of different languages

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but also of idioms and accents. Very different in intent and reception was, for instance, the ‘globalising’ appropriation of seven Indian languages by Tim Supple in his exotic Midsummer Night’s Dream (motivated perhaps by the more politicised experiment of a multilingual Dream by Karen Beier in Europe), which left most Indian audiences confused and dissatisfied.25 Hence, these productions problematise our ascriptions – which one was more Indian than the other? Further, language in theatre has a special, at times a contested, place: it is only one of the many semiotics and signifiers on stage, and currently it is being contested by a global move towards greater visuality and physicality in theatre. Experimental theatre poses radical challenges to the dominance of the spoken word/text in theatre. Theatre practice in India too is not immune to these trends: Deepan Sivaraman, a well-regarded director/academic, in a recent interview has deplored the narrow fixation with text in theatre.26 In the performance of Shakespeare, the primacy of the text has sought to be moderated and supplemented, variously, particularly in many intercultural productions, through modes of the visual and corporeal indigenous theatre languages from across the world, for example of the Beijing Opera, Noh, Kabuki or Kathakali, or an eclectic mix of styles. The Hindi Hamlet proved that words and visuality can complement each other and that it is difficult to prise apart the local and the global – and the need for such mutually distinct categories. Increasingly, everywhere there is a constant infiltration of and contamination between the two – the local and global – in cultural and, especially, in theatrical spheres, which are now neither exclusive nor oppositional; these categories, as seen earlier, are being reshaped and re-formed rapidly. With the unprecedented expansion of media and the availability of videos online and live streaming of theatre, lines separating the local and the global are being further blurred. Crucially, they impel re-alignments in the notions of the national and the transnational. Language as translation has been instrumental in globalisation: people have adopted what they need in their own terms/words, and, likewise, the expansion of Shakespeare worldwide, in translation, in different cultures. And hence, while the local must be pegged to the locality, ‘Shakespeare in India’ is not just a mere convenience; it encapsulates a long history, a certain commonality but also, most crucially, a huge diversity. And, if it is to be seen as a shorthand, it is one which is being re-formed from within: as demonstrated in the previous discussion, no one definition of Indianness, or even of Shakespeare, suffices. What has been called the “stubborn localness of theatre”27 is being constantly renegotiated.

Notes 1. For a summarisation of earlier critical responses to the ‘local’, see the “Introduction” to Re-Playing Shakespeare in Asia, eds. Poonam Trivedi and Minami Ryuta (New York: Routledge, 2010), n10, p17. 2. Alexa Joubin, “Global Shakespeare” in The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, eds. Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 144–45, and “Global Shakespeare as Methodology” Shakespeare, 9:3 (2013): 281.

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3. K. Madavane, interview with author, October 15, 2016. All subsequent statements by him are from this interview. 4. For the earliest performances in India, see India’s Shakespeare: Translation, Interpretation and Performance, eds. Poonam Trivedi and Dennis Bartholomeusz (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005 and New Delhi: Pearson, 2006) and Shakespeare on the Calcutta Stage: A Checklist, eds. Ananda Lal and Sukanta Chaudhuri (Calcutta: Papyrus, 2001). 5. As recounted by Madavane, interview. 6. Mike Ingham, personal communication to the author, email, 23 July 2019. 7. News18.com www.news18.com/, Last accessed May 2019. 8. As stated by Rajat Kapoor, email to the author, 24 July 2019. 9. Pete Kirwan, The Bardathon, March 17, 2001, http://warwickartscentre.co.uk/ events/theatre/hamlet-the-clown-prince, Last accessed August 31, 2011. 10. All quotations from As You Like It, ed. Juliet Dusinberre, The Arden Shakespeare, South Asia edition (New Delhi: Cengage Learning, 2006). 11. Ric Charlesworth, Shakespeare the Coach (Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, 2004). 12. See India’s Shakespeare: Translation, Interpretation and Performance, eds. Trivedi and Bartholomeusz. 13. Ton Hoenselaars, “Preface” in Shakespeare and the Language of Translation (London: Methuen, 2012), ix. 14. Tom Bird, “The Globe to Globe Festival: An Introduction” and “Introduction” in Shakespeare Beyond English: A Global Experiment, eds. Susan Bennett and Christie Carson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 14 and 5. 15. Bridget Escolme, “Decentring Shakespeare: A Hope for Future Connections” in Shakespeare Beyond English: A Global Experiment, 308. 16. Rose Elfman, “Expert Spectatorship and Intra-Audience Relationships at the Globe to Globe 2012” in Shakespeare on the Global Stage: Performance and Festivity in the Olympic Year, eds. Paul Prescott and Erin Sullivan (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 166. 17. Michael Dobson, “Foreign Shakespeare and the Uninformed Theatre-goer: Part I, an Armenian King John” and “Foreign Shakespeare and the Uninformed Theatregoer: Part II, a Turkish Antony and Cleopatra” in Shakespeare Beyond English: A Global Experiment, 190 and 261. 18. Christy Desmet, “Import/Export: Trafficking in Cross-Cultural Shakespearean Spaces” in Multicultural Shakespeare 15:30 (2017): 15. 19. Robert Ormsby, “Locating Makbet / Locating the Spectator” in Shakespeare Beyond English: A Global Experiment, 152. 20. Ibid. 21. Susan Bennett and Christie Carson, “Introduction” in Shakespeare Beyond English: A Global Experiment, 8. 22. Elfman, “Expert Spectatorship and Intra-Audience Relationships at the Globe to Globe 2012”, 173. 23. Ibid., 179. 24. Bennett and Carson, “Introduction”, 5. 25. See Poonam Trivedi, “Shakespeare and the Indian Image(nary): Embodiment in Versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Replaying Shakespeare in Asia, eds. Poonam Trivedi and Minami Ryuta (New York: Routledge, 2010). 26. Deepan Sivaraman, “On Going Beyond Words to Embrace the Visual Language of Theatre” Interview with Sohaila Kapur, The Hindu, July 6, 2019. www.thehindu.com/ entertainment/theatre/theatre-director-deepan-sivaraman-on-going-beyondwords-to-embrace-the-visual-language-of-theatre/article28294845.ece, Last accessed August 2019. 27. Dan Rebellato, Theatre and Globalisation (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 3.

2 HOW COULD WE PRESENT ‘A NON-LOCALISED’ SHAKESPEARE IN ASIA? Colonialism and Atlantic Slave-Trade in Yamanote-Jijosha’s The Tempest Ted Motohashi This essay aims to analyse Yamanote-Jijosha Theatre Company’s staging of The Tempest ( January 2015 in Tokyo)1 from the viewpoint of the politico-historical context of the exploitative European colonialism, which in this production is graphically symbolised by the shipwreck and Atlantic slave-trade. The purpose of such analysis is to investigate the controversial issue of localising Shakespeare’s plays in Asia. A number of Shakespearean adaptations in Asia have been esteemed as innovative and ground-breaking largely because they overtly resort to the Oriental traditions in theatrical forms as well as in ideological content. If that is the case, how could we regard a particular Shakespearean adaptation by an Asian company as successful if that adaptation does not appear to be obviously “Asian” apart from the language of the production, not intending to appeal to the Orientalism of Western as well as native audiences? Can we still judge this kind of production as “Asian”, and if so, why? I will try to respond to these questions by taking Yamanote’s Tempest as example, because this production does not employ any Oriental devices except for the language which is today’s mainstream standardised Japanese: if we can detect any theoretical and methodological trend in this particular production, it is firmly based on the hegemonic dimensions of European colonialism in the modern era. This essay’s detailed analysis of this presentation will pay special attention to its representations of storms, written or drawn signs, and the protagonist’s nightmare, all of which significantly contribute to enhancing the original play’s focus on the psychological and pathological dimensions of colonial fantasy on the part of European castaway-colonists, who are surprisingly underrated in recent productions of the play. One of the reasons for playing down the colonial dimensions these days seems to be that, despite the plethora of postcolonial criticism of The Tempest since the late twentieth century, as one

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of the central pieces to reveal the castaway-colonist’s fears/desires about the island in which he finds himself bounded and isolated,2 actual stagings of the play have not matched the critical insight of enquiries in terms of theatrical spectacles and psychological investigations of the protagonist’s behaviour.3 I would like to argue that this presentation by Yamanote-Jijosha is so successful in highlighting universal dimensions of global colonialism based on capitalism, racialism and genderism that Shakespeare’s The Tempest is again proven to be a critical play that always/already shows that the colonial fantasies of controlling space, time and body are doomed to failure, not only on the page but also on the stage. Furthermore, the production’s emphasis on the politico-historical aspects of modern “Western” colonialism through its persuasive staging of the Caribbean storm, the power of linguistic signs, and the castaway-colonist’s obsessive fears and fantasies against otherness, apparently without recourse to any “Eastern” theatrical heritage, problematises the notion of “Asian” adaptation within the contemporary trend of “Global” Shakespeare.

Caribbean Tempest and Shipwreck In January 2015, the Yamanote-Jijosha Theatre Company staged Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which according to its artistic director Masahiro Yasuda “is apparently an unexciting piece of work” that “seems to involve no significant events within it”4 (presented at Stage East, Ikebukuro Arts Theatre in Tokyo, 14–18 January 2015. I attended the performance on the 15th). In order to examine this production’s ‘non-localised’ characteristics which would highlight the play’s merit not only as a universal investigation of the colonialist psyche but also as a unique representation of the historically specific site of Caribbean slave labour, I will pick up a few scenes of this production, with specific focus on its theatrical representations of the sea hurricanes, of the power of linguistic and visual signs, and of the protagonist’s nightmarish fantasies. The Yamanote-Jijosha Theatre Company was founded in 1984 by Masahiro Yasuda (1962-) with students at Waseda University. Since then, the company has been seeking its own innovative styles of acting based not on the fixed script but on the actors’ ideas and initiatives. Nowadays it is recognised as one of the foremost experimental avant-garde companies which has created its own performative style called ‘Yojohan’ which signifies the actors’ intensive ensemble in a small and imaginatively demarcated space. Being politically and culturally sensitive to the modern Japanese condition under globalism, it has performed both classical and contemporary plays with unique interpretations, including several Shakespeare plays − such as Titus Andronicus, The Tempest and King Lear − Greek tragedies and Ibsen, Chekhov and some Japanese classics like Chikamatu and Nanboku. Its reputation has taken its productions to Europe, particularly the Sibiu Festival, as Yasuda is now one of the most internationally renowned Japanese theatre directors along with Miyagi Satoshi of Shizuoka

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Performing Arts Centre and Oriza Hirata of Seinendan Theatre Company. Here in this essay we see how its creative style emerged out of Yasuda’s radicalising politics that interpreted The Tempest as a pathological study of the castaway colonist’s psychology. When we entered the theatre, we were embraced by serene baroque music and a shower of blue light shining from the dark stage into the auditorium (set and lighting by Yuji Sekiguchi, music by Kohei Saimi). The light and music were somewhat too uncanny to be called ‘beautiful’ and created an eerie atmosphere of being left deep inside the sea: to be more concrete, we felt as if we were in Bermuda referred to in Shakespeare’s The Tempest as “still-vex’d Bermoothes” (1.2.267),5 which had been not only a byword for tempests and enchantments for the Elizabethan dramatists’ imagination but also a notorious place in the real world for shipwreck and pirates’ plundering in the Caribbean. The performance started with a scene of a tempest. This scene can become quite boring to the contemporary audience in the actual staging of this play. Whereas the original lines try to describe the devastating situation by saying “the storm” (1.1.12) or “we split!” (1.1.48–49), it is impossible for us to appreciate the spectacle, unless it is turned into a realistic film. Yasuda’s direction solved this quandary with an innovative touch: as the opening classical music was replaced by mechanical noises suggesting self-destruction of modern industrial technology, a group of black-clothed men and women who could be

FIGURE 2.1

Fairies and sailors representing the storm scene in the Yamanote Tempest

Source: Photo by bozzo.

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interpreted as sailors represented the shipwreck in pantomimic gestures, into which fairies intervened by ripping apart the sailors’ black clothes. Throughout this performance, these ominous, ubiquitous and sometimes violent fairies served as a kind of silent chorus, playing the part of characters in Prospero’s recollections, ironically commenting on his statements, or even killing him in the nightmare scene, which I will discuss later.

Violence of Representation This outstanding opening scene clearly indicated the fundamental thematic layer of this production: that is, modern, European, colonialist violence was realised and executed through the power of representations. As Peter Greenaway’s magnificent film Prospero’s Books (1991) had illustrated, the theme of representing power had been revealed to be a significant undercurrent of Shakespeare’s The Tempest in both the manifestation and its self-annihilation of Prospero’s linguistic imperialism. In this magnificent filmic representation of the play, Prospero (played by late John Gielgud in one of his last roles) not only employs the magical power of the ‘books’ he possesses but speaks and writes down all the words that should be enunciated by other characters. Despite his monopolisation of the power of representation, he abandons that power after he witnesses three Ariels’ scribbling down some words of their own on a page of the book that will become The Tempest, and subsequently renders all the other characters of the play in his or her own voices. In Yamanote Tempest, Yasuda also underlined this theme by showing all the lines in this storm scene in the superscribed subtitles on the backstage screen. The juxtaposition between the discordant music, well-trained bodily movement of Yamanote-Jijosha’s actors and the superscribed signifiers contributed to creating the topos of violence of representational scripting from the outset. This topos was further highlighted by a plethora of ‘books’. Multiple volumes of books were piled up on the stage, which were also used effectively as props: namely, sheets of cardboard that wrote Chinese characters such as “Sword” or “Log” and pages of the books that were opened to show pictures representing “Sword” or “Log” occasionally served as those materials that possessed real weight and power within the actions of play. As mentioned previously, the close relationship between ‘books’ and the dominant power of representation had been amply investigated in Greenaway’s film: whereas his Prospero had been an omnipotent magus single-handedly controlling the capability of representations, Yasuda’s Prospero on the other hand (played by Yoshiro Yamamoto) here was unequivocally devoid of such power, whose desire for control miserably exceeded performance − as his connections with the ‘books’ and their representing might were pretty remote and slight. Let us linger for the moment upon the representation of wooden “Log” in this play, where Prospero forced Ferdinand (played by Takeshi Kawamura),

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FIGURE 2.2 Ferdinand and Miranda carrying a ‘Log’ with Prospero watching on in the Yamanote Tempest

Source: Photo by bozzo.

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who had fallen in love in an instant with Miranda (played by Junko Kurashina), to carry logs in order to restrain his passion for her and to test the sincerity of his intention. Here in this scene, a piece of log was represented either as Chinese characters “Log” written on an open page of a book or as a picture of a “Log” sketched on a cardboard, either of which appeared to be carried very heavily and strenuously by Ferdinand, and lightly and effortlessly by Miranda. Needless to say, perhaps, measurement such as weight and values are only ref lections of contingent historical power relationships that create representations. These logs carried by Ferdinand and Miranda, due to their very characteristics as representations through those ‘Signs’, became powerful metaphors that reminded us of the violence involved with sexual desire and slave labour in the universal topos of colonialism. The critical insight of the director Yasuda in highlighting the colonial violence of representation, on the one hand, employed the peculiarly East-Asian writing system symbolised by the omnipresent signifiers of Chinese characters and, on the other hand, emphasised the universally modern theme of printed books that openly depicted drawn pictures of various objects, brilliantly indicating a tension and disjunction within the arbitrary system of representation at the centre of modern European colonialism. The poetic aesthetic manifested by YamanoteJijosha’s The Tempest was driven and underscored by the critical politics that examined, by revealing the arbitrariness within the system of signification, the deep-seated aspects of the malaise and desire to colonially control and dominate other human beings. Despite its use of Chinese characters written on sheets of cardboard paper, the production achieved this aesthetic and political goal of probing the essence of colonialism without indulging itself with the Orientalist localism of exotic representation.

Colonialist Pathology of Selfhood: Miranda, Caliban, Prospero In order to further excavate the colonialist pathology hidden within the Self ’s gaze towards Otherness, we have to analyse the characterisation of the three outstanding persona in this performance – Miranda, Caliban and Prospero. The key thematic notions behind their characters were, respectively, desire, memory and nightmare, and their overarching psychological motif was repetition. To our sheer consternation, Miranda in this version of The Tempest was characterised as a middle-aged woman who seemed to be more appropriate for Prospero’s wife or whore than his daughter. It would be hard to imagine that Miranda had become a middle-aged woman during the “12 years” while she had been surrounded only by Prospero and Caliban on this isolated and enclosed island. Since it was logically impossible that Miranda, who had been an infant when she and Prospero had been banished from Milan 12 years ago, now became middle-aged, the “12 years” could be a virtual term for “very long

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time” or “almost eternal”, suggesting a feared as well as idealised womanhood at the suppressed core of the male-centred psyche of colonialism that always already attempts to dominate women in general in the universal gender politics. This altogether unique Miranda was a ground-breaking portrayal of the woman who enjoyed freedom and ability to express her own desire, potently released from the stereotypical images of an innocent and chaste colonised “maid”, who should be eternally subject to her father and husband in colonialist patriarchy in the West as well as in the Rest. Turning our attention next to Caliban (played by Yoshinori Iwabuchi), his characterisation was also shown through the director Yasuda’s astute observation of the mechanism of colonialism and its violent manipulation of human resources. Since his creation by Shakespeare in 1611, Caliban has been one of the longest-standing and most representative icons of Western colonialist literature. On this stage, however, he was depicted, again in a remarkably revolutionary fashion, as a human being closely related to marine lives, rather than an inhabitant on an island. This did not mean, however, that he sojourned in the unrestricted geographical region of the ocean; rather, he was firmly bounded to a conscripted space within the hold of a ship that carried millions of African slaves in the Middle Passage across the Atlantic since the sixteenth century, the political space that symbolised bondage and suppression as well as resistance and resilience. To suggest this historically multilayered presence within the character of Caliban, Yasuda, with a sleight of hand, presented two more ‘Calibans’, or his shadowy double figures, which in effect ‘tripled’ him on the stage. One was the half-naked man tortured almost throughout the performance on a bed in a ship’s deep-hold, crying in pain. Whenever he cried, the ship also creaked as if it had been also in pain for the inscrutable memories of the millions of the perished African bodies in the Middle Passage. Pointedly, the gorgeous chandelier in Prospero’s courtly room also f lickered at these moments to suggest the selfdoubts and quandaries on the part of the European slave-traders and capitalists who gained from the Marxian process of “primitive accumulation”. Colonialism’s violence upon the slave’s body was amplified by the f lickering light shining in the magical chamber and by the creaking bed that indicated implosion of Western individualism. This second ‘Caliban’ was spotted and identified by the first ‘real’ Caliban, exclaiming “he is I; that man was my true self ”. This figure represented Caliban’s past memory as a colonised slave, as well as his present recognition of his own status controlled by the Magus Prospero. To complicate as well as amplify the topos of modern colonialism, the third ‘Caliban’ appeared for a brief moment during Prospero’s nightmare scene (which I will discuss later): without any utterance, he violently banged a black piece of metal on an anvil in an act somewhat resembling or maybe reacting to the tortured practice of slave labour, which raised an ambivalent image of uncanny resistance by a slave on the one hand and oppressive regime administered by a slave-driver on the other. The banging noise, which echoed at the same time a

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FIGURE 2.3

Caliban and his slave counterpart in the Yamanote Tempest

Source: Photo by bozzo.

blacksmith’s toil and a prisoner’s escape from jail, in a way rekindled a signal fire for revolt by the colonised. It was also a disturbing sign indicating a dissection of the universal pathology of colonialism that strengthened the Manichean dualism between domination and subjugation, while repeating the colonialist violence of representations through mimesis and consent. The reason why the uncanny sound produced by this ‘third Caliban’ was ominous and foreboding is that, unlike the sound effects frequently employed on this stage suggesting the violence of representations, this had a real potential to transgress boundaries between slaves and slave-owners, as it was real as well as imaginary, produced and exhibited from the depth of castaway colonist psyche. This Caliban was an integration of the tripartite creature made of a ‘monster’, a ‘slave’ and a ‘revolutionary’. He not only observed and witnessed the slave and the slave-driver as his own self but also transcended these three figures by reversely radiating the obedient as well as revolting image of the proletariat that lay at the foundation of modern colonialist capitalism. Yasuda’s innovative tripling of Caliban clarified the politically and economically intricate relationship between colonialism and capitalism in European modernity to which we are still globally subject. Incidentally, in this production, Caliban’s image as a creator of alternative history as well as one of the first proletarian poets, which had been so powerfully evoked in Shakespeare’s original was not focused, precisely because there was no room for Caliban’s dream exemplified in his “Be not afeared” speech

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(3.2.118–126) on this island where Prospero’s illusionary nightmare was exhibited, to which we now turn. It has been a norm of postcolonial criticism of The Tempest to indicate limitations and contradictions of Prospero’s magical power: in fact, most of the miraculous tasks are carried out by Ariel, and Prospero’s ‘magic’ seems to be useless in simple tasks such as cleaning or collecting wooden logs, hence his need of slave work executed by Caliban and Ferdinand. Yasuda’s direction quite radically exceeded these postcolonial interpretations, by almost grotesquely focusing on Prospero’s inability and feebleness both as wizard and coloniser, and this was not more eloquently illustrated anywhere else than in the ‘masque’ which was supposed to celebrate the marital engagement between Miranda and Ferdinand. Prospero took this opportunity to boast his magical might to “Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple/Some vanity of mine art” (4.1.42–43). Again, this scene often tires the contemporary audience as the spectacle employs fairies playing the roles from the goddesses to the farmers, which is hardly of interest to modern spectators. However, this scene is important within Shakespeare’s overall scheme as it represents a pathology of colonialism as well as a process of its demise. Here again Yasuda’s excellence was obvious as he presented this scene as Prospero’s recurrent nightmarish vision. As the serene music and beautiful lighting slowly became muddled and disturbed, the masque that could have been a showcasing of magical wonder gradually descended into a nightmare revealing the coloniser’s suppressed fears and anxieties. Within this monstrous vision, Prospero was murdered by Ariel (played by Hiroki Ura) and thrown into a coffin. Furthermore, Yasuda remarkably let the murdered Prospero recite lines reminiscent of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy: “To die, to sleep. To sleep eternally, and perhaps to dream again”. The reason why any nightmare looks hideous and attractive at the same time is that a nightmare is not ontological but epistemological. In this sense, a nightmare is quite akin to the ‘Ghost’ of Hamlet. We fear the ghost and the nightmare not because we see them but because we think we see them: to borrow Hamlet’s words, they are “not seems” but “that within”. Prospero’s nightmare in Yasuda’s version of The Tempest effectively revealed the colonialist pathology in that the coloniser experienced his own death as an ominous sign for the demise of his empire. In this play, everything – from motifs, themes, images to actions, sentiments, even lives and deaths – repeated themselves, as if the coloniser had been unable to live without his native customs brought with him to the colony. Prospero, the linguistic imperialist obsessed with the power of representations would never be able to awaken from his nightmarish visions. The play exposed these obsessions involved with the central characters’ desire, memory and nightmare as nothing but the pathological signs of sentiments, aspirations and fears at the core of Western modernity, which had been invested with colonial exploitations and oppressions. Colonialism, being a disease in an

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FIGURE 2.4

Prospero in a coffin within his nightmarish vision in the Yamanote

Tempest Source: Photo by bozzo.

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epistemological as well as an existential sense, is always already supported and threatened by the presence of slave and shipwreck as its own ‘ghost’. The bed on which Caliban’s slavish counterpart cried in pain was a displaced image of the coffin in which the able slave-owner Prospero dreamed of his own impotence. What Prospero exhibited in his nightmare was a disturbing awareness that his island that could have been a utopia for the coloniser was revealed to be a dystopia for all human beings in the modern world created out of European colonialism.

Bermuda Triangle: Ariel Finally, let us consider the triangular relationship in this production that was illustrated in the images of the shipwreck in the Bermuda Sea. Peculiarly, in this production of The Tempest, the relationships between the characters were always represented on the stage in a triangular fashion: Prospero/ Miranda/Caliban, Prospero/Miranda/Ferdinand, Caliban/Trinculo (Michiko Ohkubo)/Stephano (Yosuke Tani), Jovanna Queen of Naples (played by Emi Yamaguchi, as this production changed the sex from King to Queen)/Sebastian her brother (Hiroyuki Sato)/Antonio (Kazuhiro Saiki). This version went as far as to maintain this tripartite structure by cutting Milanese courtier Gonzalo and giving some of his lines to Antonio. ‘Three’ not only meant transcending dualism but also ‘indefinitely many’. The production’s prevalent reference to the threesome ref lected Yasuda’s astute interest in colonialism that indicated complexity of amplified hunger and sickness on both the part of the colonising and the colonised, rather than a simple Manichean opposition between the two. This stage presented a chain of representative violence in triangular manner and amplified it through the multiplied presence of the fairies. Those who supposedly controlled the power of the written language would be eternally caught in a maze of nightmare as a kind of domino effect. However, there was a single character who was not trapped in this triangular web of colonial relationships – Ariel. Ariel was the only character who appeared to maintain his individual freedom within this complicated network of colonialist obsessions and interests. With the fairy’s ability to freely change shapes and ventriloquise, in his parodic mimicry of Prospero’s voice from the auditorium, Ariel was the sole master in the Bermuda Triangle, the infamous spot of shipwreck and the home of pirates, where a number of colonialists had perished from the ancient period. Unlike Prospero and Caliban, Ariel would never suffer from a nightmare or dream a dream. He was alien to both past illusions and present pain, not concerned with any ideology or religion, and therefore could be the genuine executor of violence. Probably because Ariel was not a possessor of the power of representations, but the representation itself, he was naturally one with the various representations on this stage – beautiful shapes such as bubbles, watery showers, maelstrom of light, sound of folkloric

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music, human breathing under the water, as well as ugly phenomena such as vomiting, drunkenness, ruined beds and stains of paint. Not being bound by the power of written language, nor appropriating it, Ariel felt no need to either execute or resist colonialism. His theatrical presence may have been a trace of hope for the eternally deferred future, a future that would ascertain equality and justice on both ends of colonial relationship, having survived the epistemological malaise of colonialist representations. In the last scene, when Prospero set Ariel free, a Japanese popular song fittingly hit the audience’s ears: “Ii Hi Tabidachi (Departure on a Fine Day)” sung by Momoe Yamaguchi, lyric and music by Shinji Tanimura, produced in November 1987, one of the greatest hit songs by this iconic singer promoted by the then Japan National Railway Company ( JNRC) to entice the Japanese populace in a commercial campaign called “Discover Japan” to travel around Japan at the height of bubble economy.6 However, the song was abruptly cut out just before the crucial name for destination “Japan” was pronounced. Here again, the director’s insight into how colonialism works was prominent as JNRC’s campaign using this song had been so successful in letting the ordinary Japanese people fantasise that they had been already westernised, and therefore they could afford to, financially as well as psychologically, explore and enjoy the Japanese countryside from the colonialist viewpoint of urbanised and enlightened individuals. Historically, this campaign was the latest effort by one of the biggest Japanese Companies to colonise the mind of ordinary people who would acquire the mindset that led them to believe that travelling into any unfamiliar place, whether within or outside their country, would amount to conquering it. Through erasing the destined name of “Japan”, both as executor and as target of the colonisation, this production ended wonderfully poised in an ambivalent space between Japan and its colonised others, between European and Asian modernity. By doing so, Yamanote Tempest disturbingly complicated and problematised the seemingly stable and academically comfortable, if not colonially produced, relationship between the ‘original’ English Shakespearean productions and the ‘adapted’, ‘translated’ and ‘appropriated’ representations by Japanese theatre practitioners, who were acutely conscious and critical of their own historical involvement not only as a colonised other by the Westerners but also as a colonising self against its Asian neighbours. In the Bermuda Triangle where the two essential factors of colonialism, slave-trade and wrecked ship merged, we were left with, at the end of the play, an unfinished documentary directed by Ariel about a lost coloniser. YamanoteJijosha’s The Tempest was at once a past nightmare of the coloniser Prospero, a present reality of the slave Caliban, as well as an eternally postponed future of the postcolonial agent Ariel. Was the triangular bondage dissolved by Ariel’s f light and Prospero’s departure? Would the epistemological disease be finally healed by the sheer brilliance of Ariel’s theatrical presence? Answers could reside with the sojourning

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FIGURE 2.5

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The departure of Ariel and Prospero in the Yamanote Tempest

Source: Photo by bozzo.

audience who had been sailing in the rough Caribbean sea through this anticolonialist version of The Tempest and participating in an eternal seafaring with the unnamed fairies on the stage who could forebode some unexpected postcolonial future still haunted by the nightmarish obsession with the power of Shakespearean language. Judy Celine Ick, in her paper titled “The Forests of Silence: Global Shakespeare in the Philippines, the Philippines in Global Shakespeare” presented at the World Shakespeare Congress in August 2016, persuasively criticises the unequal distribution of power that bestows the legitimate labels of ‘Global Shakespeares’ to certain productions while ignoring others. She also problematises Douglas Lanier’s inf luential concept of a Shakespearean rhizomatics by saying that it does little to bring temporality to the fore . . . being a predominantly spatial paradigm. If one does not exercise due diligence in introducing the dimension of time, the concept of networks threatens to obscure or elide histories and their embedded power relations.78 I would add to her criticism by observing that so-called Global Shakespeare, or to be more precise, ‘Glocal Shakespeares’ in which all productions of Shakespeare’s plays whether in the United Kingdom, Asia, Africa, Middle East or in Europe are contemporary ref lections of power politics under globalisation or

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rather glocalisation that is always already a fundamentally colonial issue within the histories of modern European imperialism since 1492. We should employ Asian theatrical traditions as they may fit particular Shakespearean productions without any restriction – but only in a self-critically theoretical mode that is theatrically innovative enough to challenge the facile phenomenon of Glocal Shakespeares. If we admit, as I believe we must, that the European modernity invested with colonialism has been and still is the fundamental condition of our own physical and mental lives, we should question ourselves why and how we want to define such a production as Yamanote Tempest as ‘Asian’ or ‘Japanese’. Any investigation in this fashion must start with our critical conception of the Japanese historical involvement with modern colonialism both as a victim of European invasion and as an aggressor against its Asian neighbours. Therefore, to allow The Tempest still to be an epochal piece of dramatic inquiry into the psychology of European castaway colonists would require us to be critically discriminating as to which elements in the Shakespeare’s original are worthy of expansive and innovative appropriations, and the Yamanote Jijyosha’s The Tempest realised these potentials in a disturbingly remarkable way. After watching this performance which ended with Prospero’s miscarried and mistimed departure from the island, a question probably lingers for a long time to come: do we still allow ourselves to be complaisant, if not complicit, with our dominantly academic behaviour of tacitly revering ‘English’ Shakespeares while overtly praising ‘Asian’ interventions into ‘Global’ Shakespeares?

Notes 1. A full stage recording of this production (with English subtitles) is available on DVD format and can be purchased from the Company: see www.yamanote-j.org. 2. Among a number of postcolonial criticisms of The Tempest and the island literature in general, perhaps three of the most representative ones are: Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492–1797 (New York: Routledge, 1987); Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman, eds., ‘The Tempest’ and Its Travels (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals and Fantasies of Conquest (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007) which is particularly insightful as a seminal study of the castaway colonist’s psychology. 3. Probably one of the most representatively ‘postcolonial’ productions of the play was directed by Jonathan Miller in 1988 at Old Vic with Rudolph Walker as Caliban and Max von Sydow as Prospero, in which Caliban is threatened by Ariel who has appropriated Prospero’s staff at the end of the play. However, even in this production, the psychological dimension of the play, particularly in terms of the protagonist Prospero’s pathology as a castaway colonist, was not sufficiently represented. 4. Masahiro Yasuda, “The Director’s Note” (Yamanote-Jijosha, 2015). 5. William Shakespeare, The Tempest in The RSC Shakespeare Complete Works, eds. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2008). Henceforth quotations of this play are from this edition.

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6. Yamaguchi’s singing of this song can be watched/listened to at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Dgv3vNdRVf U, Last accessed December 20, 2018. An English translation of the lyric is available at https://lyricstranslate.com/en/ii-hi-tabidachi-いい日旅立 ち-departure-fine-day.html, Last accessed December 20, 2018). 7. Judy Celine Ick, “The Forests of Silence: Global Shakespeare in the Philippines, the Philippines in Global Shakespeare” (unpublished, presented at the World Shakespeare Congress, August 2017). 8. Douglas Lanier, “Shakespearean Rhizomatics: Adaptation, Ethics, Value” in Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation, eds. Alexa Alice Joubin and Elizabeth Rivlin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

3 ‘WE WILL PERFORM IN MEASURE, TIME AND PLACE’ Synchronicity, Signification and Cultural Mobility in Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio’s Cantonese-Language Macbeth Mike Ingham

Introduction My essay assesses the significance of a Hong Kong-based global-local adaptation of ‘the Scottish play’ through the lens of pertinent cultural theory, particularly Raymond Williams’ ‘structure of feeling’ and Stephen Greenblatt’s ‘cultural mobility’ paradigms, as well as in relation to Asian intercultural Shakespeare discourses. The liminality of Hong Kong’s situation, perched, somewhat precariously, between the global and the local and between Western and Chinese traditions, offers a unique vantage-point for an Asian Shakespeare intervention that does not fall into the more clearly defined category of a national theatre or a heritage genre production. As Shen Lin has critically observed in his essay ‘What Use Shakespeare? China and Globalization’, most Chinese intercultural Shakespeares tend to “avoid the troubled issues of meaning and significance”, or worse, are “equated with the marketplace” by artists “liberated by capitalism”.1 Tang Shu-wing’s Hong Kong Macbeth, as I argue, has little in common with such appropriations. “We will perform in measure, time and place” (5.8.73) – the title of my essay – is based on one of the closing lines from Malcolm’s regal proclamation at the end of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. He refers to arrangements for his investiture as monarch following the defeat of the bloodthirsty usurper, Macbeth. As the 2010 imagined sequel to Shakespeare’s play, Dunsinane, by Scottish dramatist David Greig suggests, Malcolm might not represent an ideal replacement for the slain tyrant; questions as to what and how he will perform endow the ending with uncertainty, and have informed the imaginative afterlife of Shakespeare’s tragedy. The quotation also invites us to explore the broader idea of mobility across time and place, and also cultures. Performing in measure suggests

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appropriateness or decorum, at least in the dramatic context of this closing scene, with its subtext related to the slain tyrant’s excesses and Malcolm’s own confessed tastes for the same. The words ‘appropriate’ and ‘proper’ are derived from the same etymological root as the word ‘appropriation’, and performing what is appropriate or proper carries the underlying meaning of ‘making something one’s own’. Comparing adaptation with appropriation, Judith Sanders points out: “appropriation frequently affects a more decisive journey away from the informing source into a wholly new cultural product or domain”.2 This suggests that what is appropriate to a character in a drama or to a drama out of its original context involves a shift of perspective and a re-conceptualisation, whether of oneself or of that entity. It calls into question the notion of authenticity in relation to the interpretation of both character and drama up to the present point in time. Stage adaptations and appropriations by their very nature cannot invoke authenticity of time and place, and they make no attempt to measure themselves against more canonical texts or productions. Rather, they are authentic and appropriate to themselves in their own measures, times and places. This is a core artistic principle to be found in the work of Hong Kong’s premier stage director Tang Shu-wing. His stage work is noted for his distinctive aesthetic combining storytelling techniques, physical theatre and stage minimalism, all key elements of his Asian theatre appropriations of Shakespeare. His three Shakespeare productions in Cantonese to date ref lect a strong sense of a specific Hong Kong identity, the earlier production of Titus Andronicus for the 2012 Globe-to-Globe Shakespeare Festival officially representing the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region at that international event. Macbeth, co-commissioned by London’s Globe Theatre and the Hong Kong Arts Festival has maintained, and even accentuated, this spirit of synthesis of the intercultural with the local. The production premiered at The Globe in August 2015, subsequently opening in Hong Kong at the 2016 Arts Festival. Since then it toured in Europe in 2017 and enjoyed a revival in Hong Kong, with the most recent performances taking place in late 2018. In 2019, it was also performed in three cities of the China mainland, Shenzen, Guangzhou and Shanghai, and latterly in Taipei. Unlike many Asian Shakespeares, in mainland China and Japan for example, Tang’s adaptations are not unified by a singular traditional aesthetic form or style, although, like most traditional Asian theatre forms, they tend to eschew predominantly realistic representation. At the same time, Tang’s Macbeth is unusual in adopting an essentially presentist perspective (Grady and Hawkes, 2007; Gajowski, 2010) in its associations. The vast majority of Asian Shakespeare productions tend to situate their plots firmly in a historically comparable past era, one that is relatively safe in terms of its sociopolitical frame of reference. By contrast, Tang’s production has a visceral quality of ‘nowness’ about

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it. Making the case for ‘nowness’ in our approach to Shakespeare, Gajowski queries rhetorically: The question is – what do we do with the moment of recognition of the utter contemporaneity of Shakespeare? Do we let it f lit away back into the obscurity of unconsciousness? Or do we analyze it, intervening into past meanings that have been constructed over decades and centuries? From a presentist’s point of view, the answer is obvious.3 This palpable characteristic of presentism, more than any other aspect, is what I will argue justifies my seeing the production in terms of a specific Hong Kong appropriation, rather than a typical Asian Shakespeare, or a typical Chinese Shakespeare adaptation. To cite Shen Lin’s trenchant critique: “[l] egitimacy lies in demonstrating that the value of Shakespeare is always local and timely, not universal and timeless”.4 In his interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays in the Asian context, the minimal, stripped-down design and deliberate blurring of eras between ancient China and modern-day Hong Kong is intended to ref lect how Hong Kong is currently experiencing, as Tang puts it, “one of the hardest times in her history” (house programme note). His oneiric framing concept, whereby Macbeth and his wife are represented as a contemporary couple who glimpse the consequences of “vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself ” (1.7.27) resulting in civil strife, is key to understanding the production in Hong Kong’s current sociopolitical context. The so-called umbrella revolution that took place in Hong Kong between late September and early December 2014 is still fresh in people’s minds,5 and, I contend, offers Hong Kong playgoers a ‘glocal’ point of reference for relating Shakespeare’s play to immediate time and place.

The Macbeth Production at the Hong Kong Arts Festival, 2016 The production was unveiled at the Globe Theatre, London, in August 2015 on the same stage where Tang’s company had performed their Titus Andronicus three years earlier. As in the earlier production, the minimalist, stylised aesthetics and the physically evocative, non-naturalistic acting methods that are associated with traditional Asian theatre, and likewise with Tang’s trademark style, were strongly in evidence. In Tang’s version Shakespeare’s text is translated into modern, but formal, Cantonese by translator Rupert Chan (working in collaboration with the director) with little or no use of contemporary colloquialism; the acting version contains judicious cuts from the source in order to maintain the right balance between spoken text and more visual, physical elements of the play. One major difference between the London Globe Macbeth and the Hong Kong City Hall version of it seven months later in March 2016 was that the former had taken place in daylight, which precluded use of stage lighting – including

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blackouts or chiaroscuro effects – from the elements of theatricality available to the director. This Globe production had been necessarily stripped back, focusing essentially on the actors’ voices, body language and kinetic energy. In the Hong Kong version, however, Tang opted for a more atmospheric opening in keeping with the dramatic narrative environment alluded to in the play and the technical effects afforded by an interior stage setting. In a series of snapshots punctuated by blackouts the actors playing Macbeth (Ng Wai-shek) and Lady Macbeth (Rosa Maria Velasco) are represented as a modern-era couple standing against a backcloth of South China-looking mountains; the discrepancy between their dress and that of other characters, as they enter, is immediately apparent. In murky light the hooded figure of Macbeth, anachronistically clad in modern jacket and trousers, and Banquo, wearing ancient Chinese battle-dress, are revealed sword-fighting in slow-motion with rebel soldiers, a scene that segues into the execution of the Thane of Cawdor. With minimal dialogue and utmost economy of representation this tableau transitions into Macbeth’s and Banquo’s meeting with the three witches; their encounter is marked by a symmetrical stage pattern in which the two soldiers and the (male) witches face each other at right angles to the audience. Stage symmetry in the configuration of the actors and the non-naturalistic blocking are hallmarks of Tang’s directorial style; here the device conveys most effectively a ritual ceremonial ethos, thereby heightening the estrangement effect that his productions intentionally create. The “fair is foul and foul is fair” (1.1.11) motif that permeates this scene is picked up as a recurrent linguistic and visual trope throughout the play, particularly in relation to the appearance of the seemingly smart Macbeth couple. The continued slow-motion actions of both parties and the ominous drumming pattern, together with the smoke effect and sombre lighting, heighten the threatening and oppressive mood of the scene. In a neat segue Macbeth is positioned downstage centre and – introducing a key motif of the play – appears about to fall; however his fall is arrested by the entrance of his wife who has been reading her husband’s letter. Like her husband, the contemporary Lady Macbeth figure is both the modern dreamer outside the frame of the narrative and at the same time the protagonist of the dramatic action. In the letter-reading scene she moves furtively as though, in a proleptic stage image, she is already creeping to commit the murder; this action is juxtaposed with the entrance of Duncan and his courtiers – a group attired as Chinese officials from a period approximating to the Sung Dynasty – upstage centre through a curtain backdrop that is sharply divided in the shape of a dagger. Duncan and the royal group stay motionless upstage during her soliloquy for greater economy of scenic transition, and then ‘unfreeze’ to signify their arrival at the castle. For her part, Lady Macbeth’s movement across the stage, hunched forward as if to manifest the contorted nature of her thinking, highlights the relentless

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crescendo of the “unsex me now” (1.5.46) speech. Her private motion segues seamlessly into a conventional public posture of obeisance, as she greets the king/emperor, and then falls to her knees, a deftly economical physical signifier of the devious intent conveyed in her monologue. Additionally, Lady Macbeth’s arched body and rhythmic creeping in this scene echoes the movements of her husband in the opening scene, connoting complicity between the couple. It also foreshadows ironically her husband’s doom-laden threnody for her upon hearing the news of her death: “She should have died hereafter . . . / Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day” (5.5.17–19). The parasols introduced at the entrance of the royal party become a recurrent motif of the production as a whole, and these are later carried by the Macbeth couple to signify their elevated status. In traditional Chinese theatre the parasol/umbrella as prop also connotes the onstage presence of a revenant figure, and this association is certainly relevant to the production’s evocation of ghostly visitation. Tang uses the umbrella icon allusively, together with blood-red ribbons f lowing from the mouth and hands, as signifiers of the spirits of the slain Duncan and Banquo during their solo promenades, which immediately follow their respective murders. Once the umbrella appears in the hands of the modern-dress protagonists, however, it rapidly loses its more literal and traditional signification, and acquires more contemporary and topical connotations. Tang’s dramatically motivated deployment of the

FIGURE 3.1

Macbeth visits the witches (Guangzhou production); note the parasol

Source: Courtesy Tang Shu-wing.

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ubiquitous umbrella icon tended to resonate for Hong Kong audiences with 2014’s Occupy Central civil disobedience campaign, of which the umbrella came to be a powerful symbol. In the theatre, as opposed to the street, it remains a semiotic element that is restricted in terms of its frame of reference in time and space. In the earlier Globe production in 2015 such iconicity would have had considerably less impact for obvious reasons of geographical distance,6 while Tang for obvious reasons would not acknowledge any such deliberately codified interpretation. A number of observers have commented on the dance-like composition and graceful f luidity of movement and image in Tang’s production at the Globe, and this fusion-theatre style also characterised his Hong Kong production. Following on from the composite scene of Duncan’s arrival and Lady Macbeth’s greeting, which accelerates the pace in spite of its tableau-like quality, comes a succession of economical and richly suggestive stage images and physical configurations associated with Shakespeare’s textual imagery. Thus, Lady Macbeth’s repudiation of her husband’s urging to proceed no further in the business is highlighted by the image of a cowering Macbeth dominated by his assertive spouse, as she reproves him: “Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself?” (1.7.36–7) and “But screw your courage to the sticking-place and we’ll not fail” (1.7.60–1). When Macbeth capitulates in the face of his wife’s singlemindedness, and he exhorts her to “bring forth men children only” (1.7.73), Lady Macbeth cradles him in her arms as if he were the male child he has spoken of. Now that Macbeth is resolved to commit the murder having endured his wife’s scorn, he lifts her and moves with her on his back, implying that they are once again a single unit. However, this is no dance-drama narrative that narrates events straightforwardly and non-verbally; the kinetic effect of f luent, dance-like movements and configurations is balanced and complemented by key moments of stasis. In this way, the slow-motion sequences suggest actions undertaken in a phantasmagoric, almost cataleptic, state, an evocative physical device featured in a number of scenes in the gliding, somnambulistic moves of the actors, including the more supernatural encounters with the ‘weird sisters’. When motion is suspended, the freeze-frame imagery accompanying the direct-address soliloquies, particularly those of Macbeth and (later) Lady Macbeth, implies a hypnotic and unconscious level of motivation. Thus, recurrent images of falling from the stage into the abyss – later reprised in the adaptation’s powerful ending  – enhance the signification of the Shakespeare lines from Macbeth’s great soliloquy of irresolution and ethical misgiving: I have no spur to prick the side of my intent But only vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself And falls on the other. . . . (1.7.25–8)

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This image of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, standing at the edge of the stage wearing blindfolds at various points of the play, picks up the metaphor of vaulting ambition, and conf lates it with the image of a leap into the unknown. The common oneiric sensation of falling is thus translated into a portmanteau image of the whole society’s leap into an unknown future, connoting the uncertainty surrounding the events of October 2014 in Hong Kong and its “hereafter“ (1.3.49). Of course “vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself ” (1.7.27) can also be associated with modern political figures in the minds of the audience. There are many equally virtuosic effects created by Tang’s stylisation of dramatic action: for example, after the murder scene Duncan’s soul, clad in white to signify death and mourning and with red ribbons protruding from various parts of his costume to signify blood, crosses the stage silently and exits through the curtain. The ghost of Banquo repeats this move later in the play after his murder. Other conventionalised effects common to Asian Shakespeare include a funereal walk downstage in slow-motion by Macbeth (now wearing his bloodred shirt without the jacket) together with Lady Macbeth, simulating mourning but also attempting to convey stately dignity, as well as the latter’s feigned fainting-fit, all the more dramatically effective for its aesthetically economical and suggestive – as opposed to exaggerated – expression. Equally, Ross’s narration of portents that Duncan’s horses have broken their stalls, the heavens are “troubled with man’s act” (2.4.6) and that “darkness does the face of earth entomb” (2.4.10), are conveyed largely through musical sound effects and gestural cameos that form part of a composite stage image. Such supernatural elements, which can often seem unconvincing and stagey in more naturalistic or conventional Western productions, tend to assume greater dramatic impact in the more ritualised performance styles of traditional Asian theatre forms, such as Nōh, Kabuki or Xiqu, as well as in mixed-mode Asian forms,7 a necessarily loose and broad rubric, under which Tang’s Shakespeare productions may be included. It is from this rich theatrical legacy that Tang derives his stylistic method, including the use of Korean kuk drum and of Japanese f lute,8 clearly reminiscent of Nōh theatre, to provide effects such as the knocking on the castle gate by Macduff, as signified by repetitive drumming, the cry of the raven above the castle battlements, the shrill cry heralding Lady Macbeth’s death, and so on. Another notable feature was the production’s deftly symbolic casting: the three witches – re-conceived by the director as shamen – double as the three murderers of Banquo and the three murderers sent by Macbeth to slaughter Macduff ’s “pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop” (4.3.217–18). This device creates inevitable associations and correspondences between the prognosticators and the perpetrators of evil represented in the play. Costume changes also signify shifts in the interpersonal dynamics as well as in character status: Macbeth is black-suited and Lady Macbeth wears a red evening gown for the coronation, connoting a sense of power-dressing, but greater distance is

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evident between the couple from this point onward, as indicated by the stage proxemics. When they revert to the more casual contemporary appearance for Tang’s transformed ending to the play, a return to their former intimacy is signified both by their dress and by physical proximity. In addition, the colour coding incorporates aesthetic elements adopted from Asian theatre conventions: the three murderers of Banquo, clad in white and resembling Ninja warriors, are seated immobile in pools of white light waiting for Banquo and Fleance, as the red light from the latter’s lamp moves inexorably towards them in the darkness. Banquo’s murder is not depicted in this sequence, only Fleance’s f light. This scene exemplifies the effectiveness of formalised movement and variations in scenic rhythm, alternating stasis and immobility with sudden movement and violent action. Tang’s mixed-mode Asian theatre aesthetic does not always correspond to traditional anti-naturalistic theatricality, however. For example, when Macbeth hallucinates the dagger before him in his troubled soliloquy immediately preceding the murder, it is physically represented on stage, moving in front of Macbeth through the agency of a dark hooded figure. Contrastively, during the ghost scene at the banquet following Macbeth’s murder of Banquo, no revenant figure is present on stage, suggesting a more psychologically modern interpretation of the scene; the ghost is purely a vision produced by the usurper’s guiltwracked brain, thereby rendering literal Lady Macbeth’s rebuke to him “you look but on a stool” (3.4.67). Despite the formal configuration of the scene and the deep symbolism it evokes, Tang opts for this more literal reading as opposed to the arguably more melodramatic option of physically embodying the ghost. Like Gertrude in the bedroom scene of Hamlet, Lady Macbeth cannot sense the visitation, and therefore neither should the audience, according to the director’s reasoning, even though Lady Macbeth, dismissively references “the air-drawn dagger” (3.4.61) of the earlier scene in a vain attempt to quell her husband’s attack of terror. However, in most other respects, the staging and performance of this scene is conventionalised and symbolic. The remainder of the ensemble wear masks with fixed smiles, and stand behind ready to wait on the guests, who kneel before footstools that signify their places. Banquo’s place remains unfilled, and only a spotlight evokes his ghostly presence. Colour symbolism is accentuated by Lady Macbeth’s modern-style scarlet dress, while Macbeth attempts to pursue his ghostly nemesis amid the rows of eerie attendants. The Financial Times reviewer of the Globe Theatre production argued that the decision to make the dagger that haunts Macbeth at the beginning of Act 2 visible while excluding the ghostly apparition of Banquo at the feast in Act 3 amounted to inconsistency on the director’s part. On the face of it this appears to be a valid objection, but Asian experimental theatre fusions, such as those conceived by Tang Shu-wing, rarely feel the need to conform to conventions of consistency common to Western theatrical methods; also, the British press reviewers were able to grasp the admittedly subtle Hong Kong political allusions

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FIGURE 3.2

Banquet ghost scene: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth

Source: Courtesy Tang Shu-wing.

intimated by the production, although the f luid theatrical style was lauded. The subsequent transfer of the production back to the Hong Kong context certainly seemed to bring the contemporary sociopolitical subtext into sharper relief, while the crucial supernatural element – frequently ineffective or played down in more naturalistic Western productions of the play – benefited from chiaroscuro lighting effects that enhanced the synchronised and formalised movement and ritualised staging. In an echo of the earlier ghostly promenade of Duncan the spotlit image of Banquo’s ghost is observed after the exit of the banquet guests walking slowly and deliberately downstage, a revenge portent connoting Macbeth’s remark to his wife after the abrupt termination of the banquet, “Blood will have blood” (3.4.121). The effect created by the more formal and distanced theatricality of this device ref lects more aptly Tang’s stage aesthetic, eliminating the melodrama of Banquo’s apparition at Macbeth’s feast in the original text. This accords with the director’s pattern of synchronous but spatially dislocated images that blur the boundary between coinciding dramatic interaction and coextensive but separate dramatic action, between physical and metaphysical phenomena. Such f luid, transient stage imagery effectively highlights the play’s central theme concerning the insubstantiality of seemingly concrete phenomena, the chimerical, illusory nature of existence and the vanity of human aspirations, of corporal things melting “as breath into the wind” (1.3.80–1).

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In Macbeth’s second encounter with the witches a disembodied Hecate, voiced by all three witches speaking in unison, metamorphoses into the three subordinate witches whom Macbeth has come to question. However, their persons are now represented as three costumes held out symbolically in front of the actors, and their “assurance double sure” (4.1.81) that “none born of woman shall harm Macbeth” (4.1.79–80) is as hollow and insubstantial as the “charmed air” (4.1.128) and “shadows” (4.1.110) they have conjured up to entice the tyrant. Of equal narrative economy and visual impact is the scene in which Lady Macduff and her children are murdered. In a neat symmetrical staging the scene is represented as a narrative f lashback on stage left, as Macduff and Malcom respond horror- and grief-stricken to the graphic report of their murder being played out on stage right. Standing on footstools, each in a pool of white light, the three family members are blindfolded and symbolically executed by the three murderers/witches. Afterwards Malcolm moves into the spotlight downstage centre, as he confesses to Macduff his unfitness for high office. This palpable economy of movement, image, narrative trajectory and rapid scene transitions distinguish Tang’s theatricality as Asian, but equally as a product of experimental theatre practices worldwide. Likewise, the f luent transitions from scene to scene, together with the production’s judiciously juxtaposed scenes, accelerate stage action. Other striking snapshots from the latter part of the play include an eloquent and amusing composite image of rumourmongering among two of the courtiers, Lennox and Angus,9 highly suggestive of scheming eunuchs at an imperial court. The two cross the stage diagonally at slow pace, fastidiously holding their robes to prevent them from touching the ground. Lennox’s self-serving equivocation, evident from the pattern of his dialogic moves in the scene, reveals a growing awareness of the need to save himself by switching allegiance from Macbeth to Malcolm. His lack of loyalty is critiqued – reminiscent of Brechtian gestural acting where the actor’s distance from the role is quintessential – by this effective shorthand evocation of mandarin sophistry. There is a subsequent reportage scene between the nobles/ mandarins facing each other across the stage, indicating that Lennox and Angus have changed sides and corresponding to the episodic and dramatically taut sequence of scenes in the last part of the play; this passage of short scenes blends smoothly into the shorthand metonymic image of Birnam Wood marching towards Dunsinane, suggested by a few tree-like figures. In accordance with the accelerated tempo of Shakespeare’s final act, with its alternating perspectives on events and precipitate movement towards the endgame, an economy of rapidly succeeding images accentuates Macbeth’s loss of dominion and his plunge into despair. The production’s recurrent physical motif of its protagonists being on the verge of falling from the edge of the stage reinforces the impression of fate and events taking over and of the Macbeth couple being swept towards a precipice. In her compulsive hand-washing scene Lady Macbeth walks catatonically downstage in a manner suggesting a ghostly

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presence and appropriately echoing Duncan’s and Banquo’s earlier hauntings. Simultaneously, Malcom, Macduff and Siward approach Macbeth’s castle in Dunsinane walking down on either side of the stage, and the cry of Lady Macbeth’s serving-woman indicating her death is alluded to by a shrill note on the f lute. As he prepares for battle and certain death, Macbeth’s soliloquy response resonates with motifs associated with his wife’s sleep-walking, “Life’s a walking shadow” (5.5.24) and her earlier creeping action contemplating regicide, “creeps in this petty pace” (5.5.20), as well as his own vain “strutting and fretting” (5.5.25) during his brief period of absolute power. Even at the play’s conclusion physical conf lict is represented only symbolically. Macbeth stands on a ring of footstools, suggesting he is looking down from the ramparts of a fortress. After his final soliloquy he jumps down from the ‘ramparts’ to face his enemies in combat, initially dispatching young Siward who simply hangs his head, and is carried off by other ensemble actors. This series of swift successive images culminates in a ritualised ‘combat’, in which Macbeth and Macduff lay their swords down in front of them, conf lating the challenge and the lethal martial encounter that follows, and thereby eschewing physical contact or realistic representation of swordplay. Both adopt warriorlike poses, but Macbeth’s, death is figuratively, not literally, conveyed; he drops to the ground and the revenant of Lady Macbeth appears, summoning him to join her in death. Meanwhile Macduff picks up both swords and exits upstage. Finally, in a deliberately anachronistic epilogue that departs unabashedly from Shakespeare’s text, we hear the uplifting Ode to Joy from the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, its original Schiller text extolling humanity, brotherhood of man, friendship and love of creation, in stark contrast to the nihilism of Macbeth’s earlier “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” (5.5.19) embrace of nothingness. Macbeth rises and picks up the umbrella that previously signified imperial power and that now appears to be associated with renaissance and rebirth. The Macbeths stand together, symbolically a couple once more. Hand-in-hand they walk down to the edge of stage and jump, taking a leap of faith into an unknown future.

Liminal Spaces: Between the Global and the Local As Stephen Greenblatt comments in his essay ‘Shakespeare and the ethics of authority’, a key problem the play poses is how to “discover an ethically adequate object for human ambition”.10 Greenblatt relates this to Macbeth’s soliloquy immediately before the murder of Duncan: We still have judgment here, that we but teach Bloody instructions which, being taught, return To plague th’inventor. (1.7.8–10)

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As Greenblatt argues: “There is no position outside the world or outside history from which Shakespeare’s characters can authenticate their actions, or secure an abstract, ethically adequate object for their ambitions”.11 He also refers to Macbeth’s fear that “what he metes out will inevitably be meted out to him, measure for measure”.12 Malcolm, in stark contrast to Macbeth and despite his deep misgivings about his own “boundless intemperance” (4.3.66) and lack of “king-becoming graces” (4.3.91) proposes to perform in measure, time and place “by the grace of Grace” (5.1.111) once he has been crowned at Scone. However, by eliding Malcolm’s redemption, and instead offering a different prospect of redemption through the dream device and the use of anachronism, Tang’s production directs our attention towards the ethics of authority in our contemporary world and, specifically, in Hong Kong itself: “On leaving the dream, where the couple has experienced the dark side of humanity, they contemplate their places in this contemporary realm of turbulence”.13 One particular comment by Tang in his interview in the house programme for the Globe Theatre première is revealing about the context of production and reception of his Macbeth: This is something in my mind when I conceive my staging and adaptation work at a time when Hong Kong lives through one of the hardest times in her history. A modern couple . . . assume the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. . . . Is this having any reference to the current situation in Hong Kong? I also ask myself this question. My reading of Tang’s stage semiotic is that the Macbeth pair represents both an ordinary married Hong Kong couple and at one and the same time an ambitious pair of political aspirants, motivated exclusively by opportunism and the thirst for power. Their dream shows them that “here on this bank and shoal of time” they cannot “jump the life to come” (1.7.6–7) and that there will be retribution for their deeds, as Greenblatt has emphasised. In the context of Hong Kong’s current imbroglio, in which the city’s Basic Law guaranteeing its ‘One Country Two Systems’ model is being gradually undermined by the bad faith of its original signatories, a number of such real-life figures come to mind. They include members of the city’s executive authority, particularly its former Chief Executive, who has so far managed to avoid what appear to be well-founded corruption charges thanks to the workings of cronyism – for all the hollow protestations to the contrary of the influential cronies.14 Thus, the couple’s proleptic jump projects the play’s themes of authority and power into a Hong Kong future, and connects with the pervasive binary symbolism at work in the production: the synchronicity between traditional China and modern Hong Kong, traditional dress and modern dress, traditional theatre and contemporary theatre, the illusion of theatre and the illusions of life; all of these motifs are conveyed by the theatrical conceit of the Macbeth couple’s shared dream.

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Transformed through its cultural and temporal mobility – Globe to Hong Kong, present to past and back to present again – the production exemplifies the potent performativity of Macbeth in Tang’s vision as, at one level, a piece of global Asian theatre and, at another deeper one, a piece of specifically local Hong Kong work, and definitely not the kind of Asian Shakespeare that Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan refer to as “a nationalist appropriation” with a “nationalist agenda”15 The dichotomy can be extended to the relationship between cultural/political mobility and cultural/political stability, between glocalisation and globalisation, and between stylised theatre and theatrical ‘realism’. As Greenblatt observes: This performativity can be mobilized, transformed, politicized and deployed in ways that at once adapt to and challenge both traditional and newer forms of theatrical artistry. It becomes difficult, perhaps impossible, to say any longer which elements are native and which are imported from elsewhere.16 Commenting on the production’s intended immediacy and its referential framework, Tang explains in his house programme note: I have been thinking not so much about the atmospheric Scottish location of the play, but rather the possible time and space inherent in its dramaturgy and also the ultimate feeling I want to convey to the audience through the actual presence of the actors on stage. Tang’s emphasis here resonates with Raymond Williams’s structure of feeling theory, which sees the cultural tradition and form or structure and the contemporary spirit or feeling of the work as complementary to one another, and capable of generating fresh socio-cultural meanings at different times and places of performance. Williams stresses the interrelationship between the local and the global, and thus the work’s transposable potentiality, in this chemistry: The first study of a structure of feeling is then always local, particular, unique. But what is being drawn on, in the means of communication, is already wider than the particular work: in a language, in methods, in conventions. As we collect our experiences of particular plays we see the structure of feeling at once extending and changing17 Such theoretical constructs help us map both Shakespeare’s and Tang Shuwing’s Macbeth in their journey across time and space; they enable us to imagine the afterlife of Macbeth as a stage drama and the Macbeth couple as human beings in a modern society. The proleptic leap of the play’s epilogue offers the same uncertainty that is implicit in the conclusion of Shakespeare’s play.

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Whereas in the source play the protagonist couple are viewed as damned for eternity, Tang’s production – thanks to the very Shakespearean dream device often employed in his comedies and romances – asks us to imagine the possibility of redemption and possible hope for the afterlife. In this connection it is worth noting that Greig’s Dunsinane, also performed in Hong Kong in 2014 on international tour, created resonances with occupying British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq in its portrayal of Siward and his English forces. More pertinently, it presented a Malcolm, who as King of Scotland is as corrupt and decadent as the original character in Shakespeare’s Macbeth feigns to be in his discussion of kingship with Macduff.18 Greig’s point is that Shakespearean endings are not necessarily what happens in real life, that power struggles and ambition continue, and that humanity never seems to learn the lessons of its immediate history. Nevertheless, an uneasy accommodation is reached whereby Malcolm curbs his appetites and potential for despotism in the interests of pragmatic alliances. This ‘game of thrones’ has no felicitous restoration of order guaranteed by worthy and legitimate governance, only continued turbulence and above all, insecurity. It is the antithesis of this that the ruler craves, but which, as Hecate observes, becomes “man’s chiefest enemy” (3.5.33–4). Indubitably Macbeth’s multifarious afterlife, given the play’s refusal to stay stuck “on this bank and shoal of time” (1.7.6), but instead to engage with other times and cultures, is well served by both Tang’s and Greig’s associative global-local variations on the Shakespearean theme. However, while invoking theoretical constructs that are putatively transnational and intercultural, it must be borne in mind that they too, like the primary texts they engage with, are far from neutral and ahistorical. As is the case with any postcolonial reading of a canonical Shakespeare text such as Macbeth, one must take into account the cultural politics of hybridity and liminality in relation to Hong Kong’s own ambivalent situation vis-à-vis China. In his 2010 essay ‘Foreign Asia/ Foreign Shakespeare’ provocatively subtitled ‘Dissenting notes on New Asian interculturality, postcoloniality and re-colonisation’, Rustom Bharucha censures what he sees as “the voracious consumption of any number of visual effects more often than not decontextualised from Asian performance traditions like Noh, Kabuki, Kathakali and so on”,19 resulting in “paraphrase and banality . . . in the name of postmodern reinvention”.20 Bharucha’s essay leaves us with the uncomfortable question of whether Asian Shakespeares, simply by adapting and appropriating the iconic Western ‘Bard’, lay themselves open to the charge not only of “banality” but of complicity with a globalised recolonising process on the part of a still voracious and hegemonic West, or, to reference Shen Lin‘s hard-hitting essay,21 with an authoritarian, Belt and Road China. Bharucha goes on to emphasise how vastly different modes of engaging with Shakespeare in neocolonial postcolonial and neo-Orientalist contexts collude unconsciously

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in producing the cultural capital around ‘Asia’ and Shakespeare. Clearly there are different Asias and different Shakespeares, arguably foreign to each other.22 What Bharucha stresses most significantly here is that appropriation isn’t monolithic and unidirectional, and that intercultural theatre practices have moved away from valorising hegemonic notions of a universalist models based on faux authenticity. In the case of Tang’s Macbeth such concerns about the uses of Shakespeare are, I suggest, less relevant, because any critique of the production along these lines would depend on an oversimplified East-West dichotomy. Scotland becomes the centre, not the margin, of both Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Greig’s Dunsinane, just as the peripheral and potentially rebellious Hong Kong is ultimately the centre of Tang’s version, and not just the sovereign power that Hong Kong localists and critics of Beijing claim to be ‘re-colonising’ the city well in advance of the supposed gradual convergence of the ‘One-Country-TwoSystems’ model. So, while it is not appropriate to consider Tang’s work as some kind of transparent national allegory, the location of the action of his Macbeth connotes a China that is both foreign and native, present and past, from which we may draw certain conclusions. For a significant number of Hong Kong people it is the soi-disant ‘socialist’ government of China that is the repressive centre of power, and, with extreme historical irony, it is towards the navel-gazing, self-lacerating, Brexit-obsessed former coloniser that, for some, their postcolonial nostalgia and hopes of support are directed. Perhaps, rather than see the London performances of Tang’s Titus Andronicus and Macbeth as codifying complicity with Machiavellian designs by the West to undermine Chinese sovereignty and absolute authority over its Special Administrative Region – a reading that is, I propose, as crude as it is cynical, or simply stupid – we might consider the meaning of the performance space, namely The Globe Theatre and its implications of a parallel world of theatre from which we can learn life lessons. From this perspective, we might rather see Tang’s production as signifying complicity with theatre and the arts generally in a cultural aesthetics of resistance against the powers of darkness in today’s world, a world that Shakespeare’s Macbeth so terrifyingly cautions us against. Citing the “king-becoming graces” (4.3.90) that are in stark contrast to Macbeth’s murderous ambition and tyranny, Malcolm seems to speak for Shakespeare in his itemisation of the requisite qualities for both self-governance and governance of the country: . . . justice, verity, temperance, stableness, Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude. (4.3.91−3)

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As we know too well, these are qualities that appear to be in short supply in today’s political climate, as they were in Shakespeare’s world, or in the ‘kingdom of desire’23 that Malcolm evokes in this scene. This knowledge doesn’t prevent Macduff ’s “noble passion” (4.3.114) for a better world of righteous governance. Then, as now, such a stance can be regarded as utopian, if not downright naïve. We might just see it, however, as sublimely Shakespearean, together of course with its obverse of deep pessimism in plays written around the same time as Macbeth, such as King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra and Timon of Athens.

Coda: Afterlife with Variations While the production’s afterlife was constituted more literally by its European tour from June to early July 2017, incorporating performances in Sibiu, Romania, in Neuss, Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna and Indjina, Serbia, its metaphorical one has continued to invite ref lection through local re-runs and its preextradition protest tour of Mainland cities in May 2019.24 Intriguingly, in his revisited version of the play Tang opts for an experimental but boldly effective gender-and-identity switch: in the second half of the performance the male actor, Ng Wai-shek, metamorphoses into the Lady Macbeth character, while the androgynous-looking female actor, Lai Yuk-ching, performing the female lead originally played by Rosa Maria Velasco, is transformed seamlessly into the

FIGURE 3.3

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in second half after role/gender swap

Source: Courtesy Tang Shu-wing.

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eponymous role. Tang retained the role reversal for the Hong Kong re-run of the play in early October 2018, with its insinuation of the f luidity and mutability of social roles, including those of gender and power. A number of other modifications to the performance included the incorporation of culturally heterogeneous music, specifically Cuban ‘son’ taken from the Buena Vista Social Club album of 1997. This cultural intrusion inevitably instils a mild sense of confusion in the audience, and creates an effect of uncertainty from the very start of the performance. The song ‘Candela’ which precedes the show, a song about the fiery heat of the Cuban danzón experience, is a counter-intuitive choice and probably the last thing the playgoer would anticipate from a Cantonese-language Macbeth performance. At the banquet scene the vibrant tempo and dancelike rhythms of the music, is intended, as Tang says, to “juxtapose the supposedly happy and joyful atmosphere of the banquet with the inner darkness of the Macbeths, facing the risk of their lives”.25 In this fresh, stripped-back iteration Tang dispenses with the banquet guests from his previous production entirely, and focuses on the couple’s reactions to Macbeth’s visitations by Banquo’s ghost. The Cuban soundscape of the scene features instrumental pieces followed by probably the most famous of the Buena Vista Social Club songs, ‘Chan Chan’. Even more markedly distinct from the earlier version of the production is Tang’s use of text taken verbatim from Mao Zedong’s 1942 Yan’an talks on Art and Literature and delivered by the Macbeth couple in place of the ‘Ode to Joy’ ending and the ‘great leap forward’ from the stage in his 2015–16 concept. Purportedly designed to encourage artists and intellectuals to ‘serve the people’ and promote socialist ideals, agitprop style, the talks also gave warning of the communists’ intention to exercise tight ideological control and limitations over freedom of expression. Tang’s use of them, given the current tense political climate in Hong Kong, in which freedom of expression is seriously at risk, can only be seen as deeply ambivalent, ironic and, in the context of the company’s Mainland tour, self-ref lexive. In his programme notes for the original production Tang refuses to acknowledge that his version carries any specific message. He echoes Macbeth’s celebrated existential soliloquy in regarding his production as “signifying nothing” (5.5.28). At the same time, his cryptic observations elsewhere in the programme notes, “every one of us can be Macbeth” and “you are a mature audience – if you get it, you get it”, patently connect with currently competing ideological discourses regarding civic identity, sociopolitical maturity, self-determination, and excess and restraint, or ‘measure’, in the exercise of sovereign power over Asia’s so-called World City. This is surely no coincidence. Today, arguably even more than before, it is imperative for Hong Kong to internationalise itself, while both retaining its unique identity and engaging with mainland cities situated in its hinterland in what is referred to as ‘the Greater Bay Area’ in South China. The alternative is to morph gradually into just another Chinese city, a process of assimilation that appears to suit the vested

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interests of certain political figures on either side of the border. Tang Shuwing’s Shakespeare interventions have succeeded in putting Cantonese Shakespeare on the world map. They are redolent of the city’s quintessentially hybrid, eclectic cultural identity, as it faces its uncertain future. Who better than The Bard himself to express the uncertainty of these times for ‘the f loating city’ – as Hong Kong is styled in Hong Kong writer Xi Xi’s 1986 collection, Marvels from a Floating City (浮城誌異)26; But cruel are the times, when we are traitors And do not know ourselves, when we hold rumour From what we fear, yet know not what we fear, But f loat upon a wild and violent sea (4.2.18−21)

Notes

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

The author wishes to acknowledge the Hong Kong RGC’s award under the Faculty Research Grant, Project Code 101878, in relation to the preparation for this chapter. Shen Lin, “What Use Shakespeare? China and Globalization” in Shakespeare in Asia: Contemporary Performance, eds. Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 231. Judith Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation (London: Routledge, the New Critical Idiom, 2006), 26. Evelyn Gajowski. “Beyond Historicism: Presentism, Subjectivity, Politics” Literature Compass 7:8 (2010): 279. Lin, “What Use Shakespeare?” 231. The ‘Umbrella Protest and Occupy Movement’ of 2014 was the precursor of wideranging civil disobedience, street protests and strikes in 2019 in Hong Kong against Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s proposed amendment to current extradition laws that have hitherto excluded mainland China and Taiwan; although the bill is currently suspended, its gazetting at some point in the future could result in the extradition or rendition of Hong Kong citizens to China for alleged offences, and potentially infringe their right to a fair trial. In many respects the earlier campaign is closely connected to the ongoing one, because both revolve around the issues of genuine universal suffrage and representation and also respect for the one country-two systems arrangement on which Hong Kong’s Basic Law and independent judiciary depend. See, for example, Sarah Hemming’s Financial Times review of 19 August 2015 for evidence of the misperception that Tang’s version of the play doesn’t appear to have contemporary political relevance: “And the scaled-down version of the play means that you lose the political context, the sense of a war-torn country, an opportunist on the make.” www.ft.com/content/19e21a84-4598-11e5-af2f-4d6e0e5eda22, Last accessed February 7, 2019. For example, Shakespeare productions with hybrid theatricality, such as those by Suzuki Tadashi, Ninagawa Yukio and Makoto Sato in Japan, Ong King Sen in Singapore, Yang Jung-ung and Lee Hyon-u in Korea or Lin Zhaohua in China. The other instrument played by the show’s single accompanying instrumentalist for atmospheric effect was Chinese erhu, a bowed stringed instrument commonly used in Chinese opera (xiqu). Act 3 scene 6. All citations from Macbeth are from The New Penguin Shakespeare, Ed. G.K. Hunter (London: Penguin Books 1973).

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10. Stephen Greenblatt, “Shakespeare and the Ethics of Authority” in Shakespeare’s Freedom (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 75. 11. Ibid., 85. 12. Ibid., 75. 13. Macbeth House Programme synopsis. 14. See South China Morning Post reports and summary, “C. Y. Leung UGL Payment Saga” February 8, 2019. www.scmp.com/topics/cy-leung-ugl-payment-saga, Last accessed February 7, 2019. 15. Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan, “Introduction: Why Shakespeare?” in Shakespeare in Asia: Contemporary Performance, eds. Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1–23, 7. 16. Stephen Greenblatt, Ines Zupanov, Reinhard Meyer-Kalkus, Heike Paul, Pál Nyíri, and Friederike Pannewick, Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 19. 17. Raymond Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 19–20. 18. See Malcom’s testing of Macduff ’s ethical values in their exchange: 4.3.50–132. 19. Rustom Bharucha, “Foreign Asia/ Foreign Shakespeare: Dissenting Notes on New Asian Interculturality, Postcoloniality and Re-colonisation” in Shakespeare in Asia: Contemporary Performance, eds. Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 253–81, 272. 20. Ibid., 272. 21. Lin, “What Use Shakespeare?” 229–31. 22. Bharucha, “Foreign Asia/ foreign Shakespeare”, 254. 23. Wu Hsing-kuo’s production The Kingdom of Desire (1986) for Contemporary Legend Theatre was a Peking Opera-style production of Macbeth from Taiwan. 24. Speaking of the May 2019 touring performances in mainland China, Director Tang comments: “The Shenzhen and Guangzhou performances have aroused a lot of interest in my way of interpreting Macbeth, especially the gender twist, the simplicity of the aesthetics, and the blending of the traditional and the modern, as well as the use of physical expression. Audiences asked many questions in post-show talks, and one scholar even asked for a show video for her doctoral thesis on how the Chinese interpret Shakespeare nowadays. Post-performance audience comments have included “Change of gender, a courageous experiment” and the comment the play contains “Hong Kong style humour”. A descriptive review noted, “Tang’s work is very creative and courageous; he places his main characters dressed in modern costumes in a traditional Chinese painting landscape and architecture, surrounded by other characters dressed in traditional costumes, and reciting in Cantonese verse accompanied by a mixture of Chinese and western music.” (Tang’s translation) 25. Tang Shu-wing in a WhatsApp chat with the author, February 4, 2019. 26. See http://chinaheritage.net/journal/the-f loating-city-浮城/. Last accessed February 7, 2019.

4 FROM CULTURAL MOBILITY TO CULTURAL MISUNDERSTANDING Japanese Style of Love in Akio Miyazawa’s Adaptation in the Cardenio Project, Motorcycle Don Quixote Mariko Anzai “If you ever want something badly, let it go. If it comes back to you, then it’s yours forever. If it doesn’t, then it was never yours to begin with.” Diana’s line in Indecent Proposal (1993)

From Cervantes, Shakespeare, Greenblatt and Mee to Miyazawa This essay discusses Akio Miyazawa’s play Motorcycle Don Quixote, which was performed in 2006, as one of the adaptations in ‘The Cardenio Project’1 conducted by Stephen Greenblatt and Charles Mee. One of the main purposes of this essay is to reveal what is happening on the stage, by describing the Japanese-specific expression of affection and the messages that Miyazawa wants to convey through the stage play, as compared with other Cardenio stories. What prompted me to write this essay is Greenblatt’s professed incomprehension after seeing Motorcycle Don Quixote and Miyazawa’s comment on it, that he interpreted Greenblatt’s concept of ‘cultural mobility’ as ‘cultural misunderstanding’. I consider that this comment by Miyazawa gets to the core of the concept of ‘cultural mobility’ that Greenblatt was investigating. The essay will examine this point as well as what is incomprehensible to Greenblatt and why. Stephen Greenblatt, Professor of English at Harvard, and Charles Mee, an American playwright, collaborated in the writing of the play Cardenio in 2008, which was inspired by a lost play by Shakespeare and was based on episodes in Cervantes’ Don Quixote.2 This attempt was named ‘The Cardenio Project’, and 11 groups of playwrights and theatre troupes (including Greenblatt and Mee’s own

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group) in different parts of the world participated in this project to make their own culture-based adaptations. The project was aimed at understanding how ‘cultural mobility’ takes places through a stage play. In other words, Greenblatt has been concerned with and tried to observe how a story taken from one culture with its own set of assumptions and conventions would be transformed when it moves to another culture. It would provide an interesting and enlightening case of cultural mobility, as the aim of this project was to observe a collection of what may be called “Global Shakespeares” with their individual cultural dynamics. In this project, a total of ten distinctively characteristic Cardenio adaptations were performed by ten groups from different countries: Brazil (June–September 2009), Croatia ( July–August 2008), Egypt (2008), India ( January–March 2007), Japan (May 2006), Poland (2010), Spain (March 2008–March 2009), Taiwan (May 2014), Turkey (2010) and the United States (May–June 2008).3 Among the ten adaptations, groups from India and Spain performed earlier than the United States as well as Japan. Therefore, those two countries’ plays have a high probability of not being adapted from the American Cardenio, either. For instance, the Spanish version of Cardenio in the project was actually announced: “[i]nspired by Cervantes’ novel, The History of the Valorous & Witty KnightErrant, Don Quixote of the Mancha, Part IV, and by Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Double Falsehood”.4 The original Spanish tale about Cardenio5 was written as a part of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes in the early seventeenth century. It is an aggregation of several episodes and includes lots of characters. The mainstay of Greenblatt and Mee’s Cardenio (hereinafter referred to as “American Cardenio”) is from one of those episodes: the tragic tale about Anselmo, Lotario and Camila, in the form of a story within a story (hereinafter referred to as “the original Cardenio story”). The original Cardenio story begins with Anselmo’s reckless desire and curiosity: he wants his best friend Lotario to try to seduce his beautiful new wife Camila (and, hopefully, fail) in order to be sure about her fidelity. In the beginning, Lotario refuses flatly, but ends up grudgingly accepting Anselmo’s repeated urging and starts to seduce Camila. Pursued passionately over and over by Lotario, Camila gradually falls in love with him, while Lotario, who is just pretending at first, gets serious about her, too. Finally, Lotario and Camila commit adultery, Anselmo discovers their betrayal and fate leads the three of them towards destruction. Part One of Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605) was quickly translated into English by Thomas Shelton and published in London in 1612. So Shakespeare must have had an opportunity to read the English version of the original Cardenio story, and after reading it, he must have been attracted to this story in which the protagonist asks his best friend to seduce his lover and decided to reproduce it as a play. As the historical evidence shows, Shakespeare certainly wrote the adaptation Cardenio with his late-life collaborator and successor, John Fletcher, and the play was doubtlessly performed twice in 1613, but after that the manuscript inexplicably disappeared. In 1728 Lewis Theobald, the British

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textual editor and playwright, claimed that he had discovered the manuscript of the lost play Cardenio, and a play Double Falsehood; or The Distressed Lovers allegedly based on Cardenio was produced by him. However, because he did not show the manuscript of Cardenio to anyone, it is highly questionable whether his discovery was true. Moreover, the Covent Garden Playhouse, where all of his books and papers were stored, was burned down in 1808, and no copy of Cardenio exists now. That is the reason why it is called ‘Shakespeare’s lost play’.6 The fact that any content of Shakespeare’s Cardenio has not survived today, apart from Theobald’s Double Falsehood, which is suspected to be a fraudulent adaptation, disappoints Shakespeare fans but at the same time stimulates their imaginations, including Greenblatt and Mee, who created the contemporary American Cardenio. In this American Cardenio, the scene is a stone farmhouse villa in Umbria, Italy, where a private wedding party is going on for a new couple, Anselmo and Camila. However, Anselmo is not sure whether Camila loves him, and probably somewhere deep down he is not sure he himself loves her, either. In order to see if he can trust her (and probably in order to see if he can trust himself ), Anselmo asks his best friend, Will, to seduce Camila. Then, Will seduces Camila, relenting to pressure from Anselmo. At last, Camila and Will fall in love with each other in the almost same way as in the original Cardenio story. However, there are several elements that differ from the original. First, Anselmo seems to distrust not only Camila’s love for himself but also his own love for her from the start. Second, the play turns out to have a happy ending: Anselmo and Camila annul their marriage, whereas Camila and Will make a new couple, and Anselmo finds a new partner, too. Third, other kinds of sexual relationships are also described in this play, including a mature and stable relationship between Anselmo’s parents and a short seduction dialogue inserted about halfway through the play. In a short dialogue, Edmond, a married man in his middle age who came to congratulate Anselmo and Camila on their marriage, speaks of his love for Simonetta, a housekeeper of the villa, but she rejects him because she is married and has high morals. In this play, we can see contemporary young people’s attitudes towards love and marriage, in contrast with the more conservative views. Let us now move on to the Japanese version in this project, Akio Miyazawa’s Motorcycle Don Quixote,7 which was presented in Yokohama in 2006, two years before the American Cardenio. Intriguingly, Greenblatt, having attended its performance, remarked that the final scene was “strange and incomprehensible”.8 As a matter of fact, as Greenblatt later wrote in the book Cultural Mobility emerging out of this experiment, he was quite non-plussed by this Japanese adaptation, which he recounted at some length. He writes: I had ahead of time imagined something in the kabuki style or perhaps in the more farcical mode called kyogen. Conditioned perhaps by Gilbert and Sullivan as well as Roland Barthes, I expected lacquered fans, folding

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FIGURE 4.1

Promotional poster for Motorcycle Don Quixote

Source: courtesy Akio Miyazawa.

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screens, and the delicate sound of the koto harp. What I saw instead was a play . . . set in a grimy motorcycle repair shop in which the sounds of revving engines mingled with loud American rock music. Cultural projection is not a one-way street.9 To this, Miyazawa responded, “I interpreted Mr. Greenblatt’s concept of ‘cultural mobility’ as ‘cultural misunderstanding’ that is inevitable when different cultures meet”.10 And by this, he seems to admit that he has possibly, if not deliberately, misunderstood or misinterpreted the original story. Greenblatt assumes that perhaps that was the principle that led him [Miyazawa] in his version . . . to undo, or reverse, . . . virtually everything that Mee and I had tried to do. . . . This reversal is what he seems to have meant by suggesting that mobility depends on or is misunderstanding, a misunderstanding manifestly deliberate and willed.11 Of course, it is quite likely that Greenblatt himself misunderstands the story of this Japanese version of Cardenio, because, as he himself has said, cultural misunderstanding cannot be a one-way street. However, whether Miyazawa has actually misunderstood the original story, or whether the misunderstanding is “deliberate and willed” as part of his radical adaptation, or not, it could not be assumed that his “misunderstanding” may have caused Greenblatt’s incomprehension. In my view, what Greenblatt failed to comprehend is the communication between the protagonists, Tadao and Machiko in the final scene. He could not understand what happened on the stage; how they communicate and understand each other’s feelings so well without any unambiguous indication of intention. Greenblatt says, the most striking example was the scene at the close in which Tadao, who has abandoned his wife and daughter without support or a word of explanation returns after three years. . . . Even the recognizable touch of Chekhov, I explained, was not enough to make this moment seem to me anything but strange and incomprehensible.12 It could be said that the lack of understanding about Japanese culture which may include the style of emotional expression and the Japanese social assumptions about male−female relationships caused the failure of understanding on Greenblatt’s part of the final scene. Here, first I will focus on Miyazawa’s expressive style and what he wants to say through his adaptation of the lost play of Shakespeare and then examine some of the moot lines. Each section will provide a reading of Motorcycle Don Quixote, looking at the mood shifts and the manner of emotional expression by each character. Through

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a comparative analysis of the three plays, I believe, we will be able to get the clearer view of Miyazawa’s style, which may have caused a miscomprehension on Greenblatt’s part.

Desperate Request to Seduce It is clear that ‘love’, ‘seduction’ and ‘betrayal’ are the common and critical elements of all Cardenio versions, but every main character of each Cardenio version – here we only consider three versions: the original Cardenio story by Cervantes, American Cardenio and Miyazawa’s Motorcycle Don Quixote – has a different mindset about the love of his wife and her betrayal. The main character Anselmo in Cervantes’ Cardenio story strongly doubts the betrayals of his wife Camila (and his best friend Lotario) to occur and believes that they will never happen. What drives him to ask his friend Lotario to seduce Camila may be his reckless curiosity, extravagant idealism for a faithful wife and even his feeling superior to Lotario. He may have wanted to inject a stimulant into his mundane and peaceful daily life and also may have thought that if Camila did not succumb to Lotario’s seduction, he will have proof that he was more fortunate and attractive than Lotario to be loved by this beautiful and faithful woman. It is quite clear that Anselmo’s motive lies in his egoism in love that he wants to enjoy a sense of superiority and does not care about the feelings of Camila and Lotario. Anselmo in the American version, by contrast, seems to be waiting for his wife Camila’s betrayal secretly in his mind, because he regrets marrying her as he thinks he has made a wrong choice. And the play’s major emphasis is not on the betrayal but on the protagonists’ mental immaturity. In the beginning, Anselmo is not honest with his own feelings or not aware of it, and so is Camila. That causes a bust-up of their marriage at the end. Looking at it from a different angle, these main characters are still young and on their way to having many experiences with love. What happened among Anselmo, Camila and Will is nothing more than one of the happenings in their long life. Anselmo’s behaviour in the original Cardenio story is a masculinist response of a patriarchal elite, whereas in the American version a failure in marriage happens far too frequently, ref lecting the realities in contemporary Western society. For that matter, it is not certain whether the two new couples who are born in the villa will get married in the future. It is noteworthy that the world in American Cardenio is full of aff luence, youthfulness, brightness and gorgeousness under the sunlight in a villa located in a beautiful and historical region of central Italy. Most of the characters in this play are rich enough to come all the way from the United States to attend the wedding party. Especially, Anselmo’s parents, who possess the villa, must be significantly well off. Love and suffering around young people in such a blessed and out-of-the-ordinary environment may sound romantic but should not be taken too seriously. It could also

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be argued that the play highlights the current young people’s free and liberal attitude to marriage. By contrast, the style of love in Miyazawa’s Motorcycle Don Quixote looks low-key and repressed, even though Miyazawa has solidly imported the motif of “seduction” and “betrayal” into his play. The one cardinal point of difference from the original Cardenio story in Don Quixote or the American Cardenio is that there is only modest seduction, and the central betrayal portrayed in those two stories does not actually occur in Miyazawa’s Cardenio. What triggers the protagonist to request a seduction of his wife in each of the three versions is very intriguing, and particularly so in the case of Tadao in Motorcycle Don Quixote. The setting of the Japanese adaptation is an old dingy motorcycle repair shop located in a factory town, Tsurumi district, Yokohama. Tadao Takeuchi, the elder owner of the shop, loves his young and beautiful wife Machiko profoundly. She used to be an actress and had played Lucinda in Cardenio, the lost play of Shakespeare. While performing in Cardenio, she fell in love with the actor Shiro Kamiyama playing the role of Fernando, who steals Lucinda from Cardenio. But after being abandoned by him, a desperate Machiko decided to retire from the stage, and just at that time she met Tadao by accident. Matsuura, a young guy and regular customer at Tadao’s shop, talks about Machiko’s past.13 MATSUURA: Then I heard from the owner of this shop. What happened to the owner and his young wife? Machiko who used to be an actress fell in love with an actor appearing together on the stage of Cardenio, the lost play of Shakespeare with only a record saying that Shakespeare wrote it. The man, Don Fernando who stole Lucinda from Cardenio, dumped Machiko. When the desperate Machiko decided to quit acting, she met Tadao Takeuchi. An accidental meeting: an actress and the owner of a motorcycle shop. They got married. Their modest life began. However, Tadao was always anxious; because Machiko was still an actress. (47) Machiko married Tadao, not because she loved him, but because she felt hopeless and lonely. She chose Tadao as her husband in half-desperation. However, on the other hand, her ex-lover was ice-cold and had not provided her with a sense of safety or a feeling of being cared for. She had already started to regret loving him and realised how stupid she had been to do so. We get a glimpse of this from the following excerpt, from Scene 2, “A Lost Play”: TADAO: Machiko! Tadao runs to help Machiko. TADAO: Are you hurt? Is your leg ok?

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WOMAN: I don’t know why I came back here. Maybe for his status. If I were married to him, I would be happy. Maybe I chose him. Love is such a thing, a fragile thing. Therefore I chose the King. MAN: This is my art of coaxing. It’s easy: fame, money and power. Saying so, the Man is gone. Tadao watches the Man leave, while tasting something bitter. TADAO: You’ll be dumped, some day. Like rubbish, you’ll be dumped. Why do you like that kind of guy? WOMAN: I don’t mind being dumped. Before you get dumped, you can be happier than you are now. (Impulsively) Ouch! TADAO: Your leg? Take a rest over there. Here, lean on my shoulder. Can you walk? If you cannot, take support on my shoulder. (20–21) In this scene, Tadao has a mystical dream or vision. Miyazawa here articulates his imagined story of Shakespeare’s lost Cardenio through Tadao’s vision, in which the King (MAN in the previous dialogue), the same man with Machiko’s ex-boyfriend, Kamiyama, in a pompous attitude, demands Lucinda (WOMAN in the previous dialogue), who is Machiko in a bright red dress, to become his property. Machiko firmly repels the King in word, but in her heart, she has partly succumbed to the temptation of the King’s wealth and power. The audience slowly understands that it is a scene from a play Cardenio which Machiko has performed with Kamiyama before. And by a more careful viewing, it will be able to notice that the King, who exudes self-confidence and has materialistic values, is a mirror of Tadao’s inner inferiority complex and embodies his yearning for power – the power of youth, force, wealth and beauty – that might allow him to capture Machiko’s heart. Even though the King is no more than an imaginary person in Tadao’s dream, his shadow occupies a large space of Tadao’s mind. He has a hunger to become like the King but is also sorely aware that such an elder owner of a dingy motorcycle repair shop can no longer acquire those powers. On the other hand, Lucinda presents Machiko’s ephemeral and hedonistic idea of romance. She is torn between materialistic enjoyment and true love. Her words forecast her ensuing traumatic event. In the real world, Machiko has feelings of guilt towards her husband and awkwardness in her marital life. At the same time, she must also appreciate her old husband’s gentleness. So this young lady, an ex-actress, is trying to live as an ordinary full-time housewife and as a wife of the owner of a dingy motorcycle repair shop. She is also trying to love her old husband. Her sense of gratitude to him may turn into love someday, but to really love him or to feel happy at least, even if she won’t love him, she needs to solve a big problem that she seeks to avoid facing up to reality. Meanwhile, Tadao who loves Machiko deeply is not confident of being loved in return and thinks that Machiko is only pretending that there is no

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Tadao supports wounded Lucinda – that is, Machiko – in Tadao’s mystical vision

FIGURE 4.2

Source: Courtesy Miyazawa.

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problem. He is neither young nor rich, and is almost overtaken by his assistant Hitoshi Sakazaki in his specialty – fixing motorcycles. Not confident in his wife’s affection towards him, he calls on Sakazaki to seduce her. Tadao’s reasons for asking Sakazaki to seduce her are different from the reasons that drove the same requests in the American Cardenio and in the original Cardenio story in Don Quixote because Tadao is almost sure about the lack of his wife’s love. Also, he has mixed feelings about this: TADAO: You haven’t spoken to Machiko yet? Hearing Tadao’s words, Sakazaki stops. SAKAZAKI: . . . TADAO: What is it, can’t you seduce her? SAKAZAKI: . . . TADAO: Fine, I can wait until you find the motivation. Have a cup of coffee. Take your time. (Pointing out the sofa) Why don’t you have a seat? Relax. Drink the coffee first and then get started on the job. (11–12) Why does Tadao ask Sakazaki to seduce his wife? He did so in order that he could be sure of Machiko’s fidelity, the same way Anselmo did in the original Cardenio story. But in Motorcycle Don Quixote, Tadao’s own personal honour and his sense of desperation play a much bigger role in his request. Sakazaki is younger than he, and a skilful and responsible assistant. And Machiko has also acknowledged Sakazaki’s superiority. TADAO: . . . That’s him. He’s a hard worker. MACHIKO: Right, without him, we’d be in mess. An old shop master and his wife a bit out of tune but still managing. That’s a miracle. And it’s all thanks to him. We owe everything to Sakazaki-san. TADAO: He’s still young. Young, but reliable. Especially when compared to (suddenly looking in the direction of the shutter) that lad, what’s his name again? (8) Tadao feels he can no longer compete with Sakazaki in any way. He is apprehensive that even if he did not ask Sakazaki to seduce his wife, she would fall or might have already fallen in love with him. Sakazaki is such an attractive guy, and who knows for certain that Machiko and Sakazaki would not enter into a love or sexual relationship behind Tadao’s back? Tadao might greatly fear losing face as a man, as much as he fears to be shown the undeniable fact that his wife does not love him, which seems certain to happen sooner or later. Therefore, by requesting Sakazaki to seduce his wife, it might be that he is preparing an excuse ahead of time, in

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FIGURE 4.3 Sakazaki wants to know Machiko’s past history, but Machiko remains mum about it. After the brief eye contact, Sakazaki disappears into the wing curtain and Machiko follows after him. Tadao, bestriding his motorcycle, feigns sleep

Source: Courtesy Miyazawa.

case his wife is indeed stolen by the assistant. Or he might need a reason for letting go of Machiko. There is no wife’s betrayal in this story eventually, but neither Tadao nor Machiko is happy from the beginning of the story. Machiko has got trapped into self-deception to avoid facing herself honestly. She is not satisfied with the present and even has a sense of despair about her marital life, but fools her conscious mind. She also does not make an effort to understand why she is not happy and to break through the existing situation. On the other hand, Tadao has been suffering from his fear of losing Machiko forever. When he acknowledges his defeat to the King and Sakazaki (although he notices his misunderstanding about the relationship between Machiko and Sakazaki shortly afterwards), he is almost ready to forsake his love and walk away from the life that he has built. However, from the following lines Tadao seems not to give up all hope and still has the energy and courage to fight against the King and get the last laugh at any cost. TADAO: Get rid of everything. Dump my personal belongings and let’s conclude my defeat. Someday I shall win. I must win. I cannot keep living a life of defeat any longer. I lose in everything. I lost to that man. . . . (43)

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The rock beat coming over at any hour of day or night from the house of Masao, a young man living near Tadao’s shop, represents Tadao’s impatience and fuels his motivation to take action to break the deadlock. Finally, one night, Tadao decides to set out on a journey by motorcycle after believing that Sakazaki also loves Machiko. Suspecting that they might have entered into a sexual relationship, he realises he may have lost everything: TADAO: I was not sleeping at all. I was just lying here. YUKA: Where is Mom? TADAO: All the food’s gone so I asked her to get some more. She went out with Sakazaki. Maybe they won’t come back. They’ll move to a far away place, a totally different town from here. (38) TADAO: Defeat. I was not able to match him as I thought. I lost the bet. I lost everything. (42) We can see Sakazaki’s deep feelings for Machiko in several of his lines (13, 30, 32, 33, 38, 50). There are also two scenes that imply development in the relationship between Sakazaki and Machiko (33, 38). But finally, Machiko does not accept Sakazaki’s love (42). Sakazaki also does not force his attention on her. He might feel indebted and loyal towards his employer Tadao, because Tadao taught Sakazaki the skill of fixing motorcycles. Machiko’s rejection and the appearance of Shiro Kamiyama, Machiko’s ex-lover, could be what made Sakazaki change his mind and set out on a journey with Tadao: TADAO: Who’s there? SAKAZAKI: Don’t worry, I’m not a thief. TADAO: Sakazaki, is that you? SAKAZAKI: Let’s go. TADAO: Why? You were so reluctant before, weren’t you? SAKAZAKI: Don’t squabble over it. I didn’t believe you’re serious. I’m surprised. Are you going to leave in the dead of night? TADAO: Otherwise they will stop me. I can only leave in the middle of the night, sneak out. SAKAZAKI: If they hear the engine noise, they’ll wake up, won’t they? TADAO: Once we start rolling, they can’t stop us. SAKAZAKI: . . . Saying so, Sakazaki passes Tadao’s luggage to him. TADAO: They’ll get a shock. SAKAZAKI: Will they be alright, being left out like this? TADAO: All right. Don’t worry about them. How about you? Are you all right? Serious?

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Fastening the luggage to his bike. SAKAZAKI: A man came. I don’t know who it was. He said that he is Machiko-san’s old friend. Part of it I can understand. Old Machikosan. She must belong to a different place. Silence. (58–59) They then go on the road without so much as saying goodbye to Machiko or Tadao’s daughter Yuka, and are away from their shop and home for three years. Tadao’s motorcycle journey is reminiscent of Don Quixote’s travelling on horseback. It may look like an admission of defeat or escape from defeat, but actually, it is his last fight with his back to the wall, against ‘the King’ who is threatening his male pride, and Machiko’s emotional distance. He still has a thread of hope to gain Machiko’s real affection and redeem his dignity. What is most valued by a man like Tadao or Don Quixote? I believe it is the woman he loves and his male dignity that must be his most and exclusively precious possessions in the world. Moreover, as the saying goes: “He that fears death lives not”. We can also say that you can get something vital only at the risk of losing it. Tadao abandons Machiko. He may lose her love completely. However, even if he could not gain her love, at least he will have a chance to beat the King, but only if he dares to abandon everything. So he abandons everything and sets out on a long journey. It was indeed a huge risk, but he had no choice but to take such a risk in order to overcome the situation. This is another crucial message that Miyazawa wants to express through the play.

Machiko’s Mental Growth Meanwhile, what is going on in Machiko’s mind? This section starts by providing insight on Machiko’s character and inner thoughts. As we can see from lines 20–21, 46–47 and additionally 50, earlier Machiko was materialistic and hedonistic. KAMIYAMA: I spent a lot of time searching for her. SAKAZAKI: Great job. You’ve got guts. You must have good reasons to do so. KAMIYAMA: No point talking about it. SAKAZAKI: . . . KAMIYAMA: (Looking around the shop) But, I never expected to find her in a place like this. How does she manage to live here? Machiko in a town like this. I’d heard of this place before, Tsurumi District, Yokohama, but this is the first time I’ve been here. That smell of oil, it stinks . . . there is something attractive about it. A man and a woman are here. Machiko is here. And you. She’s nice she is.

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SAKAZAKI: A nice woman . . . (Suddenly Exploding) So who the hell are you!? KAMIYAMA: An old friend. (50) This scene 5, “Preparing to Travel, Around 4 pm a Few Days Later” begins with Kamiyama’s unexpected visit at Tadao’s shop. When Kamiyama shows up at the shop to see Machiko, she is not in the shop. Here, Kamiyama’s lines imply that earlier Machiko was an inhabitant of a dazzling theatrical world, therefore, normally, she should not stick out the life in such an old rustic factory area. Because she acted as a heroine, Lucinda, in Shakespeare’s Cardenio, she must have been a talented actress. It is also suggested that she loved to act on stage, but she is now living as a full-time housewife of an aged owner of a dingy motorcycle repair shop. Moreover, her beauty must have attracted a lot of men and made her arrogant and vain. For a woman gifted with both talent and beauty and living a blessed life, being jilted by the lover might be the hardest thing in her life. After this painful experience exposed her mental weakness, she lost guidance and support to live. She became less able to distinguish reality from the play where she was performing the role of broken-hearted Lucinda, and she left her career as an actress, and married Tadao on the rebound. She lost all her precious things: her love, acting profession and colourful life. Yet, although she quit acting on stage, she still ‘plays’ a good wife of Tadao and good stepmother of Tadao’s daughter, Yuka. However, Machiko does not just waste her days with Tadao. At least, she has already found some sense of closure, and Kamiyama’s existence has not been crucial for Machiko. She might even have not loved him anymore, when Kamiyama came to see her later. If she still had yearned for him, there is no way she would have passed him on the street without so much as saying hello (54). As she has lived together with Tadao and Yuka, some feelings, little by little, may have grown in her, even if she has not been unaware of it yet. The three years and two months that Tadao was away, gives her more opportunity to re-examine herself and mature emotionally, and also enables her to get her feet on the ground and become self-sustaining. The fruit of a three-year and two months independence is presented in the final scene 6, “A Morning in July – Three Years Later”, between Machiko and Yuka in the morning when Tadao and Sakazaki are just around the corner. MACHIKO: Don’t you want to have breakfast? YUKA: After I finish here. MACHIKO: I will go to work soon. YUKA: We must work!

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MACHIKO: Yes, ‘But meanwhile, we must go on living . . . we must work, we must work!’ YUKA: Is that Natasha too? MACHIKO: Irina. But the three sisters follow their hollow dreams. Natasha is the only hard worker. Only she faces the reality of life. . . . MACHIKO: So I’ll wrap your meal up. YUKA: I wanted to see your Natasha. MACHIKO: I found Shakespeare to be more interesting than Chekhov. YUKA: You’ve changed. MACHIKO: What? YUKA: You talk to me lots now. MACHIKO: Because it’s already three years? YUKA: Three years and two months. MACHIKO: It has been such a long time since they were gone. YUKA: It has brought changes. MACHIKO: You too. YUKA: I love to hear you talk about plays. Let me hear more. MACHIKO: It was strange. Saying nothing was far stranger. YUKA: It’s time. (62–63)

FIGURE 4.4

Machiko helps Yuka practise Natasha’s lines in Chekhov’s play Three Sisters

Source: Courtesy Miyazawa.

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Miyazawa here has Machiko and Yuka say some lines from Anton Pavlovich Chekhov’s play Three Sisters. In the beginning of the scene, Yuka who is studying drama at university – that was her long-sought goal – practises reading Natasha’s lines, sweeping the f loor before going to the university. Machiko, who is prepared to go to work, emerges from the stage wing and follows the lines that Yuka is reciting. By the look of it, they are on good terms with each other and make an honest living by working. More than three years ago, Machiko tried to put the past out of her mind; she dared not to tell anyone about her actress life in those times. Now, she not only still lives in Tadao’s place and earns her living but also talks pleasantly about acting with Yuka. This scene says eloquently that she has almost fully accepted her own past and present, and is ready to accept Tadao. As seen previously, Miyazawa describes Machiko’s mental growth smoothly through the dialogues with Yuka in such a familiar scene of everyday life. Miyazawa brings up the dialogues of Chekhov’s play here for a purpose: an implication that the expressive idiom of Motorcycle Don Quixote is affected by Chekhov’s ‘static plays’. Yet, the dialogues and actions by Machiko towards Tadao (65–66) in the last scene, which are discussed in the next section, sound so curt that it is not easy even for the Japanese to understand how she feels. However, if Machiko had shown an explicit behaviour, like throwing herself at Tadao with tears and so on, it would have not been Miyazawa’s play anymore. .

Bashful ‘Tadaima’ and ‘Okaerinasai’ with Warm Eyes The following passage is from the last scene where Tadao comes back after a three-year journey. And it is these that mystified Greenblatt: Machiko comes out from upstage. As she is supposed to go to work, her costume is different from the previous scene. She holds a bag in her hand. TADAO: (Seeing Machiko.) Machiko. I’ve won. I conquered him. All is fine now. MACHIKO: What are you talking about? TADAO: The past has been concluded. I conquered Don Fernando. Lucinda was saved. MACHIKO: I don’t understand. Isn’t there some thing you’re forgetting to say? TADAO: What should I say? MACHIKO: An ordinary greeting. SAKAZAKI: I’m home. TADAO: I’m home, right? MACHIKO: That’s it. Tadao is embarrassed but finally greets them. TADAO: I’m home. MACHIKO: Welcome back.

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TADAO: What’s with your clothes? Is there a ceremony happening today? MACHIKO: I’m off to work. I’m earning a living. I need to work to live. TADAO: All is fine now. Lucinda was saved and relieved from the King’s hands. I did it. I knocked down the King. You follow what I am saying, right? So you’ve finally forgotten everything. MACHIKO: I have to go otherwise I’ll be late. TADAO: Even when I’m home? Come, here, come on, come here. Machiko goes to the centre stage. When Tadao is about to hug her, she escapes from it. TADAO: What? MACHIKO: I’m going to work. M ACHIKO STARTS WALKING AWAY. (65–66) In this scene, Machiko looks extremely composed; she seems to show neither delight, anger nor any affection – at least, though she must feel a slight surprise or anger inside her – towards Tadao, who unexpectedly reappears after running away from home and roaming for three years. The reason why she was not very surprised to see Tadao’s return is that she was probably sure he would come back someday, to my understanding. We may only be able to call it a woman’s intuition, because Miyazawa absolutely does not explain it in the script. Or she may have had some intuitions from Yuka’s behaviour (the reason is described hereinafter). In fact, Machiko did not get back together with Kamiyama or go away somewhere. Instead, she found a job and continued her daily life with Yuka in Tadao’s old place. It is certain that Machiko has decided to accept Tadao as her partner – as her lifelong companion. This decision is shown in Machiko’s line, condensed into one word, which expresses her reception of Tadao. Tadao is embarrassed but finally greets them. TADAO: I’m home. MACHIKO: Welcome back. (65) ‘Welcome back’ (‘Okaerinasai’ in the original Japanese script) tells us exactly what she intends to do with her life. She shows an affectionate expression on her face suddenly when she says this word after hearing Tadao’s bashful phrase ‘I’m home’ (‘Tadaima’ in Japanese). The Japanese word ‘Okaerinasai’ usually is translated as ‘Welcome back’ or ‘Welcome home’ in English. Indeed, while this is the literal meaning, this word is pregnant furthermore with a hidden sense that only people with a background in Japanese cultural context can feel.

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It is a sense of belonging – feeling safe enough to be accepted, needed and secured. A well-known example of it is to be seen in the two kinds of signs on the passage towards the immigration at Narita airport; one sign says ‘Welcome to Japan’ in English for foreign passengers, and the other sign is ‘Okaerinasai’ written in Japanese hiragana for Japanese and other residents of Japan. The word with only seven hiragana characters has a special power, which provides us with a strong feeling of safety and coming back home every time when we arrive at Narita. Meanwhile, Tadao, who triumphantly returned home by motorcycle, also looks as if he feels considerably confident that Machiko still stays in and will wait for him. Hearing Machiko say ‘Okaerinasai’ with her warm eyes must have increasingly assured Tadao of Machiko’s reception of him, but even before that he sensed Machiko’s mind instantly at the moment he saw her in his shop, so he said: “Machiko. I’ve won. I conquered him. All is fine now”. Here I would like to extrapolate another implication, because Miyazawa does not describe it on the stage at all, that Yuka is the key person for Tadao. In other words, he did not go on a desperate journey without any chance of winning. Assuming from his return in a self-confident attitude, it makes less sense that he had never made contact with his daughter while leading an itinerant life. Despite disappearance from home, he must have remained concerned about Machiko and Yuka. Yuka is his sole contact tied to Machiko. He might have called Yuka’s mobile phone secretly to search how Machiko was doing and have got the information that Machiko is not who she used to be anymore; that she started working for a living and is getting along with Yuka in his place. The King who is indicated as ‘him’ or ‘Don Fernando’ here comes up in Tadao’s lines again. He seems to be the essence of power and materialism, and not only distressed Tadao but also tormented Machiko. At the end, Tadao prevailed against the King; Machiko freed herself from the shadow cast by the King while Tadao was away. And in the context of the last scene, only two words, Tadao’s bashful ‘Tadaima’ and Machiko’s warm ‘Okaerinasai’, provide the sufficient description of the happy tail end of this play. In Motorcycle Don Quixote, there is no villa, wedding party or sweet romance as in the American Cardenio. The drama unfolds around daily lives in a dingy motorcycle repair shop in an old factory area, and the hero is an elderly and far from well off owner of the shop. Although he has a young beautiful wife, he had not been able to create a stable and confident relationship with her. He possesses nothing that Anselmo in the American Cardenio and the King enjoy readily. Furthermore, concerning love and betrayal, Tadao has confused feelings, when he requests Sakazaki to seduce Machiko. He expects that Machiko will reject Sakazaki but at the same time, he has prepared himself for her leaving him. Another notable element of this play which is markedly different from the other two Cardenio stories is that Tadao is not young anymore. As we have examined in a few scenes, through the shift in the dialogue’s mood, Miyazawa

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clearly aims to present his original world, which is culturally different from those of the other two Cardenio stories.

Like a Don Quixote: The Pursuit of Men’s Ways of Being I believe that Motorcycle Don Quixote is a tale that depicts a man who, having passed his prime, successfully restores his male dignity and gains his well-beloved through a daring gamble, at the risk of losing them forever. For that matter, the main message of this play must ref lect Miyazawa’s ideal sense of what a man should be and may also ref lect an ideal for a lot of elderly Japanese men, who are facing significant social changes and feel insecure about their work, home and life in contemporary Japan. That is to say, Tadao is a Japanese counterpart of Don Quixote; to be exact, Tadao is Japanese-styled or Miyazawa-styled Don Quixote which is created through Miyazawa’s own interpretation and depiction – his own cultural mobility from the original work. The mobility might more or less depend on his “misunderstanding”, but whether the misunderstanding is “deliberate and willed” as alleged by Greenblatt, or not, is difficult to decide when only a fine line exists between his unique understanding and his misunderstanding. Understanding of art varies from individual to individual based on their taste and sensibilities, even from the same cultural background, and much more so among people from different cultural backgrounds. In fact, a creative misunderstanding or misinterpretation should be one of the valuable results of cultural mobility that Greenblatt expected. Regarding this, Oriza Hirata, who has led the stage trend called “Quiet Theatre” (Shizuka na Engeki)14 since the 1990s in Japan – actually, Miyazawa is also identified as one of the playwrights representing “Quiet Theatre” – says that perhaps his intention is not conveyed precisely on stage overseas, but he thinks it is all right, because even actors will not say lines just as he hopes they will, and the essential point is that however his plays are understood, the audience can possibly get encouraged to live by watching his plays.15 Miyazawa has said that Motorcycle Don Quixote was more of an adaptation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote than that of the American Cardenio. In other words, the adaptation was not inspired by the American Cardenio directly. That is why Tadao’s words and actions partly resemble those of Don Quixote. However, because Shakespeare’s lost play was also an adaptation of Cervantes’ story about Cardenio, Motorcycle Don Quixote and the American Cardenio are no less intimately connected through Shakespeare.

Conclusion: The Message, the Method and the Culture in Motorcycle Don Quixote Hirata says, “Play is an expression that entrusts most of its interpretation to the imagination of the audience. . . . Therefore, playwrights need to understand

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a  lot about the audience”.16 Miyazawa meanwhile puts emphasis on reading plays more than watching plays, saying: “reading a play has a certain aspect that liberates us from several restrictions that the play performed on stages have”. So, reading according to one’s own sensibility “gives rise to another possibility of the interpretation”.17 In other words, Hirata as a playwright attempts to understand how the audience will understand his play, and Miyazawa as one of the audience looks to read plays with his think-outside-the-box sensibility. Both of these two Japanese playwrights who represent the “Quiet Theatre” focus on how the audience or readers understand, perhaps agree to a central tenet of this essay: our response to plays should be based on our own (mis) understanding or (mis)interpretation, and not be bound by the original writers’ intention. Needless to say, such unfettered understanding is almost inseparable from the so-called misunderstanding, whether a playwright and the audience are in different cultural contexts or not. And that kind of unfettered understanding should be the very essence of culture mobility. In the summer of 2015, I had the good fortune to meet Akio Miyazawa in Tokyo and had a 90-minute interview with him about his play. Miyazawa explained that he had wanted to present a male traveller (also could be called a venturer) and an actress which represents one of the big dreams of men and women, respectively. Motorcycle Don Quixote, as I have argued, was a tale of a man’s recovery from the loss of self-confidence and a woman’s mental growth. The conversation with Miyazawa confirmed that my understanding was mostly consistent with Miyazawa’s intention, although some ideas which I have ventured are more my own fancies, such as the secret contact between Tadao and Yuka. Miyazawa then mentioned that he had been strongly inf luenced by plays of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, such as The Seagull and Three Sisters. That is why he inserts some lines from Chekhov’s Three Sisters, despite it being an adaptation from a Shakespeare-related work. (We should also note that Hirata admires Chekhov and is inf luenced by his plays as well.) From the earlier discussions, it is conceivable that Motorcycle Don Quixote was produced by the technique of “Quiet Theatre”, which is a combination of Chekhov’s method and the Japanese-specific communication and emotional expression, a kind of expressive style, of ambiguity and moderation in the expression of affect which left Greenblatt so perplexed. Miyazawa tries to explain his characterisation to Greenblatt, “you expect that the wife should embrace her husband and welcome him home, as an American woman would do. But Japanese people do not so easily hug and kiss one another”.18 But Greenblatt admits to his westernised incomprehension: “I had, of course, thought something like the opposite: that no wife I could conceive of would, in those circumstances, welcome her husband back at all.”19 Greenblatt seems to have been left completely at sea by the Japanese version; he even says: “In Motorcycle Don Quixote virtually nothing happens on stage. . . . There is no gambling on love; no trust in happiness; no clarification and no forgiveness”.20 And with heavy irony, he sums up his experience: “on the stage of the darkened theatre in Yokohama, I felt I had been thoroughly

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initiated into the phenomenon of cultural mobility as misunderstanding”.21 As I have argued previously, however, there certainly is gambling on love and life; a trust in modest daily happiness; ambiguous for people outside but sufficiently definite clarification and forgiveness for the persons in the circle. Miyazawa stages the final scene seemingly devoid of passion and emotion, but actually, he expresses the mature couple’s affection based on daily life in restrained words and behaviour. In Miyazawa’s world, real love does not need hot kisses, deep longing gazes or exchanges of words of love except such as ‘Okaerinasai’ and ‘Tadaima’, common words of greatest value in everyday communication. Hopefully, this essay could unveil the fog over Motorcycle Don Quixote and help all perplexed audiences, including Professor Greenblatt, to overcome their sense of cultural misunderstanding to reach a more fulfilled sense of cultural mobility.

Notes 1. For details of the project, see www.fas.harvard.edu/~cardenio/index.html, Last Accessed Thursday October 25, 2018. The project has been updated on Stephen Greenblatt’s website: http://stephengreenblatt.com/resources/cardenio/cardenioproject, Last Accessed Thursday October 25, 2018. 2. See https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~cardenio/aboutcardenio.html, Last accessed Thursday October 25, 2018. 3. See http://stephengreenblatt.com/resources/cardenio/cardenio-project, Last accessed Sunday 25 August. 2019. Although 11 countries, including Singapore, joined the project and produced their own adapted Cardenio, I do not take Singapore into account, since I could not confirm Singapore’s performance on the stage. 4. See https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~cardenio/spain/resources/script%202012.pdf p1, Last accessed Thursday October 25, 2018. 5. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote. Translated by Edith Grossman (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), Chapter 24–35, 182–313. Also can see https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~cardenio/donquixote.html, Last accessed Thursday October 25, 2018. 6. For details about Shakespeare’s Cardenio, see Stephen Greenblatt and Charles Mee, Cardenio (Taipei: Bookman Books, 2013), 005–012. 7. Written and directed by Akio Miyazawa, produced by Tadashi Uchino (dramaturg Mika Eglington), performed at the Yokohama Redbrick Warehouse, May 23–29, 2006. 8. Stephen Greenblatt, Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 94–95. 9. Ibid., 91. 10. See www.fas.harvard.edu/~cardenio/japan-production.html, Last accessed Thursday October 25, 2018. Also refer to Greenblatt 2009, 90–95. 11. Greenblatt, Cultural Mobility, 92–93. 12. Ibid., 94–95. 13. The script of Motorcycle Don Quixote, second draft, written by Akio Miyazawa, translated by Mika Eglinton on 25 May 2006. See https://sites.fas.harvard. edu/~cardenio/japan/resources/script.pdf, Last accessed Thursday October 25, 2018. 14. Quiet Theatre (Shizuka na Engeki) movement started in the 1980s as a reaction to the theatres characterized by out-of-the-ordinary stories and dramatic spectacles which were popular in those days and has aimed to depict people in ordinary daily lives in the restrained style. See John K. Gillespie, “Modern Japanese Theatre” in

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15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

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Routledge Handbook of Asian Theatre, ed. Siyuan Liu (New York: Routledge, 2017), 306–07. See www.sankei.com/entertainments/news/180513/ent1805130003-n1.html, an interview with Oriza Hirata in the Sankei News, dated 13 May. 2018, Last accessed Tuesday December 1, 2019. Oriza Hirata, Engeki Nyumon (The Introduction to Theatre) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1998), 66. Akio Miyazawa, Chehofu no Sensou (The War by Chekhov) (Tokyo: Seidosha, 2005), 233–34. Greenblatt, Cultural Mobility, 95. Ibid. Ibid., 93–94. Ibid., 95.

5 SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF DANKOT Hamlet and the Kingdom of Nepal Andronicus Aden

The 2001 massacre of the Nepalese Royal family at the hands of their Prince left ten senior members dead along with five more who were grievously injured. Jeffery S. Lidke describes this atrocity as “a crime of Shakespearean dimensions”,1 while Samrat Upadhyay asserts that after the murders, “Nepalis have lost their faith in the sanctity of monarchy, which had served as the only bridge from their repressive past to their progressive future”.2 After all, the controversial regicide occurred at a time when Nepal was entering into a new wave of governance with democracy overtaking the feudal monarchy, following the aftermath of the 1990 People’s Movement and the rise of Maoist movements in the countryside. This widely publicised carnage may have brought this Himalayan kingdom to the forefront, but many are unaware of the bloody history of Nepal, beginning with its unification by Prithvi Narayan Shah in 1768 to the infamous ‘Kot Massacre’ of 1846 that established the Rana autocracy under Jung Bahadur Rana, initiating “the despicable practice of assassination and massacre of nobles and courtiers at the Nepalese Durbar”.3 This essay attempts to trace a narrative of violence in the kingdom of Nepal, its uncanny resemblance with Shakespearean plays and the ‘Nepalese’ response towards it. Furthermore, this chapter aims at understanding the preference for Hamlet over other Shakespearean works by the authors from the Himalayan region in their vernacular adaptations and the critical responses generated by such adaptations in contemporary academia.

A Brief History of Shakespeare in Nepal The wide-scale dissemination and evolution of Shakespeare in Asia has led to a host of Shakespearean adaptations whose magnitude continues to escalate

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each year. In their “Introduction” to Shakespeare in Asia, Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan provide three reasons behind the appropriation of Shakespeare in Asian countries: (i) ‘Nationalist appropriation’, (ii) ‘Colonial instigation’ and (iii) ‘Intercultural revision’. In the context of Nepal, only the first is applicable, because neither was the kingdom colonised nor did the scholars attempt to create new texts as literature was under constant surveillance. As Kennedy and Yong have illustrated through Japan’s policy of westernising their culture post-Meiji Restoration of 1868 where Shakespeare’s “introduction was part of the reform movement, allied with industry and open markets as an exemplary ‘contemporary’ writer, driven by the national project of modernization”,4 so too in Nepal, theatre and Shakespeare were actively used to voice protest and instigate nationalism. Though Nepal has always taken pride in acknowledging how it was never conquered by the British and that it largely remained a ‘Hindu Kingdom’, the Rana autocracy between 1846 and 1951 led to a period of darkness and isolation for Nepal where Jung Bahadur Rana’s suspicion of foreigners led to a hiatus in trade between British India and Nepal. Somendra Vashishtha tells us that the “Rana administrators were also afraid that exposure of Nepal to foreign capital would destroy their feudatory set-up and eventually cause their own decline”.5 Furthermore, during Jung Bahadur’s 32-year reign as the Prime Minister of Nepal, exposure to British trade, culture and education was prohibited because a seemingly uneducated and agrarian proletariat was easier to control. This is evident in the form of popular proverbs such as Padhe lekhe ke kaam, Halo joti maam, which can be translated as ‘What’s the use of pen and brains when the plough can give you grains’. Education was only available to the aristocracy whose social standing depended on their unf linching loyalty to the Ranas. Those who opposed were banished, executed or incarcerated while some voluntarily chose exile, congregating at Benaras in India. The rise of the anti-Rana movement began when Nepalese scholars at Benaras Hindu University, Darjeeling, Patna and Allahabad joined the 1942 Quit India Movement in an effort to gain an independent India’s support to overthrow the Ranas, which eventually bore fruit with the reinstatement of King Tribhuvan in 1951. Before that, journals such as Gorkhali in Benaras had begun voicing anti-Rana and anti-British sentiments as early as 1919.6 In 1935, headed by Tanka Prasad Acharya, a surreptitious antiRana organisation called ‘Praja Parishad’ was established in Kathmandu itself, with secret ties with King Tribhuvan. Tanka Prasad had secretly brought back a printing machine from Benaras with plans of printing pamphlets discussing the regressive tyranny of the Ranas.7 Although the organisation was thwarted, Acharya’s exposure to Western revolutionaries such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Marx, along with the translated works of Shakespeare and Tolstoy, allowed Prasad and others at Benaras to become bolder. In an interview with James Fisher, Tanka Prasad had mentioned that he “smuggled all these books from India, since these types of books were banned in Nepal”.8 The earlier prejudice

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against a language as foreign as English gradually dissipated. Under the establishment of the Gorkha Bhasa Prakasini Samiti (1913), as a response to Jung Bahadur Rana’s suppression of education, a rapid surge of vernacular compilations and translations was undertaken. Eventually, Narendra Mani Acharya Dikshit published his Yuropiya Sahityako Namuna (‘Samples of European Literature’) in 1938, which contained extracts “selected from the classical Greek, Shakespeare, the Romantics, and the Victorians. . .”,9 and, thereby, exposed the Nepalese society to Western thoughts on liberation and revolution. The exposure to Western texts allowed scholars and the educated Nepalese milieu to use Shakespeare as one of the tools to voice their anti-dictatorial stance as seen in the 1906 play Shri Atal Bahadur, the first tragedy in Nepali by Lt. Pahalman Singh Swar (1878–1935), where he took the tales of Hamlet and Macbeth to narrate his country’s tyrannical regime. Because Swar was living in exile in India, and due to the play’s anti-Rana tone, it was first staged in 1909 and only after the establishment of the Gorkha National Theatrical Party in Darjeeling.10 Apart from Atal Bahadur, Swar is known for his plays such as Bimaladevi, Vishnumaya, Jagat Singh and Lalubhaga, along with the introduction of ghazals in Nepali dramaturgy. Much like the theatre in England, Nepalese dramaturgy has always been inf luenced by the ruling class, especially during the Rana dynasty’s period of power. Monica Mottin explains how the Ranas commissioned theatre groups and established theatre houses within the royal courts where the audience sat according to their ranks. These performances were a pastiche of those of the Indian royal courts along with performances staged by British and Parsi theatres. Mottin observes how, “At the turn of the 20th century, exchanges between India and Nepal were common” and notes that “Dumber Shamsher Rana (grandfather of Balkrishna Sama) was sent to Calcutta in 1893 to get training in dramaturgy”.11 However, during the Rana Age, dramas were not written in Nepali; “they were translated from Sanskrit and Hindi, but Nepali was mixed with Urdu and Hindi”.12 Thus, the genre of the Parsi theatre with its elaborate set designs and dance recitals became popular in Kathmandu. Balkrishna Sama (1907–1981) is credited for breaking this tradition of restricted dramaturgy by “bringing drama out of the Rana palaces and for using theatre to rebel against the Rana autocratic dominion”.13 As a member of the Rana family, he renounced his name and used drama as a medium to not only critique the system of governance but also instil the notion of nationalism and patriotism among the domestic as well as diasporic Nepali populace. Sama heavily borrowed from the Western dramaturgical canon; genres such as the ‘tragic drama’ and ‘prose poetry’, notably from Ibsen, Chekov and Shakespeare are common, to the point that Sama is unf latteringly called ‘The Shakespeare of Nepal’ by his peers.14 Tana Sarma, a notable biographer of Sama writes, “Borrowing from Shakespeare, he wrote tragedies such as Mutuko Vyatha and Andhavegh, comedies such as Mukunda Indira and historical plays such as Amarsingh, Bhimsenko Antya and Bhakta-Bhanubhakta”.15 Apart from borrowing the

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plot structures and tropes such as lyrical dialogues and the exploration of the human psyche from Shakespeare, Sama is also credited with having developed a prosodic meter that parallels the Bard’s iambic pentameter.

Hamlet in the Himalayas In his “Introduction” to ‘Hamlet’ and World Cinema, Mark Thornton Burnett argues that “the numbers of adaptations discovered in any geographical site are intricately linked to historical processes of education, colonialism and empire”,16 and in terms of Shakespearean appropriation into world culture, Hamlet is one which is most frequently borrowed or adapted. Perhaps, it has got to do with the play’s “capacity for commenting on local situations and ideologies that run along asymmetrical lines”17 where it serves as a “ref lection of territorial instability”.18 It is interesting to note the proclivity of writers to specifically stage and adapt Hamlet (1600–1601) across the Himalayan regions, starting with the Indian adaptations, with Amarendranath Dutta’s production of Hariraj (1897) set in the medieval kingdom of Kashmir, to Vishal Bhardwaj’s 2014 film Haider, which was set in contemporary Kashmir. Writing from Darjeeling (in North Bengal), Swar’s play Shri Atal Bahadur (1906) is set in the fictional kingdom of ‘Dankot’ (as Denmark), where he locates it as being close to the princely state of Doti in western Nepal, close to Uttarakhand. Moving towards China, Sherwood Hu’s 2006 film Prince of the Himalayas portrays Hamlet as a Tibetan prince Lhamoklodan. One must also acknowledge the recent 2015 production of Hamlet by the British Council in Nepal, poetically staged within Durbar Square, close to the royal palace. As a result, the persona of Hamlet is not just a brooding Danish Prince who internalises his consciousness but is a figure like the ghost of his father, a primeval spirit, who walks the Himalayas. Irrespective of cultural or literary differences, Hamlet, and other similar Shakespearean plays, invites its readers and audiences to “see to whatever contexts suggest themselves as relevant”.19 Thus, one can place Hamlet amid the mountain kingdoms as a Himalayan prince whose character and actions narrate a parallel story of violence and statehood. According to Carol C. Davis, Swar’s exposure to Shakespeare may not have been a heuristic experience: “Most likely, however, Swar had not read Shakespeare but may have read or seen Hindi or Bengali adaptations of Hamlet”.20 Swar had mirrored the Shakespearean plot from Hariraj, whose wide-scale commercial success may have inspired him to borrow freely from Dutta’s play. Translated or adapted into Bengali by Nagendranath Choudhury and directed by Amarendranath Dutta in 1896, the play’s popularity in comparison to other contemporary adaptations of Shakespeare in Calcutta is largely due to Dutta’s complete Indianisation of the original text. There are indeed several similarities between Hariraj and Atal Bahadur. Both plays depict a kingdom in turmoil after the death of their pious king. Both plays begin with the death of Hamlet’s

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father, who is portrayed ‘writhing in pain’ in his bed with his wife beside him. Set in Hindu kingdoms, they depict the crematorium beside a river where both scenes start with elegies and songs. Both plays also borrow from Macbeth: Claudius and Gertrude who are modelled on Macbeth and his wife – the former exercising his tyranny amid moments of insomnia and guilt and the latter carefully inf luencing her husband. Perhaps, for Swar, the setting of Hariraj in Kashmir and Jammu was of importance, as Abhishek Sarkar states, “[t]he setting of Kashmir was also suggestive of Hindu political autonomy since at the time of the play’s production, Kashmir was a princely state of British India ruled by a Hindu king”.21 This notion of ‘Pan-Hinduism’ is something that might have appealed to Swar himself, whose play also glorifies Nepal’s Hinduism. The tragedy of Hamlet, as Sarkar has rightly pointed out, is not just the death of the major characters but also the extinction of a royal house characterised by their religious autonomy in both Hariraj and Atal Bahadur, where the death of the Hindu princes marks the end of a Hindu dynasty and “the lost ascendency of the Hindus, which formed a leitmotif of the contemporary discourse on Hindu revivalism”.22 One of the most compelling evidences of Swar’s emulation of Dutta’s play occurs in the garden scene in Act II, Scene v, in Swar’s play and Act I, Scene iii, and Act II, Scene v, in Hariraj. Borrowing from the Parsi tradition, in both the plays, the scene displays the Minister’s gardens where the Opheliacounterpart sings about the beauty of nature and of the f lowers blooming in the garden. Other conventions characteristic of Parsi theatre are also present in Atal Bahadur in the form of numerous ghazals and thumris sung by the characters. It is known that in the 1900 adaptation of Hamlet titled Khoon-e-Nahq by Ahsan Lucknawi, the Indian court is set in a medieval timeline marked by princesses performing kathak as is witnessed in Swar’s play too. Almost every scene in the play ends with a song either in lament or in anticipation. Like Bharatendu Harishchandra’s usage of dohas23 in his translation of Merchant of Venice, a similar use of the doha in Swar’s play is evident in Act II, Scene ii, where Atal expresses his anguish as such: Maran Pitako kashta bado, kun rithle bhuliyos Nindra bhok sabai chutigo, kyale yo man thir hos (Sufferings of my late father have pervaded, how can it not remind Sleep and hunger have evaded, what can calm this mind)24 Swar simply does not stop at dohas and thumris in his play but also incorporates components characteristic of Hindustani Classical music such as a dadra and a sabaiya. In Act II, Scene v, Kamalnayani is depicted roaming the gardens of the Prime Minister where she opens the scene by singing a dadra expressing her joy of walking among “Chameli Chaandi phool he gulabdhun tero ayo” (blooms of silvery jasmine and the symphony-of-roses diffuses).25 Unlike Ophelia with her wreath woven with English f lowers such as ‘crow-f lowers, nettles, daisies,

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and long purples’ (Hamlet, 4.7.169),26 Kamalnayani (‘Lotus-eyed’) is surrounded by native blooms and remains a character whose purpose is to provide aesthetic pleasure to the audience. As Kennedy and Yong opine, the difference between Shakespeare’s dramaturgy and their adaptations in Asia is “the respective emphasis they place on the verbal and the corporeal”,27 and that the “function of such striking, beautiful, non-representational scenography is determined by the theatrical values and critical habits of a spectator’s cultural context”,28 Nepali dramaturgy initially comprised of ritualistic dance, where there was no difference between natak (acting) and nritya (formal dance).29 The ceremonial features of traditional festivals such as the Newari ‘Lakhey’ dance and the Nepalese ‘Indrajatra’ tend to seep into the canon of Nepali plays. It is interesting to observe how adaptations of Shakespearean texts are conditioned by the political situation of the state. Much of the Nepali adaptations were created as a resistance and a reminder to the Ranas, while the setting of Hariraj in Kashmir was intended to inspire nationalism in India. In the case of Tibet, or rather China in this case, Burnett opines that the bulk of Chinese adaptations occurred during the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution (1966– 76),30 especially after the establishment of China as a global economic power. Director Sherwood Hu’s film Prince of the Himalayas (2006) marks a shift away from the domain of Chinese blockbusters and into the wild and bleak terrain of Tibet where Lhamaklodan, the Prince of Jiabo’s, journey through guilt, ambition and revenge parallels Hamlet’s journey where the topography of chortens, lakes, grasslands and lush forests mirrors the protagonist’s development. 31 Hu illustrates how familial discord, especially within the royal family, ref lects the discord of the kingdom as a whole. Here, Lhamaklodan’s anguish stems from his inability to avenge his father’s ghost, due to his gradual realisation that Kulo-ngam is his biological father and that Nanm truly loved him over the old king. Instead of vengeance, the film stresses renewal and reincarnation as portrayed in the survival of Lhamaklodan’s son – the future king of Jiabo. Hu’s film ends with a sense of hope “that aspire[s] to better things and institutional repair”,32 which could be interpreted as our inheritance of the Prince of Denmark’s legacy. Hamlet/Lhamaklodan’s bloodline continues to live on just as Shakespeare’s legacy continues to haunt the stark backdrop of the Himalayas.

The Princes of Denmark and Dankot Unlike the imprisoning universe of Hamlet’s Protestant England, Swar’s play Atal Bahadur portrays a world marked by aristocratic feuds, royal massacres and animosity between clans that lead to spontaneous and unpredictable consequences. Considered to be the first purna-anki (full-act) play in Nepali, Swar was able to use Shakespeare as the motif through which he voices his antimonarchical assertions where the preconceived notion of Nepalese royalty as ideal is dismantled. The need for creating a historical distance in a storyline was

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of utmost importance during both Elizabethan as well as Rana times; Stephen Greenblatt illustrates how Shakespeare chose to “tell the truth at a strategic distance from the present moment”, where he astutely “kept at least a full century between himself and the events he depicted”.33 Swar’s tragedy begins at the royal court of Dankot (a fictionalised kingdom in Nepal) where Atal’s father is aware of his impending death by poison. The dying king bestows his son a letter containing the details of his murder and, along with a dagger, asks him to ‘remember’ him. Similar to Hamlet, Amar Bahadur (Claudius) marries Bhawani Devi (Gertrude) and assumes the role of Dankot’s tyrannical king. The Prince of Dankot’s nonchalance irks the spirit of his father who rebukes him via a ‘celestial announcement’ for his delay. Atal Bahadur also portrays Kamalnayani’s (Ophelia) devotion towards Atal and her steady attempt to support him through his journey into madness and exile. However, unlike Shakespeare’s Prince whose philosophical ramblings and soliloquies internalise the world’s spiritual decay, the melancholy of Prince of Dankot is somewhat simplistic and not governed by principles of Western thought. Driven by his warrior code of honour and valour, Atal is more of a scorned soldier than a thinker gazing into the abyss. His inaction and delay seem to be politically driven, though in Dutta’s Hariraj the prince, beside the burning pyre of his father, remarks on the transience of human life and its worthlessness. Although both plays lack the iconic Yorick’s skull that allows Hamlet to meditate on the corruptibility of the human body, in Atal Bahadur, it is the loyal minister to the old king, who resides beside the holy river Seti as an ascetic, who sings: Jhuto manko khel ho. . . Sharir bali sadijane ho (False is the heart’s play. . . The body is meant to rot away)34 As Marcellus claims that “[s]omething is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I.iv.90), W. H. Clemen opines that the whole imagery of decay in Hamlet is marked in the very first scene where the Ghost describes his leprous skin.35 Senior Hamlet’s rule is marked by pre-lapsarian images of him “sleeping in [his] orchard” (I.v.35), which is then overturned by the arrival of the serpent and the pouring of the poison into his ears. In Atal Bahadur, the ‘juice of cursed hebenon in a vial’ is fed to the sick king under the guise of medicine. The potency of the poison which melted and curdled away the Senior Hamlet’s organs is similarly portrayed by Swar where the king on his death bed exclaims “kaleja phatisakyo, mutu katisakyo” (The liver has ruptured, the heart has split).36 Unlike Hamlet’s father, who returns as a ghost to spur his son into action, the king, Jung Bahadur, is alive at the beginning of the play and relays this information to his trusted minister and bestows a letter to Atal, instructing him to peruse it only after nine months following his death. This gestation period

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FIGURE 5.1

Title page of a copy of Shri Atal Bahadur (1906)

allows the drama to unfold where the queen, Bhawani Devi, and Amar Bahadur express their anxiety over Atal’s knowledge as well as exercise their tyranny over Dankot. With only a few hours left to live, the poisoned king hides the letter inside the sheath of a khukri – the traditional Nepali knife and a modification of the poniard in Hamlet – and tells Atal: ‘Yo chhuri leu yasai le mero yaad garnu’ (Take this knife and with it, remember me).37 Unlike the Catholic concept of redemptive suffering, the kingdom of Dankot is primarily Hindu in its beliefs and practices. Swar’s king, Jung Bahadur, is

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aware of his poisoning and has time to repent his sins, which is carried out in the form of penance at the ghat. Although the presence of the cleansing fires of Purgatory is subtly underlined in the shamshan (crematory), the imagery used by Swar is that of water. The scene opens with the king positioned in ardhajal (half in water), and as he chants his mantras, he performs achamana (a ritual whereby one cups water in the hands as one continues to pray). After his prayers, Swar describes his voice as shudh (pure), and after chanting his final prayers, his death is described as mukta bhaya (released/attained liberation). Perhaps this is the reason why Atal Bahadur does not portray a ghost, because Atal’s father could achieve moksha before his cremation and only returns to remind and chastise his son for his laziness in the form of akash vani (celestial announcement). Similarly, Curran Jr. argues, in the context of Hamlet, that “[s]loth in revenge, conversely, is the same as abject forgetfulness”.38 When Atal claims that the letter has been pilfered with, the spirit refuses to name his perpetrators and leaves the bedchamber after opening a window. Nevertheless, Curran Jr. justifies that in Hamlet, the dialogue between the living and the dead allows the audience to see the Ghost through ‘Catholic eyes’, whereas evidently in Atal Bahadur, the soul of Jung Bahadur needs to be viewed with the lenses of Hinduism as a liberated atmah that can communicate with the living. As Swar’s play progresses, the soul’s physicality decreases as it gradually dissipates into a white light, then assumes a choric role in the background and eventually fades away into oblivion.

Lady Macbeth in the Making In Swar’s play, the figure of Gertrude is depicted as an astute woman capable of regicide, treachery and manipulation of her co-conspirators and lovers. She not only deceives and kills the former king but also tricks Amar Bahadur as she is in love with Gulab Singh – her former paramour. In Act II, Scene iv, conscious of the fact that Amar Bahadur had gone to town, Bhawani Devi and Gulab Singh meet for a secret assignation in the queen’s bedchamber. Their tryst is however interrupted when Atal arrives at his step-mother’s chamber to find Gulab holding Bhawani’s hand. Her resourcefulness parallels that of Lady Macbeth as she pretends to faint, gnash her teeth and shake violently. Gulab describes the unconscious queen as Bhooth lagyajasto naari chhan (she is like a possessed woman),39 harking back to Lady Macbeth’s speech where she had invoked the ‘spirits that tend on mortal thoughts’ to assist her in her regicide. In the final act when the court discovers the truth, Bhawani Devi is called Yo Veshya sarvanashi rakshasi rani (This destructivedemonic-whore queen),40 similar to Malcolm describing Lady Macbeth as a ‘fiendlike queen’. David N. Gellner opines that the Nepalese society is one in which “the central type of possession, albeit secret, plays an important part in legitimating a complex religious hierarchy”.41 Although Bhawani Devi isn’t really possessed, her violent shaking mirrors the tantric rhythm of mediums once they are possessed. According to Gellner, men of high status are never susceptible to possession, and it

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is only those of a lower social standing or women who are possessed in an attempt to compensate for their lack of power and status. In the case of Bhawani Devi, her ‘possession’ could be interpreted as an attempt to seize the centre − that is, kingship − for she is responsible for displacing the king and further plots to seize control. There appears to be a strong tendency to depict her as a boksi (witch), who are usually infertile widows who congregate at crematorial grounds and ‘spoil’ a family by bringing in disease, misfortune and death; Gellner further illustrates: “When households break up, women are frequently blamed”.42 By the end of Swar’s play, the women are demonised as the cause of destruction of the entire kingdom. Unlike the simplistic explanation of Ophelia’s madness as stemming from her grief, the insanity portrayed by the women of Hariraj is one riddled with underlying discourses of femininity and nationalism. Like Bhawani, Sreelekha too, in Hariraj, is Lady Macbeth in terms of her manipulation, proclivity for infanticide and sleeplessness culminating into a frenzied suicide. However, the final scene of Hariraj portrays Sreelekha realising her follies, whereby her maternal instincts overcome her desire to murder her son. Instead, she stabs her husband ( Jayakar) and in a fit of mad laughter subsequently jumps into the river as an act of redemption. The taint of suicide is here surpassed by her maternal affection, while Aroona (Ophelia) simply experiences nightmares and dies out of grief. In Atal Bahadur, Bhawani Devi’s motherhood is non-existent because she herself has borne no child of her own, while Kamalnayani only threatens to commit suicide and is eventually shot during the final carnage. Sreelekha’s madness could be justified as a violent upsurge of the conf lict between the figure of the mother cum Veerangana (courageous woman) that fuelled Indian nationalism and her desire to transgress traditional constructs of Indian femininity.

Madness and Tyranny There is a common practice of associating madness with royalty as seen during the aftermath of the 2001 massacre where the unexpected carnage was blamed on a momentary fit of madness. Witnesses claimed how Prince Dipendra’s violence sprouted out of a paroxysm of insanity and anger over his mother denying him a love marriage. Others claim that he was either ‘schizophrenic’ or under the inf luence of hashish. In Atal Bahadur vis-à-vis Hamlet, madness is attributed to Atal by his stepmother after he starts claiming to hear his father’s voice. However, the only instance of feigned madness is carried out by Jadubhakth, who is a combination of the jester/clown and the character of Horatio. He not only serves as the chorus but also provides the only reasoning voice in the play, especially through episodes of psychotic laughter and dances. As Foucault argues, “If folly leads each man into a blindness where he is lost, the madman, on the contrary, reminds each man of his truth”.43 When Amar Bahadur (Claudius), who appears to be Bhawani’s puppet alongside Gulab Singh, promotes his new courtiers and begins establishing a tyrannical rule, Jadu remarks

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in an aside: “Raja karai nyau, pasa padhai dau | Andher! Andher!! Andher!!!” (‘A namesake King, lays out his traps. Darkness! Darkness!! Darkness!!!’)44. The image of the tyrant drawn by Greenblatt parallels Amar Bahadur’s, who is depicted as an unjust king whose authority everyone fears to question. According to Greenblatt, a tyrant possesses a “grotesque sense of entitlement”45 and does not believe in the welfare of his people. After his ascension, Amar Bahadur resembles an ambitious Macbeth-like figure abandoning all sense of reality and justice in his quest for personal gain. He commands Rampade and Shyampade (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) to observe Atal and later schemes to send him to Silgadi. Amar exercises his dictatorship by suppressing the public, increasing taxes, dismantling all forms of transportation such as bridges and prohibiting schools from functioning, thereby paralleling the historical Jung Bahadur Rana’s suppressive reign. In the miasma of intellectual ignorance in Nepal at that time, Swar realised the importance of Western education when he attempts to challenge the existing system by using Shakespeare to ‘write back’ to the Rana Empire. In a private meeting with the queen, Amar Bahadur’s paranoia is evident as he decides to send Atal away before he finds the letter and does something rash. Just as Macbeth wishes for a natural heir, Amar and Bhawani’s impotence is contested against Atal, who is the future of their royal house. The reason behind the royal couple’s trepidation is that the Nepali Prince is portrayed as a figure governed by his impulses rather than reason; Bhawani even calls him ‘murkha’ (‘stupid/ rash’). They do not wish death upon him but simply let him live in exile until their demise after which he could naturally succeed the throne. It is Atal who actually decides to draw blood by recruiting rebel soldiers to shoot the royal family – a decision that leads to his own death and the extinction of a royal household and one that, as Greenblatt reminds, is a part of a chain of events stemming from tyranny in the first place.46 At the end of Atal Bahadur, the Prince tries to stop the mob of rebellious soldiers from shooting at the royal court. However, the hail of bullets spares none, including Kamalnayani and Atal himself. Kamal’s concern lies with Atal’s safety even as she lay bleeding on the f loor. The Prince’s dying wish is to be cremated next to his beloved. The massacre ends in chaos as the Kaji (minister) bemoans the loss of a royal household: “Yo kya andher? Hamra mulukma yasto andher!”47 (‘What kind of darkness is this? Such darkness in our lands!’). The play ends with the collapse of the social order, the extinction of those at the zenith and the guilty soldiers branded as ‘thieves’ and ‘untouchables’. The only thing left to do is to cremate those whose bodies are littered across the stage.

Why Hamlet? Demark is portrayed as a prison, and so is Dankot. Even during his incarceration, the loyal minister Ram Bahadur proclaims that “Daivachakra sadha ek rahandaina” (‘The wheel of fortune is transient’). Consequently, Atal sends

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an officer to release him but warns him from returning back to court when the officer states: “Darbar badhlisakyo”48 (‘The court has changed’). Similarly, in Hariraj, when the jester Dodhimukh’s criticism of the royals is met with hostility, he describes the royal palace of Kashmir as ‘Gete baat bejaay chegechhe’ (III.ii.81; ‘The arthritis has relapsed intensely’).49 Dodhi further fears that his remarks will drag him to the gallows. Here the images of a restrictive disease and the stocks describe the illiberal nature of Kashmir’s state of affairs. Perhaps like Elsinore, the imprisoning miasma of both Dankot and Kashmir are at once both restrictive and liberating where the Hamlet-figure appears to be a free element capable of freethinking. Hamlet’s inference is perhaps viewed as his most radical characteristic for it serves as the catalyst for his transcendence. In Atal Bahadur, the Prince’s internalisation is visible in pockets of solitude – in private chambers – where he struggles between grief and love. After the celestial chastisement, Atal’s devotion towards Kamalnayani shifts as he is overcome with confusion and denial. The confinement of the new Dankot and Kashmir under the rule of the Claudius/Macbeth counterpart is contested against the promise of freedom that the figure of Hamlet symbolises. Perhaps this explains the popularity of Hamlet in oppressive states where the Prince’s intellectual freedom parallels those of academics and thinkers alike. Playwrights have chosen Hamlet as the agent of freedom, for as Bloom states, “There are many signs that global self-consciousness increasingly identifies with Hamlet, Asia and Africa included”.50 In the kingdom of Kashmir, Hariraj laments the misfortunes brought out by women and the futility of love. His conf licted love between his mother Sreelekha and wife Aroona leads to confusion, madness and suicide. The culmination is a Jacobean scene of multiple stabbings and deaths, and similar to Atal, the final scene displays Hariraj bringing the cycle of violence to an end with Kalhan and Dodhimukh surviving as witnesses. In both plays, the Princes of their respective kingdoms are heralded as martyrs whose sacrifice brings stability and peace to the land, even if it comes at a cost. Hamlet as a figure has transcended the limits of Shakespeare’s text as a universal and legendary figure. Hamlet’s desire to be posthumously remembered is carried out by Horatio – the last living character who knows the truth. In Atal Bahadur, Jadubhakth and the old minister and in Hariraj, Dodhimukh and Kalhan are the Horatio-counterparts who propose to hang the royal family’s portrait for posterity and to live as ascetics respectively, denoting a future marked by lament and introspection.

Similar Plays and Adaptations It may appear that Shakespeare’s inf luence in contemporary Nepali drama has somewhat thinned over the years. Some may question the relevance of Shakespeare in Nepali dramaturgy with contemporary playwrights such as Asesh Malla focusing on social evils such as alcoholism, witch-hunting and the Maoist

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armed struggle after 1996. Theatre has traversed towards street performances as playwrights attempt to educate the public. Another notable playwright that Carol C. Davis discusses is Abhi Subedi, whose plays bear an eerie resonance with Shakespeare as contemporary Nepali plays move “from hope to disillusionment”.51 Amidst the chaos of political unrest, Shakespearean tropes survive as echoes in his plays. Set against the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, Subedi’s Agniko Katha (‘A Tale of Fire’, 2003) illustrates the fires of revolution where the female protagonist states: “Every day I have started hearing people cry. I hear the wail of helpless children whose parents have been killed. I have heard that people are crying in pain. . .”,52 which echoes Macduff ’s frustration: “each new morn,/New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows/strike heaven on the face” (IV.iii.5–6).53 In his other play titled Journey into Thamel (2003) that chronicles an aristocratic family’s decay, a scene where a masked bandit tries to rob the family at gunpoint chillingly mirrors the manner in which Prince Dipendra gunned down his whole family; this reverberates once more in Atal Bahadur where the royal household is slaughtered not by the traditional khukri but by the symbol of British colonialism – the gun. The recent 2015 staging of Hamlet by the British Council in Nepal also illustrates the undying relevance of Shakespeare in Asia: the ghost may rise instead from the funerary

FIGURE 5.2 Scene from the staging of the Nepali Hamlet (2015); courtesy of the British Council in Nepal. A Hindu Hamlet (Divya Dev) in mourning contemplates the killing of Claudius (Kamalmani Nepal) at prayer

Source: Courtesy Himalayan Times.

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pyre; ‘Hamlet’ may be shorn and clad in Hindu funerary whites, but the story remains the same. Although Gregory Thompson and Bimal Subedi, the codirectors, claim that this is the first translation and production of a Shakespearean play in Nepali,54 a thriving wave of Shakespearean translations in Nepali had already taken place. Notable works include Ramchandra Giri’s Veniceko Mahajan 1976 (The Merchant of Venice) and ‘Mahakavi’ Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s (1909–1959) translation of Hamlet. The reason behind the choice of Hamlet, according to Thompson and Subedi, is because of the play’s uncanny resemblance with the royal massacre, which is why they decided to give it a political turn. Laertes appears on stage dressed in military colours and armed with a gun that echoes Prince Dipendra during his final hours. In contrast, the shorn Hamlet is armed with a khukri, which he uses to kill Polonius.

Conclusion The dissatisfaction of the Nepalese public led to the Jana Andolan (‘People’s Movement’) that further led the country into turmoil, culminating into violent riots that were resolved with the establishment of democracy on 9 April 1990. However, the corruption of the constitutional monarchy and the apparent underdevelopment of Nepal led to the Maoist insurgency (1996–2006) that aimed at toppling the monarchy. Once again, the country was torn in a civil war that was further exacerbated with the royal massacre of 2001. Already unpopular, Gyanendra’s ascension, replete with his corruption, lucrative wealth and nepotism, led to the Maoist insurgents’ apparent victory over the armed forces. Nepal’s civil war ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2006. Two years later, Nepal’s monarchy was absolved when the Nepalese Constituent Assembly declared Nepal a Republic. Here, the choice of Hamlet as a text to represent political discord can be justified by Bloom’s remark: “Elsinore’s disease is anywhere’s, anytime’s. Something is rotten in every state, and if your sensibility is like Hamlet’s, then finally you will not tolerate it”.55 Similarly, Burnett argues that Hamlet is “identified as the work to turn to during periods of regime change”.56 The moral rot in a state that expands its cankerous roots provokes playwrights and authors to illustrate the threats that autocracy and dictatorship pose over a nation/kingdom. Atal Bahadur and Hariraj show how the inaction and delay of leaders causes the dismantling of order. In Prince of the Himalayas, however, we, as Horshu (Horatio), realise that it is our duty to acknowledge and preserve the rewards of the Prince’s sacrifice. In the final moments of the film, Lhamaklodan enters the spirit realm and successfully exorcises the ghost of the evil king – the source of Jiabo/Tibet’s decay whose soul would no longer defile the kingdom. Irrespective of the state/kingdom, Hamlet is always a Prince whose sacrifice in order to preserve the sanctity of the throne restores order and peace. It is, however, interesting to observe how an adaptation of Hamlet is set in a princely state of

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India and the Himalayas just a few decades before the absolution of its monarchy.57 Does Hamlet’s death signify the end of feudalism and sovereignty along with the advent of democracy? Perhaps, the playwrights and directors were aware of the redundancy of kingship where Hamlet’s death is a sine qua non that provides freedom from totalitarianism. As Julia Reinhard Lupton states, after Claudius’s death, momentarily, Denmark is without a king, and although Hamlet is not elected king, with his ‘dying breath’, he elects Fortinbras as the successor who could be interpreted as a tenet of citizenry and election. Hamlet predicts the ‘election’ of Fortinbras, and in doing so, “his voice issues from a place somewhere between that of the dying sovereign and that of the body politic that must ratify any new king”.58 Perhaps this is what Atal and Hariraj have been trying to warn us about – the moral rot of any kingdom or state stems from its centre, that is, the crown or the constitution whose disease and corruption needs to be cleansed through transcendence and sacrifice.

Notes 1. Jeffrey S. Lidke, “Devi’s Dance: The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley” International Journal of Hindu Studies 10:1 (2006): 35, www.jstor.org/stable/20079621. 2. Samrat Upadhyay, “A Kingdom Orphaned: Ref lecting on June 1, 2001” Manoa 13, no. 2, Secret Places: New Writing from Nepal (2001): 48, www.jstor.org/ stable/4229973. 3. Nepal’s royal history has been marked by cycles of atrocities that continue with each generation. For further reading, see Baburam Acharya, “The Tragic End of Prince Bahadur Shah” in The Blood-Stained Throne, translated and edited by Madhav Acharya and Shreekrishna Acharya (Gurgaon: Penguin Random House India Pvt. Ltd, 2013), 6. 4. Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan, “Introduction: Why Shakespeare?” in Shakespeare in Asia: Contemporary Performance, eds. Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 7–8. 5. Somendra Vashishtha, “British India’s Relations with Nepal: A Phase of Restricted Inter Course and Friendly Isolation (1846–57)” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 64 (2003): 1315, www.jstor.org/stable/44145560. 6. Chandra Prakash Singh, “Rise and Growth of Anti-Rana Movement in Nepal” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 65 (2004): 994, www.jstor.org./stable/44144808. 7. Ibid., 995. 8. James Fisher, “Education and Social Change in Nepal: An Anthropologist’s Assessment” Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies 10:2 (1990): 31, http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol10/iss2/10. 9. Govinda Raj Bhattarai, “A Brief Survey of Translation in Nepali” in History of Translation in India, ed. Tariq Khan (Mysuru: National Translation Mission, CIIL, 2017), 210. 10. Amaresh Dutta, Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature: Devraj to Jyoti, vol. 2 (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1988), 1090. 11. Monica Mottin, “Rehearsing for Life: Theatre for Social Change in Kathmandu, Nepal” (D.Phil., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2009–10), 40. 12. Ibid.

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13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 41. 15. Tana Sarma, Sama ani Samka Kritiharu (Sama and his Works) (Sajha Prakashan: Lalitpur, 1988), 76. 16. Mark Thornton Burnett, ‘Hamlet’ and World Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 7. 17. Ibid., 2. 18. Ibid., 10. 19. Ibid., 8. 20. Carol C. Davis, The Theatre of Nepal and the People Who Make It: Urban History, Rural Forms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 22. 21. Abhishek Sarkar, “Hariraj and Haider: Popular Entertainment and the Nation in Two Indian Adaptations of Hamlet” Literature Compass 14:11 (2017): 5, https://doi. org/10.1111/lic3.12412. 22. Ibid., 6. 23. As noted by Sisir Kumar Das, “Shakespeare in Indian Languages” in India’s Shakespeare, eds. Poonam Trivedi and Dennis Bartholomeusz (New Delhi: Dorling Kindersley (India) Pvt. Ltd, 2006), 55. Doha, a rhyming couplet in the Matrika metre. 24. Lt. Pehalman Singh Swar, Shri Atal Bahadur (Siliguri: Saraswati Sahitya Sadan, 1989), 14. All translations from this play are by the author. The date of first publication is 1906. 25. Ibid., 23. 26. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, ed. Philip Edwards, updated ed. (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2003). All citations from this edition. 27. Kennedy and Yong, “Introduction”, 17. 28. Ibid., 18. 29. Mottin, “Rehearsing for Life”, 31. 30. Burnett, ‘Hamlet’, 135. 31. Ibid., 141. 32. Ibid., 17. 33. Stephen Greenblatt, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power (London: The Bodley Head, 2018), 5. 34. Swar, Shri Atal Bahadur, 29. 35. W. H. Clemen, “The Imagery of Hamlet” in Shakespeare: Modern Essays and Criticism, ed. Leonard F. Dean, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 233. 36. Swar, Shri Atal Bahadur, 4. 37. Ibid., 5. 38. John E. Curran Jr., “Purgatory and the Value of Time” in Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006), 81. 39. Swar, Shri Atal Bahadur, 20. 40. Ibid., 32. 41. David N. Gellner, “Priests, Healers, Mediums and Witches: The Context of Possession in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal” Man, New Series 29:1 (1994): 28, www. jstor.org.stable/2803509. 42. In these adaptations, we discover the Gertrude counterparts being portrayed as barren and ‘witch-like’, whose actions lead to death and destruction. See, Gellner, “Possession”, 40. 43. Michel Foucault, “Stultifera Navis” in Madness and Civilization, 1967 reprint (Abingdon: Routledge Classics, 2010), 11. 44. Swar, Shri Atal Bahadur, 17. 45. Greenblatt, Tyrant, 53. 46. As Greenblatt states, ‘Tyranny attempts to poison not merely the present but generations to come. [. . .] Tyrants are enemies of the future’. Greenblatt, Tyrant, 106. 47. Swar, Shri Atal Bahadur, 32.

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48. Ibid., 12. 49. Amarendranath Dutta, Hariraj, (Kolkata: Shree Krishna Library, 1924), 65. Translation by author. 50. Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), 420. 51. Carol C. Davis, “Drama of Disillusionment: Nepal’s Theatre, 1990–2006” Asian Theatre Journal 24:1 (2010): 24, www.jstor.org/stable/40982904. 52. Ibid., 33. 53. William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. A. R. Braunmuller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 204. 54. Agnish Ray, “Alchemy 2016: Shakespeare’s South Asian Voice in Nepali ‘Hamlet’” Asian Culture Vulture (2016): 1, http://asianculturevulture.com/portfolios/ alchemy-2016-shakespeares-south-asian-voice-in. 55. Bloom, Shakespeare, 431. 56. Burnett, ‘Hamlet’, 17. 57. Coincidentally, the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir was disestablished in 1952, the polity of Tibet was incorporated into the People’s Republic of China in 1951 and the Rana regime of Nepal came to an end after the Revolution of 1951 that restored the Shah dynasty along with the establishment of Democracy in Nepal. 58. Julia Reinhard Lupton, “Hamlet, Prince: Tragedy, Citizenship, and Political Theology” in Alternative Shakespeares 3, ed. Diana E. Henderson (London: Routledge, 2008), 195.

PART II

The Asian Cinematic and Digital Sphere Democratising the ‘Global’

6 GLOBALISING THE CITY Kolkata Films and the Millennial Bard Paromita Chakravarti

Kolkata: The Shakespearean City Travelling across four continents and six countries to map Shakespeare’s global status, when Andrew Dickson arrives in Kolkata, it feels like a homecoming because the British seemed to have never left the city. Their presence could be felt in the St. Paul spire, in the lions guarding Fort William, the Victoria Memorial, the mustard-yellow taxis modelled on the 1950s Morris-Oxfords and the ubiquitous reminders of Shakespeare: While in Mumbai it had been a struggle to find any traces of Shakespeare at all, in Kolkata he seemed – like the British – to be everywhere. There was a whole street named after him. Shakespeare Sarani (formerly Theatre Road, rechristened in 1964, for the 400th anniversary of the poet’s birth.1 However, in the opening shots of the BBC 2 documentary “Shakespeare in India”, the anchor, Felicity Kendal, who grew up in India as a member of Shakespeareana, her parents’ touring theatre company, travels the length of Shakespeare Sarani and fails to find anybody who could direct her to Shakespeare’s plaque. Egg sellers and office goers stare in bewilderment when asked about the bard’s whereabouts in their city. Both impressions of Kolkata are perhaps equally valid – the attentive preservation of a colonial past of which Shakespeare is an important part and the postcolonial indifference to these markers. Aparna Sen’s film 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981) and Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear (2006), both set in Kolkata, bring out this ambivalence of the city. The bardophilia of its respective protagonists, Violet Stoneham, an old Shakespeare teacher, and Harish Mishra (Harry), an

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ageing Shakespearean actor, evoke a city steeped in Raj nostalgia yet their loneliness and growing irrelevance to their students and audiences also highlight the apathy of contemporary Kolkatans towards the city’s imperial legacy. However, unlike these English language films, the recent crop of Bengali films released between 2014 and 2016 to coincide with Shakespeare’s 450th birth and 400th death anniversaries demonstrate a different attitude to the city, deploying the bard’s plays to engage with the impact of globalisation on Kolkata and on shifting ideas of Bengali identity. Moving away from the middle-class, realist, dialogue-heavy, literary style of Bengali cinema, they explore the cartographies of a changing cityscape. No longer symbols of imperialism or colonial modernity, Shakespeare’s plays have become sites of examining the lives of young urban professionals in Ranjan Ghosh’s Hrid Majharey (In my heart, 2014, based on Macbeth and Othello) or real estate gang wars in Aparna Sen’s Arshinagar (Mirrorsville, 2015, Romeo and Juliet), film industry intrigues in Anjan Dutt’s Hemanta (2016, Hamlet) or dockyard crime in Srijit Mukherjee’s Zulfiqar (2016, an amalgam of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra). These films examine how a new globalised Kolkata of sky scrapers, malls, consumerism and glamour built on crime, and corruption is obliterating the lives of the impoverished and the marginalised. Shakespeare in these films is not a distant and revered icon but a resource so well assimilated that his plays are used to narrativise strands of Kolkata’s cosmopolitan histories, its mixed culture and its less represented neighbourhoods and communities that are disappearing with the emergence of the global city. 2 As large-scale development projects, land acquisition and evictions of the poor threaten to obliterate the diversity of a once-teeming port city, Shakespeare’s plays, embodying ‘all the world’, help to preserve a pluralist past. His plots involving Venetians and Cypriots, the black man and a white society, Montagues and Capulets, Danes and the Norwegians, Romans and Egyptians enable Bengali film-makers to tell intercultural stories embedded in the life of their city.

Kolkata in Bengali Cinema: Responses to Globalisation Kolkata has always been a vibrant presence in Bengali films although outdoor scenes were limited in the studio-dominated early cinema. Auteurs like Satyajit Ray, Ritwick Ghatak and Mrinal Sen, inf luenced by Italian neo-realism, moved the camera outdoors. In Ray’s and Sen’s Kolkata trilogies, the city became a protagonist and a site of moral decadence, political turmoil, youth angst and social change in the wake of the Maoist student uprising (Naxalite Movement) of the late 1960s.3 A new language of urban political cinema was born drawing from the French New Wave, German Expressionism, Surrealism, Soviet and Third World cinema. Ray’s photo-negative f lashbacks in Pratidwandi (The Adversary, 1971), innovative use of sound and silence in Jana Aranya

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(The Middleman, 1976) and political montage were new ways of expressing the brutality of a city riven by class conf lict and violence. The 1980s marked a decline of both the city and its cinema as a Left regime consolidated its power. Frequent labour movements and political turbulence led to an exodus of private companies and businesses to other parts of India leaving the film industry starved of capital. Local producers were disinclined to invest in experimental and serious cinema. Changing audience demographics also created a demand, particularly in rural Bengal, for a popular cinema which would combine the f lavour of Bollywood masala films with folk performances like jatra. This gave rise to film-makers like Shakti Samanta, Swapan Saha and Anjan Chowdhury who catered to a rural and semi-urban audience and Kolkata, the city, effectively disappeared from these films. However, a new idiom of the city emerged in the 1990s with the globalisation of Bengali cinema. The neoliberalising Indian economy and global investor friendly state policies impacted the Bengali film industry which opened up to corporate funding and diasporic markets necessitating improvements in production technologies to reach global standards. The narratives, production value and aesthetics of Bengali urban cinema were profoundly altered. The rise of metropolitan multiplexes with high ticket prices meant that films exhibited in these spaces would be geared towards a consuming middle class with dispensable incomes. Sayandeb Chowdhury shows how these changes led to the cinema of Rituparno Ghosh (and others) which was a “major contributor to middle class’ conscious self-fashioning under globalisation and the construction of their spatial and locational aesthetic . . . achieved by a conscious disenfranchisement of the idea of the City”. From Unishey April through Dosar, Raincoat, Baadiwali, Shubho Mahurat to Last Lear Ghosh explores the relationship dynamics of bourgeois protagonists ensconced in plush interiors of genteel homes with little connection with the broader currents of city life. This is a chamber cinema of a self-conscious, autotelic and consumerist middle class wanting to see only itself ref lected in the refined confines of the houses they aspired to. Chowdhury reads the banishment of the city as symptomatic of the depoliticisation of middle-class cinema dissociated from ordinary citizen concerns, bearing few marks of a violently changing Kolkata: Ghosh’s city if any, is not Calcutta. . . . His films, non-denominational, as they are, can be based anywhere . . . this is the Calcutta of the 1990’s, fueled by real estate boom, luxury condominiums and protected habitations. To extend Gyan Prakash’s argument about the ‘urban turn’ in the Indian context, this was the moment when the middle class finally and fully uncoupled itself from seeing the city as part of any nationalist imagination. The bourgeois city, as Partha Chatterjee argues, grew outside the sphere of ‘the governed’ and sought to provide a new urbanism that is in service of neo-liberalism.4

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The genre of a ‘city less’ urban middle class cinema characterised the globalised Bengali films not only of Ghosh but also of Aparna Sen and some films of Kaushik Ganguly, Srijit Mukherjee and Mainak Bhaumik. While The Last Lear belongs to this category – exploring the interiors of old townhouses and their genteel owners, much of 36 Chowringhee Lane unfolds in the classroom of a missionary school and the brooding old f lat bearing the address of the title interspersed with some images of colonial Kolkata like the Victoria Memorial. In the last decade there has been a trend of producing period films not just in Bengali5 but also in Hindi like Parineeta and Byomkesh which showcase a museumised Kolkata marked by the iconic, Howrah Bridge, Maidan, Victoria Memorial, the trams and yellow taxis. The real city as a social space disappears under these almost touristy images. However some new film-makers are engaging politically with the imaginary of a globalised Kolkata, examined not from the closeted middle class home but from the margins, slums and colonies, dockyards and settlements. These films seem to be addressing the new development policies brought in by a Left government trying to respond to economic liberalisation and globalisation. In West Bengal the Left government (1977−2011) enjoyed a long rule based on working-class support and a pro-poor approach. However from the 2000s following the opening up of the Indian economy they changed their anticapitalist stance, focusing on urbanisation and industrialisation. The government invited global investors who, in collusion with the state, engaged in coercive acquisition of agricultural land for their development projects leading to widespread protests. From 2006 development has thus been a politically fraught issue which found expression in Bengali theatre and cinema. Moinak Biswas and Arjun Gourisaria’s Sthaniya Sambaad (Spring in the Colony, 2009) and Suman Mukhopadyay’s Mahanagar@Kolkata (2010) cinematically mapped how the texture of Kolkata life was being changed by land grabbing to build global urban infrastructure. Set in a refugee colony, Sthaniya Sambaad portrays the machinations of local goons and construction mafia to seize land while a ‘promoter’ sells dreams of a new Kolkata. Mukhopadhyay’s Mahanagar@Kolkata alludes to Satyajit Ray’s cinematic tribute to the city, Mahanagar (The Big City, 1963) while indicating a shift to the global internet age through the symbol @. It interweaves three short stories to archive lives under erasure in a changing cityscape – retrenched workers, criminalised youth, government hospital touts, slum dwellers. These two quirky, satirical and politically edgy films introduced themes which later emerged in more mainstream films like Bhooter Bhabishyat (The Future of Ghosts, 2012, dir. Anik Dutta). A runaway hit, the film portrays the farcical intrigues of indignant ghosts faced with an eviction problem when their haunt, a crumbling city mansion is about to be pulled down to build a snazzy shopping mall. “Bhoot” in the title, refers both to the spectral inhabitants of the house but also the past – the disappearing layered history of Kolkata, from the time of Muslim nawabs, the British colonialists,

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the 1960s Maoist students’ movement to the global present of local rock bands, all represented through memorable apparitions etched in the best traditions of Bengali fantasy and ghost literature. The film addressed an anxiety about a fast changing city: [C]entury-old buildings are meeting their doom at the hands of promoters . . . heritage buildings are being replaced by shopping malls and apartment blocks that all look alike and ugly. The familiar sights and sounds are slowly fading into oblivion.6 Biswas’ and Gourisaria’s, Mukhopadhyay’s and Datta’s films move away from the drawing room angst and Victoria Memorial exotica, use a new cinematic language of satire and fantasy to re-politicise the space of the city as a site of contesting claims of diverse citizens, localities and histories. The new crop of Shakespeare films maybe included in this category, experimenting with forms, genres and styles to tell stories of a largely unrepresented Kolkata of slums, dockyards and film studios and the little acknowledged Islamic legacy of the city. Two of these films, Arshinagar and Zulfiqar are set in Urdu-speaking Muslim communities and recount their histories of migrations, exile and Partition7 largely invisibilised in Bengali culture. In these films, Shakespeare provides both the impetus and the cover to articulate a politics which remains complex and controversial. Focusing mainly on Arshinagar (2015) and Zulfiqar (2016), this paper will examine how Shakespeare enables Bengali cinema to emerge out of its bhadralok8 ethos and explore a culturally diverse narrative of the city faced with globalisation and cultural homogenisation which threaten to wipe out the lives of the poor and the minorities.

Arshinagar (2015): Holding a Mirror Upto the City Aparna Sen’s engagement with the changing cityscape starts with her first film, 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981), a paean to the disappearing colonial legacy of Kolkata symbolised by Shakespeare. Her later films like Parama (1985) explore a changing Kolkata as a liberatory site for a middle aged woman trapped in a meaningless marriage and mundane domesticity. Stepping out of her husband’s house she walks on an under-construction bridge to gaze on a developing city, marked by the promise of new possibilities. Paromitar Ek Din (2000) explores the claustrophobia of an orthodox North Kolkata bourgeois home while in Iti Mrinalini (2011) the city is framed by a yearning for its intellectual addas, the bookshop lined College street and the Coffee House. Arshinagar (2015) however explores a different terrain – in terms of plot, language, aesthetics, casting decisions, genre, audience pitch and the Kolkata and Kolkatans it depicts. Exploring the lives of slum dwellers, Muslims and

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criminalised urban youth, Sen finds herself far from the Hindu bhadralok milieu of her earlier films. Most characters speak not a polished Bengali but a colloquial and contemporary street lingo interspersed with Urdu and English. Sen’s portrayal of the upper class Muslim household of the Khans claiming descent from the wazir of Bahadur Shah Zafar (the last Mughal emperor who was dethroned and exiled by the British) is also “unparalleled in mainstream Tollywood cinema”9 and reveals little known strands of Kolkata’s Islamic history. Unlike her previous films, Arshinagar tries to address a popular audience, wooing them with action, fights, band music and a star from commercial cinema, Dev. This uneasy mix of serious and popular cinema and Sen’s formal experiments in an unfamiliar territory led to the film’s box office failure. However, its innovativeness inspired by Shakespeare, marks a significant rupture in the aesthetics and politics of Bengali urban cinema. The film examines a globalising Kolkata through the lens of mafia wars between realtors trying to seize land by destroying the slums of the poor. A public intellectual who had played an active role in the Singur and Nandigram protests against the State’s land acquisition policies,10 Arshinagar – an intercommunity romance set against communal strife and class conflict triggered by unequal urban development – ref lects Sen’s political concerns. In Country and the City, Raymond Williams shows how the nineteenth-century city is an expression of industrial capital and the relationships it produces. Although set in a later context, Kolkata and its mirror image, Arshinagar, demonstrates symptoms of late capitalist growth and its inequities.11 Arshinagar, literally Mirrorsville, is introduced to us by a nomadic puppeteer, speaking in a Hindi accented Bengali with a smattering of English words. She universalises the town by refusing to locate it – it could be “Bengal, Bihar, MP, and Orissa – after all what is in a name? Call a rose by any name, its fragrance would remain the same. The odour of Arshinagar, new Kolkata, its open drains and dustbins would remain unchanged”. Yet all eyes were on Arshinagar because everyone wanted its land. Thus it was also a city of dreams, in everybody’s hearts, presenting a mirror to see themselves in. Shirshendu Mukherjee describes Arshinagar as “both imaginary like R.K Narayan’s Malgudi, yet not unfamiliar – a habitation made up of the nooks and crannies of our lives”.12 A slum lacking basic amenities, reeking of poverty and inhabited by a dispensable populace, Arshinagar is the Calibanesque other of the global city of glittering malls and f lyovers, the underbelly which must be demolished to make way for the new Kolkata. Sen avoids naming her film after the lovers, underlining the focus on the setting, shifting our attention from Romeo and Juliet’s love tragedy to the tragedy of the communities and the city which lie devastated by hate. In adapting Shakespeare’s play, Sen seeks to recuperate the narratives of ordinary people, threatened by the bulldozers of greed and development, struggling to be heard within the hegemonic template of the emerging new city.

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Arshinagar is also a space of contestation and confrontation between the rival gangs of the Muslim Khans (Capulets) and the Hindu Mitters (Montagues) led by the popular band singer and reluctant fighter, Rono Mitter (Romeo) and a blood thirsty martial artist Tayeb Khan (Tybalt). In the midst of this daily conf lict, Rono meets Zulekha ( Juliet), the daughter of the Khans at their Eid banquet and the two fall in love. However they soon discover the ‘ancient grudge’ between their families who were business rivals, from different religions and also had a past history of conf lict – Rono’s mother, Madhu Mitter, and Zulekha’s father, Sabir Khan were former lovers who were forcibly separated, on religious grounds by their orthodox families. Rono and Zulekha’s romance thrives in the midst of escalating violence between the families leading to a politically engineered Hindu-Muslim riot in which Arshinagar is burnt to the ground and the couple brutally killed. The foundations of the new global Kolkata are laid on the ashes of destroyed communities, broken families and civil strife. Western literary traditions represent cities as “founded in fratricide and shadowed by conf lict”. While Enoch, the first city in the Old Testament, is established by Cain who killed his brother Abel, in classical myth Rome is born out of the internecine war between Romulus and Remus.13 In Arshinagar Sen imagines Kolkata not through the romantic aura of bourgeois nostalgia but as a site of bitter class and communal struggle. Like Shakespeare’s play set in Verona, Arshinagar ref lects the random violence of city streets dominated by gangs, crime and civil conf lict. Adaptations of Romeo and Juliet from the 1960s onwards have underlined the urban elements of the play; particularly inter community tensions which have sharpened with globalisation and the growth of multiracial societies. In popular versions like West Side Story (1961),14 which Sen acknowledges as an inspiration for her film,15 Shakespeare’s play helps to narrate strife torn urban histories. The trailer of West Side Story opens with aerial shots of New York which is not just the setting but also the subject of the film about rival street gangs, the Puerto Rican Sharks and the white Jets in 1950s Upper West Side – an ethnic, working-class neighbourhood which was cleared in the 1960s in an urban renewal project, much like the slums in millennial Kolkata. Set in a similar locality, Arshinagar also relates the story of a changing city. Inf luenced by the stage musical genre, Sen combines the “natural realism of the cinema with the staged dramatic narration of the theatre to produce a form never before seen in Bengali cinema”.16 Arshinagar is portrayed as a stage set, and the house interiors have cabinets and book shelves painted on the wall. A scene in a Lucknow haveli terrace uses sketched arches and minarets as backdrop, while the lovers’ imaginary Mumbai sojourn is suggested by f lexes printed with sky scrapers. The film underlines the constructedness of its urban mise en scène combining realism with qualities of a stage or movie set. The film’s theatricality is highlighted by its deployment of stylised dances frequently

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using a frontal stage perspective, choreographed action sequences and rhymed dialogue to retain the f lavour of Shakespeare’s poetic drama.17 Music creates hallucinatory cinematic moments in the film, juxtaposing the real and the visionary when Zulekha’s Sufi song materialises ecstatic qawwali singers and whirling dervishes or Parvathy, the baul, appears amid the riot fires, singing.18 The puppeteer (who is also Zulekha’s nurse, Fati) introduces Arshinagar as a “song, dance and spectacle, less a play and more a fairy tale, containing love, murder, fights, song and dance, 100% value for money, straight out of England from the pen of Sexpearesahib”. Chastising the audience which in an era of global entertainment prefers television to puppet shows, she identifies the film with older folk theatre forms. Mark Thornton Burnett points out how Shakespeare film and TV productions recreate the theatrical power of the bard’s plays, while ironically acknowledging that it can only be done through the global reach of film and TV.19 Arshinagar belies audience expectations by introducing theatrical elements to break the cinematic illusion, thus creating a Brechtian alienation effect. Moving away from domestic interiors and the imaginary of a city distant, static and reified in nostalgia, Sen’s film challenges the politics of an urban development which wipes out ‘unwanted’ citizens in pursuit of a global dream. But despite its critique of globalisation, the film celebrates the hybrid culture of the Bangla rock bands. Rono’s multilingual song, “Your speeding jeep on the highway of my heart” with the refrain “Baby I love you, Jaanqabool” (Baby I love you, upon my life!) containing Urdu, Bengali and English words evokes the spirit of a fast paced, technologised, global youth culture. Zulekha’s adventurous bid to get an angel wing tattoo shows her desire to be a part of this ethos. It also alludes to Baz Luhrman’s teenage Juliet portrayed as an angel in Romeo+ Juliet (1996), an urban dystopia of guns, drugs, conspicuous consumption, f lashy cars and gadgets. Although Sen’s film draws from global culture, it questions a form of hegemonic globalisation which erases diversity rather than facilitating it. Arshinagar also addresses the threat to the city’s syncretic traditions posed by the growing might of a right wing central government since 2014 and its stated goal to build a Hindu nation. Sen uses Shakespeare’s play to understand both the causes of intercommunity tensions as well as the histories of shared lives. She said in an interview: I had been very disturbed by communal enmity ever since the demolishing of the Babri Masjid . . . we never thought it would happen in secular India . . . when I was an editor of Sananda [a women’s magazine] . . . my editorials were about communal harmony. Then it found its way into Mr and Mrs Iyer . . . and this [Arshinagar].20 Setting Romeo and Juliet in the context of Hindu-Muslim enmity is not novel and has been done before in Bengali, notably in Utpal Dutt’s jatra adaptation,

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Bhuli Naai Priya (I have not forgotten, Beloved). However Sen’s film is unique in its focus not so much on the conf lict but the peaceful quotidian coexistence of the communities underlined through small details – the Hindu priest sprinkling holy water on Fati, Zulekha’s Muslim nurse, or Tayeb’s (Tybalt) mother recalling her childhood friend, Madhu Mitter, Rono’s mother, their Hindu neighbour in Lucknow. The medieval traditions of Bhakti music, primarily baul and sufi which celebrate the legacies of religious syncretism are evoked in the title, “Arshinagar”, alluding to a baul song about a mirror city near our homes where our neighbour (porshi) resides, yet remains invisible to us: “porshi, whom you have never seen . . . somebody you perceive as other but who is not . . . you just haven’t seen him properly and it could just be a mirror image of yourself ”.21 When Rono and Zulekha meet, the latter asks: “You live in Arshinagar too, we are porshi then?” It is the inherent oneness of neighbours yet their failure to see each other which is the substance of Parvathy Baul’s song in the middle of the riots: “You remain ignorant of the real “I” within the self I am neither a [Hindu] monk nor a hermit Neither a Mecca pilgrim nor a teacher of Islamic law Temples, mosques and false rituals I have no taste for those. . . .” The song is an appeal to look beyond fractures created by narrow religious identities at a fundamental oneness of the self. For Sen, Parvathy’s song is a central image . . . like a musical counterpoint – you have the fire, people running and killing each other and you have this singer singing in the middle of it all, unaware almost. So it’s the two opposite sides of human nature, one that is able to love and the other that only hates.22 Arshinagar critiques a model of globalisation which divides communities and effaces lives, suggesting an alternate paradigm, a microcosm of community living where the neighbour is the self.23 Sen finds an echo in the Indian philosophical traditions of non-dualism which believe that the self (Atman) is the same as the highest metaphysical reality of the universe (Brahman): This harks back to Adwaityavaada where nobody is the other .  .  . the Shaivite poems of the tenth century . . . says ‘into what shall I plunge a dagger my lord, and what shall I take it out of when you are all the world?’ Even when you are plunging a dagger into somebody you are really plunging it into yourself . . . we are one.24

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FIGURE 6.1

Parvathy Baul in Arshinagar

This conception of the integrated self and the world resonates with Renaissance notions of the macro and microcosm often used to describe lovers, particularly in Donne’s poetry.25 The imagination of a new universe of love can reframe our understanding of globalisation, not as divisive and hegemonic, but as a process of subsuming the world in the lovers’ undivided self. Sen’s Arshinagar gestures towards a new articulation of a globalised city where Kolkata becomes not an image of London as promised by political leaders,26 but a mirror city of the lovers’ united souls – a space containing the world, accommodating differences of rich and poor, Hindus and Muslims – and this is enabled by Shakespeare’s play of love.

Zulfiqar: The ‘Unlegal’ City Srijit Mukherjee’s Zulfiqar (2016) is an amalgam of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, set in the Khidderpore docklands, considered a minority, primarily Muslim ghetto identified with crime, the dark double of globalising Kolkata. Albeit a scaled down locale for Shakespeare’s plays about republics, empires and civilisations covering half the globe, Khidderpore, like Arshinagar is also a multilingual microcosm, inhabited by Hindus, Muslims and Christians, speaking Bengali, Urdu and English. Adjoining the river, the trade artery which drew the British to Kolkata, Khidderpore and the adjoining Metiabruz was also home to Wajid Ali Shah, Awadh’s last nawab and his

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entourage in exile and continues to be a mixed neighbourhood of traders, migrants and settlers. In contemporising the plays Mukherjee felt that the Shakespearean drama of power and ambition could work either in the world of politics or the underworld and he chose the latter. He combined two sources of inspiration in his film: Shakespeare and Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather (1969) which was adapted by Coppola into the classic film trilogy about the American Italian mafia. Setting Shakespeare plots in the underworld has been common practice since Joe Macbeth (1955, dir. Ken Hughes), Macbeth retold as a crime drama set in the 1930s American underworld. Indian mafia adaptations have been popularised by Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool (2003) and Omkara (2006). Wondering where to locate Zulfiqar, Mukherjee’s research into Kolkata’s crime scene led him to the docklands known for smuggling, kidnapping, extortion and violent killings. Criminal lore and Muslim milieu have marked this area off from the genteel parts of the city, its iconic monuments or its new markers of globalisation, the malls and the f lyovers. Wanting to escape the cinema of bhadralok Kolkata Mukherjee found a neighbourhood where: “the smell, the food, the language, the body language is so not the touristy Kumartuli, Howrah Bridge, Sourav Ganguly, rosogolla, trams, mishti doi Kolkata which we are bombarded with .  .  . in every film based in Kolkata, you open the window you see Howrah Bridge . . . when you step out . . . you have a tram which takes you through a line of Durga idols. . . . I was going to break that and I knew . . . it would . . . hurt bhadralok sensibilities . . . the invisible otherisation of Islam and the Muslims . . . is there in our consciousness right from 1946 . . . that communal streak . . . comes out from underneath the veneer of Rabindranath and mishtidoi sensibility . . . so I took that . . . [other] image of Kolkata . . . that’s why Lepidus says, ‘this too is Kolkata’”. For Mukherjee Shakespeare’s plot required a canvas not only far from the anodyne touristy depictions of Kolkata but also from the globalised interiors of posh drawing rooms: Why . . . a protagonist has to have Fabindia cushions . . . soft colours . . . lamp shades .  .  . South City apartments .  .  . wine glasses and champagne . . . that’s the other extreme of the Howrah Bridge syndrome. It’s the South City syndrome.27 The gritty realism and cultural ‘otherness’ of Zulfiqar’s setting shaped its reception. It was a box-office success, particularly in the districts and ordinary people wrote in to say that they identified with the streets, characters, houses

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in the film and with Dev, a star of commercial rather than intellectual cinema. The Khidderpore setting also framed the film’s genre, aesthetics, politics – a Kolkata gangster film, pitched as a popular action thriller: For me Shakespeare . . . was . . . balancing mass and class . . . it is a dangerous trap if you over intellectualise Shakespeare .  .  . he took stories which already existed . . . remaking Greek and Latin legends into more palatable stage versions . . . I don’t think he wanted literary immortality. What he wanted is . . . entertainment . . . that is also what I had in mind.28 The film unfolds as a f lashback account by the police officer, Laltu Das (Lepidus) delivered to the new incumbent who will take charge of the area. The story recounts Zulfiqar’s ( Julius Caesar) killing but also becomes a guided tour through the docklands which has its own economy, polity and laws – a space, not illegal but ‘unlegal’, an alternative system outside the norms regulating rest of the city. Das’s exposition introduces the new officer and audience to the characters, a motley crew drawn from all communities – the ambitious and popular Zulfiqar ( Julius Caesar), head of the gang, his friend, trusted associate and nationalist, Basheer (Brutus), Kashinath (Cassius), a promoter and goon, Zulfiqar’s loyal henchmen, Markaz Ali and Tony Braganza, jointly representing Mark Antony29 and the young widow, Zulfiqar’s mistress and Markaz’s lover, Rani Tolapatra (Cleopatra). The gang men are all members of a decisionmaking body referred to as the Syndicate, a conglomeration of local stakeholders including Port and Customs officers and the police, an underworld equivalent of the Roman Senate. Described as a spider with its multiple legs in several local businesses, the Syndicate is a surrogate government running charities, providing employment and curbing attempts to monopolise authority as Zulfiqar’s assassination demonstrates. Resentful of his rapid rise to power, growing popularity in the community and a political party’s offer of an electoral ticket to him which he refuses thrice (like Caesar refusing to be emperor), Kashinath hatches a conspiracy to eliminate Zulfiqar. He convinces the patriotic Basheer that his friend is part of Pervez’s (Pompey) plot to bring Afghan militants into the country and gets most Syndicate members to agree to the assassination. Zulfiqar’s murder unleashes a series of killings which ends with Akhtar (Octavius, Zulfiqar’s nephew), taking charge of his uncle’s businesses, and his mistress, Rani, murdering Tony, eliminating Markaz and dissolving the Syndicate to start a new regime. Mukherjee follows the Shakespearean plot closely and finds felicitous Urdu equivalents to the poetry – the soothsayer’s Ides of March warning becomes “Beware of Eid”, referring to the Islamic festival of Eid when Zulfiqar is murdered. The “Cowards die many times before their death” ( Julius Caesar, 2.2.32–33)30 lines are quoted as an Urdu sher (couplet) composed by Sheikh

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Peer (Shakespeare).31 The speeches of Basheer, Markaz and Tony at Zulfiqar’s burial follow the original. Brutus’ “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more” (3.2.21–22)32 is also mentioned as a quotation from Sheikh sahib – “if I am asked why I went against Caesar, the answer would be that there is no love greater than the love of one’s country”. Antony’s “Brutus is an honourable man” refrain is rendered as “Basheer never lies”. Not only the verbal text, textual imagery too is cinematically recreated like Zulfiqar’s phantasmagoric ghost or Karishma’s (Calpurnia) drug induced hallucinations, wandering the city streets at night, followed by sword wielding rioters and men who have been set ablaze. Her visionary transports relive the traumatic memories of the communal violence of Partition which threatened to wipe out the city’s history of intercommunity living. But almost as significant as the Shakespearean inf luence on Zulfiqar is the inspiration of Mario Puzo and the Western gangster film, described as a cinema of anxiety, thriving on dread, loss and despair generated by the topos of the modern city.33 But the city of the gangster film is a city in ruin, ravaged by crime and living in fear,34 the very opposite of the global metropolis imagined as a civilisational spectacle, an acme of industrialisation, capitalism and technological development. From the 1980s a brand of slick action thrillers set in Bombay featuring urban gang wars started appearing in Bollywood like Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Parinda (1989) followed by the experimental films of Ram Gopal Varma, whose savage portrayal of urban violence was hailed as the ‘Mumbai Noir’.35 A 1940s Hollywood crime genre characterised by low-key black and white photography inspired by German expressionism, dark themes and cynical protagonists, Film Noir inf luenced world cinema and continues to shape contemporary films which are referred to as neo-noir. With the globalisation of the mediascape in the 1990s, noir and neo-noir films became available to Indian filmmakers who were inspired by them.36 The Mumbai gangster films started to take on shades of noir in the works of Varma, Anurag Kashyap, Sriram Raghavan, Vishal Bhardwaj and others. Lalitha Gopalan points out how after Varma’s Company (2002) the portrayal of the city in crime films changed. The “gothic grandeur of the colonial city”37 with the spectacular waterfront and the skyline dotted with multi-storeyed buildings of Bombay were replaced by the decrepit suburbs, slums and back alleys of Mumbai – a city in decay, bearing the legacy of declining industry, sick factories, unemployment, real estate crime, smuggling and extortion. Bhardwaj’s Maqbool (2003), inspired by Parinda, Varma’s films and Mahesh Manjrekar’s Vastav (1999), was a gangster noir, as much about Shakespeare’s Macbeth as it was about Mumbai. The film opens with two policemen, the witch figures, poring over a horoscope of the city trying to predict its destiny which unfolds in the film. Inspired in turn by Bhardwaj, Mukherjee wanted to set Shakespeare’s Roman plays in a Kolkata gangland. While Bombay has been associated

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with underworld thrillers, Kolkata has seldom featured in this genre which remains almost untried in serious Bengali cinema. 38 Attempting a new kind of urban film, Zulfiqar maps Khidderpore almost as a documentary essay, its crowded streets, beef stalls, young men lashing themselves for muharram, barges lined up on the river, stacks of ship containers, the draw bridge rising spectrally in the night haze and the Nile Bar like a retro Bollywood set where Rani holds court surrounded by her eunuchs. The neighbourhood presents a contrast to the new Kolkata which is almost as stark as the one between Rome and Egypt in Antony and Cleopatra, although located within the same city. Like the Mumbai Noir films, Zulfiqar creates a dystopic aesthetics of the city, taking us into labyrinthine alleys, shadowy cemeteries, garishly lit brothels, unfinished buildings with girders showing like bared teeth as murderous gangs hurtle through them. Mukherjee presents a nightmarish contrast to the spectacle of the globalising city and its new icons. The new Hooghly bridge, a symbol of development, becomes a track for the bike races of the gangs where Zulfiqar and Basheer’s rivalry bursts into the open. Rani’s aspirations to move into a f lat fitted with ‘wall paper and a bathtub’ in the new 50-storeyed apartment blocks with ‘a swimming pool in the sky’ coming up in the newer parts of Kolkata, remains unfulfilled. The fruits of global capital remain out of reach of the denizens of the ‘unintended city’, 39 thus contributing to their further ghettoisation. Beyond the global city, shadowy frames underline the ambivalence of the dockyard where the binaries of good/evil, legitimate/illegitimate, police/criminal are suspended. Shakespeare as well as the noir genre helped Mukherjee to create f lawed protagonists who inhabit a moral liminality. Neither black nor white but shades of grey, they challenge the sentimental melodramatic mode of Bengali cinema and create possibilities for a tragic denouement.40 The violence is captured through fragmented shots, unusual angles, rough edged, fast paced editing and Eisensteinian montage which use unexpected image juxtapositions to shock the audience. This is best exemplified by the scene in which the camera moves away sharply from Markaz and Tony training their guns on suspected killers of Zulfiqar, to a photograph on the wall, of Tagore, the emblem of Bengali bhadralok culture, which gets splashed with blood as a gunshot is heard. This image becomes a metonymic expression of how through Zulfiqar, Mukherjee critiques the dominant idiom of Hindu middle class Kolkata and Bengali identity.41 Gopalan speculates: “Bombay Noir conjures the possibility of noir in other sites, Tamil and Bengali cinema for instance”.42 In Zulfiqar, Shakespeare’s clearsighted examination of power and ambition and Puzo’s savage depiction of mafia rivalries enable perhaps an alternative imagining of the city, of Bengaliness and Bengali cinema and thus create a pioneering Kolkata Noir.

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Zulfiqar, a Kolkata noir

Conclusion: The Urban Bard and the Global City Unlike Arshinagar and Zulfiqar which deploy Shakespeare to envisage the changing city through a new cinematic idiom, Hrid Majhare (2014) and Hemanta are less innovative in their portrayal of Kolkata as well as in their generic locations. Hrid Majharey, a reworking of Othello unfolds in domestic interiors and Kolkata is shown through a collage of city sights set to a love song which describes it as a “decorated/manicured city”. But underneath the veneer of modernity, reason and ordered beauty lies a mass of simmering passions, anxieties, jealousies and superstitions which play out in the Andamans (an equivalent of Cyprus), a group of Indian Ocean islands, a site of colonial incarceration and exile, where the film moves. The islands are haunted by a Bangladeshi refugee seeking his way back home, a reminder of the Partition. Like Arshinagar and Khidderpore, the Andamans become the uncanny other of the global city and its critique. Anjan Dutt’s Hemanta (2016), an adaptation of Hamlet maps the story of a globalising Kolkata through the crisis in the Bengali commercial film industry faced with falling demand for domestic cinema in a globalised market, declining quality of films and the demolition of unprofitable cinema theatres to build malls. The Hamlet narrative is plotted onto the changing fortunes of the Sen family, the owners of the once successful Agradoot studios – Kalyan Sen (Claudius) kills his brother, takes over the studio, marries his brother’s wife Gayatri (Gertrude), erstwhile movie star and makes underhand deals to keep the business running. Hemanta (Hamlet), Hirak (Horatio) a journalist and Yuri (Yorick) Hirak’s hacker friend uncover a plot exposing how Agradoot’s

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capital comes from offshore shell companies involved in money laundering and possibly funding terror networks. In Hemanta globalisation is associated with an international crime nexus enabled by a global cyberscape and the film has generic affinity with Dutt’s detective period films about Byomkesh, but for the most part it domesticates Hamlet into a bourgeois melodrama with TV aesthetics. All four Bengali Shakespeare films discussed choose a changing, globalising Kolkata as their setting. In this respect they are different from the big budget, globally networked Bollywood industry which is producing Shakespeare films sited in local even pre-modern settings. With the exception of Maqbool the recent crop of Bollywood Shakespeares, (particularly the three Romeo and Juliet adaptations)43 are turning to the Indian small towns and hinterlands showcasing an older and vernacular ‘Bharat’ (the original Hindi name for India) feudal, orthodox, mired in caste and community conf licts against the global and secular India of mobile phones, university going women and inter community marriages. However, contemporary regional Bengali cinema sets Shakespeare in a metropolitan context to critique hegemonic models of urban development provided by globalisation and majoritarianism which threaten to obliterate the heterogeneity of city life. The bard emerges as an icon of cultural and community diversity against global homogenisation, enabling filmmakers to break the mould of bourgeois Bengali cinema to reimagine the city and discover alternate templates of intercommunity exchanges and cohabitation. Rather than the pre-modern small town imaginary used by Bollywood Shakespeare films which may suggest a correspondence, not unproblematic, between Shakespeare’s sixteenthcentury world and the Indian backwaters, the Bengali films evoke an ethos of urban modernity. However this is distinct from and critical of westernised colonial modernity which shapes the bhadralok reception of Shakespeare and the construction of Bengali identity and the Bengali urban cinema based on it. Equally it challenges notions of global modernity, evolving instead a paradigm of syncretic cultures based on indigenous sources like Indian philosophy, Bhakti traditions, folk theatre as well as practices of mixed urban living. Shakespeare assimilated as Sexpeare or Sheikh Peer becomes integrated with these local resources as do global forms and genres. This glocalisation allows for the emergence of an alternative modernity through a vision of shared city spaces and an attention to marginalised lives and narratives. These films use Shakespeare to reorient our understanding of globalisation not as an economic, political and cultural imposition of a Western model of neoliberal development on less developed countries, but as an exploration of our own plural urban cultures. Tarini Mukherjee suggests how we may use the theoretical frame of neighbour/hood to reconceptualise the idea of a “Global Shakespeare” as a stable authorial sign infinitely circulated across cultures reinforcing a conception of adaptation as a hierarchised relationship between a stable master text and its translated afterlives,

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original and copy.44 The Bengali films discussed indicate how Shakespeare’s “global” status can be reinterpreted to make him a ‘podshi’, an intimate stranger who helps us to rewrite the histories of cities, neighbours and neighbourhoods; an other in the self, an equal collaborator who co-constitutes our versions of ourselves and of his plays. Mark Thornton Burnett points out how Shakespearean world cinema provides a site where: Global and local questions are debated . . . alternative models for a more productive sense of belonging are proposed; and reciprocal models for collaboration are contemplated. What emerges from these exchanges is a Bard who is more mobile, inf lected and elusive than previously imagined and paradigms which, in helping to expose current inequities of space and place, stand as testimony to the valences of a global Shakespearean citizenship.45 The millennial Bengali films mark a journey towards an equitable ‘global Shakespearean citizenship’ for those disenfranchised by unequal global development. They demonstrate how Shakespearean cinema could become an archive of globalising cities across Asia by documenting urban histories, rediscovering local and alternative traditions of urban modernity, resisting hegemonic globalisation and re-signifying it from the margins. This opens up possibilities of using Shakespeare films in urban and globalisation studies.

Notes

1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

The colonial name of the city Calcutta was changed back to the original Kolkata in 2001 in what was seen as a decolonizing move by the government. Andrew Dickson, Worlds Elsewhere: Journey’s Around Shakespeare’s Globe (London: Penguin Vintage, 2015), 249. Bengali theatre has notable instances of using Shakespeare adaptations to chronicle the city. Asit Basu’s Kolkatar Hamlet (Kolkata’s Hamlet, 1973), Bratya Basu’s Hemlat (2006) and Bibhash Chakraborty’s Hamlet (2011) use Hamlet to map Kolkata’s political cartography from the 1970s to contemporary times. See Paromita Chakravarti, “Urban Histories and Vernacular Shakespeares in Bengal” Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures, eds. Shormistha Panja and Babli Moitra Sharaf (New Delhi: Sage, 2016), 41–59. Satyajit Ray’s trilogy includes Pratidwandi (The Adversary, 1971), Seemabadha (Company Ltd, 1971) and Jana Aranya (The Middleman, 1976). Mrinal Sen’s trilogy includes Interview (1971), Calcutta 71 (1972) and Padatik (The Guerilla fighter, 1973). Sayandeb Chowdhury, “The Endangered City in Rituparno Ghosh’s Early Cinema of Confinement” in Rituparno Ghosh: Cinema, Gender, Art, eds. Sangeeta Datta et al. (London: Routledge, 2016), 104, 116. Ghosh’s Chokher Bali, Nouka dubi, Antarmahal, Anjan Dutt’s and Arindam Seal’s several Byomkesh films, Aparna Sen’s Goynar Baksho. Anik Datta in an interview to Showli Chakraborty in The Telegraph, www.telegraphindia.com/entertainment/tollywood-bhooter-bhobishyot/cid/439141, Last accessed on February 29, 2020.

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7. The Partition refers to the division of British India into two independent dominion states, India and East and West Pakistan. In 1971 East Pakistan became the independent state of Bangladesh. 8. A Bengali term which literally means ‘gentleman’ and is used for the new genteel, bourgeois classes who emerged during British rule as a product of colonial education. 9. Partha Chatterjee, review in The Telegraph, 31 December 2015, www.telegraphindia. com/opinion/a-different-future/cid/1437718. Last accessed March 3, 2020. 10. In 2006 Tata Motors, a corporate giant, was invited by the government to set up a car factory in Singur. Their coercive land acquisition policies led to widespread popular protest. The attempt in 2007 to set up a chemical hub in Nandigram was met with stiff resistance which left 14 villagers dead. 11. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York: OUP, 1973), 303. 12. Shirshendu Mukherjee, Aam Bangalir Jonye Notun Gharanar Chhobi (A new genre of film for the average Bengali), January 1, 2016, AnandabazarPatrika. 13. Gail Kern Paster, The Idea of the City in the Age of Shakespeare (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985), 3, 9–10. 14. Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story (1961) adapted from the 1957 Broadway musical inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet became the second highest-grossing film of the year and was nominated for 11 Academy Awards winning 10, including Best Picture. 15. Interview with Aparna Sen in Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas: ‘Local Habitations’, eds. Poonam Trivedi and Paromita Chakravarti (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 309. 16. Partha Chatterjee review. 17. With the exception of Satyajit Ray’s Goopy Bagha films for children and Anik Datta’s Bhooter Bhobisyot which pays a homage to Ray’s use of verse, this is unique in Bangla cinema. 18. Qawali and Baul are forms of mystic music associated with the syncretic religious movement known as Bhakti (devotion). 19. Mark Thornton Burnett, Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace (London: Palgrave, 2007), 4. 20. Interview in Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas: ‘Local Habitations’, 308. 21. Ibid., 309. 22. Ibid., 310. 23. See Tarini Mukherjee, “Theorizing the Neighbour: Arshinagar and Romeo and Juliet” Borrowers and Lenders 12:2 (2019), www.borrowers.uga.edu/784351/show. 24. Interview in Shakespeare and Indian cinemas, 309. 25. See for example ‘The Good Morrow’ where lovers are the two perfect hemispheres of the globe or ‘The Sun Rising’ where the lovers’ bed is the centre of the universe. 26. Mamata Bannerjee, Chief Minister of Bengal has promised to transform Kolkata into London. Last accessed March 3, 2020. See www.thehindu.com/news/ national/mamata-wants-to-turn-kolkata-into-london/article2317137.ece. 27. From an unpublished interview with Mukherjee taken by the author on April 9, 2017. 28. Ibid. 29. Srijit Mukherjee amalgamated two Shakespearean plays into a single film because he felt that Julius Caesar after Caesar’s killing and burial was anti-climactic and lacked development. He added Antony and Cleopatra to give it direction and resolution. About splitting Mark Antony’s character, Mukherjee said that the Antonys in the two plays were different – one was a soldier, the other a lover. Thus two actors played the role, one, Markaz Ali, is a Muslim and is speech challenged while Tony Braganza, a Christian, interprets Markaz’s sign language. Markaz is played by the popular star Dev, who plays Romeo in Arshinagar.

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30. Stephen Greenblatt et al., eds., The Norton Shakespeare (London: WW Norton, 1997). 31. Kalyan Ray’s novel Eastwords (New Delhi: Penguin, 2004) is narrated by a character called Sheikh Piru. 32. Stephen Greenblatt et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare (London: WW Norton, 1997). 33. Lalitha Gopalan, “Bombay Noir” Journal of the Moving Image, Writing Histories for Indian Cinema Chapter 2 (Kolkata: Jadavpur University, December 2015), 66. Also see Ravi S. Vasudevan, “The Exhilaration of Dread: Genre, Narrative form and Film Styles in Contemporary Urban Action Films” in The Sarai Reader 02, Cities of Everyday Life (Delhi: Sarai Media Lab, 2002), 59–67. 34. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1999). 35. This is a term deployed by Ranjini Mazumder in “Ruin and the Uncanny City: Memory, Despair and Death in Parinda” The Sarai Reader 02, Cities of Everyday life (Delhi: Sarai Media Lab, 2002), 68–77. 36. Vasudevan, “The Exhilaration of Dread”, 62. 37. Gopalan, “Bombay Noir”, 76. 38. Some poorly made Bengali commercial films try to recreate Tamil gangster films but these are not invested in the story of the city. In recent times, Hindi detective thrillers like Byomkesh and Kahani have presented a particular view of the city. 39. Title of a book by Jai Sen on squatter settlements in Kolkata. 40. Moinak Biswas, “Mourning and Blood Ties: Macbeth in Mumbai” See https:// jmionline.org/articles/2006/mourning_and_blood_ties_macbeth_in_mumbai. pdf, Last accessed March 4, 2020. 41. See my article “Cinematic Lears and Bengaliness” in Shakespeare in Indian Cinemas: ‘Local Habitations’ for discussions of bhadralok modernity, Tagore and Bengali identity, 161–79. 42. Gopalan, “Bombay Noir”, 87. 43. Ishaqzaade (dir. Habib Faisal, Yash Raj Productions, 2012); Issaq (dir. Manish Tiwary, Pen India Limited, 2013) and Goliyon Ki Raasleela: Ram-Leela (dir. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Eros International and SLB Films, December 2013). 44. Tarini Mukherjee, “Theorising the Neighbour: Arshinagar and Romeo and Juliet” Borrowers and Lenders 12:2 (2019), www.borrowers.uga.edu/784351/show. 45. Mark Thornton Burnett, “Introduction” Shakespeare and World Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 7.

7 SHAKESPEARE’S USES IN CHINESE MEDIA AND TRANS-SPHERE Lingui Yang

The global practice of popular media references to Shakespeare has become a postmodern cultural phenomenon and has engaged theoretical interest in the new millennium. Most studies of Shakespeare in movies and other media published in Anglo-American scholarly publications, however, fail to consider non-Anglophone communities of artists who appropriate Shakespeare for their own productions despite the fact that his mass media presence is worldwide. Asian practices of adapting and referencing the Bard, ranging from appropriations of his stories to textual references and allusions, are as abundant as they are in the English-speaking world and are engaged in distinctive processes of cultural meaning formation that defy theoretical definitions of performance, adaptation and appropriation. This essay tries to explore how Chinese practitioners approach Shakespeare when they use his text for popular entertainment and discusses some prominent features of his images in popular culture, not only cinematic or TV adaptations, but also in media references to Shakespeare. Although a general term, ‘mediatisation’, may be used for this mass media usage, the different ways of deploying Shakespeare in contemporary media deserve close analysis. However, available models of adaptation theory for Shakespeare film studies do not apply to the new phenomenon that we want to conceptualise. In fact, Shakespeare’s mediatisation has engendered questions beyond traditional categories of literature and its popular adaptation as media forms are ever evolving. When the accessibility of Shakespeare’s images in the popular world is extended from print to electronic devices, he is everywhere – online and off line, and on screens from the big one (in the cinema), to the small one (TV and iPad), and even to the tiny one (the smartphone). The existence of Shakespeare in the popular sphere necessitates shifts of focus for critical

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practice “not only away from the text of Shakespeare’s plays but from adaptation as well”.1 Visual materials may be considered as equivalent to texts so that we could incorporate ‘non-conventional’ treatments of Shakespeare in order to more comprehensively understand his value in postmodern culture. These treatments are non-conventional in different senses. For one thing, some are loosely based on his text as derivatives of Shakespearean elements. Others include passing quotations from Shakespeare directly or indirectly. Still others allude to Shakespeare film adaptations or moments in filmic history. Thus, the scope for study is beyond the Shakespeare films and beyond the Anglophone circles, with a larger corpus than the few hundred Anglo-American Shakespeare movies that the academia frequently addresses in film studies. The Shakespearean derivatives, references and allusions in the global mass media deserve intertextual scrutiny as much as the individual analyses about the few established Shakespeare movie auteurs. If intertextuality is translated into a cross-medial sphere, a cross-cultural image can be treated as a text that is a mixture of previous texts. Thus, in the post-structuralist sense of intertextuality, cross-cultural adaptations, appropriations and spinoffs use Shakespeare’s text as a source text or pretext in creating new forms and meanings which are derived from and added to the source text. Cross-cultural relocations also allude to adaptations of Shakespeare in other medial forms to construct new meanings. In the process of negotiating with contemporary culture, adapting artists incorporate episodes from other adaptations or allusions to established visual texts; or, in Julie Sanders’s words, they play with Shakespeare’s extra-textual referentiality by ghosting existing roles. Thus, in order for audiences to understand the visual text, they must have some knowledge of other visual texts derived from the source as well as the source text itself. In that sense, audiences as well as the producers become collaborators in making sense of the cultural product. In any case, audiences are encouraged to trace the source back to Shakespeare as perpetual reference as he is the established figure of high humanist values. A peep into Shakespeare’s dissemination in non-Anglophone popular culture allows us to see a yet braver ‘new world’, in which practices are transmedial, transnational, cross-linguistic and cross-cultural. They put Shakespeare in a trans-sphere where there are no temporal and spatial borders. The Chinese cases of references and allusions to Shakespeare I study here illustrate some possibilities of his transient existence that yet perpetualise his status as a canonical author, who is seen to uphold modern Western notions such as individual freedom, worldly desires, and other humanist values.2 The roles he has been made to play tell much about his status in contemporary popular culture that favours cross-ism or trans-ism. I will discuss various features of Shakespeare’s referentiality in Chinese popular media with examples from TV programmes and movies that reference Shakespeare in different ways. First of all, they demonstrate changes in Shakespeare’s status in the popular reception in China. In the

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process, Shakespeare’s image has transformed from an authority of high culture to the object of trans-spatiotemporal parody. At the same time, nonetheless, his stature as a humanist icon is maintained even though he assumes new identities.

Rise and Fall of High Cultural Icon: Shakespeare in Drama for Life and A Time to Love Although Shakespeare as an icon of modern Western humanist high culture has been well established in Chinese reception, his reputation experiences ups and downs at different moments of modern Chinese culture, as may be seen in Drama for Life3 and A Time to Love4. Drama for Life is a TV drama serial shown in the early 1990s, and A Time to Love, a 2005 movie targeting youth audience. Both reference Shakespeare as an established high cultural icon, an unquestionable authority, who is worshipped as a romantic poet and dramatist. In these popular works, he is regarded as a high cultural hero, teaching modern lessons, especially about love in his texts. He is thus the object of imitation for his craftsmanship in weaving wisdom into dramatic narratives. Drama for Life mirrors the social transformation which took place when China began to accept market economy in the 1990s, and paradoxically when the aura of Shakespeare, as representative of high culture, had begun to dim. The bard was most celebrated in a “Shakespeare fever” in an earlier decade, when Shakespearean humanism was deemed as a cure for the cultural void created during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This enthusiasm climaxed in a Shakespeare festival organised by the Shakespeare Association of China in Beijing and Shanghai in 1986. The over two dozen Shakespeare performances and papers presented at the conferences during the festival highlighted Shakespeare’s humanist lessons to liberate human minds from political impositions and celebrate desires, emotions, individual freedom and personal happiness. The 19 episodes of Drama for Life dramatises the last days of a huaju (spoken drama) performer Jiang Xian, a Hamlet-like figure, and his troupe’s rehearsals to get ready for staging Hamlet at the Shakespeare festival in Beijing. As Jiang’s life-long pursuit was to perfect his role of Hamlet – both in life and in the TV serial – he was frustrated with the Cultural Revolution, which prevented him from developing his acting career. He shared some personality traits with Hamlet – his melancholy, hesitation, paralysis of action and his eccentricities. Like his princely character, the Chinese player falls down on the stage, immediately after the successful performance, highlighting Hamlet’s own destiny and the actor’s cultural frustration. While the TV serial maintains a sympathetic tone towards him, there are ironic moments in which his dreams of the world of high culture are threatened. To his disappointment, artists of the younger generation – his students and his son – do not want to dedicate themselves to the theatre. There are other parallels with Shakespeare’s Hamlet: the “to be or not to be” dilemma of

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the leading characters like the Ophelia figure, Zhou Yang, about whether to leave the troupe or not; for Jiang whether to stick to Shakespeare or not, to say goodbye to his girlfriend or not; for his son whether to follow in his father’s steps and become a performer or not. For instance, Jiang’s son volunteers to play Hamlet after Jiang is injured in an early rehearsal of the fight scene. Disagreeing with the director’s interpretation, the talented young performer offers a powerful performance which is applauded by the rehearsing cast. Jiang junior’s ambivalent Hamlet hugs Ophelia after his harsh words against her. This results in the reconciliation between father and son, a sign of hope for the future of huaju. With this incident Jiang is able to unite the troupe and concentrate on rehearsal. However, at the final rehearsal of the production and a celebration of the theatre’s 43rd anniversary, the junior Jiang runs away. This puts the elderly Jiang on stage again. The camera shifts away from the stage to his girlfriend with whom he has just broken up, while he is uttering Hamlet’s “get thee to a nunnery” (3.1.122).5 There are long shots of the audience, and the full house indicates how Shakespearean drama has brought back audiences to the theatre. Interestingly, in a metadramatic moment, in this TV play Shakespeare’s Hamlet is inserted as a play-within-the-play, in which the performers refer to and comment on specific lines of Shakespeare’s text in Chinese translation. Through translation and the metadramatic scheme of employing a play-withina-play, Shakespeare’s Hamlet generates new meanings in the cultural context in which the performers interpret the play from their own cultural perspectives as Shakespeare’s play is used for the huaju performers to ref lect on their individual lives; they experience the to-be-or-not-to-be dilemma in their career. The text makes sense to them only when their own dilemma is addressed. Some of the references are initially fragmentary before the troupe put their presentations together. In addition, the TV serial alludes to other stage performances several times when the Chinese Hamlet performer makes Laurence Olivier-like gestures on and off stage and when he prepares the castle model. Curiously, the TV serial juxtaposes the son’s generation’s realistic concerns and Jiang’s idealist insistence on Shakespearean values which are inseparable from his aesthetic interest in dramaturgy and stagecraft. In the TV drama’s ref lections on huaju professionals’ life, the narrative ties Shakespeare to the fate of the theatre and idealises his role in reviving huaju. Furthermore, the young artists’ nontheatrical activities, such as participating in commercial advertising and popular shows that feature martial arts, are criticised by Jiang. Drama for Life’s use of the Shakespearean frame along with its comments on the Bard’s role in the theatre mourning the past glory of the huaju form is only one aspect of the full story. Actually, Shakespeare has appeared in contrasting images and has played antithetical roles in the Chinese media, sometimes as a high cultural and sometimes as a popular icon with commercial value. While Drama for Life’s tragic story addresses Shakespeare’s status in elite culture and the philosophical question of choice, A Time to Love on the other hand is a touching love story. The movie’s

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references to Shakespeare and allusions to other Romeo and Juliet films are factors that drew audiences to the cinema and channels through which the adapters convey their critical views about contemporary life. In this Chinese Romeo and Juliet story, Shakespeare’s cultural capital is reused. Targeting the young audience, the film not only makes use of the universal theme of Shakespeare’s story but also spins some Shakespearean moments into a modern Chinese tragicomedy. The movie presents plots that somewhat parallel Shakespeare’s play. The lovers in the movie, Qu Ran and Hou Jia, share a library copy of a translated Romeo and Juliet and the misfortune of the protagonists as well. Their love suffers from a feud between the two families originating from an incident during China’s Cultural Revolution. As Qu Ran ref lects, holding a copy of translated Romeo and Juliet, his relationship with Hou Jia is similar to that of Romeo and Juliet. The movie features abundant references to the play in the form of a printed copy of its Chinese translation, Qu and Hou reciting lines from the balcony scene, and watching movie and ballet adaptations of Shakespeare’s play. Previously titled as Forever Shakespeare as a homage to the bard, the movie is renamed to Qingren jie which, in Chinese, puns on Valentine and knot of love, catering to the youth market of cinema goers for the Valentine Day of 2005. The producers thought the original title might undermine their intentions to “create an oriental Romeo and Juliet” and most importantly would be unable to draw popular attention. Although Shakespeare disappears from the title, his name is referenced in the theme song, “Forever Shakespeare”, added in the latter half of the movie shooting, which appeals both to the fans of the main actor Zhao and of the Romeo-Juliet story. It also is the title and the opening piece of Zhao Wei’s DVD collection of songs, released immediately before the movie. The release of the song at this time helped to publicise the movie by promoting Zhao’s stardom. Already a TV serial star, Zhao’s name attracts her fans to the cinema. At the same time, singing the theme song in a movie with references to Shakespeare and the classic Romeo and Juliet story, extends her stardom into the realms of film and music. In addition to images of and references to the printed text of the Shakespeare play, the movie includes scenes in which the protagonists watch Shakespeare films, which are identifiably Sergei Prokofiev’s and Zeffirelli’s versions of Romeo and Juliet. While the classic ballet music is set in the background, Zhao’s pop-styled Shakespearean song appeals to her audience both within and beyond cinema. The singer fiddles with the melancholic guitar strings in a soft melody while the Chinese lyric alludes to the beautiful story that transcends time and mentions Shakespeare’s name in English six times. This must have touched the heart strings of fans because the song was ranked fourth in the eighth week of the 2005 Chinese Pop List. As with the movie, Shakespeare’s transcending power is relayed in visualaudio images that carry his humanist messages about personal values. Thus, although from Drama for Life to A Time to Love, Shakespeare seems to have stepped down from his shrine of high culture, he has securely settled down

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in the popular sphere of cinema where the political concerns of class, race, and gender are irrelevant. The sociopolitical approach to drama, movie and, in general, literature, once the dominant ideology in Cultural Revolution era when class struggle was the only doctrine to follow, has become out of date although the political connotation in Chinese discourse is different from that of the Western postmodern. When Shakespeare turns from the political to the personal, his secular implications extend to the economic. To be sure, his cultural capital is exploited in China as well as elsewhere in the capitalist rule.

Cultural Capital Recycled in the Popular Cinema: The Banquet as a Chinese Hamlet Spinoff Two made-in-China movies with Shakespearean concerns were released in 2006: Feng Xiaogang’s Banquet6 and Sherwood Hu’s Prince of the Himalayas.7 Both contain identifiably Shakespearean elements recast in non-Euro-American cultures and engage in cross-cultural dialogues between the original texts and the adaptations’ socio-cultural milieus.8 For their Shakespearean components, the films join their counterparts elsewhere around the globe that interpret, appropriate, dissemble, and reconstruct Shakespeare’s canonical text by reinventing the Shakespearean story and re-setting their cinematic narratives in local history and culture. Not only is Shakespeare’s text used and changed, but cultural elements are exploited to evolve a unique style of filmmaking, like Kurosawa’s use of Japanese landscape and costumes, or Kenneth Branagh’s nineteenth-century period setting, or Michael Almereyda’s postmodern spinoff of Hamlet. Regardless of whether the Chinese filmmakers are as radical as Kurosawa, Branagh or Almereyda in changing the play’s setting, they provide an alternative to the Hollywood-styled filmmaking. In the following sections, I will discuss what alternative experience each of the two Chinese movies have provided for audiences by focusing on particular treatments of landscape and cultural elements in The Banquet and The Prince of the Himalayas. This and the following sections address the two movies separately because they deploy Shakespeare very differently. The Banquet illustrates how Shakespeare’s cultural capital is used in the popular sphere. Set in the interior of China in the period known as Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, when mighty lords wrestled for power after the collapse of the regime of the glorious and prosperous Tang Dynasty in 907 A.D., the movie unfolds the working of desire in political intrigues and power struggles. Civil wars and upheavals plague the country when unrestrained desires are unleashed. The narrator’s voiceover with an audio-visual prelude, composed with the sound and fury of battlefields, brings modern audiences into the cultural landscape of Chinese history. Against this background, the movie intersperses cinematic reconstructions of historical and cultural artefacts with the fictionalised events of an imperial family.

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Presenting this Chinese story containing loose Shakespearean plots, the film-maker fills a 131-minute filmic space with full and contrasting colours (especially red, white, black, and green), dazzling period landscape and architecture, breathtaking martial arts, historical and cultural allusions, fascinating musical and melodramatic effects, technologically-treated lighting, and symbolic and sometimes ostentatious visual imagery. Many cinematic technologies have been harnessed to make a “Chinese neo-classicist film”9 of mixed-genres, mixed-sources and mixed-media for mixed international audiences, as the director claims. Feng’s film displaces Shakespeare’s “To be, or not to be” question and replaces it with a “seemingly abstract philosophical thought”10 of loneliness, a quotidian sentiment in a technology and capital dominated postmodern life, in which the “real” emotion is often replaced by a mere performance of it. The Banquet also allegorises loneliness for mass consumption using cross-cultural, cross-historical signs and mixed genres and styles, a practice that exemplifies Jameson’s definition of pastiche as a postmodernist mode of cultural expression that imitates past styles without depth and historicity. This displacement does not contain any sense of parody of Chinese history or Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the alleged sources for the movie, demonstrating pastiche’s displacement of parody. As Jameson defines: Pastiche is, unlike parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language. But it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody’s ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs.11 What the film wears is not only a linguistic mask or “masks of extinct mannerisms”12 but masks literally as part of its mimicry of the Tang style, as discussed earlier. What the mask does to the film, furthermore, is fulfilled with the change of faces – the displacement of a fictionally historical face by the face of the movie star, Zhang Ziyi. Zhang’s glamour as the internationally-known star for her roles in award-winning films by Zhang Yimou and Ang Lee and recently in Memoir of a Geisha is more important than Queen Wan’s loneliness to the box office success of the film. To highlight her role for the Japanese cinema market, the title of the film was even changed to Empress at its Japanese premiere. And its title for the US release on DVD, Legend of the Black Scorpion, identified the empress with the venomous scorpion, further testifying to the key role of Wan in the film as well as the importance of the actor Zhang Ziyi to the film. Here another displacement takes place: the dimension of performance displaces that of the characterisation in its description of the ambitious empress

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in the film. Or, more precisely, the ambitious role has been created to give the actress more time and more room for performance. Modernist “aesthetic” concerns give way to the star appeal of actors in the interest of the market. Hence, it does not matter if the performance is in Japanese or Chinese costumes or whatever historical period the cultural references are to, as the star-like images of the past are foregrounded. In addition to the masks, there are visual and aural images of other ‘historical’ artefacts: costumes, hairdo, architecture, court dances, archaic paintings, and a ‘classic’ poem, dated even earlier than the ‘historical’ setting of the movie. This poem is scored into a theme song by Tan Dun, an artist who has crosscultural education and professional experience, and is sung by singers of different ethnic and gender groups. Images of the past are matched with musical effects, including a melancholic tune for the forest scene with modern piano, and another song on the theme of loneliness, in a modern melody for Empress Wan or rather Zhang Ziyi. The “aesthetics of classic Chinese culture” in Feng’s coinage, then, is represented with these glossy images. All the references to the Tang Dynasty, one of the most glorious periods in Chinese history, seem to have some nostalgic value. Using the cultural signs or past “referents”, the film “approaches the ‘past’ through stylistic connotations, conveying ‘pastness’ by the glossy qualities of the image”.13 By celebrating the cult of images, however, Feng’s postmodern pastiche paradoxically appeals to his audiences who are in compliance with the blockbuster way of entertainment. In fact, this multicultural international audience, whose viewing habits have already been constructed according to the Hollywood models, does not care if its historical details are “genuine” and if its portrayal of loneliness represents the real experience in postmodern life. Market success relies on the quality of contemporary remaking of past styles while it empties out their historicity and reduces them to signs, necessitating the breakdown between signifier and the signified. The Banquet was produced at a time when China was beginning to move from being the world factory to becoming a big market for cultural products as well as consumer goods and when the Chinese cinema had begun to explore the commercial film market.14 At the millennial turn, Chinese film-makers and directors15 enter the complex market system in which the distinctions between art and marketability, high and low cultures, local and the global have started to collapse.16 The success or failure in handling these complex conditions may not be a criterion for judging directors’ box office achievements. The producers make use of these contradictions and target both the domestic and international markets. And the two Chinese Hamlet films under discussion share some of these postmodern problems, but don’t adopt the same strategies to solve these contradictions in terms of their productions and circulations. The Banquet’s producers have made all efforts to raise money from the box office through their worldwide campaigning team, aggressive strategies to

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advertise the all-star crew, showcasing the commonly-recognised cultural signs and the period film’s glossy images of the past as well as artistic renderings of the hugely popular kung fu actions. The brand-name of the director, Feng Xiaogang was also used although the film was more a corporate commodity created jointly by the investor and the producer, Huayi Brothers.17 According to Wang Zhongjun, the CEO of Huayi, the making of film is the company’s choice, and Feng’s status as one of the most valued Chinese directors would help the company to recover investment and make profits on the 120 million CNY (about $17 million) project.18 The cast too is composed of stars well known in the Chinese-speaking world and some globally renowned, including Zhang Ziyi, Zhou Xun, Ge You, Daniel Wu, and Huang Xiaoming. Tim Yip’s art design, Tan Dun’s score,19 Zhang Liangying 20 and Teng Ge’er’s songs all add to the brand value of the film. Advertising in the form of entertainment news was initiated even before the making of the film started. Word was released in 2005 that Feng would direct a Chinese version of Shakespeare’s tragedy and the leading role would be played by an internationally recognised actress such as Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li, who appears in Zhang Yimou’s big-budget wuxia film Curse of the Golden Flower released earlier in 2006. Feng remains proud of his choice of Zhang Ziyi as the female lead and considers her crucial to the film’s success as he revealed to the press: If I tell European and American vendors that I would relate a Chinese story taking place in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, my translator wouldn’t know how to translate. But if I say this is an Asian version of Hamlet starred by Zhang Ziyi, they will get it. In addition to her performance, Zhang Ziyi will be helpful to the film’s distribution. Knowing it is performed by Zhang Ziyi, big film vendors from all over the world will contact you actively for a view.21 Feng mentions two internationally recognised icons – Hamlet and Zhang Ziyi, as figures who would provide a global currency to the film. Zhang Ziyi’s appearances were fully used in all the promotional events for the film – at its international premiere at the Venice Film Festival, at the film vendors preview at the Cannes Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the World Film Festival of Bangkok, and in all the luxurious domestic campaigns. Both Shakespeare’s cultural capital and the star system’s popular appeal contributed to its international success.22 By the end of 2006, the overseas sales had exceeded the investment, with an additional 150-million-yuan domestic box office as net gain.23 Although criticised for its ambiguous genre, unclear narrative, mixed language styles, tendency to cater to the popular taste for visual consumption, lack in depth of characterisation and problems in cultural references by domestic critics,24 it was a commercial success.

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The Banquet’s box office success was considered by a blogger as inaugurating an era of Chinese big-budget films.25 Others ascribed the positive values of the film to the emergence of a strong Chinese commercial film market 26 and found in it an alternative to Hollywood storytelling. For example, the unexpectedness of Emperor Li’s suicide is considered a unique way of narrative that is not possible in a typical Hollywood treatment of an evil character. As Jia, an authoritative voice in the Chinese film industry asserts, for example, this approach to the heroic figure is a typical treatment in Chinese mainstream films.27 Both heroes as representatives of positive values will not get worldly happiness but fulfil their ideals by sacrificing their lives. This theorisation of the Chinese mainstream films attempts to ascribe high culture values to the popular cinema with its ethical concerns. As discussed earlier, however, the film actually does not owe its commercial success to the ethical judgements of its characters.

A Test of High Culture: Hu’s Prince of the Himalayas Sherwood Hu’s movie is set in the Himalayan provinces of Tibet during a preBuddhist period before the seventh century A.D. Hu has worked with two Tibetan fellow writers along with an all Tibetan cast to help reconstruct the cultural memories of the region so that the film is filled with a distinct Tibetan cultural atmosphere. It features minstrel tales, mystic traditions, surreal relations between nature and tribal history, gods of nature, and details of Tibetan physiology and ethnic customs, costumes and rituals. In addition to capturing typical Himalayan landscapes where all four seasons can be experienced within a single day, the director has attempted to rebuild an epic tradition through cinematography while adapting Hamlet in the Tibetan language and tradition. Hu’s adaptation of Hamlet into Tibetan culture reveals a Freudian sentiment with a quasi-Oedipus complex in the depiction of the father-son relationship. In the film, the son (Prince Llamo) first follows the words of the Old King’s ghost who orders him to kill the current King, who is actually the prince’s real father. However, when Lady Wolf, the Tibetan prophet, tells him the truth of his birth, he abandons the idea of revenge and learns the value of forgiveness from the prophet. Then, the real father teaches him the lesson of life before both father and son meet their doom. The film presents a quasi-Buddhist view that eternal life exists in the transmigration of love through symbolic representations of the union between natural landscape and human presence, between body and soul. Lady Wolf as the symbol of mythical elements heals the prince’s wounds and helps him out of mental crisis with a love portion. The universal notions of love and forgiveness are naturally yet magically transplanted into the Tibetan soil. In this sense, the film reworks the father-son relationship of the original play, ref lecting aspects of the director’s own life experience, Hu has stated that he made the film, in response to his deceased father’s wish to direct a

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Chinese film appropriating Hamlet, and its protagonist who was idealised as the typical humanist hero by artists of the generation of Hu’s father, the generation of Jiang Xian of Drama for Life, because Jiang and Hu the senior shared the humanist conception of Shakespearean canon. Therefore the film emphasises the power of love because this is what that earlier generation of Chinese intellectuals would have found valuable in Shakespeare’s plays and what they would have liked to restore to the lives of Chinese people in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), during which humanist values were criticised and banished. Furthermore, though individual sacrifices are unavoidable, they are worthwhile because they will bring spiritual growth and final redemption. According to Lady Wolf, the prince is “doomed to face suffering and death” to find out the secrets of his fate. In facing his fate and rejecting the Ghost’s order of revenge, he acquires strength and becomes the real hero of the Himalayan epic. The film’s humanist messages are complete with the “to be, or not to be” question. The reconstruction of a Tibetan utopia of love and forgiveness is woven into a filmic representation of the local landscape and culture. Because of these features, the movie may seem a little too sophisticated and esoteric to the audiences who are used to the popular cinema. The Prince of the Himalayas might, however, fall into the ‘mainstream’ of Chinese films when we consider the ending, which presents themes of positive values such as redemption and forgiveness. Although this adaptation departs substantially from Hamlet, it still adopts much of the ‘Shakespearean’ style of speech, by employing huaju style, which may sound esoteric to some viewers.28 Though Hu explains that the film only uses one-tenth of the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy,29 the fact that speech in both the Tibetan and Chinese versions includes original lines directly from the bilingual translations of Hamlet makes the film too theatrically elaborate,30 as if the prince were actually on the huaju stage. More intriguingly, Hu invited his all Tibetan film crew into the huaju theatre to stage the production in his hometown soon after the film’s premiere. He presented The Prince of the Himalayas at Shanghai Grand Theater in May 2007 and revived it for four night shows as a special programme for the Ninth Shanghai Art Festival at Shanghai Experimental Theater located on the campus of Shanghai Drama Academy later in the year. The huaju performances of The Prince of the Himalayas have won great success.31 And this success, oddly, tends to break the boundary between the theatre, the professional space of huaju and the cinema, as well as the boundary between the high and popular culture, the world of Shakespeare and that of popular stars and their fans. Hu does not need Feng’s marketing strategies because he finds other marketing channels and trains a star-to-be to play the leading role in film, on stage and in the market by exploring possibilities of artistic innovation. Hu’s direction has made it possible for his crew and audiences to switch between the two spaces, as Lady Wolf does between the magical world and reality. Hu innovatively integrated episodes from his film to make stage

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settings using technological and cinematic techniques. He projected episodes, the montage scenes from the film, on to a digitalised three-dimensional screen as background. As a result, the performance on stage seemed to appear within the mise-en-scène of the film while adding a physical live effect to the film. The landscape of the Himalayas from the movie provides the ‘natural’ context, in which players present the dramatic lines that connect the mystical Tibetan elements with the illusory effects created with modern devices. And here, there may be another collapsed boundary, one between reality and illusion. Secondly, therefore, the promotional endeavours can be expanded into two other spheres. The success of the stage performances helps with the sale of the electronic copies (DVD copies for home theatre and film copies for the cinema), whereas the film has already paved the way for sales of theatre tickets. The huaju and film versions of The Prince of the Himalayas are a mutual and double promotion of each other. Thirdly, Hu nurtured a popular star who assists in the sale of the film when he was established. Purba Rgyal, the Tibetan performer of Prince Lhamoklodan, was unknown when Hu recruited him for the film. By the time the film was completed, Purba Rgyal had become a princely figure among Chinese youth when he won the 2006 title of My Hero, the competition show on Shanghai Oriental Satellite TV. The real-life popular “Prince of the Himalayas” was born! Promotion of the film thereafter could rely on the prince’s appeals to his fans. As soon as Purba Rgyal was nationally recognised, the marketing of both versions started to highlight the popular star, who having received professional training, became skilled in performance, graduating from Shanghai Drama Academy in September 2007. More importantly, his name could be put to profitable use for advertising The Prince of the Himalayas, both film and theatre copies. Of course, the capital gains this manoeuvre has come up with are insignificant, as compared with the monetary success of Banquet, although Hu’s success is elsewhere, as cultural capital with fame in the world of art. Hu and his star brought back awards from international festivals. The movie was recognised at the 2007 Los Angeles International Film Festival. Hu won the Best Director Award at the Venice Film Festival in 2008. Purba Rgyal was crowned with the Best Actor title at the Third Monaco International Film Festival in May 2008. Hu’s film thus relies on artistic innovations, as discussed previously, a different mode of doing Shakespeare for a niche market that does not promise capital gain. Pertinent to both films, nonetheless, are these factors, some of which may seem contradictory but can work together to produce an artefact related to Shakespeare: cultural capital of a classical or canonical figure, the star system, popular media, and some investment, large or small, in the form of either hard capital or symbolic capital (festival registrations or time and energy on a potential star). Both cases prove that Shakespeare’s 450-hundred-year-old legacy is worth monetary investment. But, a prerequisite seems to be that neither the

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producer/film-maker nor audiences can be too bothered about who this figure is and whether or not the product is faithful to the original. Or, is there an original? While The Banquet and its fans were reticent about Shakespeare, The Prince of the Himalayas makes an implicit claim that there is Shakespeare in the film, but who cares if there is any Prince of Denmark.

Localised Shakespeares: Modern or Postmodern? The narratives of both films are structured in an unusual style that celebrates local landscape and ancient culture through borrowing Shakespearean plots wrapped in a colour-saturated mise-en-scène. The notable plot of a prince’s revenge within the royal family, along with other families’ revenge subplots, a play-within-the-play, eavesdropping, and the prince’s tragic fate, is clearly visible and comparable in both movies. The Prince of the Himalayas takes his spirit to Tibet while The Banquet sets him at the political centre of ancient China. Through reinventing both the Shakespearean story and local cultures, each film makes a cinematic myth of a fictional world of ancient history – either in pre-Buddhist Tibet or in the war-ridden Chinese states of the tenth century. Various elements within this myth define the characters and events through visual and narrative textures, modern lighting, colour contrast, period music, moving camera, and way of figure positioning. All these elements in the two movies, in different ways, also rely on landscape and cultural particulars in the filmic re-significations of the story. The specialties of the landscape and cultural elements, either Tibetan or Chinese, appeal to both domestic and international viewers with a nostalgic or touristic curiosity. Why Shakespeare, then? Why deploy a foreign plot when revenge stories similar to, or more complicated than, Hamlet are available in Chinese art and history? This is because through a century of Shakespeare’s popularity in China, his adaptations in Chinese art forms, and especially his re-exports in various forms of xiqu (traditional Chinese drama), using a Shakespearean play to tell a Chinese story is not so unusual any more. For Chinese film-makers to put Shakespeare in their production list now, however, there must be that something extra: evoking of the foreign and the past serves specific local and present purposes in the cinematic circulation of Shakespeare’s cultural capital. At least, this capital is resourceful enough to define the modern and postmodern elements in the two films. If we compare The Prince of the Himalayas and The Banquet in terms of Jameson’s definition of the cultural and economic criteria, we may find that some features of the movies are against the grain of the postmodernist assumptions that Jameson posits. Culturally, we may identify Hu’s root searching for meaning through filmmaking as modern and Feng’s collation of multiple cultural signs as postmodern. While the former’s design dwells on a query over the meaning of life through a surrealistic cinematography, the latter totally defies

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the Hamletian philosophical dilemma through a pastiche practice, in which even Empress Wan’s final irony can be deconstructed. Her vain victory is set in a mixture of colour schemes, such as red and black, as the dominant signifiers, depicting her desire and ambition, which do not end up with any specific signification except for the film’s ascription of those clichéd symbolic meanings that have nothing to do with classic culture or history the movie refers to. For his insistence on a Shakespearean source for his Tibetan narrative, however, Hu’s reverence for Shakespeare does not reveal such postmodern temperament as with Feng’s mixed uses of Shakespeare and other cultural signs. While Feng has never given credit to Shakespeare except for a mention of his name in marketing, Hu not only makes it clear at the end of his film that it has been “[a]dapted from Hamlet by William Shakespeare” as his salute to the Bard but lets his unknown performers utter Shakespearean lines in a minority language. In addressing the increasingly specialised demarcation of film markets, the production of the two films demonstrates contrastive trajectories of success, which illustrates that the cinema as a cultural site can be both modern and postmodern in both its cultural and economic senses. While The Prince of the Himalayas may be identified as an art film for its low investment and for targeting a niche market, The Banquet exploits the international market of commercial cinema.

Ephemerality and Perpetuity: Reflections on Cross-Cultural References to Shakespeare The famous quote of “15 minutes of fame”, as attributed to Andy Warhol, for pop culture seems to have now become a golden rule in many aspects of contemporary life, especially in the new millennium when e-commerce and internet circulation of fame and capital take over much of the business world that follows the capitalist logic of fame-associated finance. In such an era, Shakespeare’s name itself as a brand across any national boundary finds its new use in entertainment newbies’ pursuit of fame. For instance, Shakespeare as Love Tutor (Xiang Shashibiya nayang lian-ai, 2009)32 recycles the Bard’s cultural capital in inventing a newer form of popular media, the so-called 8-mm film, and plays with the idea of Shakespeare’s trans-spatiotemporal capability. This is a local TV programme, at once broadcasting online, and is set in contemporary Chinese metropolitan area against the background of skyscrapers of office buildings, shopping malls, and recognisably the Water Cube, one of the landmark buildings of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. The story is about a young woman, Maizi’s confusion about the meaning of love and frustrations in her relationship with her boyfriend. Eventually, she supposedly finds real love with lessons that Shakespeare is assumed to teach. In this TV programme, Shakespeare appears in the new genre of transdrama as Shasha, and offers instructions on true love for the young lovers who are confused about emotion and the meaning of love relations. But more important is the role the producers put him into to serve the purpose of the production. That

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is for his name to be used to promote their invention of the 8-mm film, which is actually a TV programme, longer than a movie but shorter than a regular TV serial, with division of episodes as with a sitcom. Furthermore, the producers’ experiment with an innovative media form plays with references to Shakespeare’s texts, alludes to other visual texts, and parodies of Shakespeare’s icon. The programme includes f lashes to available Romeo and Juliet films and even refers to a love song from The Banquet, featuring a triangular relationship among Qing, the Prince and Wan. Unfortunately, neither the TV programme nor the 8-mm film genre to be promoted has a lasting stay on the ever-changing shack of popular entertainment. Shakespeare’s presence in this programme may suggest that he is now out of fashion in these postmodern times, as his old-fashioned image in a wig shows. But, at the same time, the programme offers him a new identity as a tutor of love that transcends time and space. As the ending of the film suggests, his teaching is still effective in the contemporary life and may enlighten young lovers in the metropolitan part of China. So far, we have discussed the various ways in which Shakespeare is used in popular culture: celebrated as high cultural icon (Drama for Life and A Time to Love), as sacred and appropriated source or pretext for filmic inspiration (The Prince of the Himalayas and Banquet), and as the parodic love tutor in the transmedia 8-mm film, and eventually as cultural capital recycled, deployed, and exploited for contemporary consumption. Nonetheless, as Warhol’s words imply postmodern fame is short-lived. On the other hand, in all the short-lived popular entertainment artefacts or the transient pieces of mediatisation of fragmentised Shakespearean moments, the Bard gains new life, regardless of a sense of loss felt by purists, who would rather have their Shakespeare unchanged. References to Shakespeare since the 1990s in pastiche, parodies, quotations and other citations in different media imply a homage to him so that Shakespeare’s venerated high-culture status is repeatedly reinforced. The references to Shakespeare involve him as a source text in one way or another. Further, Shakespeare in trans-sphere, crosses several boundaries when he is translated and transformed into different cultures and languages, and into different media as in China and elsewhere in the global village. All in all, when his texts are reset in new spatio-temporal contexts in crosscultural appropriations, they speak to contemporary audiences who participate in the re-construction of meaning of his texts. With or without manifest reverence to his authority, the cross-cultural references in Shakespeare-related products, like their contemporary Anglophone equivalents, therefore demonstrate characteristics that emphasise modern and postmodern dimensions. At the same time, however, some of his values are maintained when his authority, as well as cultural capital, is transplanted and grafted in a different context in which his global as well as local images are relayed and perpetualised in the transient practices of localising some of his supposedly universal and humanist messages.

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Notes 1. Richard Burt, “Alluding to Shakespeare in L’Appartement, The King Is Alive, Wicker Park, A Time to Love, and University of Laughs: Digital Film, Asianization, and the Transnational Film Remake” Shakespeare and Asia, ed. Lingui Yang (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2010), 47. 2. In an understanding of Shakespeare’s humanism that has been inf luenced by Jacob Burckhardt’s conception of Renaissance humanism in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (New York, 1958), Shakespeare is a humanist icon, whose status is secured in his canonized Renaissance text. In the reception of Shakespeare in China, he is the representative of Renaissance humanism, and most of the supposedly universal values are considered valid in academic discourses in China. 3. Drama for Life (Xiju rensheng), dir. Wang Dapeng, screenplay by Shen Hongguang, starred Wang Gang ( Jiang Xian) and Zhu Lin (Zhu Yang), prod. by Shenzhen TV and CCTV, first shown in 1992. 4. A Time to Love (Qingren jie), dir. Huo Jianqi, starred Zhao Wei (Qu Ran) and Lu Yi (Hou Jia), released in 2005. 5. Hamlet in The Norton Shakespeare, eds. Stephen Greenblatt and others. New York and London: Norton, 1997. 6. The Banquet (Ye yan), dir. Feng Xiaogang, starred Daniel Wu (Wuluan), Ge You (Emperor Li), Zhang Ziyi (Empress Wan), and Zhou Xun (Qing), released in 2006. 7. The Prince of the Himalayas (Ximalaya wangzi), dir. Sherwood Hu, starred Purba Rgyal (Prince Lhamoklodan), released in 2006. 8. Some portions of this and following section are based on Lingui Yang, “Shakespeare in Popular Cinema: Chinese Filmic Spin-offs of Hamlet” Theatre Arts 5 (2013): 42–52 with revision. This study discusses a wider range of Shakespeare in Chinese pop media. 9. At a press conference before The Banquet’s official website was launched, Feng revealed his intention to restore “neo-classicist style” of Chinese culture in the movie. See report at www.southcn.com/nfsq/ywhc/ss/200604270473.htm. See the movie site at www.yeyan.sina.com.cn/ and related topics at Sina.com: http:// ent.sina.com.cn/f/thebanquet/index.shtml. 10. Ibid., 4. 11. Frederich Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 17. 12. Frederich Jameson, Signatures of the Visible (New York: Routledge, 1992), 83. 13. Jameson, Postmodernism, 19. 14. Though Jameson’s postmodern theory has exerted great impact in China since the late 1980s, the changes that China’s new role in the system has brought to the market-oriented global economy around the end of the first decade of the new millennium has been his blind spot. For sure, theory is before there is adequate data for analysis. Nonetheless, mainstream of popular cinema has targeted the Chinese market. Hollywood films have overpowered locally produced ones since the 1990s in China, and most recently started to explore the Chinese market with Chinese elements and the popular form of kung fu, such as Michael Angarano’s The Forbidden Kingdom and Kung Fu Panda. 15. Chinese commercial movies are often recognized through the big name directors such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Feng Xiaogang, even though they work for the billionaire producers. 16. As Richard Burt argues in examining contemporary media adaptations of Shakespeare’s image, these popular practices “significantly blur if not fully deconstruct distinctions between local and global, original and copy, pure and hybrid, indigenous and foreign, high and low, authentic and inauthentic. . . .” See “Shakespeare, ‘Glo-cali-zation’, Race, and the Small Screens of Popular Culture” in Shakespeare,

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18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

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24.

25. 26.

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the Movie, II: Popularizing the Plays on Film, TV, Video, and DVD, ed. Richard Burt (New York: Routledge, 2003), 14–36. Huayi Brothers Pictures, Co. Ltd. and Media Asia Films Ltd as co-producers. Huayi xiongdi (Huayi Brothers) sounds like Huana xiongdi (Warner Brothers). The Chinese brothers do not have a surname of hua; they are Wang Zhongjun and Wang Zhonglei. The similarity in the sounding of the name indicates their imitation of Warner Brothers in commercial film making. We may see resemblances of Huayi’s operative strategies to those of the American counterpart: billion-budget investment, big names in the list of contract directors and performers, and moneyburning international campaigns. Quoted in Zhang Jiangyi, “Yeyan duiyu zhongguo dianying shichang de zhengmian yiyi (The Banquet’s Positive Values to the Chinese Film Market)”, http:// ent.sina.com.cn/r/m/2006-10-09/11011275970.html, Last accessed September 9, 2009. Both Yip and Tan are on Ang Lee’s crew for the awarding winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. No wonder viewers find The Banquet look and sound familiar. Feng might want to duplicate Lee’s success. The 2005 third place of Super Girl (Chinese Idol) competition, Zhang Liangying became a contracted singer of Huayi and once was a guest on the Oprah Show. Beijing Entertainment Herald February 2, 2006, retrieved October 15, 2009, from http://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2006-02-27/0025997964.html. The film received the Future Film Festival Digital Award at the Venice Film Festival, the People’s Choice Award at the 4th World Film Festival of Bangkok, and was chosen as Hong Kong’s entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It could not rival Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower for the mainland entry, though. With the $7 million sales of its Japanese copy and Southeast Asian version in total, not counting its European and American sales, overseas sales is over $10 million. The film’s Chinese box office beats that of The Da Vince Code, the top imported film of the year, and ranked only next to Curse of the Golden Flower. A media report quotes Feng’s words: “The European sales have reached $5million and more is expected from Italian and German vendors at the Venice Film Festival”, http:// media.people.com.cn/GB/40606/4721134.html, Last accessed September 8, 2009. Most critiques target the film’s and Feng’s inaccurate cultural references, its quasi classic style, and the mixed speech language styles. For example, some find out that the poem is not from the Books of Songs, one of the Five Classics as Feng once indicated, see: http://blog.ifeng.com/article/1506110.html. Dated August 22, 2006, the data in the blog cannot include later-released information but has already indicated the film’s economic success, see http://blog.sina.com. cn/s/blog_4a5a1ad40100063z.html. Zhang Jianyi thinks that The Banquet producer’s goal for profit follows the commercial logic and is the right direction for the Chinese film industry, retrieved September 8, 2009, from http://ent.sina.com.cn/r/m/2006-10-09/11011275970. html; see also Yin Hong, “The Banquet: The Destiny of Chinese Big-Budget Films” Film Art (Electronic Journal) issue no. 1 (2007), http://qkzz.net/magazine/ 0257-0181/2007/01/10012281.htm, Last accessed September 8, 2009. Jia Leilei, vice director of Chinese Film Studies Institute, makes such assertion without defining what is Chinese mainstream film, though. See “Feng Xiaogang dianying yu zhongguo dazhong wenhua pinpai (Feng Xiaogang’s Films and Chinese Popular Culture Brand)” http://ent.sina.com.cn/r/m/2006-10-09/11071275975. html, Last accessed November 26, 2009. On Baidu, a popular Chinese site, there is a bar or forum for The Prince of the Himalayas, http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=148631338. Most young viewers feel the film is too Shakespearean and too huaju.

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29. “Purba Rgyal Becomes Hamlet in The Prince of the Himalayas” Shanghai Youth Newspaper, September 28, 2006, http://ent.sina.com.cn, Last accessed October 10, 2009. 30. Originally recorded in Tibetan, the film is dubbed in Chinese by the same performers. 31. A report tells that the two May performances both enjoyed a full house, http://ent. cctv.com/special/C19561/20071101/103328.shtml, Last accessed November 20, 2009. 32. Directed by A Yu and produced by Shenzhen TV in 2009, the event film program has been designed to greet the Chinese New Year.

8 BARDOLATORS AND BARDOCLASTS Shakespeare in Manga/Anime and Cosplay Yukari Yoshihara

If you are inspired by Andrew James Hartley’s “Ren Fest Shakespeare: The Cosplay Bard”,1 you might want to google by the search words ‘Shakespeare’ and ‘cosplay’. Then you would probably find images of people who impersonate or ‘cosplay’2 ‘Caster of Red William Shakespeare’,3 a character in the light novel4/anime5 titled Fate/Apocrypha.6 They would be holding a First Folio and a pen. If you google by ‘cosplay’, ‘Romeo’ and ‘Juliet’, you would find images from cosplays of the Japanese sci-fi anime, Romeo x Juliet.7 If you happen to know that there is a parody episode of Hamlet in the Japanese manga/anime titled The Black Butler, in which the character named Grell Sutcliff, a male grim reaper, performs the part of Ophelia in a play-within-an-anime, it might push to you to google by ‘Black Butler’ and ‘Ophelia’. Then you will find images of Grell-as-Ophelia and of people cosplaying Grell-as-Ophelia. If you know there is an annual anime cosplay convention in Iowa, it might occur to you to google by ‘Iowa’, ‘Ophelia’ and ‘Grell’. You would find “Anime Iowa 2011-Ophelia’s Sassy Gay Friend Skit” on YouTube,8 which combines Grell-as-Ophelia, and Envy in another Japanese anime, The Fullmetal Alchemist (2001–10) and “Sassy Gay Friend: Hamlet” (2010).9 How far can these enactments be regarded as Shakespearean or, as Japanese? This chapter will attempt at investigating the ways in which Shakespeare is being used not as a “parent text to be appropriated/adapted, but a boundless user-driven archive of material to be repurposed and refashioned”10 by fans of manga/anime and of Shakespeare. For that purpose, it relies on recent developments in academic work on the relationship between Shakespeare as global brand and popular culture. I regard Shakespeare in manga/anime as constituting what Douglas Lanier calls “Shakespearean rhizomatics”11 – “the aggregated web of cultural forces and productions that in some fashion lay claim to the label ‘Shakespearean’ but that has long exceeded the canon of plays and poems we have come to attribute to the pen of William Shakespeare”. Christy Desmet,

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Natalie Loper and Jim Casey point out, referring to Lanier’s “Shakespearean rhizomatics”, that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, whose theorisation Lanier is indebted to, conceptualise “artistic relations as rhizomes, a spreading, growing network that sprawls horizontally” that defies “hierarchies of origin and inf luence”.12 This notion of a weblike spread has been further explored in nontraditional contexts, including digital and social media, by Valerie M. Fazel and Louise Geddes’, and they arrive at the conclusion, which I share, that the value of Shakespeare lies in its usability, in that the texts, as well as the myth of the man, can be broken down and reassembled by a body of users whose valuation of Shakespeare is unpredictable and often resistant to pre-conceived notions of cultural hegemony.13 Manga/anime creators, fans and cosplayers ‘use’ the cultural phenomenon known as ‘Shakespeare’ in unpredictable ways which could be resistant to/subservient to the authority and cultural hegemony of the Global Bard. They have potential to expand “the definition of ‘Shakespearean’ far beyond the reach of the academy”.14 As Stephen O’Neill writes about user agency of YouTube Shakespeare, Shakespeare in manga/anime use Shakespeare as “an open-source property exceeding any single ownership”.15 Shakespearean texts, as being outside of copyright, function as “a freely available repository of stories”16 for them. Manga/anime and cosplay ‘uses’ the global brand of Shakespeare in order to gain currency in the global cultural commodity market, and in that process they question the boundaries between ‘high’ culture and pop or consumerist culture, between the West and Asia, between the universal and the local. Though manga/anime and cosplay can still have a degree of cultural authority when they are branded as ‘made in Japan’, distinctively Japanese elements needed to be erased in order to make them global cultural commodities. Shakespearean characters such as ‘Caster of Red William Shakespeare’ or real people cosplaying them, who have almost no signs of Japanese-ness, are the cases of such erasure. It is partially true that manga/anime/cosplay ‘use’ or ‘abuse’ Shakespeare for its global marketing strategy, and hence, they could be detrimental to Shakespeare’s authority. In other words, they could be “bardoclasts”.17 However, in this chapter I will examine global manga/anime fans’ and cosplayers’ ‘use’ of the label Shakespeare, to argue that they are bardolators in disguise. They, seeming “bardoclasts”, give Shakespeare “unlimited potential” to overcome the narrower sense of academic bardolatory, and Shakespeare becomes a part of what might be called manga/anime rhizomatics.

What Are “Sassy Gay Friend: Hamlet” and “Anime Iowa 2011-Ophelia’s Sassy Gay Friend Skit”? When you watch “Anime Iowa 2011-Ophelia’s Sassy Gay Friend Skit” (henceforth IOWA) on YouTube, where a black-haired performer in a sport

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bra-looking top and a pair of short pants (cosplay of Envy, a male demon from the Fullmetal Alchemist) scolds a red-haired performer in a long red dress (cosplay of Grell-as-Ophelia), saying “What are you doing? What, what, what are you doing?” – if you do not know “Sassy Gay Friend: Hamlet” (2010), you will not be able to figure out what IOWA is based on. “Sassy Gay Friend: Hamlet” is clever in challenging Ophelia’s romanticised image as a sacrificial maiden. Just when Ophelia is about to throw herself into water, Sassy Gay Friend appears. Though at first unconvinced by his admonition that it is a stupid idea to kill herself for Hamlet who mistreated her and killed her father, Ophelia finally follows her friend’s advice to live on, as she does not want to wet her hair, which her friend says is the best hair she has worn. Though it could be argued that Sassy Gay Friend is stereotypical and Ophelia is shallow, and that the skit is possibly misogynistic and homophobic, it makes a clever ‘use’ of Hamlet in that it questions and criticises the fetishised image of the suicidal, love-crazed powerless Ophelia. On the other hand, if we do not know anything about Shakespeare’s original, we will not be able to appreciate “Sassy Gay Friend: Hamlet” and IOWA, because of the simple fact that we need to know the original in order to understand the twists in parodies. If Shakespeare is not a recognisable brand commodity in the globalised cultural market, the skit does not make any sense. In other words, the Shakespearean original is important that much for the purpose of understanding IOWA, where “the Shakespearean text is an important element but not determining one”.18 IOWA, frivolous and ephemeral as it may be, forms a part of what Lanier terms as “the Shakespearean rhizome”. It ‘uses’ not only “Sassy Gay Friend: Hamlet” but also history and culture of Japanese manga/anime adaptations of Shakespeare’s works, in partial challenge against and partial acknowledgement of Shakespeare’s cultural authority. In order to appreciate IOWA, you would need literacy not only of Shakespeare but also of Japanese pop culture, which this chapter attempts at providing.

What Is Cosplay? In the Renaissance Fairs held in England, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and particularly in the United States, Shakespeare the person and his characters are regularly impersonated, while in Japan, there used to be almost none or very few cases of cosplaying Shakespeare himself or his characters, partially because Shakespeare is considered to be too lofty to be impersonated in cosplay style. Manga/anime characters deriving from or based on Shakespearean characters, such as Romeo and Juliet of Romeo x Juliet and Caster of Red William Shakespeare of Fate/Apocrypha, however, are frequently cosplayed in manga/anime conventions for global manga/anime fans.19 ‘Cosplay’ (combination of costume and playing) is a practice of dressing up as fictional characters from anime, manga, games, movies and other popular culture.

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As Nicolle Lamerichs shows, cosplay inherits the history of “the fan tradition of dressing up” which goes back to “historical reenactments and Renaissance Fairs where earlier time periods are a source of inspiration” and to “American sciencefiction conventions in the 1960s and 1970s” where fans dressed up fictional characters in series such as Star Trek or Star Wars. The term “cosplaying” was coined in the 1980s by a Japanese game designer, Nobuyuki Takahashi, inspired by American impersonating practices. However, today “many contemporary Western fans learn about costuming not through science-fiction or fantasy genres, but through Japanese fiction”.20 Cosplay is largely regarded as Japanese, even when the cosplayers are not Japanese and the figures do not look Japanese. Cosplayers worldwide impersonate Shakespearean characters (or Shakespeare as a character) as recreated in manga/anime, not because they are Shakespearean but because they are characters in anime/manga made in Japan. For cosplayers, Shakespearean originals hold very limited authority, functioning merely as “a freely available repository of stories”. In this sense, the cultural hierarchy between Shakespeare and popular culture, though in tongue-in-cheek fashion, is presented as cancelled. On the other hand, elements perceived to be characteristically Japanese are erased out or presented in ironical self-orientalising fashion. Thus, cosplaying manga/anime characters deriving from or based on Shakespearean characters can problematise the distinction between Shakespeare and Not-Shakespeare, and Japan and Not-Japan.

Who Is Grell? In IOWA, the person in red is a cosplay of Grell Sutcliff. Grell is a grim reaper in Yana Toboso’s manga The Black Butler (2006–) and its anime version (2008–). Set in Victorian England, it is hugely popular both in Japan and outside Japan: the manga has sold 26.6 million copies, of which 7.5 million copies sold outside of Japan.21 The main plot is about a boy (Ciel) who is in a pact with a devil (disguised as a butler in black, named Sebastian). Ciel is to surrender his soul to the devil, when Sebastian succeeds in helping him take revenge on the murderers of his family. Thus Ciel has something of Hamlet and of Faust. Grell is a member of grim reapers’ syndicate, struggling with the devils for human souls, but he is obsessed with his antagonist, Sebastian the devil. He compares his inevitable confrontation with Sebastian to the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet: he laments, “Sebastian Darling! Wherefore art thou Sebastian, Darling!”22 In one spin-off anime episode (2009), Grell performs the part of Ophelia in a play-within-an-anime, on which IOWA is based. The androgynous Grell is physically a male but emphatically feminine in his looks and manner of speaking though his voice is distinctly masculine. When he performs Ophelia in a red long dress, he looks/sounds like a drag queen campily overacting femininity. In the play-within-an-anime, Ciel plays Hamlet and Sebastian plays Laertes. Grell’s Ophelia departs wildly from the original character. This Ophelia falls in

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love with every handsome man around her, including her father. When Polonius punches her stomach and kicks her into the river, the f loating corpse looks slightly like John Everett Millais’s Ophelia (1851–52). This Ophelia, however, does not remain dead. When Laertes and Hamlet fight, she comes back to life, riding on a fancy gondola and singing, ‘Do not fight over me’ in karaoke.

Brief History of Shakespeare in Manga/Anime, Cross-Dressing in Manga/Anime and Ophelias in Japan In order to appreciate Grell’s Ophelia as an instance of challenge against Ophelia’s fetishised image as a dedicated lover and beautiful corpse, an overview of Japanese adaptations of Shakespeare, of the convention of crossdressing in manga for girls (some of which are inspired by Shakespeare), and of Ophelia in Japanese literature and popular culture are due. In the earlier Japanese adaptations in the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, distinctively Western elements in Shakespeare’s works needed to be erased out: the scenes were set in Japan (including its colonies) and characters were changed into Japanese, so that the foreignness of Shakespeare was domesticated, his stories were made more relatable and understandable, and most importantly, so that Shakespearean works could be ‘used’ to promote political and ideological agendas at the time of reception. The first adaptation of Merchant of Venice (1885), performed in kabuki style, ‘uses’ Shakespeare so that it serves the purpose of inspiring the Japanese with the then new idea of Western-style industrialisation, by making the Antonio figure a Japanese entrepreneur who wins, thanks to his modernised/westernised sense of industry. Since then, starting from the early twentieth century, Western realist performance without overt Japanisation became dominant. The late twentieth century and the twenty-first century are witnessing revival of Japanised Shakespeare, such as Hideki Noda’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1992) and Hidenori Inoue’s Metal Macbeth (2006). In terms of adaptations of Shakespeare in comics in the English-speaking world, Richard Burt wrote in his introduction to Shakespeares after Shakespeare that, while adaptations of Shakespeare’s works on stage and in literature dared to deconstruct the authority of Shakespeare by boldly altering, modernising or parodying his works, “Comic book adaptations tend to be among the most conservative in any medium”. In comics, “characters from Shakespeare . . . are almost always in period dress” .23 Manga/anime artists, on the other hand, have taken great liberty with the stories, the contents of Shakespearean lines and the settings, which has made them almost unrecognisable as Shakespearean. Osamu Tezuka (1928–89), the manga god, created his manga abridgement of The Merchant of Venice for educational purpose in 1959. The scenes are set in Venice, with Portia as the only daughter of a “media tycoon who televises his dying moments”.24 Manga/anime

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adapting and/or inspired by Shakespeare’s works are numerous. Earlier instances include Moto Hagio’s The Poe Clan (1974: boy vampires performing As You Like It), Yasuko Aoike’s Sons of Eve (1978: Hamlet who says “wherefore art thou Romeo?” in falling in love with Romeo, his brother), Machiko Satonaka’s Girls Born under Aries (1973–75: an episode about school girls who perform Romeo and Juliet in all girl school production). More recent ones include Hiromi Yamashita’s Osaka Hamlet (2005–) about a working-class boy whose mother remarries with his uncle shortly after his father’s death (the boy refuses to think of his life as similar to Hamlet’s), Harold Sakuishi’s Seven Shakespeares (2010–) in which seven people (including a Chinese woman living in Manchester) collaborate to produce Shakespeare’s works, and Aya Kanno’s Requiem of the Rose King (2013–), based on Richard III, with Richard III figure as an inter-sexed person. Grell-as-Ophelia is a man campily dressed as a woman. Shakespeare’s comedies and manga/anime, especially manga/anime for girls, are alike for their use of conventions of crossdressing, and resulting subversion of gender hierarchy. The manga convention of a girl in disguise as a boy dates back to Tezuka’s Princess Knight (1953), in which the princess (born with both a ‘girl heart’ and a ‘boy heart’)25 disguises herself as a prince for a girl cannot inherit the throne. In Yasuko Aoike’s Sons of Eve (1978), biological sex is indeterminate. The three principal characters are biologically male, but when they are transported to scifi worlds, they can change their biological sex into female. One of the principal characters (Virgil) undergoes a sex change against his will but determines to enjoy the occasion fully. He/she performs the part of Juliet as an elegant drag queen in a play-within-manga sequence against a younger, cute and effeminate Romeo. In Matsuri Akino’s As You Like It (1997–98), the girl protagonist, Jacqueline, cross dresses as a boy and joins a travelling theatre troupe (Elizabeth I’s secret agents undercover) led by Shakespeare. In one episode, the young master of an aristocratic mansion is secretly in love with his male attendant. He decides, with Jacqueline’s help, to cross dress as a lady, in order to have just one dance with his loved one. It turns out that the attendant as well has been in agony for his passion for his lord. The story ends happily, when it turns out that the Lord, named Celia, is actually a woman who was brought up as a man to secure her/his inheritance. Takako Shimura’s Wandering Son (2002–2013) is a masterpiece making full use of gender bender convention in manga for girls. In episodes of a junior high school performance of Romeo and Juliet, a boy who wants to be a girl wishes to perform the part of Juliet, and a girl who is not sure about her gender wishes to perform the part of Romeo.26 Grell as Ophelia inherits this manga tradition of cross-dressing which highlights the cultural, social and political constructedness of gender: a girl can be a boy if she can cosplay the part, or vice versa. Ophelia is repeatedly recreated, adapted and transformed in Japanese novels, stage performances and in pop culture, and it is significant that such Japanese Ophelias often run counter to the stereotypical image of Ophelia, as an

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obedient, self-sacrificial dead beauty.27 Ophelias as adapted and used in Japanese culture are independent, strong and rebellious, in contrast to the widely shared image of Ophelia, made famous by John Everett Millais use (1851–52) of the original, as a powerless, innocent, self-sacrificial maiden. Ophelias in Japan fight, with intellect, wit and physical abilities, against all these powers that aestheticise and romanticise female death for love. Grell-as-Ophelia also inherits the ‘tradition’ of Japanese Ophelias who refuse to die. The first of these Japanese strong Ophelias is Soseki Natsume’s O-Nami in his novel Kusamakura (1907). As the first Japanese professor of British Literature at Tokyo Imperial University, Natsume (1867–1916) was cognisant of the Victorian fascination with Ophelia, who was described by Bram Dijkstra as “the later nineteenth-century’s all-time favourite example of love-crazed selfsacrificial madness”.28 The narrator of the novel, an artist, attempts to draw the mysterious hostess of his hotel, O-Nami, as an Ophelia in the style of Millais’s painting. However, O-Nami is a highly intellectual, independent-minded, and rebellious woman, and she refuses to die beautifully as the original Ophelia did. O-Nami is the first of Japanese Ophelias who fight against what Romanska calls “Necr-Ophelia”, a morbid fascination with dead wet beauties.29 When creating Ponyo (2008), Hayao Miyazaki was inspired by Millais’s Ophelia and O-Nami in Natsume’s Kusamakura. Instead of repeating the stereotypical image of Ophelia as a beautifully exquisite but powerless maiden, however, Miyazaki transforms Ophelia into the powerful, gigantic sea goddess Granmamare, mother of Ponyo. Grell-as-Ophelia, though once ‘dead’ in Millais’s Ophelia fashion, does not remain dead but revives to enjoy seeing two men fighting over her. She confounds the customary aesthetics of fragile, beautiful and self-sacrificing female beauty as embodied by the original Ophelia and Millais’ Ophelia. Even though it remains to be questioned why it is Grell, a man, not a female character of The Black Butler, that performs the part of Ophelia, Grell-as-Ophelia allows us have what Desmet calls “an inverted reading”30 of the original text, to realise once again that how, though beautiful, powerless the original Ophelia is in the original and in Millais’s painting. In one remarkable fan participatory activity, Akirachan 1789 juxtaposes John Williams Waterhouse’s Ophelia (1889) with Grell-as-Ophelia, captions the former as “Your Ophelia”, the latter as “My Ophelia” and comments that “Grell is best Ophelia ever”.31 Exactly. There are further references to Shakespeare in The Black Butler. Grell belongs to a league of grim reapers: his boss is Will Spears and one of his colleagues is named Osero [ Japanese pronunciation of Othello]. His boss, Will Spears, is said to be deriving his name from the Bard. Speculation on whether this Will is an incarnation of the Bard has become a part of The Black Butler fan culture, as in “Kuroshitsuji Theory”32 where it is playfully speculated that the Bard might have spent his lost years as Will Spears, a grim reaper, which resulted in the

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darker tone of his works after the lost years. One of Grell’s colleagues is Osero, who looks Caucasoid. One thing that can help explain the mystery of his name is the fact that he wears the black and white pieces of a board game,33 which is called Osero [Othello] game in Japan (equivalent of reverse game). As I examined elsewhere, the name Osero [Othello] refers more to the board game, than the Bard in Japan.34 The Black Butler’s Osero with black and white pieces is a joke about the fact that the Bard has less cultural significance than Osero game in Japan. In its affectionately debasing ways, The Black Butler gives the Bard his afterlife, making him one indispensable part of globalised Japanese pop culture.

Shakespeare in Manga/Anime as Global Commodities As Grell-as-Ophelia and IOWA are products of globalisation of manga/anime, here it would be due to give some thoughts to aspects of Shakespeare in manga/ anime as commodities intended for global consumption. In this section I shall examine Shakespeare-related products in manga/anime as global commodities, paying particular attention to the ways in which manga/anime ‘uses’ Shakespeare as a global brand name, and how distinctively Japanese elements needed to be erased for the purpose of making Shakespeare in anime/manga gain global currency. I shall attempt to show that new additions to “Shakespearean Rhizomatics” can change our perceptions about the original work, making the original “less a root than a node that might be situated in relation to other adaptational rhizomes”.35 At least on the surface, there is almost nothing overtly Japanese in manga adaptations of Shakespeare from the 1950s to the present – the character names and the scenes are mostly Western, and even when they are Japanese, they look Western. Paradoxically, the lack or erasure of Japanese traits is a national brandmark of Japanese cultural commodities after WWII. Koichi Iwabuchi, in his inf luential book on globalisation of Japanese cultural commodities such as animation and computer games, points out that “the erasure of racial or ethnic characteristics” from Japanese cultural artefacts are important factors that made them “one of the main players in the development of media globalization”. He observes, “characters of Japanese animation and computer games for the most part do not look ‘Japanese’” and such “non-Japaneseness” is key to Japan’s increased “cultural presence on the global scene through the export of merchandise seemingly ‘lacking any nationality’”.36 In order to make Japanese cultural commodities go global, local and parochial elements needed to be erased out. Manga/anime is no longer monopoly of Japan. It is translated, circulated and read worldwide, and produced by non-Japanese artists. It was the British publisher Self Made Hero that gave Shakespeare in manga global circulation and reputation, with its Manga Shakespeare Series (2007–). Concurrently in early twenty-first century, Japanese manga/anime began to be produced with international circulation in mind. In that process, Shakespeare in manga/anime has

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become a medium which can problematise the distinction between Shakespeare and Not-Shakespeare, and Japan and Not-Japan. Self Made Hero’s Manga Shakespeare series (MSS) began with Hamlet (text by Richard Appignanesi, illustration by Emma Viecelli) and Romeo and Juliet (text by Appignanesi, illustration by Sonia Leong) in 2007. The editor-in-chief, Emma Hayley, consciously chose to employ manga style and “young artists in the UK who considered themselves to be mangaka [manga artist]”.37 In terms of language, the series has a policy to retain Shakespeare’s original English without modernising it, though there are some cuts and abridgements.38 Sonia Leong, the artist for Romeo and Juliet, set her work in present-day Tokyo to achieve a blend of Shakespeare-ness and Japan’s contemporary youth culture. Now, the MSS is regularly displayed for sale in the bookshop in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, alongside more conventional Shakespearean texts. The MSS creatively ‘uses’ manga’s global currency in order to make Shakespeare mutate into a global bard in the age of globalisation and horizontalisation of cultural hierarchy. Self Made Hero hosted a cosplay competition in 2008 in which participants cosplayed the Shakespearean characters as reproduced in Manga Shakespeare Series.39 The globalised/localised cultural capital of manga collaborates with the cultural mega-capital of Shakespeare, which has likewise become globally shared and localised. Around about the same time, cosplay based on the Japanese sci-fi animation Romeo x Juliet (2007) became widely practiced at anime conventions in Japan, Germany, Spain, the United States and elsewhere.40 In such cases, the authoritative origins of cosplays are the manga series and the anime, not Shakespeare. Set in Neo Verona, a city f loating in the air, Romeo x Juliet is about the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. Juliet, whose family was massacred by Leontes Montague, is cross dressed as a boy, Odin, to wait for the chance for revenge. Most of the characters are named after Shakespeare’s characters. Cosplay based on this anime, particularly the scene where Odin, dressed as a girl (a girl disguised as a boy dressed as a girl), dances with Romeo, is widely practiced worldwide. Romeo x Juliet was produced targeted to the global market. Romeo x Juliet has no overt Japanese elements, as the scenes are set on a city modelled on the medieval city of Verona and all the characters look Caucasoid. As I have argued earlier, because the lack or erasure of Japanese traits is the national brandmark of Japanese cultural commodities, the very erasure or lack of Japanese-ness can be trademarks of a Japanese product. The production company GONZO uses the label ‘made in Japan’ and the label ‘Shakespeare’ for the purpose of making its product a global cultural merchandise. The chief producer, at the pre-production interview, boasted that the company would ‘use’ the global brand and label of Shakespeare, for the sole purpose of making their product

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marketable on global scale.41 Two years after its release in Japan, it was dubbed into English and released by Funimation in 2009. The anime stands on “the line between what is and what is not Shakespeare”.42 Though the main plot loosely follows that of the original work, nonShakespearean elements, such as f loating city and revolution, are more striking. Even so, it labels itself as Shakespearean when it associates itself with the original text, with its title deriving from Shakespeare, characters with Shakespearean names (it has even a playwright named Willie). Non-Shakespeare-ness on the surface might be deceiving. As Jim Casey has shown, even though its use of Shakespearean character names might look frivolous, it has resonances and correspondences with the Shakespearean works on the deeper level: for example, the relationship between Lord Montague and his bastard son, Tybalt, recalls the relationship between Gloucester and Edmund in King Lear.43 It is true that most of recent manga/anime adaptations of Shakespeare are, in Casey’s term, “allusive yet elusive adaptations”, which “abandon[s] not only the text of Shakespeare’s play, but also his plot, his minor characters, and even his language”.44 They might not be Shakespearean enough. However, we can think of them as having potential to change the ways we perceive and understand the original works. Juliet in Romeo x Juliet, dressed as a boy Odin and as a political leader of rebel force against tyranny of the Montagues, is more active and independent than Romeo, who is an overprotected aristocrat who originally had no will to disobey his father. The anime can have potential to make us reconsider gender order and the aristocratic class structure in the original. As an appropriation, Romeo x Juliet enables what Desmet calls “an inverted reading”45 of the original text. As Dani Cavallaro writes in Anime and Art of Adaptation, we can think of manga/anime appropriations of Shakespeare as participating in “the process of Shakespearean relocations” in which “the Bard’s oeuvre is never assumed as a stable and immutable point of reference but rather approached as the raw material for potentially endless textual metamorphoses”.46

Manga/Anime Fans React One remarkable instance of Shakespeare being re-created as a character in an anime is ‘Caster of Red William Shakespeare’ (henceforth ‘Caster’) in Fate/ Apocrypha, which began as a light novel ( Japanese novels targeted for high school–and middle school–age group) (2012–14), followed by a manga version (2014) and an anime version (2017). Caster is further interpreted, commented on and recreated by fan participatory activities including cosplay. Caster has a very loose connection with the Bard or Shakespearean texts, except for the facts that he is a playwright figure with a Folio and a pen, and he has propensity to quote Shakespearean lines, but rather randomly and out of context. Fate/Apocrypha centres around the epic fights between the two opposing factions, Red and Black. The characters are based on mythical heroes, historical

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figures and literary masters, who are reincarnated in the world of the story after their death in the real world. Caster belongs to a magician group called Casters, whose role is to fight with magic. But he rarely fights. As AniNews explains in “Caster of Red: SHAKESPEARE Explained”,47 viewed 138,943 times, he would usually just witness and document the fights so that he could later create a play based on it. He is more of narrator and observer or a jester. He quotes and recites lines from his own works, in some cases suiting the situation, sometimes quite out of context (as in the case of his first appearance, when he cites Richard III’s “A horse, a horse, a kingdom for a horse!”). With his First Folio, he can cast a spell on his opponent, which makes him/her re-experience the most traumatic occurrence in their past life. He uses “shadow actors” (wooden puppets) which follow the script he wrote, and he uses the spell, King’s Men, to summon “shadow actors”. To take two instances, he makes Frankenstein’s monster (a young female that does not speak, just grunts) re-experience her trauma of being disowned by her creator, Dr. Frankenstein; he shows Joan of Arc, his principal opponent, an illusion of her past when she was burned to death as a witch. On the internet, we can find dedicated fans explaining, annotating and analysing Fate/Apocrypha with deep knowledge both about anime and historical/ mythical existences on which characters are based. One example is “TypeMoon Wiki: Caster of Red”48 on FANDOM. Its Japanese version49 annotates and explains from which of Shakespeare’s works Caster’s words come, and how Caster quotes are appropriate or inappropriate. In one instance, it cites Caster’s words to Joan of Arc (“There are more things in heaven and earth, Joan of Arc, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”) in both English and Japanese, and it explains that Caster’s quote is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but it replaces Horatio with Joan. Another case of manga/anime re-creation of Shakespeare is The Blast of Tempest (manga: 2009–13, anime: 2012–13), a sci-fi taking elements from The Tempest, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and some other Shakespearean works. It could be relatively easy to dismiss it as a random sampling of various Shakespeare’s works without much coherence. Surely the characters take after Shakespearean characters to some extent: one of the main characters is like Hamlet for his emo-style philosophical musing: he likes to recite Hamlet’s “O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right!”. His sister-in-law is a combination of Juliet and Ophelia, who sacrifices herself in order to save the world, after saying “There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of ” to a Sycorax figure. It is audacious in using Shakespeare as “a freely available repository of stories”, “an open-source property exceeding any single ownership”.50 As to its Japanese-ness or the lack or erasure thereof, it has some distinctively Japanese elements such as Mount Fuji, assassins in ninja outfits and cute high school uniforms, but they are codified signs of imagined Japanese-ness globally shared among anime fans. Thus, the anime is both Shakespeare/Not Shakespeare, and is Japan /Not Japan.

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Romeo x Juliet and The Blast of Tempest have become origins and sources of fan participatory activities, including fan fictions, cosplay and online debate whether the animes deserve to be called Shakespearean adaptations. In one online analysis of The Blast of Tempest ( Japanese title: Zetsuen No Tempest), entitled “Zetsuen No Tempest: Anime as Shakespearean Theatre”, Josh, a self-styled otaku (geek fan of Japanese anime/ manga), after detailed and wellinformed examination of the possible inf luence of Shakespeare’s works on the anime, gives the verdict that it “succeeds very well at being an anime in touch with its Shakespearean roots. It fails because it tries too hard to emphasize this fact”.51 Having too many of Shakespearean elements can be detrimental for anime fans for they watch it as an anime, not because it is based on or a sample from Shakespeare’s works. Furthermore, they themselves have become source texts to be appropriated by fan fictions. One example is “Romeo x Juliet parody episode”, a series of fan fiction by Kazura. Kazura, living in England with thorough knowledge about anime/ manga conventions, has created parodies of the whole 24 Romeo x Juliet episodes, and is doubtful whether the anime needed to be entitled Romeo x Juliet. Kazura shows limited appreciation of the anime’s use of Shakespeare, by making ‘Shakespeare’ in the fan fiction (based on “Willy”, the dramatist in the source text, Romeo x Juliet) bemoan saying “No one understands my brilliance – I deserve more than randomly appearing in this loose adaptation of my own play”.52

Conclusion In this chapter I have examined “Anime Iowa 2011-Ophelia’s Sassy Gay Friend Skit” based on Grell-as-Ophelia from The Black Butler, Romeo x Juliet, The Blast of Tempest, ‘Caster of Red William Shakespeare’ from Fate/Apocrypha, and participatory fan culture, such as cosplays, fan fictions and fan annotations. These instances are intriguing because they require us to rethink the relationship between Shakespeare and popular culture, the West and the East, the canonical and the trashy consumerist. Their relationship with Shakespeare is paradoxical, for they can be both subservient to and challenging of the authority of the Global Bard. The practitioners of the above-mentioned cosplays would be more fans of Japanese manga/anime, less of Shakespeare. Even so, however, if the Shakespeare as ‘Global Bard’ were not a recognisable brand, these fan participatory activities would not be existent. As such, these fan participatory sampling of Shakespeare can be regarded as another form of proliferation of Shakespeare’s global brand name. Conversely, we can see the ways in which non-academic, fan participatory popular culture (cosplay), originally from Asia and now globally shared, is challenging the authority of global brand Shakespeare. They are bardolators and bardoclasts at the same time. They extend “the Shakespearean rhizome”, giving Shakespeare other dimensions as global brand and offering us “an inverted reading” of the original texts.

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Notes 1. Andrew James Hartley, “Ren Fest Shakespeare: The Cosplay Bard” Shakespeare Survey 63 (2015): 210. 2. A portmanteau word combining ‘costume’ and ‘playing’. 3. https://worldcosplay.net/character/62771, Last accessed November 18, 2018. 4. Japanese novels targeted to young readers. 5. Japanese style animations. 6. www.ezcosplay.com/fate-apocrypha-caster-of-red-william-shakespeare-cosplaycostume.html, Last accessed November 18, 2018. 7. One example is www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5VSoFmN6RU that shows an abridged story of Romeo x Juliet, Last accessed December 24, 2018. 8. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU60tvOsmr0, Last accessed November 17, 2018. 9. “Sassy Gay Friend: Hamlet”, directed by Joshua Bank, performed by Colleen Foy (Ophelia) and Brian Gallivan (Sassy Gay Friend), www.youtube.com/ watch?v=jnvgq8STMGM, Last accessed November 17, 2018. 10. Valerie Fazel and Louise Geddes, “Give Me Your Hands If We Be Friends’: Collaborative Authority in Shakespeare Fan Fiction” Shakespeare 12:3 (2016): 274. 11. Douglas Lanier, “Shakespearean Rhizomatics: Adaptation, Ethics, Value” in Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation, eds. Alexa Alice Joubin and Elizabeth Rivlin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 27. 12. Christy Desmet, Natalie Loper, and Jim Casey, “Introduction” in Shakespeare/ Not Shakespeare (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 25. 13. Valerie M. Fazel and Louise Geddes, eds., The Shakespeare User: Critical and Creative Appropriations in a Networked Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Kindle No. 214–16. 14. Ibid., 231. 15. Stephen O’Neill, “Theorizing User Agency in YouTube Shakespeare” in Fazel and Geddes, No. 3127–32. 16. Ibid. 17. Christy Desmet, Natalie Loper, and Jim Casey, eds., Shakespeare/Not Shakespeare (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 48. 18. Lanier, “Shakespearean Rhizomatics”, 29. 19. The fact that the most recent major comic convention in the UK, the London MCM Comic Con, has attracted more than 133,000 cosplayers in May 2019 testifies to the growing popularity of cosplay worldwide, https://theconversation.com/ the-cosplay-economy-how-dressing-up-grew-up-86575, Last accessed July 31, 2019. 20. Nicolle Lamerichs, Productive Fandom: Intermediality and Affective Reception in Fan Cultures (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 200. 21. SQUEARE ENIX, www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/group/index.html#comic1, Last accessed December 23, 2018. 22. Toboso Yana, Black Butler, vol. 3, English ed. (New York: Yen Press, 2014), 66–67. 23. Richard Burt, ed., Shakespeares after Shakespeare, vol. 2 (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2007), 10. 24. Minami Ryuta, “Japanese Comics” Shakespeares After Shakespeare, ed. Richard Burt, vol. 2 (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2007), 813. 25. Osamu Tezuka, Princess Knight (New York: Vertical, 2011), Part I, 9. 26. Shimura Takako, Wandering Son, vol. 6 (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2011), 168. 27. An earlier version of this part on Japanese Ophelias is published as “Ophelia and Her Magical Daughters” in Shakespeare and the Supernatural, eds. Victoria Bladen and Yan Brailowsky (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming in 2020). 28. Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 42.

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29. Magda Romanska, ‘Necr-Ophelia: Death, Femininity and the Making of Modern Aesthetics’, Performance Research, 10:3 (2005): 34. 30. Christy Desmet, “YouTube Shakespeare, Appropriation, and Rhetorics of Invention” in OuterSpeares: Shakespeare, Intermedia, and the Limits of Adaptation, ed. Daniel Fischlin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 60, 62–63. 31. https://deskgram.net/p/1431244877324143567_3173758463, Last accessed December 24, 2018. 32. http://hyperluminous-hypernova.tumblr.com/post/143661778484/william-t-spearsheadcanon, Last accessed December 28, 2018. 33. http://kuroshitsuji.wikia.com/wiki/Othello, Last accessed December 28, 2018. 34. Yukari Yoshihara, “Tacky Shakespeare in Japan” Multicultural Shakespeare 10.25 (Lodz: University of Lodz Press, 2013): 91, www.degruyter.com/view/j/mstap. 2013.10.issue-25/mstap-2013-0007/mstap-2013-0007.xml, Last accessed December 28, 2018. 35. Lanier, “Shakespearean Rhizomatics”, 29. 36. Iwabuchi Kōichi, Recentering Globalization Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 28. 37. Emma Hayley, “Manga Shakespeare” in Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives, ed. Toni Johnson-Woods (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), Kindle, No. 6175. 38. Hayley, No. 6155. 39. http://mangashakespeare.ning.com/prof iles/blogs/congratulations-to-ourmanga, Last accessed February 2, 2011. 40. Instances include, World Cosplay Summit 2008 (Singapore), www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ZHgIbLrlp2k&feature=relatedNatsumatsuri 2015 www.youtube.com/ watch?v=T5VSoFmN6RU (Lima, Peru) – a cosplay that abridges the original story. 41. www.famitsu.com/anime/news/2007/03/23/681,1174647699,68933,0,0.html, Last accessed November 29, 2018. 42. Christy Desmet, Natalie Loper, and Jim Casey, Shakespeare / Not Shakespeare (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 36. 43. James Casey, “HypeRomeo & Juliet: Postmodern Adaptation and Shakespeare” in Shakespeare / Not Shakespeare, eds. Desmet, Loper, and Casey, 195. 44. Ibid., 75. 45. Christy Desmet, “YouTube Shakespeare, Appropriation, and Rhetorics of Invention” in OuterSpeares: Shakespeare, Intermedia, and the Limits of Adaptation, ed. Daniel Fischlin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 60, 62–63. 46. Dani Cavallaro, Anime and the Art of Adaptation ( Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2010), 100. 47. www.youtube.com/watch?v=K49of LnQXE8, Last accessed December 28, 2018. 48. http://typemoon.wikia.com/wiki/Caster_of_Red, Last accessed December 24, 2018. 49. https://typemoon.wiki.cre.jp/wiki/%E3%82%A6%E3%82%A3%E3%83%AA%E 3%82%A2%E3%83%A0%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B7%E3%82%A7%E3%82%A4% E3%82%AF%E3%82%B9%E3%83%94%E3%82%A2, Last accessed December 28, 2018. 50. O’Neill, No.3122. 51. https://eyeforaneyepiece.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/zetsuen-no-tempest-animeas-shakespearean-theatre/. March 21, 2013, Last accessed November 30, 2018. 52. https://azuref lame.info/2007/06/30/romeo-x-juliet-parody-episode-1/. June 30, 2007, Last accessed December 1, 2018.

9 SHAKESPEARE ON THE INTERNET Global and South Asian Appropriations Thomas Kullmann

Introduction Shakespeare’s lines constitute a major, and global, internet presence. Not only do we come across a plethora of online Shakespeare commentaries, explanations and academic studies; but Shakespearean phrases are used for a multiplicity of purposes, including advertisements, newspaper headlines, titles of pop songs and names of restaurants. Lines like “To be or not to be”, “Frailty, thy name is woman”, “star-crossed lovers” and “Lord, what fools these mortals be” have become part of a linguistic code used worldwide. India and other South Asian countries can be identified as a major source of these online references to Shakespeare’s language. Quite often Shakespearean lines are used for journalistic purposes, telling stories and describing phenomena which clearly have a regional, culture-specific focus. Proceeding from digital culture theory as well as postcolonial studies this paper aims at conceptualising and categorising this phenomenon, and thus to examine the impact of the “information society”1 on the contemporary reception of Shakespeare. It will take a contrastive view of the Shakespearean references worldwide and those found on South Asian websites. In doing so, this chapter will also examine the question whether the prevalence of Shakespearean lines worldwide, and in South Asia in particular, can be considered an effect of “globalization”, that is as an instance of “compression of the world” and a “consciousness of the global whole”,2 an effect of the “network society” brought about by information technology.3 And if so, if it should be considered an instance of “McDonaldization” (Ritzer)4 or rather as indicative of a dialectic relationship between what is global and what is local.5 Furthermore, both the presence of Shakespeare online and the South Asian origin of many of these online references posit challenges to received

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assumptions about digital culture and the postcolonial condition. Digital culture has often been described as standing in opposition to traditional culture, allowing new forms of artistic expression to gain ground at the expense of canonised works of art. According to Richard Gere, Cybernetics was originally considered a tool of military planning and rationalising industrial manufacture 6 which then developed forms of cultural interaction which stand in opposition to established practices. Computers were considered central to forms of “Counter-culture”.7 Research tends to focus on phenomena like “Cyberpunk”,8 computer games,9 “New Media Art” including “digitextuality”10 and “cross-media experiences”11 and “Post-human Bodies”.12 Can the use of Shakespeare on the internet be considered an instance of “digi-culture”, or does it just constitute an extension of established practices of quoting Shakespeare in print media and other traditional forms of communication? With regard to South Asia we should also address the question whether the electronic presence of Shakespeare’s lines on South Asian websites differs in any way from that on websites based in other parts of the world. If there is a difference, this might be accounted for in two ways, which may be interrelated. On the one hand, the presence of Shakespeare might indicate a neocolonial British, or Western, cultural hegemony and/or the prevalence of Western cultural, or even economic, imperialism, which is often considered an adjunct to globalisation.13 However, while globalisation theorists often proceed from the notion of an “empire” ruled by American culture and values as a global phenomenon,14 we may ask the question if the presence and use of Shakespeare on South Indian websites may be accounted for by South Asia’s specific colonial past. A similar question can be raised with regard to the status of the English language on South Asian websites: While English has emerged as the main language of the internet, its specific position in South Asia may be due to its history as the language of instruction used during British colonial rule.15 On the other hand, the uses made of Shakespeare’s lines on South Asian websites might ref lect cultural issues specific to India, Pakistan and the other South Asian countries. With regard to India we may refer to Arjun Appadurai, who notes that India is “the world’s largest democracy” and “aspires to economic domination in Asia and the world”; its “massive globalising economy” and “deep cultural resources”, however, go along with “equally massive problems of poverty, inequality, and infrastructure”. “India’s achievements”, he concludes, “are not easy to disentangle from its unhappinesses”.16 Among India’s cultural resources, two areas may be of particular significance with regard to the presence of Shakespeare on the internet: its “longest continuous multicultural tradition in the world”17 and its eminently successful IT industry.18 Finally, we should look at the ideological and political implications of the presence of Shakespeare’s lines on the internet, both worldwide and on South Asian websites. Is the presence of Shakespeare a sign of the persistence of British, or Western supremacy, or may we assume that Shakespeare’s language has

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undergone a process of emancipation from its origins in Renaissance Europe and could be considered an intellectual resource available worldwide, and does it play a specific role in South Asian countries? Has Shakespeare become a meaningless linguistic commodity, or can his work be considered a kind of cultural capital suited to cultural exchange and trans-cultural communication?19

Global Statistics I should like to examine the phenomenon of Shakespeare’s worldwide and South Asian internet presence by examining the results of google researches of some well-known Shakespearean collocations, first by looking at examples taken from the first 100 google hits, and, in a second step, focus on material found in South Asian websites. With Hamlet’s soliloquy starting “To be or not to be” (3.1.55–89), the mere number of google hits is impressive. The phrase “to be or not to be” alone scores 25,600,000 hits; “slings and arrows”, 937,000; “outrageous fortune”, 953,000; “take arms against a sea of troubles”, 106,000. “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all” comes to 67,600 hits; “the native hue of resolution”, 30,900; “the pale cast of thought”, 46,100, and “lose the name of action”, 1,020,000.20 Of each of these phrases, I then proceeded to examine the first one hundred hits appearing on my screen, leaving out those which directly refer to the fields of Shakespeare explanation, Shakespeare scholarship and Shakespeare performance. My aim was to learn about the contexts in which these Shakespearean phrases appear and to determine their respective semantic functions. I begin with the phrase “To be or not to be”: A major group of hits belongs to the fields of journalism and scientific research. Authors of online articles ask the question if a certain political or social development, or a new form of diagnosis or therapy, is “to be or not to be”. On Twitter, Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, entitles his proposal for a continuation of the membership of the United Kingdom in the European Union: “To be or not to be together, that is the question” (www.consilium.europa.eu); an online forum on digital photography contains an article on “To be or not to be a street photographer” (http://digital-photography-school.com). A website devoted to renewable energy discusses the policy for the US Department of Energy: “The US DOE: To Be or Not to Be in Renewable Energy” (www. renewableenergyworld.com). Two German-language articles, on nutrition and on economics, are given English titles: “Low Carb – to be or not to be”, discussing whether a reduction of carbohydrates makes sense (www.bdr-ausbildung. de); and “To be or not to be a Keynesian – ist das eine Frage [is that a question]?”, discussing the pros and cons of state intervention in current economic crises (www.rote-ruhr-uni.com). Another online journal refers to the politics of the orthodox churches: “The Future Pan-Orthodox Council: to be or not to be?” (www.firstthings.com). A medical journal contains an article, written

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in English by two German researchers, on the applications of “vectors” in gene therapy: “Adeno-associated Vector Toxicity – To Be or Not to Be?” (www. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov), while in another, a statistical procedure is recommended: “To Be or Not to Be: Bayesian Correction for Misclassification of Self-reported Sexual Behaviors Among Men Who Have Sex with Men” (www.ncbi.nlm.nih. gov). The purpose of the Shakespearean phrase in all of these articles is obvious: A certain problem or question is presented as a binary opposition of two alternatives, opposed to one another, as are life and death. Thus complex issues such as the rivalries of the orthodox churches, the side effects of new therapies and the unreliability of questionnaires about sexual behaviour can be rendered more interesting and accessible. At the same time the reference to a literary text obviously adds a note of irony – indicating that the reduction of the issue to a question of binary opposites may in fact be a simplification. Apart from journalism, the phrase “To be or not to be” occurs as the title of pop songs, or collections of pop songs, such as a record by Neal Howard, released in 1988, a song also called “The Hitler Rap” by Mel Brooks, and a German language René Weller Rap which obviously imitates the Brooks rap. “To be or not to be” is the title of an interactive computer game, as well as the name of a café in Berlin, and a restaurant in Sarajevo. It belongs to the title of a story of time-travelling to Shakespeare’s time, offered by an educational platform, and predictably, is used by the Danish Visit North Seal and Tourist Board, advertising Elsinore Castle. Most of the hits of “Slings and Arrows” refer to a Canadian TV series about a family of actors, running from 2003 to 2006; which obviously inspired a New Zealand TV series entitled “Outrageous Fortune”, running from 2005 to 2010 (both, e.g., www.imdb.com). “Slings and Arrows” also features as the title of a “Star Trek” series, the episodes of which were also given titles taken from, or inspired by, Hamlet’s soliloquy: “A Sea of Troubles”, “The Oppressor’s Wrong”, “The Insolence of Office”, “The Sleep of Death”, “A Weary Life” and “Enterprises of High Pitch and Moment”. It is also the name of a group of pop musicians, and of several computer games available online. Again, however, a cluster of google hits refers to the headlines of journalistic articles. Both The Economist and The Financial Times made use of the phrase to refer to British policies in connection with the Brexit referendum (www. economist.com and www.ft.com); the literary and archaic phrase obviously emphasises the Prime Minister’s inability to deal with unexpected obstacles encountered in his campaign to keep Britain in the European Union. Other articles are concerned with economics: with the mixed fortunes of an international business company dealing in Asian commodities, or with “CRM” (customer relationship management) (www.researchgate.net). Other articles discuss midlife crises, exogenous depressions, incivility in the workplace and the story of two women whose friendship helped them to survive “mad men’s slings and arrows” (www.thedailybeast.com). Other articles are about the treatment of

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bed-ridden, elderly ladies in a New Zealand institution, the system of “meritocracy” and your legal chances of claiming a lottery win on the basis of a wrongly dated ticket in Alberta, Canada (www.albertalawreview.com). Two articles stand out as they do not refer to the phrase’s metaphorical but to its literal meaning: “Slings and Arrows: Why Birders Love to Hate Blue Jays” (www.audubon.org) and “Can Slings and Arrows Lead to an Outrageous Fortune?” about a campaign to legalise the use of the “sling bow” for the purpose of hunting in several US states (www.wsj.com). The line of “To take arms against a sea of troubles” also features in several journalistic articles, for example about cuts in British schools, about Cyber insecurity, about the story behind a crusading San Francisco homeowner, and a campaign against the building of a dam in the Sangamon River Valley in Illinois (www.lib.niu.edu). It is also quoted in articles on outsourcing “contact centre solutions” in Canadian businesses (http://canadadirect.ca) and on the “Unconscious Bias” which may favour male over female applicants to leading positions in business (www.humanfacets.com). The phrase is used as the title of film reviews of two films, Robert Redford’s “All is Lost”, and “Cartel Land” on Mexican drug trading. It is also the title of a visual work of art produced by K. J. Holmes, and quoted as the motto of Ola Oskarsson, founder and board member of MMT, a Swedish company of marine surveyors (www.mmt.se). Apart from the Star Trek episode mentioned before it is the title of a Flaming Carrots comic. In at least three of the instances mentioned, the use of the image may have been motivated by the literal meaning of sea, in what I think is certainly a characteristic Shakespearean usage. One of the most salient features of this list is the wide variety of contexts in which the Hamlet phrases appear. We are by no means limited to the fields of arts and literature. Many of the hits concern websites devoted to specialised areas, such as economics, medicine, law and computing. In the areas of artistic and literary production, most of the hits indicate websites devoted to popular culture: TV, film series, comics and most persistently, pop songs. While there are also some ‘serious’ modern novels which borrow titles from Hamlet’s speech, we can assume that with pop songs and comics most of the recipients are not expected to be aware of where the respective title comes from. The function of the title seems to lie in its original out-of-the way ring. The poetic, and occasionally archaic, quality of most of these collocations does not seem to be an obstacle to their use in contemporary text production. On the contrary: It appears to be precisely this poetic sound which informs the use of these phrases which are obviously placed to draw the reader’s attention to central aspects of an issue discussed. Through being old-fashioned and out of tune with contemporary diction Shakespeare’s phrases have acquired layers of meaning which had never been present in the original text of Hamlet. The use of images is a case in point. While “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” denoting the unpredictability of life may have been a natural image

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to Elizabethan audiences, “slings and arrows” have nowadays lost their seat in contemporary life; and as a metaphor, they are clearly exceptional. Concerning “outrageous fortune”, most of the examples found involve a pun on the polysemy of fortune in the senses of destiny, and ‘huge amount of money’. Other phrases have become favourites with authors writing in a certain field: “Perchance to dream” is time and again invoked to introduce medical articles on the issue of dreaming; and “the law’s delay” regularly introduces articles and discussions of the length of juridical procedure. In an article on the administration of law in India we read: “Forget the proud man’s contumely and the pangs of despised love. In India, the law’s delay ranks first among the reasons listed by Shakespeare’s Hamlet for finding life unbearable” (www.ft.com). While in this case the phrase means exactly what Hamlet also intends, the phrase – in the United States – has also served to indicate the length of parliamentary procedures before a certain bill is passed. We may also notice that a significant number of hits indicate websites and articles which were obviously established and written by people whose native language is not English. Sometimes these English phrases even crop up on websites written in languages other than English. We can certainly account for this phenomenon by supposing that the process of acquiring English undergone by many non-native authors obviously included some Shakespeare, and that Shakespearean phrases have become part of the limited inventory of lexical items available to non-native users of English. Concerning the reception of Shakespeare’s lines I should like to argue that two types can be identified: In one case it is the archaic sound which matters; the origin of the respective phrase need not be known. In other cases the context is referred to and quoted, and the authors presuppose a certain familiarity with Shakespeare’s works in their participants. This also applies to most instances of the use of other Shakespearean phrases. A case in point is “Frailty, thy name is woman!” (Hamlet, 1.2.146) uttered by Hamlet to mark his frustration with his mother’s remarriage. There are 87,100 google hits. Some of them refer to cups, bracelets, and other products with this inscription; on some postcards the quotations appears in an ironic and sometimes satirical context. On one card, for example, “Frailty, thy name is woman” appears in big print, while the small print at the bottom adds: “. . . come over here and say that sunshine, and I’ll punch your lights out!” (http:// purdiegallery.com). Most often, however, the phrase is quoted in articles which discuss the relative position of men and women in certain areas of life and society. An article published in a medical online journal, entitled “Frailty, the name is woman” discusses the relative risks of men and women suffering from diabetes of developing a fatal coronary heart disease (www.bmj.com). The phrase also occurs as the title of a feminist article on depictions of female madness in literature (http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu) and in a discussion of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting “Lady Lilith” (www.victorianweb.org).

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Other articles and blog entries are concerned with gender prejudices, sexual abuse and feminism. The phrase is the heading of an article on Tina Packer, the creator of a show called “Women of Will”, featuring Shakespeare’s women. A website entitled “Africa on the Blog” prefixes the quotation to an article on fraudulent male ‘healers’ who trick women into complying with sexual activities (www.africaontheblog.com). An article in the online journal of a worldwide chain of women’s gyms is prefixed “Frailty, Thy Name Is Woman?”, with a question mark. An article in the SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) online journal “The SHRM Blog” (https://blog.shrm.org), also prefixed “Frailty, thy name is woman” deals with unconscious sexism in the workplace, arguing that sometimes a male manager’s “heightened sensitivity takes a dangerous turn”, for example when after using the f-word he apologises to the only woman present at a meeting, implicitly suggesting “that she was a fragile creature who needed to be rescued and protected from their vulgar mouths”. In each of these cases, the authors obviously presuppose a familiarity with the Shakespearean original, which is sometimes quoted together with its immediate context. Hamlet’s pronouncement becomes an anchor used to discuss gender equality and inequality. Hamlet’s phrase appears to be used for its provocative potential. Readers are meant to be roused into violently denying Hamlet’s proposition, or to be involved in an argumentation leading up to an acknowledgement that women, alas, are still weak, and liable to become victims of male aggression. The most popular one of conscious quotations from Shakespeare is probably the phrase of the “star-crossed lovers”. There are 2,980,000 google hits. As usual, the phrase has been used in the arts, by musicians; most famously in a piano piece composed by Duke Ellington. There is also the usual merchandising. The website www.tobi.com offers a “Star-Crossed Lovers swing dress”. There are several computer games called “Star-Crossed Lovers” (e.g. http:// legendofmana.info). Usually, however, the phrase refers, as in Romeo and Juliet, to difficult or impossible love affairs. An online journal discusses “The Plight of Syria’s Star-Crossed Lovers” referring to couples living on opposite sides of the various military fronts (www.newsdeeply.com). By contrast, the problems of the star-crossed lovers focused on by the British Guardian newspaper appear slightly pathetic: In an article entitled “Star-crossed lovers? Meet the couples sleeping with the (political) enemy” Sarah Marsh discusses relationships between two people one of whom votes Tory and the other one Labour (www.theguardian.com). The phrase is also used to provide a title to a video featuring a kitten and a young dog: “Classic tale of star-crossed lovers plays out in pet store” (http://mashable.com), which shows a kitten breaking out of her cage to enter that of an excited puppy. The two animals end up sniffing and, quite obviously, kissing one another. Just as to Shakespeare himself, the plight of “star-crossed lovers” can become a matter of deep interest to onlookers, who enjoy sympathising with the distressed

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lovers from an outside point of view. An Australian TV company which advertises a show entitled “Star-Crossed Lovers”, inviting “couples that are in diverse, multicultural or progressive relationships that believe against all odds they are destined for one another”, certainly gets close to the original conf lict of Shakespeare’s tragedy (https://go.mycastingnet.com, cf. www.smh.com.au). As an article of consumption, star-crossed lovers can of course stimulate the imagination and become a part of the personal development of an individual, as recorded in an autobiographical text by Kimberley Gordon, who recalls her memories of Baz Luhrmann’s film version of Romeo and Juliet (1996), starring Leonardo di Caprio. With her friends she shared “the obsession, the Star Crossed Lovers haze . . . the dream of Leo” (www.wedreamoficecream.com). The appeal of the phrase is certainly due to its unique combination of two metaphorical fields. While “crossing” is a common image indicating obstacles on a road or pathway, its connection to tragedy is certainly enhanced by an implicit reference to the Christian Cross as a symbol of suffering. The stars referred to in Shakespeare’s phrase can be interpreted as a metonymy of fate, that fate which astrologers believe they can find in stellar constellations. The image, however, is particularly fascinating because of its reference to the universe, which by itself can stand for two things: the love of Romeo and Juliet is perceived as being as big as the universe, and the obstacles in this “course of true love” are represented by the distance between the earth and the stars. A humorous application of the metaphorical phrase to its literal origin is present in an article on the astronomic phenomenon of two stars circling and touching one another: “Star-Crossed Lovers? Two Suns Caught Smooching” (www.pinterest.de). As a final example, I should like to refer to the internet appearances of Puck’s word in The Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Lord, what fools these mortals be” (3.2.115). The phrase scores 33,900 google hits. You get the usual hits in the areas of pop song and merchandise, including T-shirts and coffee mugs as well as smartphone and tablet cases; there is a Star Trek Comic (http://curtdanhauser. com) entitled “What Fools These Mortals Be” and at least one computer game, advertised as “a text adventure parody of NetHack” (http://nethack.wikia.com). In most cases, however, the phrase is used to sum up the respective author’s attitude with regard to his fellow humans, with human language, practices and aspirations. In a satirical blog entitled “Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be”, the journalist Keith Telly Topping pokes fun at the language of news about the cast of a new series of Doctor Who ( http://keithtopping.blogspot.de). The same title is prefixed to a contribution by Joanna Robinson on Manic Pixie Dream Girls (www.pajiba.com). More serious issues are discussed in the review of a book on the civil war in Syria: “Lord, what fools these mortals be: Diana Darke – Inside Syria” (https://wayswithwordsfestivals.wordpress.com) and in a blog by “Yusuf Toropov, Wordsmith” showing Donald Trump with his right arm stretched out, which obviously reminded the blogger of fascism (http:// yusuftoporov.com).

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While the variety of contexts and form of use is impressive,21 we can hardly understand these quotations as indicating the prevalence of a “counter-culture”. On the contrary: These quotations may appear as a continuation and proliferation of a long-standing practice. From the late eighteenth century onwards, Shakespearean quotations have been a staple practice of the educated discourse of polite society in England and well as America and the colonies. Many of the examples quoted seem to follow the same lines: Shakespeare is being quoted to show off the writers’ education and to establish a companionship with the reader who shares in the cultural competence provided by an acquaintance with Shakespeare. While a few of the quotations appear in the context of digital experiments, the majority of them certainly serves similar purposes as found in the print media of at least two centuries. As Edmund Bertram remarks in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814), Shakespeare’s “celebrated passages are quoted by everybody; they are in half the books we open, and we all talk Shakespeare, use his similes, and describe with his descriptions”.22 As Julie Maxwell and Kate Rumbold point out, Shakespeare has since come to be quoted “in the classroom as well as the courtroom; in poetry and in parliamentary discourse; in political propaganda, prisoner-of-war notebooks, advertisements, internet memes and Oulipian experiments”.23 And as Douglas Lanier notes, “Shakespeare is everywhere in popular culture. Movies, television, radio, pulp fiction, musicals, pop music, children’s books, advertisements, comic books, toys, computer games, pornography: nearly every imaginable category of contemporary pop culture features examples of Shakespearean allusion or adaptation”.24 The field of Shakespearean quotation provides a prime instance of the interaction of the internet with “old media” practices.25 A particular instance of this interaction is advertising. As Graham Holderness notes, “Shakespearean quotation” has been “freely available both to the advertising industry, and to the people who read its texts and consume the products it promotes” for a long time.26 The “ludic irreverence of. . . postmodern pastiches” found in advertisements which allude to Shakespeare, he contends, “is actually nothing new”.27 The main difference, however, between Shakespearean discourses on the internet and in the print-media of the pre-digital ages is that the practice of Shakespearean quotation has now become a worldwide phenomenon, which has certainly become detached from its national origins. As the various instances of Shakespearean quotation have little in common they cannot be considered as evidence of a “transnational network” or even as an example of “McDonaldization”. Neither can the phenomenon discussed be considered as indicative of an “oligopolistic network model” which, as Hardt and Negri suspect, may inform the new “global information infrastructure”.28 The only definite link of all of these Shakespearean quotations seems to be the English language. With English as the lingua franca of the internet, Shakespearean quotations seem to function as part of the repertoire of language tools available to educated users worldwide. As the ‘education’ required involves a certain

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familiarity with Shakespeare’s lines, however, it obviously goes beyond a basic knowledge of the language as a lingua franca. It could therefore be argued that Shakespeare’s worldwide presence testifies to a certain degree of Anglophone cultural dominance.

South Asian Appropriations With regard to South Asia, the question to what extent Shakespeare’s internet presence is informed by globalisation as an “accelerated and newer version of imperialism”,29 is inextricably connected to the history of the South Asian countries: We may wonder if we encounter the same effects of globalisation, fostered by Information and Communication Technologies, as elsewhere, or if the prevalence of Shakespeare on South Asian websites is due to a tradition of appropriations of Shakespeare which goes back to the times of the British Raj30 and may thus be considered an aspect of a postcolonial condition specific to South Asian countries. The works of Shakespeare certainly formed part of the school curricula instituted by the British rulers, and the teaching of Shakespeare certainly bore fruit. From the nineteenth century onwards, many sources inform as about the fascination exercised by the British playwright on Indian readers. In her book The Web of Indian Life (1904), American-born Sister Nivedita (Margaret E. Noble) records that during her first stay at Calcutta she found herself in “a world in which men in loin-cloths, seated on door-sills in dusty lanes, said things about Shakespeare and Shelley that some of us would go far to hear”.31 Vikram Seth’s novel A Suitable Boy (1993), the plot of which is set in 1951 and 1952, features a performance of Twelfth Night, seen by middle-aged Rupa Mehra: When Olivia, in love with Viola, said: Fate, show thy force. Ourselves we do not owe: What is decreed must be; and be this so!’ – Mrs Rupa Mehra nodded her head sadly as she thought philosophically of much that had happened in her own life. How true, she thought, conferring honorary Indian citizenship to Shakespeare.32 While we may argue on whether this apparent love for Shakespeare is part of a colonial discourse imposed upon India or the result of an educated choice made by Indians who found Shakespeare congenial to their own cultural formation it is obvious that Shakespeare played a significant role in Indian discourses even before the advent of the internet. When examining South Asian websites with regard to the presence of Shakespearean lines we should therefore ask if they are indicative of tendencies which differ from those found in websites based in other parts of the world. If

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we come across South Asian specificities we may wonder if they testify to an ongoing tradition originating in colonial times, or if they respond to cultural characteristics specific to South Indian countries and societies. In South Asian countries, the phrase “Frailty, thy name is woman” appears to be a catchword, often used in the context of discussion of the social situation of women. The google search entry “ ‘Frailty, thy name is woman’ India” scores 20,000 hits. The journalist Abha Khetarpal refers to “the image of woman embedded in our Indian psyche” as “that of a weakling who has always been suppressed, oppressed and exploited by the male dominant society” (http:// abhakhetarpal.in). Khetarpal opposes this image by stating that modern Indian women “are getting more and more into extramarital affairs”. Another Indian webpage, that of the newspaper The Hindu, prefixes an article about a women’s meeting with the words: “Frailty, thy name is not woman” (www.thehindu. com). The same heading was chosen by the Pakistani journal “The Nation” ( http://nation.com.pk), reporting on the signing of a “CEO Statement of Support for the Women’s Empowerment Principles” by 17 chief executive officers. What we should note here is that the contexts in which the Shakespearean phrase appears specifically refer to India or Pakistan. The online journalists use Hamlet’s pronouncement to draw attention to the situation or practices of women living in a South Asian country. Another Shakespearean phrase which obviously resonates strongly in South Asian contexts is that of Romeo and Juliet’s “star-crossed lovers”. The google search “’Star-crossed lovers’ India” provides 1,510,000 results. In a news posting, Manisha Pande refers to a case where a wife was presumably murdered by her relatives because they objected to her marriage. It is entitled “Star-Crossed Lovers: India Needs a Law to End Honour Crimes” (www.newslaundry.com). Another instance of star-crossed lovers is provided by a couple who, as reported by The Times of India, committed suicide together by jumping in front of a railway train. Their love did not have a chance as the woman was married already to somebody else (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com). The use of the Shakespearean phrase obviously indicates a great deal of sympathy with the lovers who are debarred from happiness by social traditions, traditions which are to some extent specific to India. That the sympathy accorded to star-crossed lovers is also a traditional part of Indian culture is shown in a contribution by Supriya Savkoor to a website dedicated to book reviews, http://noveladventurers.blogspot.com, entitled “The Original Star-Crossed Lovers”. As Savkoor points out: “Long before Romeo and Juliet, there was Laila and Majnu, the ultimate star-crossed lovers who generations of Middle Eastern, Asian, and African cultures celebrated through poetry, plays, art, and later film”. In the epic rendering by Nizami Ganjavi the story is still considered in India “the penultimate story of star-crossed lovers”. The Shakespearean phrase is used to draw attention to a literary tradition which is located in greater proximity; the implied reader who may have considered Shakespeare’s Romeo

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and Juliet the ultimate expression of a love relationship which cannot find fulfilment, is invited to cast off his Eurocentric lookout and focus on a cultural tradition which is closer home. The romantic associations of the phrase may have induced a photographer to entitle his collections of landscape photographs from the Naga Hills “The Secret Path of the Star-Crossed Lovers” (www.indiamike.com). This association may also extend to Europe, as in an article in The Hindustan Times about Verona, the “City of star-crossed lovers” (www.hindustantimes.com). The latter example can be considered a reversal of colonial discourse: While European colonists and administrators used to construct Indian cultures as an “Oriental Other”,33 the Italian city has now become the exotic goal of Indian tourists. Readers of the Hindustan Times are taken to vestiges of the exotic world described in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. As a final example I should like to refer to two instances of the phrase: “Lord, what fools these mortals be” on Indian websites (“’Lord, what fools these mortals be’ India” produces 37,500 google hits). As in websites produced in other parts of the world, Indian authors use this phrase to indicate the craziness of humanity. The quotation is prefixed, for example, to an article on “Global Warming, Climate Change, Air Pollution and Allergic Asthma” ( http://medind.nic.in). While the authors may have had the atmospheric conditions of India in mind, the issue of global warming is obviously a general, global one. In another article the phrase is even used to denounce practices which can be called “neocolonial”: T. Sher Singh makes use of it to conclude an article on “Glass Beads, Trinkets & Indians”. in which he argues that the aims and methods of colonialism have not changed till the present day: “[‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’ My apologies to William Shakespeare.]” (http:// sikhchic.com). Singh obviously feels the need to apologise to Shakespeare (albeit playfully) because he uses his phrase to combat the effects of a culture of which Shakespeare himself was a part. This example, however, rather testifies to a universal applicability of Shakespearean quotation, as referring to aspects of human nature which have been perceived similarly by poets and writers of divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds. It seems to me obvious that these Shakespearean references on Indian websites cannot possibly be explained as products of globalisation, least of all as a case of “McDonaldization”, that is a uniformity induced by American cultural domination. Neither can they be considered as instances of cosmopolitanism 34 or deracination. They rather point to a surprising applicability of some of the Shakespearean phrases to cultural issues particularly relevant to contemporary South Asia, issues which include the roles of women in society and the conf licts between sexual love and society’s rules and expectations with regard to marriage.35 While Shakespearean references on websites in other countries tend to be unrelated to Shakespeare’s contexts (as in the majority of the instances of the use of “to be or not to be”) and can often be considered instances of

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postmodern pastiche36 or of “textual poaching”,37 references found on South Asian websites often touch upon issues comparable to those negotiated in Shakespeare’s plays, and thus testify to a comparatively intimate knowledge of the English dramatist. I would like to suggest that these South Asian specificities may be due to the following reasons: • • •

•

the cultural tradition, common to South Asia and Europe, of discussing unresolved societal issues in cultural artefacts, such as fiction and drama, a high degree of cultural literacy, that is an awareness of the significance of literary classics, a special relationship with the English language (which certainly goes back to colonial practices) in the context of which studying English is not just purpose-oriented (as in other countries in which languages other than English are spoken) but also connected to studying literary texts, including Shakespeare, a high degree of familiarity with electronic media.

The first two points indicate that the references to Shakespeare clearly perpetuate practices current in print media and conversation, and seem to belong to the set of linguistic tools which comes with an ‘educated’ use of the English language. The use of Shakespeare’s lines on the internet does not differ from that in novels and newspaper articles. The third point is certainly related to the postcolonial condition of the South Asian countries. From having been the medium of colonial and imperialist domination, however, the English language as used by South Asians has certainly developed into cultural capital which can be used for negotiating internal concerns as well as for purposes of self-assertion with respect to other cultures.38 In this respect Shakespeare could be compared with the game of cricket. As has often been pointed out,39 this game belongs to the colonial legacy but has become an essential aspect of present-day South Asian identity. To some extent, I would like to suggest, the same can be said with regard to Shakespeare. Finally the use of “cybercultural technologies” can definitely be considered “empowering” in south Asian contexts. Rather than ‘f lattening’ cultural differences, they can be used to further the “rise of a global civil society”,40 a society in which, as Arjun Appadurai notes, “culture becomes less what Pierre Bourdieu would have called a habitus .  .  . and more an arena for conscious choice, justification, and representation”.41 Given the cultural traditions of South Asian countries, and their position in the field of IT technologies,42 they will certainly play a significant role in creating this society, in a world whose “global cultural economy .  .  . cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing centre-periphery models”.43 An educated knowledge of English and of the cultural practices which go along with this knowledge, like Shakespearean

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quotation, and appropriation, will certainly continue to offer ways and means of communicating and negotiating cultural and political positions.

Notes 1. Pramod K. Nayar, An Introduction to New Media and Cybercultures (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 6. 2. Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (London: Sage, 1992), 8. 3. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); William I. Robinson, “Theories of Globalization” in The Blackwell Companion to Globalization, ed. George Ritzer (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 125–43, 132. 4. Cf. e.g. George Ritzer, “An Introduction to McDonaldization” in McDonaldization: The Reader, ed. George Ritzer (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2002), 7–24, and Nayar, New Media, 6. 5. Cf. e.g. Roland Robertson and Kathleen E. White, “What Is Globalization?” in The Blackwell Companion to Globalization, ed. George Ritzer (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 54–66, 62–63. Cf. also Mike Featherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (London: Sage, 1995), esp. 1–14, and Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Misnnesota Press, 1996), esp. 27–47. 6. Charlie Gere, Digital Culture (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), 69–70. 7. Ibid., 117–49. 8. Nayar, New Media, 36–42. 9. Ibid., 42–50, Vincent Miller, Understanding Digital Culture (London: Sage, 2011), 39–45. 10. Nayar, New Media, 50–53. 11. Miller, Understanding Digital Culture, 82–83. 12. Nayar, New Media, 65–80; Miller, Understanding Digital Culture, 208–33. 13. Cf. also Pramod Nayar, who states that globalization is characterized among other things by “an increased presence of Western consumer products and cultural artefacts”, New Media, 6–7. 14. Cf. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), e.g. xiii–xvi. 15. Cf. e. g. Salikoko S. Mufwene, “Globalization, Global English, and World English(es): Myths and Facts” in The Handbook of Language and Globalization, ed. Nicholas Coupland (Chichester: Wiley-Balckwell, 2010), web, Last accessed July 22, 2019. 16. Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction” in India’s World: The Politics of Creativity in a Globalized Society, eds. Arjun Appadurai and Arien Mack (New Delhi: Rupa, 2012), vii–xv, viii–ix, xiv. 17. Sheldon Pollock, “Crisis in the Classics” in India’s World: The Politics of Creativity in a Globalized Society, eds. Appadurai and Mack, 20–46, 20. 18. Cf. e.g. Ajit Balakrishnan, “India’s IT Industry: The End of the Beginning” in India’s World: The Politics of Creativity in a Globalized Society, eds. Appadurai and Mack, 1–19. 19. On Shakespeare’s “cultural capital” cf. Siobhan Keenan and Dominic Shellard, eds. Shakespeare’s Cultural Capital: His Economic Influence from the Sixteenth to the TwentyFirst Centuries (London: Palgrave, 2016). 20. Most of the research was undertaken in 2016. This explains why most of the examples date from 2015 and 2016. All of the website quotations and addresses, however, were updated on October 31, 2018. All citations from Hamlet are from the Arden edition, ed. Harold Jenkins (London: Methuen, 1982).

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21. In view of this variety, it is difficult to go along with Gary Taylor’s assessment that “Video, CD-ROM, and the Internet are not really expanding the Shakespearean domain; they just provide an alternative way to satisfy the existing Bard market”; “Afterword: The Incredibly Shrinking Bard” in Shakespeare and Appropriation, eds. Christy Desmet and Robert Sawyer (London: Routledge, 1999), 197–205, 198. 22. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ed. Tony Tanner (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), 335; on this passage cf. Julie Maxwell and Kate Rumbold, eds., Shakespeare and Quotation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 1. 23. Maxwell and Rumbold, Shakespeare and Quotation, 1, cf. 210–11. 24. Douglas Lanier, Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3. 25. Cf. Miller, Understanding Digital Culture, 28. 26. Graham Holderness, “‘Beauty Too Rich for Use’? Shakespeare and Advertising” in Shakespeare and Quotation, eds. Julie Maxwell and Kate Rumbold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 260–74, 274. 27. Ibid., cf. Lanier, Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture, 52. 28. Hardt and Negri, Empire, 298–300. 29. Pramod K. Nayar, Postcolonialism: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum, 2010), Postcolonialism 193 and 205–06. 30. On an example of a ‘colonial’ Shakespeare production on an Indian stage, see Sudipto Chatterjee and Jyotsna G. Singh, “Moor or Less? The Surveillance of Othello, Calcutta 1848” in Shakespeare and Appropriation, eds. Christy Desmet and Robert Sawyer (London: Routledge, 1999), 65–82. 31. The Sister Nivedita (Margaret E. Noble), The Web of Indian Life (London: Heinemann, 1904), 1–2. 32. Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy (London: Phoenix, 1994), 1124. 33. There is certainly no need to explicitly refer to Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978). 34. Cf. e.g. Nayar, Postcolonialism, 163–90. 35. Ibid., 206. 36. See, e.g. Lanier, Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture, 17–18. 37. Ibid., 52. 38. Cf. K. Narayana Chandran, “On English from India: Prepositions to PostPositions” in Postcolonial Studies: An Anthology, ed. Pramod K. Nayar (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), 225–38. 39. See, e.g., Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 89–113, Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (London: Penguin, 2017), 207–11. 40. Nayar, Postcolonialism, 210. 41. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 44. 42. Cf. Rohit Chopra, “Global Primordialities: Virtual Identity Politics in Online Hindutva and Online Dalit Discourse” in Postcolonial Studies: An Anthology, ed. Pramod K. Nayar (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), 587–601, 588–91. 43. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 32.

10 THE PERFORMANCE ARCHIVE AND THE DIGITAL CONSTRUCTION OF ASIAN SHAKESPEARE Judy Celine Ick

Somewhere between 2008 and 2013, Asian Shakespeare as an academic field of study was born. That bold statement naturally requires refinement. Of course, Shakespeare in print, performance, translation and adaptation has centuries of history in many parts of Asia. Scholars have written about the connections between Shakespeare in the East and Shakespeare in the West long before 2008.1 Books on national Shakespeares within Asia had been published earlier as well.2 Taken up by the rising tide of ‘Global Shakespeare’ as a field of study in the twentyfirst century, many scholars wrote important pioneering essays on Shakespeare from different locations in Asia.3 Even as they paved the way for the eventual emergence of Asian Shakespeare, these efforts were largely independent of each other and sought to shed light on Shakespeare within specific Asian locales, their vision largely trained on the dynamics between the local and the global or between the authentic Shakespeare and its local adaptation. Asian Shakespeare – where Asia emerges as a unified, if diverse, location beyond national borders; where other Asian locations begin to serve as context for studying Shakespearean texts; where connections and comparisons among and between Shakespeare from more than a single location in Asia – only comes to the fore in the five-year period between 2008 and 2013. One can look to conventional markers of the emergence of a field of study – conference panels and seminars, scholarly anthologies, academic organisations – and locate milestones within this period. Panels on Asian Shakespeare begin to appear in large academic conferences and smaller conferences within the region. Scholarly anthologies on Asian Shakespeare by predominantly Asian scholars such as Trivedi and Minami’s Replaying Shakespeare in Asia (2010) and Kennedy and Yong’s Shakespeare in Asia: Contemporary Performance (2010) are

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published during this period as well.4 In 2011, the Asian Theatre Journal devotes a special issue to Shakespeare in Asia. By 2013, the Asian Shakespeare Association (ASA) is established in Manila and the following year its inaugural conference was held in Taiwan. Over two hundred scholars from all over Asia and the world gathered together to present papers and discuss nothing but Shakespeare in Asia. Truly, at this point, Asian Shakespeare had arrived. The deep entanglement between Asian Shakespeare within the larger rubric of Global Shakespeare cannot be overstated. The rise of Global Shakespeare as a field was in many ways an enabling condition for Asian Shakespeare itself to come to the fore. Looking to the establishment of the ASA as an example offers concrete proof of this. Many of the ASA’s founding members came in contact with each other at various Shakespeare conferences outside of Asia where they often spoke about Shakespeare in their national cultures in conferences that gave increasing focus on non-Anglophone Shakespeares. Recognising affinities even as they marvelled at the incongruity of finding Asian Shakespeare outside Asia only strengthened their resolve to institutionalise Asian Shakespeare by establishing an academic association dedicated to Asian Shakespeare based in Asia. The history of Asian Shakespeare and Global Shakespeare are literally intertwined in this instance. In an epitome of globalisation, the ASA’s initial executive board meeting took place on the sidelines of a conference in Ferrara, Italy in 2013. Global Shakespeare also offered some fresh, broader paradigms for understanding Shakespeare in Asia. For instance, whereas Indian Shakespeare had received some critical attention largely through the efforts of postcolonial scholars, the field of Postcolonial Shakespeare could not comfortably accommodate other Asian locations such as China and Japan and their rich Shakespearean histories. Global and Asian Shakespeares, on the other hand, allowed for more inclusive configurations that admitted wider conversations between countries in the region. Global Shakespeare also provided the possibility of studying Shakespeare and, more importantly, theorising about Shakespeare in Asian locales outside the frames of Shakespeare’s universality. Global Shakespeare reverses the conventional idea of a universal Shakespeare by resisting the essentialist and reductive tendency that seeks, even insists upon, familiarity – reducing Shakespeare to a set of values, emotions, experiences purportedly held in common by humanity. No matter the place, a universal idea of Shakespeare maintains, Shakespeare remains fundamentally the same. Global Shakespeare, instead, celebrates plurality even as it recognises a connection (however f limsy) with Shakespeare as source or inf luence. Where a universal idea of Shakespeare venerated an unchanging Shakespeare, Global Shakespeare is obsessed with how Shakespeare changes once he travels around the world. Shifting locations and contexts gave the world a shape-shifting Shakespeare whose vitality now rests on mutability. Asian Shakespeare, in turn, provides abundant proof of both distance – of Shakespeare’s reach up to literally the opposite side of the globe – and f lexibility – of Shakespeare in heretofore unimaginable and

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disparate forms. In a manner of speaking, Asian Shakespeare provided Global Shakespeare with ample ocular proof. The rise of Asian Shakespeare was also greatly enabled by a more recent type of scholarship that rendered Shakespearean performances from Asia visible to the rest of the world. The same five-year period saw the development of significant Digital Humanities projects that served to establish Asian Shakespeare as a field of study. In 2008, the Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive or A|S|I|A ( http://a-s-i-a-web.org) – a collaborative, multilingual, online database of Shakespearean performances from East and Southeast Asia directed by Yong Li Lan of the National University of Singapore together with scholars from Korea and Japan – was launched. In 2009, Shakespeare Performance in Asia ( http://web. mit.edu/shakespeare/asia/) – a collection of video clips, photos, relevant texts on Asian Shakespeare put together by Alexa Huang – likewise appeared. This collection was later subsumed into the far more ambitious Global Shakespeares website (https://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/) hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of Peter Donaldson and Huang in collaboration with eminent Shakespearean scholars from across the globe. While the site aspires to archive Shakespeare from across the globe, at the moment it is heavily weighted towards Asia. At present, the site lists 300 productions from Asia as opposed to only 36 from the United Kingdom, 34 from the Arab World, 31 from the United States, 18 from Africa and 14 from South America among others.5 A major contributor to the MIT website, the Taiwan Shakespeare Database (http://shakespeare.digital.ntu.edu.tw), put together under the directorship of Beatrice Bi-qi Lei, who also chairs the ASA, was launched in 2013. It would appear that Asian Shakespeare is arguably propped up in part by archives of the digital variety. It is a happy accident, or perhaps no accident at all, that the rise of Asian Shakespeare as a field of study coincides with the rise in prominence of the Digital Humanities itself and the construction of multiple digital performance archives. Just as much as conventional anthologies or academic organisations, these digital performance archives contributed greatly to the forging of Asian Shakespeare. They are crucial, if not constitutive, elements of the scholarly work on Asian Shakespeare and have done much to help define the field. They serve as portals of comparison for scholars within Asia to look more deeply into work outside of national borders. Being collaborative projects, they entailed labour from various locations within Asia and as a result, have brought Asian Shakespearean scholars together from disparate locations within Asia. They have served as a way to view Asia and its myriad cultures and performance traditions through a Shakespearean lens. In The Archeology of Knowledge, Michel Foucault asserts that archives enforce the very disciplinarity of disciplines. The archive is first the law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events. But the archive is also that

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which determines that all these things said do not accumulate endlessly in an amorphous mass . . . but they are grouped together in distinct figures, composed together in accordance with multiple relations, maintained or blurred in accordance with specific regularities; . . . it is the system of its functioning. Far from being that which unifies everything that has been said in the great confused murmur of a discourse . . . it is that which differentiates discourses in their multiple existence and specifies them in their own duration.6 In Archive Fever, Jacques Derrida describes the archive as both commencement and commandment.7 Being both point of origin and principle of order, archives demand careful scrutiny as active and inf luential elements in the development of fields of study. Archives, if Foucault and Derrida are to be believed, can and do hold the power of definition, of creating the definitive and legitimate. Both Foucault and Derrida, however, were theorising about analogue archives, physical brick and mortar locations and the collections housed within them. Do their observations apply to digital archives as well? How does the digital medium bear upon the idea of the archive? This essay seeks to examine the role of Asian digital performance archives – collections of heavily curated mediatised performances – in the making of Asian Shakespeare. Less empiricist in its approach, this essay is neither descriptive content analysis nor a data-driven impact study. Rather, it attempts to explore some theoretical underpinnings of the medium’s effects on defining the field. Just as archives are dynamic and in perpetual construction, questions continue to arise and linger because of the relative novelty not only of the digital archival form but also of the role they can play in making the idea of a field of study possible. In the little over a decade since their inception, Asian digital performance archives have done much to raise the profile of Shakespearean productions from Asia by offering a visibility and reach far beyond conventional archives and the academic circuits and establishments that support them or of the original performances themselves. It is inarguable that digital archives do have the power to potentially contain and display much more and provide access to the heretofore inaccessible. Yet, much like traditional archives, these digital performance archives also serve as curators and filtering agents – Derridean archons, if you will – by constructing and determining the shapes of archives and vetting their contents in the first place. In their archival practice lies the power to define or authorise a field. On the other hand, being digital archives, they also subscribe to the mantra of openness and collaboration and are rooted firmly in the ethos of the worldwide web and the possibilities opened up by digital technologies. Asian Shakespeare digital performance archives developed and continue to exist in the tensions between the disciplinary regimens of conventional archives against the radically different configurations and consequent democratisation of knowledge held in promise by the digital. In this

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brave new world constantly in f lux – responding to the exigencies of production and reception, rapidly changing and uneven technologies, the availability of materials and funding while participating in the newish field of the Digital Humanities that itself still struggles for academic legitimacy in some parts of the world – digital performance archives give Asian Shakespeare “a local habitation and a name” on top of the primal challenge of trying to encapsulate or represent the heterogeneity and vastness of Asian cultures and their engagements with Shakespeare in the first place. One thing is clear: these digital performance archives enabled the rapid development of Asian Shakespeare precisely because they made Shakespeare in Asia widely visible and readily available to anyone with any kind of interest in the subject. While this visibility was unquestionably crucial to the establishment of Asian Shakespeare as a field of study, the corollary question of exactly what they made visible and how these helped define Asian Shakespeare must also be asked. What do we see as representative of Asian Shakespeare in these digital performance archives? How do they define and determine the field? What forces from without and within the digital archival process work to meld the archive to represent Asian Shakespeare in specific ways? This essay will discuss some of these forces and issues surrounding digital performance archives and the making of Asian Shakespeare by dividing the discussion into three categories: Technology (or the concerns of the Digital), Ethnography (or the concerns of the Archival) and a combination of both (or the Digital Archival).

The Digital To assert that digital archives are determined by technologies is, of course, a no-brainer. in Asian Shakespeare, for instance, the geography of technological inequity somehow mimics the contours of the field. It is no accident that digital performance archives are produced in more advanced Asian economies with more developed internet infrastructures and technologies (and, yes, more funding) like Singapore (in collaboration with institutions in Japan and Korea) and Taiwan. The content of these archives also weigh heavily towards East Asian productions from locations that also possess the means to document theatrical productions in acceptable formats. What gets archived is often dependent upon access to technologies of the archive –in terms of both the capacity to create and maintain them and the ability to document content to technical specifications in the first place. Are we to believe that the richer Asian countries simply have more resources to produce more Shakespeare? Or, rather, is what is on display the power to document Shakespeare to technically acceptable specifications and the considerable intellectual and human resources available to collect and annotate data to organise and maintain a digital performance archive? Consider India, which owing to its lengthy history as a British colony, provides some of the earliest examples of indigenous Shakespeare in Asia yet is underrepresented

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in digital performance archives. The Global Shakespeares website, for example, features 43 Japanese language productions but only 22 productions in the various languages of India.8 In all likelihood, there are multiple and complex reasons to explain this imbalance. For sure, language, economics, other cultural/historical factors together with the individual projects’ plans and research designs, have significant roles to play in this relative invisibility of parts of Asia in these digital archives. But by making visible and accessible only a specific number of performances, directors and productions, digital performance archives inevitably give shape to Asian Shakespeare – perhaps even gesturing towards a canon. It may be a chicken or egg question but there must be some correlation between the visibility of objects of study on platforms like digital archives and the scholarship that legitimises them as worthy objects of study. Do digital archives render certain works canonical? Or are they already canonical before admission into an archive? Apart from issues of inclusion and consequent, if inadvertent, canonicity, technological inequity also dictates the access to these archives. What correlation can be posited between the ease of internet access and the relative absence of scholars and scholarship from places like Myanmar, Laos or Sri Lanka – locations with some of the lowest internet penetration rates in Asia – in the field of Asian Shakespeare?9 Are we to believe, as the existing digital performance archives on Asia lead us to, that Shakespeare does not thrive as much in Asia’s less advanced economies? What happens when one cannot access the archive because of limited internet speeds, when streaming video is just ‘too heavy’ for existing bandwidths? Who then gets left out of the conversations? And as these conversations on Asian Shakespeare continue to grow and help define the field, limited access to the archive may be just as, if not more, critical a factor as non-inclusion. In some ways, the imbalance of representation in and access to archives of Asian Shakespeare could potentially evolve into a version of what Laura Estill has labelled as the “Shakespeare problem” of the Digital Humanities in general.10 “Too many digital projects and sites focus on Shakespeare alone”,11 she claims, so “despite the potential for democratisation or canon expansion, digital projects too often reify canon, even when they attempt to subvert it”.12 The ubiquity of Shakespeare in the Digital Humanities creates a cycle where: Scholars write about Shakespeare because they can research him in innovative ways (easily comparing, for instance, early printed texts on the Shakespeare Quartos Archive, or watching a production on the Global Shakespeares site); the interest in Shakespeare, in turn, generates more Shakespearecentric sites, often specifically designed for teaching and research.13 Perhaps the “Shakespeare problem” of the Digital Humanities can serve as a cautionary tale to the emergent field of Asian Shakespeare? Much more needs

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to be done to enable equitable inclusion and access to ensure a broader and more realistic representation of Asian Shakespeare, to make certain that as the field grows, it accounts for and makes visible the richness and diversity of Asian practices of Shakespeare. The digital nature of the archive, however, does more than bring a field into view. It also controls how a field can be viewed. Beyond the question of access or inclusion, problems that hopefully will ease with the bridging of the digital divide or through time with more submissions to the archive from other locations in Asia, is the intervention of technology in the very shape of the archive itself. The technology of the archive, what Derrida calls “archivization”, ultimately determines its current and potential contents. (T)he technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the future. The archivization produces as much as it records the event.14 For digital archives that structure is in large part determined by metadata – the data about the data contained in the archive that is readable to the machine. Metadata becomes a structuring principle in that, for example, it determines what is searchable in the archive thereby already pre-empting the kinds of questions that can be asked and answered by the data contained therein. The creation of metadata entailed in the digitising technology can dictate how the objects are viewed, determine what we can or cannot see, or which objects we see side by side. Metadata establishes relationships between archival objects that give shape to the archive itself. The A|S|I|A site makes exemplary use of metadata and is far advanced in its use of digital tools to manage and present data. It does so by first requiring contributors to submit related data in a common template that then dictates the terms of searchability. The A|S|I|A data template has four main areas: (1) the event (the people who made the performance, where and when it was staged); (2) its reception (audience responses in the press, blogs, academic work); (3) its artistic practices (the use of theatrical forms, languages, staging strategies); and (4) the external world surrounding the performance (references to Shakespeare and to historical, social, and cultural contexts of production).15 The productions on the site are featured as videos with multiple translations and the data submitted via the template can also be accessed for each individual production. They appear as visually delightful bubbles or rhizomatic connections that explode into further specific categories/meanings with each mouse click. Given the exigencies of the form and the brevity demanded of internet

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texts, these bits of data on events, reception, artistic practices and points of reference are delivered as short descriptive phrases or statements without much elaboration. While there is a wealth of data provided for each production, the confines of the form leave room for inaccuracies or misapprehensions. The possibilities of elisions between meanings of terms across various performance cultures are inevitable. What does the word “traditional” or “modern” imply as a description for a performance style? Does it mean the same for a Japanese production as for a Philippine production? Moreover, the template also asks the productions to define themselves in terms of degrees of adaptation – a first-degree adaptation adheres to the Shakespearean source text more than 90% of the time, a second-degree adaptation from 20% to 80% of the time, and a third-degree adaptation 10% or less. The quantification of adaptation, as well as the inequitableness of scales (compare the leeway between 20% and 80%, for instance, with the 10% at either end) is rather puzzling. And what of the gaps in the templates? One wonders about the possibilities of information that remains unrevealed because of questions unasked. Similarly, because the productions’ producers or creators mostly supply information on the templates, one wonders about the links supplied as examples of a production’s reception. How willing would producers truly be to supply links to less than f lattering reviews? Don’t we then run the risk of getting a skewed picture of a production’s reception? The creators of the A|S|I|A are, of course, well aware of the shortfalls of any template, even of its impossibility. Yong Li Lan, Director of the A|S|I|A, herself admits “(a) culture-neutral, fully inclusive template cannot be constructed”.16 Still and all, and however roughly, the common data extracted from these templates serve as grounds for comparisons. Converted to metadata, the data from these templates become the tools for categorising, cross-referencing, and organising the productions contained in the database. Comparative data are presented on the site in pie charts that visualise proportions of aspects of Asian Shakespeare. For example, if one seeks out data on the use of distinctive staging strategies using objects, one finds that the objects break down into further categories – props, everyday objects, furniture, and performing objects. If one investigates further into any of those items like “performing objects”, for example, one finds that the majority of productions that claim a distinctive use of a “performing object” utilised masks. A list then follows with brief descriptions of the use of masks in nine different productions. A comparative space or potential research direction is immediately made apparent. The digitisation of data allows the opening up of comparative perspectives but at the same time that perspective has already been limited or predetermined by metadata. In effect, metadata behaves like agents of definition for Asian Shakespeare. The technologies of metadata prove Derrida true – the archivisation produces as much as it records the event.

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The Archive While some Asian cultures have recorded histories dating back thousands of years, for other parts of Asia, record keeping was an oral or performance (ritual) bound tradition. Cultures across Asia exhibit a variety of ways of preserving cultural memory outside of the text. As such, the idea of keeping an archive to store historically significant or governance-related data, artefacts, or documents has an uneven history across Asia. Moreover, in many parts of Asia, the idea of the archive was systematised as a colonial imposition. Archives served as a powerful tool of imperialism. “The imperial archive”, Thomas Richards asserts, “was a fantasy of knowledge collected and united in the service of state and Empire”.17 Propelled by imperialist agendas, the practices of the modern archives at the dawn of colonial history in Asia relied a great deal on ethnographical data – race, ethnic groups, languages – as principles of classification and organisation. Some of these categories are echoed in contemporary digital performance archives as well. The Global Shakespeares website and the Taiwan Shakespeare Database, for instance, organise productions into ethno-linguistic categories. What are the implications of these repetitions? To what extent can the act of archiving Asian Shakespeare be decoupled from the work of the imperial archive? Do archives have to unintentionally but inevitably replicate imperial agendas? Is it possible to imagine Asia – and consequently, Shakespeare in Asia – apart from ethnographic and geographic categories utilised by colonial archives that may, in a manner of speaking, leave an imperialist taste in the mouth? These questions become even more urgent when one considers the exigencies of the digital archive, specifically the pressures of producing visually appealing interfaces in keeping with the norms of the medium. By their very nature, digital archives lean towards videos or photos over texts and the performance archives on Asian Shakespeare are certainly not wanting for visually arresting performance images. These performance archives feature numerous videos of Asian Shakespearean performances, majority of them in traditional Asian theatrical forms. The inherently spectacular optics of most traditional Asian theatrical forms often used in Shakespearean productions from the region  – featuring lavish, exotic costumes in a variety of designs and very often explosions of colour – could potentially work to reinforce the exoticism of Asia as spectacle. What role does the spectacular play in the construction of the Asianness of Asian Shakespeare? Is there a danger of abetting Orientalist assumptions and constructs inherent in these performance archives? Given the historical role of spectacle in framing the East in orientalist history, can or do digital performance archives call up those ghosts to the present? In “Translating Performance: The Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive”, Yong Li Lan cautions against the ease with which Asian Shakespearean

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performances, particularly when performed outside native contexts or on tour in the West, can “readily reproduce(s) the Orientalist cliché of the Asian body versus Western language, as a spectacle of foreignness”.18 Yong also teases out the variations of meanings determined by the circumstances of production and the spectatorial positionalities of reception for Asian Shakespearean productions. Meanings of performances shift with reference to locations of production and reception and could alter significantly depending on whether it is viewed as a local or a foreign production.19 As such, the radical deterritorialisation enacted by the existence of a production in an internet archive, where the circumstances of reception are far more diverse than any single specifically located performance, could very easily lead back to essentialising Orientalist assumptions about Asian Shakespeare. If the work of the archive harkens to Asia’s colonial histories, calling up the dangers of repeating classificatory regimes of the past as well as resurrecting Orientalist assumptions and perceptions and integrating them into Asian Shakespeare in the present, how then can these digital performance archives counter these embedded historical tendencies? An understanding of the nature of the digital archive itself may begin to answer these questions. Archives are essentially databases – what Lev Manovich, pioneering theorist of new media and digital culture, declares the “new symbolic form of the computer age . . . a new way to structure our experience of ourselves and of the world” at a time when “the world appears to us as an endless and unstructured collection of images, texts, and other data records, it is only appropriate that we will be moved to model it as a database”.20 Manovich explains that there are “two competing imaginations, two basic creative impulses, two essential responses to the world”21 – the database and the narrative – and in the current age, the database reigns supreme as the primary form of meaning-making in digital media. As a cultural form, database represents the world as a list of items and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause- and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events). Therefore, database and narrative are natural enemies.22 While primarily databases, Asian Shakespeare performance archives do not make “natural enemies” of narratives. These archives, in fact, augment their databases with narratives, broadly conceived. The Global Shakespeares website, for example, features background essays, critical reviews, and artist interviews, albeit from a limited range of authors at present that can only be enriched as the archive grows, to complement and augment the entries on its database. Similarly, the Taiwan Shakespeare Database offers relevant contextual essays and reviews, with abstracts supplied in English translation, for all featured performances. These complementary background materials serve to contextualise and critically situate performances in Asia and supply a deeper understanding

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of Asian Shakespeare beyond mere spectacle. They work to resist the confines of archival capture by countering the logic of the database with the logic of the narrative by providing complex, layered contexts for appreciating Asian Shakespeare productions. The A|S|I|A makes the most conscious effort against the regressive Orientalist potential of Asian Shakespeare archives by harnessing both narrative and database logics. As Yong Li Lan explains: An online archive of Shakespeare performance recordings collected from disparate theatre cultures, where each performance is displaced from its live contexts of production, is then overdetermined as a collection of cultural performances of a master text, if the discourses in which these performances participate both verbally and physically are not translated and annotated.23 The A|S|I|A takes several steps to reverse the dangers of reverting to the power relations of the colonial archive, where Asian performances exist in service of and secondary to the Shakespearean “master text”. First of all, the A|S|I|A website is a multilingual website – giving the user the choice to access content in English, Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Whereas English would have naturally been the default language of the website in keeping with the norms of the worldwide web (and presumably the lingua franca used by its multicultural staff and international consultants), the A|S|I|A deliberately uses multilinguality as “ideologically motivated” policy. The policy of parallel languages in A|S|I|A was at first ideologically motivated. Translation and information in English would have seemed the obvious choice for both a Shakespeare archive and the Internet medium. However, the histories of Western imperialism that brought Shakespeare to Asia form comparable contexts across the region to which many of the performances respond.24 Aside from rejecting the primacy of English as the global internet language, the A|S|I|A also very consciously highlights the interculturality of the Shakespearean encounter with Asia – embedding it in the very name of the archive. It does so by exploiting the power of the digital database to allow data streams to appear side by side rather than sequentially as in a narrative. All performance videos on the A|S|I|A are accompanied by translations of performance texts in separate but integrated panels depriving users of the option of encountering them as pure spectacles, forcing the spectator beyond the realm of spectacle into language. As Yong explains, “(t)he A|S|I|A project models an approach to archiving performance that foregrounds language-based understanding of performance recordings through their scripts and contextual data”.25 By presenting text adapted

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from Shakespeare re-translated into English (or Chinese, Japanese, Korean), the archive succeeds in decentralising Shakespeare as the performances defy direct retranslation into the Shakespearean originals. Being adaptations or cultural translations of Shakespeare, Shakespeare becomes an echo at best, a reference point for an entirely new Asian performance. The simultaneous appearance of performance as video and culturally-translated text enabled by the technologies of the database puts the complex workings of the intercultural encounter at the fore and forces the spectator to grapple with more than just spectacle. In effect, the A|S|I|A harnesses the power of database to change the narrative, so to speak, leaving the ghosts of the colonial archive squarely in the past.

The Digital Archive In some ways, the notion of the digital archive can be oxymoronic. The term yokes together the dynamism of digital technology – its capacity to animate, to actively collate, to reconfigure, and visualise data – with the inherent stasis of the archive and its mandate to fix and contain knowledge. Reinforcing the sense of stasis, Asian Shakespeare digital performance archives, as they exist at present, are more often than not tied to academic notions of knowledge that seem incommensurable to the way knowledge is created and disseminated in the digital world. How appropriate are traditional academic tools – bibliographies, glossaries, and critical essays – for digital consumption? How can digital technologies be used to overturn or animate the traditional notion of the archive? Cognisant of these challenges, current digital performance archives have already begun to explore and exploit the potentials of digitised data and the technologies of the digital. A|S|I|A, for instance, uses data visualisation techniques through their pie charts that reveal the proportions or dominance of certain forms and practices within Asian Shakespeare performance; Global Shakespeares employs mapping techniques to show Shakespeare’s global reach. Both archives also encourage interactivity – providing users with the means to extract video for personal use, bookmark videos, annotate performances through virtual notepads or clipboards and allow users to conduct online conversations for their own purposes. Many of these interactive features support pedagogical and research endeavours – teachers can readily access relevant clips for class discussion or researchers can conceivably use the videos to craft both conventional (print) and multi-media essays or even monographs for academic publication. As laudable as these efforts are, however, they may be pushed even further. Are extraction technologies of Global Shakespeares database enough? Surely, they help create users’ interpretations of Shakespeare, but these interpretations reside outside the archive. Why can’t they reside in them? Why, for example, can’t the critical essays in the database be multimedia essays that demonstrate the scholarly use of archival materials in ways that take advantage of digital content? Shouldn’t digital archives also contain models of digital scholarship?

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Similarly, why can’t these archives contain thematic or topical sub-archives to mix and match content in original ways and to provide alternative perspectives rather than rigidly defined content, to mix things up and shake knowledge from the fixity of its archival stupor and move away from petrified display towards creative conversation? The opportunities opened up by the archives’ technologies of interactivity already allows for the construction of multiple narratives, for the creation of a variety of contexts for understanding Asian Shakespeare but these user-generated narratives and contexts remain mainly for private consumption. Interactive features allow users to be their own archival curators, so to speak, yet granting curatorial agency to users only happens within the confines of private use. What happens if these sites make them available to larger publics for instance in user-curated “playlists” a la Spotify? Can Asian Shakespeare digital performance archives make room for such less formal content? Perhaps these questions may be answered by asking the prior question: who are these archives for? The introductory statements to these archives are telling. Global Shakespeares envisions itself as “intended to promote cross-cultural understanding and serve as a core resource for students, teachers and researchers” who participate in an “international research and educational online community”.26 A|S|I|A is “intended for scholars, practitioners, teachers, students and general audiences”.27 The Taiwan Shakespeare Database describes itself as “a useful tool for researchers, teachers, and students alike”.28 The overwhelmingly academic and research-oriented dispositions of these archives therefore dictate that its content and structure veer towards formal academic modes of knowledge. One manifestation of this academic tendency is the privileging of producers over consumers, of favouring the documentation of production over audience reception. These archives feature more data from and on their featured productions where data are often supplied by the producers themselves (as in the metadata used by the A|S|I|A) or in contextual background features like the artist or director interviews contained in the Global Shakespeares site. While they do feature reviews as proof of reception, these reviews are by professional reviewers and many have been previously published in print in newspapers or academic journals. The academic orientation of these archives tends to limit how context and reception can be framed for these performances, confined to formal, vetted types of knowledge easily recognisable to academic audiences. As noted by Joanna Bucknall and Kirsty Sedgman in “Documenting Audience Experience: Social Media as Lively Stratification”, it is through the process of documentation that diverse experiences become petrified, as an ‘official’ narrative is produced that asserts a performance’s achievements. . . . While individual audience members carry with them their own personal memories, unless their recollections are shared more widely this embodied knowledge becomes lost to cultural memory.

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As the documentation of performance has in the past been largely the responsibility of its makers, it has tended to concern itself with recording the dramaturgy of cultural practices: more often than not, production has been privileged over reception. “29 However, “what is lost to cultural memory” or what remains outside of the formal academic archive, in part because of the bias of the “official narrative” towards production, is precisely where the strength of the digital lies. There is a wealth of born digital material that can only serve to expand and deepen the understanding of Asian Shakespeare in these digital archives. They only have to explore the world beyond the narrow confines of academic forms and turn to less formal modes of cultural or social memory. In Re-collection: Art, New Media and Social Memory, Richard Rinehart and Jon Ippolito lucidly explain the forms of social memory with reference to digital cultures. Social memory can be broken into two large categories: formal and informal. Formal social memory is “canonical” and is often stewarded by institutions such as museums, libraries, and archives. . . . (T)hey comprise society’s organized “cabinets of wonder” or, to use a computer metaphor, they are our collective memory banks, the databases of civilization. Informal social memory, on the other hand, is characterized by folklore and distributed, popular forms of remembering. The comparable computer metaphor is that informal social memory acts like society’s network system, preserving memory by making it a moving target.30 While Rinehart and Ippolito do not directly reference social media as a practice of informal social memory in the aforementioned statement, social media is undoubtedly a major feature in contemporary society’s network system, if not the primary network itself, and arguably its “most popular form of remembering”. Social media platforms may yet be the best resource for expanding contexts for appreciation and interpretation of Asian Shakespeare performances. User posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can certainly widen the scope of performance reception by providing a more varied and candid sense of how audiences reacted to performances across space and over time. Particularly, they help in the comparative analysis of performances over a period of time, especially if a performance has evolved through several performance runs, and open up a productive comparative space for studying audience reception of touring performances. They can also provide a range of responses outside those of professional or academic critics to get a more authentic feel of a production’s impact on a more general viewership. Since social media posts tend to be informal and written in close proximity to the event, they work to enable, as Bucknall and Sedgman suggest, “the experience of liveness to travel outside the confines of

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physical co-presence”.31 The immediacy of the unfiltered eyewitness account as relayed on social media platforms restores at least some sense of the liveness that theatrical performance has lost through digitisation and archivisation. In addition to reception, a wealth of performance-related born digital material or digital performance paratexts – for instance, websites of theatrical companies, their YouTube channels and other digital marketing tools, personal blogs of both artists and audiences – all help to augment the understanding and paint a fuller picture of circumstances surrounding the creative and material processes of production. Seeing a theatrical production through the lenses of an actors’ account of rehearsals or backstage photos as they might exist on a social media platform like Facebook or Instagram, for instance, may provide useful insights that would be unavailable elsewhere. Tracking a production’s digital marketing strategies promises a reading or interpretation of the performance event outside aesthetic or cross-cultural concerns and may open up windows to comparative research on Asian Shakespeare theatre markets. Social media and other born digital material hold great promise for opening up the field of Asian Shakespeare studies to a wider range of topics. But that promise remains at bay without, what Vanessa Bartlett advocates for in “Web Archiving and Participation: The Future History of Performance?”, “a critical appraisal of the historical and scholarly value of this born digital material”. As contemporary experiences of performance become subject to increasing mediation on the web, including venue websites detailing forthcoming programmes, Facebook invites listing event attendees and post show blog reviews circulated via various social media, there appears to be an urgent need for critical appraisal of the historical and scholarly value of this born digital material.32 Indeed, there is a case to be made for the inclusion of social media and other born digital content whether through links or curated collections into Asian Shakespeare performance archives. Moreover, doing so would only be in keeping with what performance theorist Elena Perez identifies as a paradigm shift in archiving performances in the digital age from “documenting ‘objects’ to documenting experiences,”33 moving the archive beyond a rigid catalogue of objects to a more inclusive and dynamic collection of experiences of these objects, redefining the archive as an enforcer of stasis and capture literally confined in a physical space as in conventional archives to a dynamic generator of further meanings enabled by the openness and accessibility of digital technologies.34 In the end, however, as Diana Taylor has put, archiving is more than compilation, it is about a sense of self: Archival practice, once a devastating tool of empire, now seems the guarantor of the ‘authentic’ and enduring. Digital technologies have only

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heightened the appreciation of embodiment. Perhaps the current rush to ‘archive’ has less to do with place/thing/practice and more with trying to save and preserve a sense of self as we face the uncertain future, emphasizing our agency in the selection and meaning-making process that we fear threatens to outpace us.35 And the task of giving further meaning or, indeed, of expanding the field of study that is Asian Shakespeare cannot be the exclusive burden of digital performance archives alone. Focused as they are on but one aspect of Shakespearean production in Asia – performance – they cannot supply a complete picture. The dominance of performance archives at present may be working to slant the study of Asian Shakespeare towards performance or theatrical modes but this is, hopefully, a temporary condition. At the moment, there are no databases for texts, translations, and adaptations for which Asia is an incredibly fertile ground, no databases exclusively for films even if there are strong traditions of Shakespeare-derived cinema all over Asia, or for popular culture forms even as Asian manga or anime artists continuously transform Shakespeare in the most exciting ways. Perhaps future digital scholars of Asian Shakespeare can look to these pioneering digital performance archives for inspiration and instruction and produce other databases and archives that highlight the myriad ways in which Asia produces Shakespeare outside of theatrical performance to grow the field of Asian Shakespeare scholarship. For if digital archives were to make a claim to and for this thing called ‘Asian Shakespeare’, they must be bigger – account for more forms and modes, come from a variety of locations, speak a multitude of languages and escape the narrow essentialist confines of “Asia”. The challenge is to creatively employ digital technologies to create archives that produce more representative, inclusive and realistic versions of Asian Shakespeare. Participation and access are crucial. Collaboration is key, and size does matter. For truly, as Derrida claims “the question of the archive is not a question of the past. . . . It is a . . . question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise, and of a responsibility for tomorrow.”36

Notes 1. Some notable early publications on the topic include Rustom Bharucha, “Foreign Asia / Foreign Shakespeare: Dissenting Notes on New Asian Interculturality, Postcoloniality, and Recolonization” Theatre Journal 56:1 (2004): 1–28; James Brandon, “Some Shakespeare(s) in some Asia(s)” Asian Studies Review 20:3 (1997): 1–26; and John Russel Brown, New Sites for Shakespeare Theatre, the Audience, and Asia (London: Routledge, 2001). 2. See Ruru Li, Shashibaya: Staging Shakespeare in China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003) and Poonam Trivedi and Dennis Bartholomeusz, eds., India’s Shakespeare: Translation, Interpretation, and Performance (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005). 3. Sukanta Chaudhuri and Chee Seng Lim, Shakespeare without English: The Reception of Shakespeare in Non-anglophone Countries (New Delhi: Pearson/Longman, 2006).

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4. Other notable volumes published during this period include Alexander C. Y. Huang and Ross Charles Stanley, Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia, and Cyberspace (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2010); Bi-qi Beatrice Lei and Ching-Hsi Perng, Shakespeare in Culture (Taipei, Taiwan: National Taiwan University Press, 2012); and Minami Ryuta, Ian Carruthers, and John Gillies, Performing Shakespeare in Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 5. “Videos by Region” Global Shakespeares Video and Performance Archive, https://global shakespeares.mit.edu/regions/, Last accessed June 28, 2019. 6. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge: Michel Foucault (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), 129. 7. Jacques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression” Diacritics 25:2 (1995): 9–63, Last accessed September 20, 2009. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/465144. 8. “Videos by Language” Global Shakespeares Video and Performance Archive, https:// globalshakespeares.mit.edu/languages/, Last accessed June 28, 2019. 9. The latest available data on internet penetration rates for Laos, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka stand at 35.4%, 33.1%, and 34.1% respectively – below the 51.8% average for Asia and far below the penetration rates of Asian internet leaders like South Korea (95.1%), Japan (93.5%), and Singapore (84.5%). “Internet Usage in Asia” Internet World Stats, www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm, Last accessed June 28, 2019. 10. Laura Estill, “Digital Humanities’ Shakespeare Problem” Humanities 8:1 (2019): 45. https://doi.org/10.3390/h8010045. 11. Ibid., 1. 12. Ibid., 6. 13. Ibid., 10. 14. Derrida and Prenowitz, “Archive Fever”, 17. 15. Li Lan Yong, “Translating Performance: The Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive” in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance (Oxford: Oxford Press, 2017), 14, Last accessed June 04, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfor dhb/9780199687169.013.37. 16. Ibid., 16. 17. Thomas Richards, The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire (London: Verso, 2011), 6. 18. Yong, “Translating Performance”, 6. 19. Ibid., 1–4. 20. Lev Manovich, “Database as a Symbolic Form” Manovich.net, http://manovich.net/ index.php/projects/database-as-a-symbolic-form, Last accessed June 28, 2019. Also in print in Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies 5:2 (1999): 80–99. 21. Ibid., 16. 22. Ibid., 8. 23. Yong, “Translating Performance”, 6. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., 7. 26. “About the Archive” Global Shakespeares Video and Performance Archive, https:// globalshakespeares.mit.edu/about/, Last accessed June 28, 2019. 27. “Vision” Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive, http://a-s-i-a-web.org/en/vision. php, Last accessed June 28, 2019. 28. “Overview” Taiwan Shakespeare Database, http://shakespeare.digital.ntu.edu.tw/ shakespeare/home.php?Language=en, Last accessed June 28, 2019. 29. Joanna Bucknall and Kirsty Sedgman, “Documenting Audience Experience: Social Media as Lively Stratification” in Documenting Performance: The Context and Processes of Digital Curation and Archiving (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017), 113–30, 117.

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30. Richard Rinehart, and Jon Ippolito, Re-collection: Art, New Media, and Social Memory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014), 15. 31. Bucknall and Sedgman, “Documenting Audience Experience”, 124. 32. Vanessa Bartlett, “Web Archiving and Participation: The Future History of Performance?” in Documenting Performance: The Context and Processes of Digital Curation and Archiving (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017), 131–48, 131. 33. Elena Pérez, “Experiential Documentation in Pervasive Performance: The Democratization of the Archive” International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 10:1 (2014): 77–90, 78. https://doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2014.912503. 34. A website still under development on Shakespeare in the Philippines (https:// archivingshakespeare.wordpress.com/) can prove instructive in this instance. Created by Ms. Shech Pacariem as an MA English thesis project at the University of the Philippines, this site includes an astute curation of born digital material – performance paratexts, marketing activities, posts from social media accounts of performers and audiences, etc – that illustrates the potential of such material for future digital performance archives. 35. Diana Taylor, “Save As .  .  . Knowledge and Transmission in the Age of Digital Technologies” Imagining America 7 (2010), https://surface.syr.edu/ia/7. 36. Derrida, “Archive Fever”, 36.

PART III

Historicising the Asian Global Shakespeare as a World Poet

11 GLOBAL SHAKESPEARE AND THE QUESTION OF A WORLD LITERATURE Supriya Chaudhuri

Let me begin by posing a problem, one that may seem unexpected in the context of ‘Global Shakespeare’. Shakespeare has not figured significantly in the world literature debate, despite being surely the outstanding instance of a writer whose work has travelled all over the world and acquired global renown through translation and adaptation. Indeed, the conjunction of ‘world’ with ‘Shakespeare’, now common enough to be a cliché, is more the result of Shakespeare’s own fondness for the term, rather than an accolade bestowed by posterity. According to Eric Johnson’s Open Source Shakespeare Concordance, of which I am a grateful user, it occurs 656 times in Shakespeare’s works, just behind Life 823, Death 844, Time 1482, and Love 2209, and well ahead of Earth, 363. And while Shakespeare does not use the relatively modern adjective ‘global’, he does refer to the ‘globe’ 11 times (there is an additional single reference to ‘globes’), usually with a punning reference to the Globe Theatre in which many of his plays were staged. Often, indeed, he seems to be aware of a semantic tension between the relatively material and solid globe, and the socially and metaphysically capacious world. In Hamlet, the protagonist is anxious about the capacity of memory to hold on to its seat in the “distracted globe” that is his own head (with a reference, surely, to the Globe as a memory theatre). This is the term’s only appearance in the play, while ‘world’ appears no less than 27 times: “let the world take note”, says Claudius (I. 2.108), while to Hamlet “all the uses of this world” seem “weary, stale, f lat and unprofitable” (I.2.133–34); man is “the beauty of the world” (II.2.273), but “the world is not for aye” (III.2.194); and at the close of the play, Horatio declares his intention of speaking to the “yet unknowing world/ How these things came about” (V.2.363).1 The Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, always a prescient reader of the literatures of the world despite his scepticism about the world literary market,

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offered Shakespeare the title of ‘world-poet’ (viśva-kavi) for his 300th death anniversary, in a poem written at his pastoral retreat of Shilaidaha, in rural East Bengal, on 29 November 1915, over a hundred years ago. This was much before the literary-historical moment at which the title of viśva-kavi, worldpoet, became popular in encomia of Tagore’s own work and its supposed universalism, though he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913. I find it surprising, therefore, that contemporary debates around the idea of a world literature, vigorously argued by, say, Franco Moretti, David Damrosch, Pascale Casanova, Emily Apter, and Pheng Cheah, to name just a few, generally fail to take account of the global popularity, indeed the global appropriation, of Shakespeare and his works. I would like to look a little more closely at this phenomenon, in the context both of the debate itself and of Shakespeare’s circulation across the globe, or what we might newly term his globalisation. I will be arguing that in some respects ‘Global Shakespeare’ and the idea of a ‘world literature’ are contrasted, rather than related concepts; that world literature as currently defined has failed to take note of the elephant in the room, or the global popularity of Shakespeare; and that Shakespeare’s global appropriation may even undermine or challenge the category of world literature.

Weltliteratur and World-Making ‘World literature’, a term literally translated from Goethe’s Weltliteratur, became popular as an object of study in the wake of a loss of faith in comparatist literary studies and the growth of a global book trade sustained by translation on the one hand and the ascendancy of the languages of European colonisation on the other. Goethe himself, at the start of the nineteenth century, had coined the term in a conversation with his pupil Johann Peter Eckermann, observing that: I am more and more convinced that poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men. . . . National literature is now a rather unmeaning term; the epoch of World literature is at hand, and everyone must strive to hasten its approach.2 Unsurprisingly, the most striking early repetition of Goethe’s term was by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto, who noted that the economic domination of the bourgeoisie had given ‘a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country’, and led to the exchange and circulation of literary commodities: The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and

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more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world-literature.3 This transnational literature, composed by cultural free markets and migrant texts, is the logical precursor to the globalised literary culture of today, where new works by prominent writers are simultaneously translated and published in up to a dozen languages, and the marketplace of print is controlled by multinational publishing houses. But as Marx knew well, free markets do not result in free exchange; they are subject to structures of power and computations of loss and profit that are decisively weighed in favour of economic capital. I will return to this point later. For the moment, let us consider the other element in Goethe’s celebration of weltliteratur, his assertion that “poetry is the universal possession of mankind”. As Pheng Cheah has pointed out in a succession of essays that contrast ‘world’ and ‘world-making’ with ‘globe’, Goethe conceives of world literature as “a dynamic process of literary exchange, intercourse, or traffic”, facilitated by translation, and fostering understanding and tolerance.4 For Goethe, “[t]he idea is not that nations shall think alike, but that they shall learn how to understand each other”.5 Cheah regards world literature as an important instrument of ‘world-making’, where the world is not something given to us, but something formed in time and history, through human interaction. For Cheah it is emphatically a normative category. He contrasts the temporal, process-driven, and ethical nature of world-making with the purely spatial extension of the globe: “The world is a form of relating or being-with. The globe, on the other hand, the totality produced by processes of globalisation, is a bounded object or entity in Mercatorian space”.6 Further emphasising the role of world literature in producing the ‘human’, Cheah cites Erich Auerbach’s essay on ‘Philology and Weltliteratur’ (1952), where humanity “was not something naturally given, but a telos to be achieved through intercourse across the existential plurality and diversity of human traditions and cultures whose individuality must be maintained and whose unique historical development must be respected”.7 For both Goethe and Marx, the idea of a world literature is connected to the constitution of human society, at the same time as the global exchange of literary products is facilitated by the spread of commerce and trade. The conjunction of these two propositions is deeply characteristic of nineteenth-century humanist scholarship. And despite its acknowledgement of cultural difference, the discipline of comparative philology unavoidably drew, as Edward Said among others pointed out, upon a peculiarly Eurocentric universalism.8

Translating ‘World’ Translation, which Goethe regarded as essential to the making of weltliteratur, is also critical to our conceptual understanding of it. Barbara Cassin’s

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massive ‘philosophical lexicon’, the Dictionary of Untranslatables (2004/2014), has a long entry on German Welt and related terms, but no account of nonEuropean equivalents.9 There is in fact a whole range of terms in Indian languages for concepts linked to the universe, the world, the earth, or society: viśva, bramhānḍa, jagat, ihaloka, triloka, bhuvana, bhūmanḍala, dharani, prithivī, samsāra, samāja (Sanskrit), duniyā (Arabic) jahān, zamāna (Persian) and so on. Tagore uses the Sanskrit and Bengali word viśva, normally rendered as ‘world’, or ‘universe’, rather than ‘globe’ – though we later have a Bengali neologism, viśvāyan, for the substantive ‘globalisation’ (also rendered as bhūmanḍalikaran in Hindi). Indeed, before he offered the title of viśva-kavi to Shakespeare, he had already delivered a lecture on viśva-sāhitya (usually translated as ‘world literature’) on the 9th of February 1907, at the National Council of Education, a patriotic and anti-colonial institution set up in the wake of the swadeshi (homelandist) agitation sparked off by the first Partition of Bengal in 1905. The talk came at a critical juncture of the formation of nationalist self-consciousness. The organisers, in an exemplary display of cosmopolitan modernity, had asked the poet to speak on the relatively new academic field, barely 30 years old, of comparative literature, a subject still unknown in university curricula, though the first department in the discipline was later to be set up at the National Council’s offspring, Jadavpur University in Calcutta.10 In the course of his lecture, Tagore stated that he would prefer to render the English term ‘comparative literature’ by viśva-sāhitya, or world literature.11 This act of translation had far-reaching implications. Himself fated to achieve extraordinary international fame through the mediation of just those practices of translation and cultural transmission that Goethe had celebrated, Tagore chose to focus on only one of Goethe’s propositions, that of a human relation to the world, and poetry as constitutive of a world.12 For Tagore too, though he does not mention Goethe, the world is unmistakably something made or formed through human interaction. He asserts that human beings are tied to the world through three bonds: of reason, of necessity, and of joy, this last bond being productive of the aesthetic realm. Human beings establish emotional or affective relations with the world, because the human heart “incomplete in itself ” seeks constantly to turn “its inner truth into the truth of the world”.13 Literary affect links human beings to other persons in other places, but Tagore shows no interest in the global transactions of the literary market where translated books circulate as commodities. Instead of prescribing an extensive, comparatist programme of reading upon his eager provincial audience, Tagore urges it to find the world in the self, and to reject a cumulative, aggregative world literary economy for a sense of poetry as a movement of affect that binds human beings together. That is, he speaks of affective unities, rather than transactions, exchanges or transfers. Since the Sanskrit and Bengali term sāhitya, meaning ‘literature’, can also be literally rendered as ‘being-together’, viśva-sāhitya is a state of being together in the world.14

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Shakespeare as ‘World-Poet’ I think that we can see a continuity between Tagore’s use of the word viśva in viśva-sāhitya here, and his choice of the same term, viśva, in order to bestow the title of ‘world-poet’, viśva-kavi, on Shakespeare some eight years later. Asked for a poem on Shakespeare to mark the tercentenary of his death, Tagore dashed off a quick tribute, published as Poem 39 in Balākā (1916), and translated for inclusion in Shakespeare: A Book of Homage (1916), edited by Israel Gollancz. The result has always struck me as a somewhat feeble exercise, given the energy with which Tagore engages with Shakespeare elsewhere – in his own translations, the essay on ‘Śakuntala’, and the references in his autobiography. The poem presents an unmistakable parallel between Shakespeare and Tagore himself, and would repay deconstruction. In a sequence of images, Tagore romanticises and even infantilises Shakespeare’s ‘native wood-notes wild’, so that his eventual ascent to a place of pre-eminence on the world-horizon is assigned to the mysterious call of the infinite: a metaphysical surrogate, Marx might have said, for the unseen forces of empire and capital. Milton, who wrote of Shakespeare’s “native wood-notes wild” (‘L’Allegro’, 134) also composed a deeply ambiguous poem about Shakespearean commemoration (“Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving/ Dost make us marble with too much conceiving”: ‘On Shakespeare’, 11–12) – texts that might be working in a Bloomian way to reduce the power of the threatening predecessor. Tagore’s tribute, by contrast, might be read as a covert encomium to himself:

Balaka, 39 Jedin udile tumi, bishvakabi, dūr sindhupāre England-er dikprānta peyechhila sedin tomāre Apan baksher kāchhe, bhebechhila bujhi tāri tumi Kebal āpan dhan; ujjval lalāt taba chumi Rekhechhila kichhukāl aranyashākhār bāhujāle, Dhekechhila kichhukāl kuyāshā-anchal antarāle Banapushpa-bikashita trinaghana shishira-ujjval Parīder khelār prāngane. Dvīper nikunjatal Takhano otheni jege kabisūrja bandanā-sangīte Tār pare dhīre dhīre ananter nihshabda ingite Diganter kol chhāri shatābdīr prahare prahare Uthiyāchha dīptajyoti madhyāhnyer gaganer pare Niyechha āsan taba sakal diker kendradeshe Bishvachitta udbhāsiyā; tai hero jugāntar-sheshe Bhāratsamudratīre kampamān shākhāpunje āji Narikelkunjabane jayaddhvani uthichhe bāji. Shilaidaha, 13 Agrahayan 1322

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(Tagore’s own translation): SHAKESPEARE When by the far-away sea your fiery disk appeared from behind the unseen, O poet, O Sun, England’s horizon felt you near her breast, and took you to be her own. 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 f lowers. 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. 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. Rabindranath Tagore Calcutta15 There are odd omissions in this translation. The word viśva or world (pronounced ‘bishva’ in Bengali) appears twice in the Bengali text, addressing Shakespeare as ‘bishvakabi’ (viśva-kavi, world-poet) in the very first line and then pursuing the metaphor of Shakespeare as the sun taking his place in the centre of the heavens (‘mid-sky’), describing him as irradiating the world-soul, ‘bishvachitta’ (viśva-chitta) in line 14. Both these occurrences are elided in the English version, and there is no English equivalent for viśva. In the first line, Tagore addresses Shakespeare as ‘O poet, O Sun’, and he cannot have been unconscious of the analogy between the metaphor and the first part of his own name, Rabi, meaning ‘sun’, on which he plays constantly in his writings. The later reference to the ‘world-soul’, or ‘bishvachitta’, is simply omitted. Perhaps Tagore felt uncomfortable with the unfamiliar collocation ‘world-poet’ in English – he was always uneasy about composition in a foreign tongue – whereas in Bengali, he was at least as fond of the word viśva and its derivatives as Shakespeare was of ‘world’. There are 269 instances of the word viśva by itself in his Bengali works, and innumerable occurrences of verbal compounds like viśva-kavi, viśva-sāhitya, viśva-chitta, and of course Viśva-Bharati, the name of the university he founded. In fact, Tagore first applied the term viśvakavi to the Creator, or God, in 1911, before he offered it to Shakespeare; later, it came to be applied to Tagore himself in an article published in the Ananda Bazar Patrika in 1935, ‘Viśva-kavi Rabindranath Thakur’16 What is a world-poet, and what might his place be in world literature? It is clear that Tagore uses the term in two senses: first, as a universal creator, a maker (Greek poeta) of the world, and second, as a poet who achieves worldwide

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fame and recognition. As his poem asserts, Shakespeare, beginning as a national poet, England’s child, is now universally acknowledged as a world-poet, receiving praise on Indian shores. Perhaps the tribute also contains the hope – or the confidence – that Tagore himself, son and sun of India, might rise someday to a like pre-eminence. And indeed, as the first Asian writer to win a place in world literature – even if this place was short-lived, and is the subject of a slightly bemused reference to the award of the 1913 Nobel Prize to Rabindranath Tagore in Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters – Tagore can see this ascent to the ‘mid-sky’ of fame as validating a poet’s universal appeal.17 The poem, written to order for a commemorative event, acknowledges the ‘global’ spread of Shakespeare’s reputation at the same time as it ‘consecrates’ him (to use Pascale Casanova’s term) as one of the greatest poets in the world, ‘lighting up the world-soul’ (bishva-chitta udbhāsiyā) when he takes his place in the literary heavens. Unlike Casanova’s account of consecration, however, Tagore’s tribute does not come from the metropolis, but from the periphery: it does not seek to admit a provincial writer to metropolitan renown, but suggests that even Shakespeare, like Tagore himself, might start out as a relatively provincial, unknown poet nurtured in native pastures, until he rises to world prominence. How does this happen? The poem treats it as a metaphysical event, but surely Tagore was himself all too painfully aware of the complicated nature of fame, and the material trajectories that must be traversed by literary texts on global journeys. At the same time, as the lecture on viśva-sāhitya had shown, he does not see world literature as a collection of texts in circulation, but as the literary act of world-making.

What Is World Literature? It is important, then, to ask David Damrosch’s question: What does it really mean to speak of a “world literature”? Which literature, whose world? What relation to the national literatures whose production continued unabated even after Goethe announced their obsolescence? What new relations between Western Europe and the rest of the globe, between antiquity and modernity, between the nascent mass culture and elite productions?18 Long after Goethe and Marx and more or less ignoring Tagore, world literature has acquired a new prominence in academic circles. Enshrined in university departments and courses, its name seems to affirm one-worldedness on the one hand, and to celebrate difference on the other. And as with world history and world-systems analysis, it has put the notion of ‘world’ under enormous pressure. Used as an adjective, ‘world’ implies a degree of cohesion that is lacking in phrases such as ‘literatures of the world’ or ‘literature in the world’. Close to other adjectives such as international, cosmopolitan, or global, it is not identical

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with them. The conditions of its historical emergence are plainly marked, but its history is obscure, and its constitution is still controversial. Franco Moretti proposed some years ago that there were two world literatures, ‘one that precedes the eighteenth century – and one that follows it’: The ‘first’ Weltliteratur is a mosaic of separate, ‘local’ cultures; it is characterized by strong internal diversity; it produces new forms mostly by divergence; and it is best explained by (some version of ) evolutionary theory. The ‘second’ Weltliteratur (which I would prefer to call world literary system) is unified by the international literary market; it shows a growing, and at times stunning amount of sameness; its main mechanism of change is convergence; and is best explained by (some version of ) world-system analysis. What are we to make of these two world literatures? I think they offer us a great chance to rethink the place of history in literary studies . . . the lesson of the two world literatures is that the past and present of literature should be seen, not as “better” or “worse” epochs, but as structurally so unlike each other that they require completely different theoretical approaches. Learning to study the past as past, then, and the present as present: such is the intellectual challenge posed by Weltliteratur in the twenty-first century.19 This second, contemporary model of world literature, Moretti says, is not an object, it is a system: a system that requires a new scientific method to be applied to it, while Shakespeare belongs to the older world literary ‘mosaic’. In ‘Conjectures on World Literature’, Moretti took his initial hypothesis ‘from the world-system school of economic history, for which international capitalism is a system that is simultaneously one, and unequal; with a core, and a periphery (and a semi-periphery) that are bound together in a relationship of growing inequality’.20 Inequality – the distance that separates centre from periphery – is a basic premise of Pascale Casanova’s application, in The World Republic of Letters (1999), of Bourdieu’s agonistic mapping of the French literary field to the ‘space’ of world literature, the geography of which is based on ‘the opposition between a capital, on the one hand, and peripheral dependencies whose relationship to this centre is defined by their aesthetic distance from it’.21 What ensues is an endless struggle (competition is Casanova’s word) for recognition at the metropolitan heart of Europe – that is, Paris – waged equally by the provincial author and the ‘minor’ literature from the erstwhile colony. This is the centre-periphery model favoured by Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis of capital f lows and concentrations, as opposed to the ‘circulation’ model informed by theories of cultural traffic. Both variants of world literature theory, however, are under attack, one of the most recent being mounted by Emily Apter’s Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (2013),

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which picks up Barbara Cassin’s category of the ‘untranslatable’ and uses it to attack world literature’s ‘entrepreneurial, bulimic drive to anthologise and curricularise the world’s cultural resources’, even citing Jacques Derrida’s fantasy of ‘the entire world becoming an enormous department of Comp Lit’.22 Recent debate has not only contrasted ‘world’ with ‘globe’ but also brought other terms into discussion, such as planetarity, globalisation, cosmopolitics and cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and the ethics of alterity, communitarianism, network theory, and the globalising character of financial debt. Implicit in much of this discussion, however, is the assumption that world literature is a recent, modern category, brought into being by processes that we collectively characterise as modernity.23 United, put into circulation, in some sense even produced, by the world literary market, world literature belongs to a worldsystem, so that analysis by genre or mode, by cultural or historical links, is not just sanctioned but necessary. At the same time, there is a curious overlap between the spatial and the virtual turn in literary studies, so that on the one hand it could be argued that the forces of globalisation have connected remote parts of the earth through physical commerce, while on the other, the ‘world’ of the internet or the world wide web offers a model of connectedness that cancels distance out. Such a field, Moretti might argue, is made for distant reading, and in the last chapter of his book by that name, Distant Reading, he applies network theory to a single play by Shakespeare, a pre-eighteenth century author who, so “Google N-grams tells us, still occupies 0.002 of all the books Google is Googling” – as Jonathan Freedman says in his brilliant review of Moretti.24 But Distant Reading is an eclectic collection of essays written at various times, and in his first chapter, Modern European Literature: A Geographical Sketch, Moretti uses Shakespeare quite differently, to illustrate the creative divergences of ‘national’ literatures that broke up the European unity envisaged by Ernst Robert Curtius in his European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1948): Would there be Shakespeare, had England not been an island? Who knows? But that the greatest novelties of tragic form should arise away from the mainland, and from someone with small Latin and less Greek, is quite a sign of what European literature had to gain from forgetting its unity, and losing its past.25 In fact, so Moretti argues, at this juncture of world literary history, “the most significant transformations do not occur because a form has a lot of time at its disposal: but because, at the right moment – which is as a rule very short – it has a lot of space”.26 Space and time are played off against each other in Moretti’s argument here, with generic innovation and divergence linked to spatial separation and national difference, while generic similarity and convergence increase as the globe is unified by the capitalist world-system. Shakespeare is crucial to both parts of the narrative, because for Moretti his becoming Shakespeare is

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tied to Britain’s insularity, while his global popularity depends on the forces of empire and capital.

Shakespeare’s Travels Moretti then seems to confirm, rather unexpectedly, Tagore’s insight: Shakespeare, a national dramatist and poet, isolated author of revolutionary advances in baroque tragedy, becomes part of world literature at a later date, as a result of far-reaching changes in the world literary system, changes fostered by capitalism. How are these terrestrial travels initiated? Marcie Frank, Jonathan Goldberg and Karen Newman’s edited collection of essays on early modern literature, This Distracted Globe, engages with the world-making propensities of Renaissance texts, especially those by Shakespeare, but only indirectly with the world literature debate. For Madhavi Menon, the adjective ‘Shakespearean’ works “purely as an insubstantial signifier, a signifier that refers to ideas shared across space, language, and time”.27 There is, of course, something quite substantial behind this insubstantiality. Andrew Dickson, attempting to track Shakespeare’s popularity through a hectic tour of five countries in his recent book Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globe (2015), suggests a link between Shakespeare’s global travels and his fondness for setting his plays in distant, often imaginary lands: take The Comedy of Errors, Antony and Cleopatra, Pericles, or The Tempest. But it is difficult to be wholly persuaded by Dickson’s argument, because in that case Marlowe’s Tamburlaine should have achieved equal popularity. In a different spirit, Emma Smith’s Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book looks at global Shakespeare through the lens of book history, examining the fortunes of the printed book, the First Folio of 1623, that kept ‘Shakespeare’ alive as a material, collectible object, to be bought, sold, stolen, forged, written in, hoarded, displayed: the Folger Shakespeare Library has 82 copies, most acquired by Henry Clay Folger himself. The plays also travelled in performance: there is a story, probably untrue, of Hamlet being performed by sailors on board a British ship, the Dragon, moored off the coast of Sierra Leone in 1607. But while the account was seized upon as the founding moment of Shakespeare in Africa, it was most likely a nineteenthcentury forgery. Closer to our times, David Schalkwyk’s Hamlet’s Dreams (2013) suggested that the story of the Robben Island Shakespeare, the ‘prisoners’ Bible’ read and written in by Nelson Mandela among others, was also very largely invented. Still, I have myself heard the long-imprisoned Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim speaking at the Brisbane World Shakespeare Congress on how Shakespeare sustained him in jail, so this remains one of those stories that – like so many about Shakespeare – could have been true. Shakespeare’s early travels were European – he was an early theatrical export, especially in Germany right through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The eponymous hero of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795–96), plays Hamlet

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with a touring company, while in the next century in France, Victor Hugo claimed to have summoned Shakespeare in regular séances, producing one act of a dictated play, and the surprising admission (from England’s greatest poet) that the English language is inferior to the French. We might recall that Hugo’s son Francois-Victor was the first writer to render all of Shakespeare in French. Shakespeare’s global reach was materially aided by empire, and within the colonial knowledge economy, Shakespeare was a cultural master-property deliberately circulated as a literary model to subject races. In this respect, his globalisation perfectly fits one structural dynamic operating behind the phenomenon of ‘world literature’. In ‘The Hero as Poet’ (1840), Thomas Carlyle set Shakespeare’s price higher than empire itself: Consider now if they asked us, Will you give-up your Indian Empire or your Shakespeare, you English: never have had any Indian Empire, or never have had any Shakespeare? . . . should not we be forced to answer, Indian Empire or no Indian Empire, we cannot do without Shakespeare! Indian Empire will go, at any rate, some day; but this Shakespeare does not go, he lasts forever with us.28 The Indian Empire, it appeared, could not do without Shakespeare either. Not only were his plays performed in early colonial theatres such as those set up in Calcutta, for which no less an actor than David Garrick supplied ‘plays and scenes’, but he was freely adapted and translated. At the same time, the colonial educator D.L. Richardson, whose lectures were so deeply imprinted on Macaulay’s memory that he said he might “forget everything about India, but your reading of Shakespeare, never”, made Shakespeare an essential part of the Indian university curriculum.29 By the second half of the nineteenth century, the novelist Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay was drawn by the ubiquity of colonial knowledge-as-power into making the astoundingly inaccurate claim that “Every home has its Shakespeare; everyone can open and read the original work”.30 This equation of the Anglicised bourgeoisie with the undifferentiated ‘everyone’ living under colonial rule is characteristic of the way in which ‘representation’ operates in politics, society, even literature: both world literature and the notion of a Global Shakespeare are dependent, we realise, on a number of such elisions between the faceless many – about whom nothing can be predicated with certainty – and the one, or the world, about which we constantly make metaphysical assertions. Despite Bankimchandra’s claim, few in India read Shakespeare’s ‘original work’. In 1964 the National Library of India recorded 670 different translations of Shakespearean plays into Indian languages, the greatest number being into Bengali, followed by Marathi, Tamil, Hindi and Kannada: but this is likely to be a considerable underestimate, because not all translations and adaptations made their way into the Library’s archives.31 Many of these translations Indianised the

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settings and proper names, while attacking with vigour the perennially absorbing task of translating Shakespearian blank verse. Some became fairly popular, like the nineteenth-century Marathi Macbeth (Manajirao, 1896), and the Bengali Shakespeares carried to villages and small towns by the Marxist Utpal Dutt’s Little Theatre Group in the 1960s. Rabindranath Tagore himself, as a boy of 13, was set by his tutor the exercise of translating Macbeth, scene by scene, into Bengali verse, and was shut up in the schoolroom until he had completed each day’s exercise. Like other examples of Tagore’s juvenilia, the translation has not survived in full, but a spirited rendering of the witch scenes was published very early in the Tagore family journal Bharati, all that remains of this adolescent exercise.32 Translation of other Shakespearean plays, and adaptations for the Parsi theatre, had commenced some 20 years earlier, with Harachandra Ghosh’s Bhanumati Chittabilas (The Merchant of Venice, 1853) in Bengali, and the staging of a Gujarati version of The Taming of the Shrew at Surat in 1852. In Varanasi, Bharatendu Harishchandra attempted a Hindi translation of The Merchant of Venice in 1880, but left it unfinished. Haralal Ray’s translation of Macbeth into Bengali as Rudrapal Natak was published in 1874, the same year as Tagore’s schoolroom labours, and Taraknath Mukhopadhyay’s Macbeth, also in Bengali, appeared in 1875, from Nath Suburban Press. A few years later Nagendranath Basu offered another Bengali version of Macbeth as Karmabir (Calcutta, 1885/86). Girishchandra Ghosh, the greatest playwright and theatre-manager of his time in Calcutta, presented his Bengali Macbeth at the Minerva theatre on 28 January 1893, though the text only survives in a printed edition from 1900. The twentieth-century playwright and actor Utpal Dutt described Ghosh’s Macbeth as “a translation so brilliant that it has not been equalled yet”; theatrically, it strove after ‘authenticity’ by being staged in ‘authentic’ Scots costumes and settings through the hired services of an English stage-designer. A contemporary reviewer praised its “astounding reproduction of the standard conventions of the English stage”. 33 But these conventions, whatever they may have been, did not please its contemporary Calcutta audience. Not only did Ghosh’s Macbeth play night after night to a near-empty Minerva Theatre, but some indignant viewers apparently demanded their money back. Ghosh, a theatre man to his fingertips, never staged Shakespeare again. This minor theatrical failure points to a crucial rift in the history of Shakespeare in India: a rift, if we may so call it, between translation and adaptation. On stage, Shakespeare has a formative role in three early traditions: performance in English on colonial stages, especially in Bombay and Calcutta during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; modern vernacular theatre drawing on new dramatic writing as well as on adaptations of Shakespeare; and Parsi theatre, the first professional popular theatre in India. The first two traditions survive well into the twentieth century: the fate of the first is documented not only in books like Geoffrey Kendall’s autobiography Shakespeare Wallah (1986, nearly 20 years after the successful Merchant-Ivory film of the same

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name, based on a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala) but also in records of visiting troupes, little theatre groups, and university or college drama. Vernacular theatre drew heavily on Shakespeare in the nineteenth century, and even up to Utpal Dutt’s prolific Bengali adaptations in the twentieth, after which – though stage adaptations continue – Shakespeare gains a new life on screen. From the mid-nineteenth century, Shakespeare was repeatedly Indianised for the stage, in versions that retained only the bare bones of the fable, altering settings, characters and language. Parsi theatre companies invested in a popular idiom that combined Victorian melodrama with the musical performance styles of nineteenth-century courtesans, folk theatre, and the abhinaya of classical Sanskrit drama. It was this hybrid theatre that went on tour to other parts of South Asia and to Africa, and gave birth both to the Marathi sangitnatak or musical drama, and – through the transformation of Parsi theatres into movie studios in the 1920s, and the f low of Parsi capital into the talkies thereafter – to the Bombay film. Shakespeare was a staple of the Parsi stage, and its greatest playwright-producer, Agha Hashr Kashmiri, achieved notable success with his versions of King Lear (Safed Khoon, 1907) and Macbeth (Khwab-e-hasti, 1909).

Literary ‘Influence’ and the Question of Time Shakespeare affected other writers too. In his Reminiscences, published in 1912, Tagore described the extraordinary impact of the passion and colour of Shakespearean drama on the relatively restricted literary world of his youth. For him, this drama appeared as a form of modern baroque, marked by the ‘working out of extravagantly vehement feelings to an inevitable conf lagration’.34 This baroque extravagance left its mark not only on contemporary theatre but also upon the ‘new’ form of the novel. Tagore’s great predecessor Bankimchandra was unequivocal about his debt to English literature in his first three novels, acknowledging that “While writing Kapalakundala the author I most read was Shakespeare”.35 Like many other nineteenth-century colonial authors, Bankimchandra was deeply concerned with the cultural dynamics of inf luence. To educated men of his time, the extent to which writing in the modern Indian languages was being transformed by contact with the west was a visible process: it aroused deep cultural anxieties, and generated new experiments in literary self-representation. This question of inf luence is tied in with our understanding of time, especially time in the colony, for which we might use Michel Serres’ model of folding or crumpling: If you take a handkerchief and spread it out in order to iron it, you can see in it certain fixed distances and proximities. If you sketch a circle in one area, you can mark out nearby points and measure far-off distances. Then take the same handkerchief and crumple it, by putting it in your pocket. Two distant points suddenly are close, even superimposed. If, further,

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you tear it in certain places, two points that were close can become very distant.36 Thus Serres bases his treatment of time on topology rather than metrics, suggesting that “Time doesn’t f low: it percolates”.37 We experience time as folded or crumpled, rather than as ironed out f lat. The inf luence of European authors upon Indian writers under colonial rule is better understood as this process of seepage, of filtering or percolation, rather than as a simple linear sequence of transmission. Certainly it is helpful in understanding Bankimchandra’s own, radical employment of a Shakespearean trope in his novel Kapalakundala, and his celebrated essay on ‘Śakuntalā, Miranda o [and] Desdemona’ (1875), together with Tagore’s later essay on ‘Śakuntala’.38 Both Bankimchandra and Tagore set Kalidasa’s heroine against Shakespeare’s, opening up contemporary debates on women, nature, sexuality and freedom. But it was Sir William Jones who first instituted the comparison that Bankimchandra develops in this essay, recklessly inverting history to describe Kalidasa, a Sanskrit court poet of the fourth century CE, as ‘the Shakespeare of India’ in the Preface to his translation of Sacontala, or the Fatal Ring (1789).39 The parallel is difficult to sustain, because Kalidasa wrote very few plays and is known equally for his long narrative poems belonging to the golden age of Sanskrit poetry at the fabled court of Vikramaditya (usually identified with Chandragupta II, ca. 376–415 CE). Moreover, his plays bear witness, not to an early version of the diverse, composite, politically charged characterisation of Shakespearian drama, but to a classical idealisation of character on the lines recommended by that great manual of early Sanskrit theatre and the arts of performance, Bharata’s Natyashastra (ca. first century BCE). The anachronism of describing him as the ‘Shakespeare of India’ is characteristic of the temporal sleights-of-hand produced by the colonial knowledge system.40 Still, the passion and colour of Shakespearean drama continues to offer a model for Bankimchandra’s understanding of character, as in his late novella Rajani (1877), where a young man appears to be leafing through the pages of Boydell’s A Shakespeare Gallery and comments that painted illustrations – visual props for the imagination – cannot convey the nuances of speech or action.41 Shakespeare in nineteenth-century India is thus intimately associated with the formation of a modern theatre, with the affective and social registers of literary modernity, and with the creation of a new idiom of representation. This is both an accident of history and the deliberate outcome of imperial educational policy, successfully marketing Britain’s prime cultural product. It illustrates a canonisation of the ‘great authors’ kind, one that predates ‘world literature’ as a category, but it also threatens the category itself. For Shakespeare’s ‘consecration’ does not take place within the networks of global publishing and translation: rather, it is the outcome of a determined localisation of the global, the easy appropriation of a non-copyrighted author whose performance

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texts script other and radically new performances. His distinction – what we might describe as his ‘world-making’ capacity, quite distinct from his global transmission and cultural canonisation – is that his texts present themselves for rewriting rather than simple reverence. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Shakespeare infiltrates cultural production in India, ‘speaking to’ the major issues of the time through an energetic programme of adaptation. Tagore was quite right in seeing this as the hallmark of a ‘world-poet’, one whose reach extends beyond his native shores to the coconut groves of the Indian subcontinent. At the same time, Shakespeare’s domestication in India makes him markedly different from the exemplars of the ‘world literary system’, as Moretti calls it, whose global circulation and readership depend on the international print market. It is true that Shakespeare’s canonisation in the literature curriculum has created – in India and worldwide – an endless demand for new editions, for critical studies, and for all the materials of a thriving pedagogic sub-industry, such as colloquia, conferences, and seminars dedicated to him; but creative and popular engagement with Shakespeare does not usually depend on this paraphernalia. Even in the nineteenth century, when this pedagogic canonisation first took hold in the colonial classroom, Shakespeare enjoyed an independent, ‘naturalised’, life on the stage and in literary adaptations. What is the fate of Shakespeare in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with the category of ‘world literature’ exposed to new kinds of attack, and the Tagorean idea of a world-poet scarcely viable across a fractured and divided globe? The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy argues that ‘there is no longer any world: no longer a mundus, a cosmos, a composed and complete order (from) within which one might find a place, a dwelling, and the elements of an orientation’.42 Even the ‘world literary system’ about which Moretti spoke with such confidence might appear a questionable proposition, given the challenges of ecological and planetary crisis, and a global descent into xenophobia, insularity, and ethnic, racist, or communal violence. Yet there is no denying the ubiquity of Shakespeare around the globe. Is this global presence tied to the marketing of Shakespeare-as-commodity, or to the idea of a hegemonic world literary system of ‘consecrated’, canonised authors, or does it indicate a more subversive infiltration? With the advent of ‘postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capital’, as Fredric Jameson described it, aesthetic forms have been drawn into a global economy of ‘remixing’.43 Instead of being part of a corpus of relatively stable texts circulated as ‘world literature’, Shakespeare has become, in fiction, film and theatre, a kind of fertile literary compost, subject to the universal exhortation to recycle, reuse and reduce. These ecological dicta, read metaphorically, need not be seen as a wilful ‘desecration’ (as opposed to ‘consecration’) of Shakespeare’s stature. In India, the current absorption of Shakespeare into cinema, into new media, into experimental theatre, into creative advertising, into graphic novels, retro-fiction and fantasy, is only matched (if at all) by a similar process affecting Tagore. Both might be regarded – at least in the Indian

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context that I have outlined – as world-poets who become insidious and irreplaceable components of a literary-cultural climate, or even an ecology – which is the fate of compost everywhere. So if Shakespeare is a success-story for world literature, his ascendancy ensured by the f lows and concentrations of colonial capital, his is also the kind of success that insidiously destroys its vehicle from within. Through his own disintegration and reconstitution, Shakespeare disintegrates world literature – otherwise an aggregation of circulating texts – into something rather closer to Tagore’s universal language of literature in which one can choose to speak for oneself, and – wholly creatively – learn to curse. In this respect Global Shakespeare is local Shakespeare. He remains an unsolved problem for the formal category – and theory – of world literature.

Notes 1. All citations of Hamlet, by Act, Scene and Line Number, are from William Shakespeare, Hamlet, eds. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, rev. ed., The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). 2. Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens (1835). See Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret, trans. John Oxenford (London: Smith and Elder, 1850), 2 vols: vol. 1, 350–51. 3. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, trans. Samuel Moore (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1949), 49–50. 4. Pheng Cheah, “What Is a World? On World Literature as World-Making Activity” Daedalus 137:3 ‘On Cosmopolitanism’ (2008): 27. 5. Ibid., 28, citing Goethe, “Some Passages Pertaining to the Concept of World Literature” in Comparative Literature: The Early Years. An Anthology of Essays, eds. HansJoachim Schulz and Phillip H. Rhein (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), 5. 6. Cheah, “What Is a World?” 30. 7. Pheng Cheah, “World against Globe: Toward a Normative Conception of World Literature” New Literary History 45:3 (2014): 305. 8. Edward W. Said, “Secular Criticism” in The World, the Text, and the Critic (London: Vintage, 1983), 19–22. 9. Barbara Cassin, ed., Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (French ed. 2004), English trans. ed. Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 1217–24. 10. The journal Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum was founded in 1877 by the Hungarian scholar Hugo Meltzl de Lomnitz. 11. See Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali [Collected Works], vol. 8 (Kolkata: Viśva Bharati, 1941), 385; and ‘World Literature’ trans. Swapan Chakravorty, in Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Writings on Literature and Language, eds. Sukanta Chaudhuri, Sisir Kumar Das, and Sankha Ghosh (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 148. 12. See Tagore, “World Literature” trans. Chakravorty, 142–43. 13. Ibid., 143. 14. For Tagore’s own play on this sense of ‘sāhitya’, see Rabindranath Tagore, “Bangla Jatiya Sahitya” in Rabindra Rachanabali, vol. 8, 415–32; trans. as ‘Bengali National Literature’ by Swapan Chakravorty in Tagore, Selected Writings on Literature and Language, 179–93. 15. Both original and translation cited from Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali (Collected Works), vol. 12 (Kolkata: Viśva Bharati, 1942), 65–66 (Bengali), and

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17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

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593 (English), as printed in Israel Gollancz, ed., A Book of Homage to Shakespeare (London: Oxford University Press, 1916), 320–21. I have transliterated the Bengali according to standard modern practice, restricting diacritical marks to a minimum, and using ‘b’ for the Bengali pronunciation of Sanskrit ‘v’ (thus ‘bishvakabi’ rather than ‘viśva-kavi’, which I have preferred elsewhere in this essay for ease of scholarly comprehension). See the essay “Sundar” (On Beauty), from Santiniketan, in Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali (Collected Works), vol. 16 (Kolkata: Viśva Bharati, 1943), 385. The article in Anandabazar Patrika, 1935, is cited in the entry on ‘viśva-kavi’ in Bibartanmulak Bangla Abhidhan [Diachronic Dictionary of Bangla Language] (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 2013–14). Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 150. David Damrosch, What Is World Literature? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 1. Franco Moretti, “Evolution, World-Systems, Weltliteratur” in Distant Reading, ed. Franco Moretti (London: Verso, 2013), 120–21. Franco Moretti, “Conjectures on World Literature” New Left Review 1 (2000): 55–56. Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, 12. Emily Apter, Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (London: Verso, 2013), 3, 237. See Eric Hayot, On Literary Worlds (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 105. Jonathan Freedman, “After Close Reading” The New Rambler (online review of books), n.d., n.p., https://newramblerreview.com/book-reviews/literary-studies/ after-close-reading, Last accessed April 3, 2020. Moretti, Distant Reading, 13. Ibid. Madhavi Menon, “The Nether Lands of Chouboli’s Dastan” in This Distracted Globe, eds. Marcie Frank, Jonathan Goldberg, and Karen Newman (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016), 213. Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 148. Quoted in Taraknath Sen, ed., Shakespeare Commemoration Volume (Calcutta: Presidency College, 1966), vii. In Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Bankim Rachanabali [Collected Works], vol. 2, ed. J.C. Bagal (Kolkata: Sahitya Samsad, 2004), 181. My translation. See Sukanta Chaudhuri, “Shakespeare in India” p.  4 (‘Shakespeare and Indian Literature’) in Internet Shakespeare Editions, Foyer Library Theater Annex, https:// internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/Criticism/shakespearein/india1/index.html , Last accessed April 3, 2020. Bharati, Ashvin 1287 (August-September 1880); reprinted in Rabindra Rachanabali, vol. 30 (Kolkata: Viśva Bharati, 1998), 53–56. See Utpal Dutt, Girish Chandra Ghosh (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1992), 15, and, for a contemporary review, The Englishman, February 8, 1893, quoted in Sarottama Majumdar, “That Sublime Old Gentleman” in India’s Shakespeare, eds. Poonam Trivedi and Dennis Bartholomeusz (Delhi: Pearson Education, 2006), 266. Rabindranath Tagore, “Jivansmriti [My Reminiscences]” in Rabindra Rachanavali [Complete Works], vol. 17 (Calcutta: Viśva Bharati, 1954), 374–75. As cited in J.K. Chakravarti, ed., Kapālakundalā (Calcutta: Śridhar Prakaśani, 1967), 7. Michel Serres with Bruno Latour, Conversations on Science, Culture and Time, trans. Roxanne Lapidus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 58–60.

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37. Ibid., 58. 38. See Bankim Rachanābali, vol. 2, 179–84, and Rabindranath Tagore, “Śakuntala” in Rabindra Rachanabali, vol. 5 (Kolkata: Viśva Bharati, 1942), 521–37; trans Swapan Chakravorty in Tagore, Selected Writings on Literature and Language, 237–51. See also Supriya Chaudhuri, “The Absence of Caliban: Shakespeare and Colonial Modernity” in Shakespeare’s World/ World Shakespeares, eds. R. S. White, Christa Jansohn, and Richard Fotheringham (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008), 223–36. 39. Kalidasa, The Sacontala: or, the Fatal Ring, trans. Sir William Jones, republished Jogendra Nath Ghose (Calcutta: Trübner & Co, 1875), iii. 40. For more on this, see Supriya Chaudhuri, “Remembering Shakespeare in India: Colonial and Postcolonial Memory” in Celebrating Shakespeare: Commemoration and Cultural Memory, eds. Coppélia Kahn and Clara Calvo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 101–20. 41. In Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Bankim Rachanabali, vol. 1 (Kolkata: Sahitya Samsad, 2003), 457. 42. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Sense of the World, trans. J.S. Librett (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 4. 43. See Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991).

12 BEYOND BARDOLATRY Rabindranath Tagore’s Critique of Shakespeare’s The Tempest Swati Ganguly

I A Poem for the ‘World Poet’ The world remembers Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) as the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913 for his English Gitanjali or Song Offerings.1 This prestigious award to a hitherto ‘unknown’ poet from a province of the British colony in India became an event not only in Anglophone nations but across Europe and the rest of the globe. Rabindranath achieved extraordinary fame almost overnight and the Gitanjali was translated into all major European languages like French, German, Spanish, Russian and Italian, to name a few. In the next few years the poems and lyrics of the Gitanjali, with their intermingling of devotion and love, became a phenomenal success among readers across the globe. The Gitanjali, addressed to a personal god of care and compassion, provided solace and hope to those who had experienced the dark night of the soul in the catastrophic events of the First World War. In November 1915, Rabindranath Tagore, who was then 54 years old, wrote a poem titled Viśva-Kavi (World Poet). Listed as poem no. 39 in the collection of poems titled Balaka, this has been identified by scholars as homage to William Shakespeare. Though Shakespeare is not mentioned by name, the address to the ‘world-poet’ who arose, across the distant sea-shore, within the horizons of England would indicate that Rabindranath may have had the Bard in mind. A rough English prose translation of the poem would be as follows: finding you so close to their hearts, they had regarded you as their own precious possession/ kissing your bright brow/ they cradled you in their sylvan branches/ kept you hidden under the veil of the misty landscape/ in the dew-soaked deep grassy plot full of wild-f lowers/ in the fairy’s

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play-ground. The island forests had not yet woken to the songs of praise to the poet-sun/ Then slowly, following the silent signs of eternity/[thy] bright f lame like the mid-day sun/ moved beyond the horizons, in the centuries’ hours/ and you have found your true seat in the centre of all directions/ illuminating the mind-of-the world; now see, at the end of an era/the trembling coconut fronds near the sea-shore of Bharat/resonate with your victory-chants. Rabindranath’s address to William Shakespeare as ‘poet of the world’ appears at first glance, to be typical of the rhetoric of hyperbole of the Englisheducated colonised Bengali elite. The history of William Shakespeare’s arrival in Bengal and his function as the cornerstone of the British colonial ‘civilising mission’, through both pedagogy and performance, is both well-documented and critiqued by scholars. Suffice it to say that by the mid-nineteenth century in Bengal, the Bard of Avon had come to epitomise British European civilisational excellence. A large group of the educated bhadralok (the refined and gentle middle-class) Bengali regarded his works as the supreme exemplar of highest ‘human’ values. Expressions that none other than Shakespeare could occupy an exalted position as a poet-playwright of the world became commonplace. Thus, it might be tempting to read Rabindranath’s poem as part of this phenomena of interpellation in the ideology of the imperishable empire of Shakespeare. However, such an attempt would necessarily be complicated by the status of Rabindranath Tagore at the time of the composition of this poem and I suggest that the poem to William Shakespeare acquires a curious double meaning in this context. It is perhaps telling that by the time he wrote this poem addressed to Shakespeare, Rabindranath was himself feted as the ‘Viśva-Kavi’ (literally the worldpoet). It is difficult not to think that there is a subtle self-referential quality in the poem. Is Rabindranath’s choice of the image of the poet as a sun, merely part of a long tradition of poetic trope or is it possible to read into this a veiled allusion to his own name Rabi which is one of the many Bengali words for the sun? Indeed, Rabindranath was fond of playing with the meaning of his name, referring to the sun as his namesake. Equally interesting are the references to the poet’s fame which cannot be contained within the shores of his native land, an allusion which may require some glossing. In 1912, shortly before he set off for this third trip to England (the one undertaken with the specific purpose of presenting the English translation of Gitanjali to William Rothenstein), Rabindranath had written to his friends about how felt the need to go beyond the boundaries of Bengal and respond to the call from across the shores. The voyage that Rabindranath had undertaken was both literal and metaphorical and it signalled a moment of his arrival in the world hitherto oblivious of his existence. It may not be far-fetched to suggest that these ideas were in Rabindranath’s unconscious when he sat down in his

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family estates in Shelaidaha to compose this poem in honour of William Shakespeare. Even if one were to disregard the topical allusion, there is little doubt that in 1915 Rabindranath Tagore could hardly be regarded merely as a Bengali poet, a subject of the British colony, writing in awe of the English Bard. This homage was from a poet whose stature could match that of Shakespeare’s – the significance of the title of the poem is that it was from one viśva-kavi to another. I would like to stress that Rabindranath’s poem challenges the exclusive claims that nations make on their poets; it posits that poets do not belong to nations but to the world. By the winter of 1915 Rabindranath Tagore had been invited by an agency in the United States to give public lectures for which he was to be paid handsomely. He agreed to this US trip and travelled via Japan. It is likely that by 1915 he had already conceived the core of his critique of the idea of nation and its praxis. These were delivered in several cities in Japan and America in 1916; three lectures among these were published as Nationalism in 1917.2 A recurrent theme is that nationalism, by its very ideology, is inimical to the notion of what it means to be human; nation is anti-human. The central thesis of these lectures is that by fulfilling greed and multiplying gain, nationalism, as a handmaiden of colonialism and capitalism, has eaten into the moral vitality of humanity. In all three lectures, Rabindranath makes a plea to create an antidote to the lethal poison of nationalism: viz. a restoration of man to his natural surroundings, to the fullness of communal life, with all its living associations of beauty, love and social obligations. A true valuation of the human lay in embracing the civilisational values in the East and also in the West. Though the term international was in vogue Rabindranath eschewed it in favour of ‘universal’. This ‘universalist’ position, often derided in postcolonial theories, has to be understood as a serious alternative available to Rabindranath who wanted to move beyond the claims of narrow chauvinistic nationalism as central to human existence. I would like to read Rabindranath’s poem about Shakespeare’s arrival on the Eastern shores within this framework expounded in the 1916 lectures. Thus, the core of the poem is the poet’s metaphorical journey or voyage which signals a freedom from the limiting national boundaries. Swapan Chakravorty, in his essay ‘Shakespeare and Colonial Modernity in Bengal’ makes a passing reference to the poem and suggests that “Tagore was speaking of the possibility of translation and of traffic between cultures, of the equal joy in light the sylvan boughs and the coconut fronds were born to share”.3 In agreeing, I would like to stress that the claim of equality could only be founded on a shared respect between cultures of the West and East and not on a servile acceptance of the former by the latter. Rabindranath’s universalism was thus a departure from the standard lessons of liberal education of British India. The latter claimed its own excellence as ‘universal’ through a violent erasure of the knowledge systems and cultures of the countries it conquered. This was a mask of conquest. The

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deployment of Shakespeare in the colonial masks of conquest is now a critical common-place. Here is one instance of the claims of his universal appeal: Shakespeare especially has addressed himself to the universal human heart. The jealousy of Othello and the ambition of Macbeth are as perfectly apprehended by the intelligent Hindu alumni of an English College in Calcutta as by students of scholastic engagement in the poet’s native land.4 Such a paean is premised on the notion that Shakespeare’s depiction of human nature is universal and therefore would carry an appeal for all cultures and ages. Rabindranath challenged this very basis of what constitutes the human in his essay titled ‘Sakuntala’, written in 1902. In this essay he had gone against the grain of literary criticism prevalent in his own time; this was also a challenge to bardolatry which was the order of the day.

II The Bengali Critical Response to the Bard It was Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (1838–1894), one of the most renowned Bengali litterateurs and ideologues of the nineteenth century, who played a significant role in securing the stature of William Shakespeare among the elite Bengali of his times. An alumnus of the Hindu College which was later renamed as Presidency College, Bankim Chandra knew his Shakespeare rather well; his writings may be read as epitomising the manner in which bardolatry was established in Bengal. In his novel Rajani (1878) the erudite anti-hero, Amarnath waxes eloquent on how Shakespeare’s text alone can bring out the complex intertwining of innocence and courage, beauty with coyness, pride in female chastity and ebullience of youth that characterises Desdemona and Juliet.5 This passage is also meant to convey the depth of Amarnath’s education which takes into its ambit not only classical Sanskrit literature but also Greek and Roman history, as well as the works of European politico-philosophical thinkers, the likes of Schopenhauer, Comte, Huxley, Mill, Owen and the lone natural scientist Darwin.6 Evidently, for the nineteenth-century educated Bengali, Shakespeare operated as the privileged conduit to the best of Western culture and philosophy, so that knowing one’s Shakespeare was equivalent to gaining entry into an exclusive cultural club. Naturally, the members of such a club were male and the operation of Hindu patriarchy was consolidated through a specific appropriation of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespearean ‘characters’ were read as epitomising certain virtues or traits of human beings and the tendency was to praise the ‘feminine’ potential of these characters. This was particularly conducive to the newly reconstituted patriarchy in Bengal which was intended to integrate women even more seamlessly into the social fabric. Discourses on women prevalent during late nineteenth century in Bengal were aimed precisely at such social

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integration and not unsurprisingly the merits of the English or European ladies, as represented in the literature of the colonial masters, provided the preferred model for Bengal’s patriarchy. Bankim’s essay ‘Sakuntala, Miranda ebong Desdemona’ [Sakuntala, Desdemona and Miranda’] (1875) published in Bangadarshan, the hugely inf luential journal which Bankim edited, served as an epitome of the fashioning of the feminine. Thus, ‘innocence’ seems to be a favourite and highly approved critical tag for characters identified as truly feminine – Desdemona or Miranda. Bankim’s essay is pegged on a discussion of the nature of this innocence in both these characters and uses Sakuntala as a counterpoint. Innocent, beautiful, feminine nature is corrupted in human company, in the presence of human society; its purity is sullied like the cloud which darkens the beauty of the moonlit night by preoccupations with thoughts of who shall love me, who shall regard me as beautiful, how shall I win the heart of a man? Sakuntala and Miranda have not been tarnished in this manner because they have not been brought up in human society. (translation mine) 7 In this context it is worth noting that Bankim quotes Shakespeare’s text in the original; he was confident that the erudite Bengali readers of Bangadarshan would be able to access it with ease. This is followed by a section in which Bankim compares the courtship of the pair of couples. He draws attention to the similarity of their situations – Miranda has been brought up exclusively by her father Prospero, and Sakuntala by her adoptive father the sage Kanwa and a couple of young men who live as hermits in the ashram. Both young women fall in love at first sight with the respective heroes of the two plays, but their expressions are very different. This, argues Bankim, is bound to be distinct: Sakuntala, who has grown up in an ashram community and is conditioned by its customs, is characterised by lajja a typically feminine quality which is an admixture of coyness and shame. He notes, with a degree of disapproval, that Kalidasa’s heroine seems to be tongue-tied in the presence not only of her lover Dushyanta but is incapable of expressing her heart’s tumult to her friends and companions. There is a degree of furtiveness, a play of hide and seek that according to Bankim is the feature of Sakuntala’s amorous dalliance with Dushyanta. Sakuntala is full of “lame excuses” and this appears to irk the critic.8 In a striking contrast Miranda is so completely innocent that she can gush about her romantic response and praises Ferdinand’s looks to her father Prospero.9 Evidently, Bankim favours Miranda’s innocence, which is not constrained by what he characterises as feminine lajja; he praises Miranda as a bird of the forest/wild which sings at daybreak, a f lower that blooms at the touch of breeze – unlearned in the social art of femininity, there are no hindrances to her frank and innocent expressions of ardour.10 In the tapovana or forest

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hermitage, Sakuntala comes across as a mere child in her behaviour and manners; she is overshadowed by Dushyanta and Bankim suggests this is the intention of the poet-playwright: Dushyanta is a mighty ruler of the world and Sakuntala a mere chit of a girl who has grown up in a tapovana. There is little scope within the early sections of the play for the evolution/development of her character. Sakuntala becomes a mature woman only in her grief and anger when Dushyanta fails to recognise her in the court. The tongue-tied young girl can then chastise the great king.11 There is no mention in Bankim’s essay of the relation between Kalidasa’s play and its source, the tale of Sakuntala and Dushyanta in the epic Mahabharata. In the latter, Sakuntala is not a coy, pretty young woman incapable of any expression except shame but a desiring subject whose ability to speak her mind to the erring king is not at odds with her initial identity as a denizen of the ashram. What strikes a particularly strange note is the way Bankim ends this section of the essay; he asserts that his attempt has been to prove that Kalidasa’s talent as a playwright was in no way lesser than that of Shakespeare, a claim which appears curious given the thrust of his comparison. Since Bankim dominated the literary scene in the Bengal of his times, his essay became both popular and inf luential; it laid the template for a certain kind of trend in Bengali literary criticism. The Orientalist scholar Haraprasad Shastri for instance, who was also a Shakespeare aficionado, wrote an essay titled ‘Kalidas o Shakespeare’ [Kalidas and Shakespeare] (1878) in which he compared Miranda and Desdemona’s innocence to that of Sakuntala as did Bankim’s essay. Within five years of the publication of Bankim’s essay, Shrishchandra Majumdar wrote an essay titled ‘Miranda o Kapalkundala’ [Miranda and Kapalkundala] (1880) in Bangadarshan. Though Bankim’s inf luence as a literary critic was phenomenal, yet Rabindranath managed to steer clear of it in his own essay ‘Sakuntala’ (1902). One reason for this could be Rabindranath’s engagement with Kalidasa, his deep appreciation of the poet-playwright, had a long history which could be traced to his childhood memory of hearing his eldest brother Dwijendranath Tagore recite the Sanskrit Meghduta, the long narrative poem about the Yaksha, who banished from his home and pining for his wife, addresses the cloud as a messenger to convey his longing and desire for her. While a detailed discussion of Rabindranath’s admiration for and critical appraisal of Kalidasa is outside the purview of this essay, it is possible to posit that Rabindranath had placed the Sanskrit poet-playwright at the centre of what he regarded as a bharatiya or Indian tradition of literary creativity, treating him as a source of history and heritage. It is worth recalling that the essay ‘Sakuntala’ was part of an anthology called Prachin Sahitya [Ancient Literature] (1907) in which three among the seven essays were devoted to Kalidasa’s poems and plays. In the following section I argue that Rabindranath’s essay marks a departure from the ideological premise of Bengali literary comparisons between Kalidasa

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and Shakespeare. Rabindranath’s ‘Sakuntala’ completely overturns the genre of literary criticism that had emerged at the turn of the nineteenth century by focusing exclusively on ‘character analysis’ of women protagonists in a vacuum. It shifts the very basis of such comparative studies from a discussion of feminine characters to human nature; it contextualises the meaning of the human by locating it in an affective relationship with nature. He identifies this particular quality of the relationship between human beings and nature as specific to the civilisational ethos of the East.

III Tagore’s Interventions in the Paeans to the Bard Rabindranath begins his essay ‘Sakuntala’ by drawing attention to the apparent similarities between the classical Sanskrit play and Shakespeare’s tragicomedy: A comparison between Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Kalidasa’s Sakuntal is likely to occur in our minds. Their external similarities and internal differences are matters fit for a detailed discussion. The love between Miranda, nurtured by solitude, and Prince Ferdinand is similar to that between Sakuntala, the hermit’s daughter, and Dushyanta. Even the settings are similar; an island, surrounded by the seas in one and a tapovan in the other.12 However, he points out, despite the apparent similarities, the kavyarasa (literally the poetic f lavour) of the two plays is distinct. The essay is devoted to a discussion of this distinction. I would like to identify three major points which Rabindranath develops in this essay, discuss these closely by referring to his text and argue that they do not form discrete categories but are linked to each other. The first of these concerns an inquiry into what constitutes the ‘feminine’ qualities of the heroines of the two plays; the second is a discussion of the locales/contexts in which they grow up and its implications for the development of their character; the final point which develops from this is a scathing critique of The Tempest as a play concerned with control of nature and power over human beings. The discussion of Sakuntala’s femininity is premised on her innocence. Aware of the existing literary-critical trend which regarded Sakuntala as immature, Rabindranath begins by acknowledging that she has “blemishes” but hastens to add that she “remains blissfully unaware of it”. Indeed, the quality of Sakuntala’s ‘innocence’ is a subject that the author keeps returning to in this essay. In a significant departure from the idea that lack of feminine innocence is linked invariably with sexual knowingness, Rabindranath emphatically asserts that Sakuntala’s ‘innocence’ is intrinsic to her, it is not “encircled by ignorance from all sides” and “it is not right to state that she has no knowledge of the quotidian world”. And it is this that makes Sakuntala’s innocence different from Miranda’s, which is constituted of ignorance. This is because Miranda’s circumstances

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have trapped her in a secluded island with only her father as companion and this is why “her real self does not attain its natural fruition”.13 Breaking away from the trend initiated by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Rabindranath refuses to tilt in favour of Shakespeare’s innocent heroine Miranda. His essay continually draws attention to how Miranda has absolutely no affective ties with the island where she has been nurtured: We see Miranda living amidst the natural world of a deserted rocky island, battered by the turbulent seas; and yet, she does not exhibit any intimacy with mother-nature in the island. When an attempt is made to take her away from her world – the world which has nurtured her from her childhood days – she does not feel any pull from behind resulting out of her long association with the island, her foster-mother. How her solitary life, devoid of people’s company, in the island shapes her character is the only fact that gets ref lected in the portrayal of her character. We do not discern any vital relationship between Miranda’s inner-self and the rocks and waters of her island. We see the deserted island merely as a backdrop of the events in the play; not as a matrix of the inner workings of Miranda’s mind. The island remains necessary only as a location at the level of the narrative; it does not become an integral core of Miranda’s character.14 The points which Rabindranath raises are significant: Miranda grows up in an exclusively male companionship owing everything to her father Prospero, the patriarch; Sakuntala grows up in the company of her friends, other young women of her age. The exchanges between them are instances of lightness, banter, warmth and joy. Sakuntala’s sakhis or female friends are her confidants and they play an important part in the courtship of Dushyanta and Sakuntala. Indeed, Rabindranath points out that if “Sakuntala were to be left only in the company of Kanva her emotional growth would surely have suffered. Her innocence would have been transformed into mere ignorance which, in turn, would have made her the female counterpart of Rishyashringa”.15 However, because she grows up in a community of men and women, partaking of the activities of the ashram, Sakuntala is spontaneous, generous, full of joy but she is also responsible towards the community, her tender heart, like a tendril, spreads and lovingly entwines both the human and the non-human worlds with equal love and care. Rabindranath continues to develop a comparison between Miranda and Sakuntala based, not on their courtships with the respective males, but on the presence or absence of their affective relation with the world of nature. Thus, in Rabindranath’s astute assessment: Sakuntala’s emotional life matures through her intimacy with nature, through acts of watering the plants that are dear to her, feeding the deer

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and revelling in the beauty of the moon-lit night. The intensity of this bond with nature becomes evident when she has to leave the tapovan and journey to the court to meet her husband Dushantya. There is a vivid description of how Sakuntala and the nature in which she has been nurtured and taken care of, in turn, feel the sharp pangs of parting. Rabindranath has no hesitation in stating emphatically: No other text in world literature shows this fact with such great poignancy as we find it in Act IV of Sakuntala. In this kavya there is a union  .  .  . between man and nature. Achieving a sense of deep union amidst widespread discords is perhaps not possible anywhere else in the world but in India.16 This brings me to the second issue – that of the differences in the place and space in the two plays viz an island (in The Tempest) and a tapovan or forest hermitage in Abhijnanasakuntalam. The island in The Tempest, over which Prospero holds sway, is, as Caliban says, rich in natural resources but its beauty is occluded by the constant ugly and violent struggle to possess it. The tapovan is precisely not an island cut off from society; in it the communitarian ties as well as the bond between human beings and nature thrive. Rabindranath goes on to elucidate in detail what he considers as the unique quality of the forest hermitage: The tapovan is a place where common human nature and ascetic pursuits, beauty and restraints coalesce. No artificial societal restrictions exist here: but,’ one, nevertheless, has to follow strict religious rules . . . Sakuntala, as a play, achieves a unique stature for the very reason of being located at the meeting point of bondage and freedom.17 A major part of Rabindranath’s essay is devoted to a close reading of the Sanskrit play. In it Sakuntala with her bonds of love and affection, of care and nurture, emerge as a more complete human being. In this context it might be worth noting that in the essay, ‘The Message of the Forest’ (1919),18 written more than 20 years after the ‘Sakuntala’ essay, Rabindranath pursued the distinction between Shakespeare and Kalidasa along the lines of what is now identified as eco-criticism. Rabindranath gives instances from Shakespeare’s last plays, comedies and tragedies, drawing attention to how hostility constitutes a core of the representation of the human-nature relationship. In Cymbeline, the mountainous forest and the cave appear in their aspect of obstruction to life’s opportunities – which only seem tolerable in comparison with the vicissitudes of fortune in the artificial court life.19

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Rabindranath reads As You Like It, traditionally regarded as the epitome of the pastoral – a celebration of forest life – as a paltry effort at didacticism, one which preaches without providing peace. The barren heath in Macbeth is a ‘prelude to a bloody crime of treachery and treason’ and the witches are a ‘personification of Nature’s malignant forces’. In King Lear, it is the father’s fury which is expressed as the storm on the heath. “In The Winter’s Tale, the suspicious nature of a king’s love stands bare in its relentlessness and Nature cowers before it, offering no consolation”.20 Together these constitute a sustained critique of Shakespeare’s plays in so far as they fail to create an affective bond between human beings and nature. The problematic has its source, argued Rabindranath, in the antagonism that appears to be at the heart of the Western civilisation. The aspect of nature which dominated the imagination of the West was the sea. Rabindranath’s reading of the relationship between human beings and the sea is worth noting: In the sea, Nature presented herself to these men in her aspect of danger, of a barrier, which seemed to be at constant war with the land and its children. The sea was the challenge of untamed Nature to the indomitable human soul. And man did not f linch; he fought and won. . . .21 An astute and sensitive reader of literary cultural trends, Rabindranath extrapolated from this the idea that “the spirit of the fight continued in him (man)”.22 In a striking contrast to the experience of the West, in the East the core of the human-nature relationship was the forest: The forest gave them shelter and shade, fruit and f lower, fodder and fuel; it entered into a close living relation with their work and leisure and necessity, and in this way made it easy for them to know their own lives as associated with the larger life. They could not think of their surroundings as lifeless, separate or inimical.23 Rabindranath identified this close emotional, affective human-nature relationship as a key quality of an Eastern civilisation, one that had found expression in ancient, Sanskrit literature. This affective bond of nurture and sharing between human being and nature, which form the core of the collective memory of the people who lived in India in the past, Rabindranath argued, set them apart from their counterparts in the West. In the ‘Sakuntala’ essay Rabindranath had explored, through a close reading, that The Tempest, usually praised as one of the Bard’s most perfect plays, reveals the workings of power. Reading from the vantage of human relation to nature, Rabindranath lays threadbare the coercion and oppression that lies at the heart of Shakespeare’s last play. Rabindranath’s criticism zeroes in on this particular aspect of Prospero’s engagement with nature:

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In The Tempest man is not nurtured with the positive spirit of discovering oneself as a note in harmony with the great symphony of the world of creation. Man tries to humble and to dominate the world of nature in order to become its master. Contradictions and conf licts, borne out of the desires to control, comprise the leitmotif of The Tempest. In this play, Prospero who is dispossessed of his own kingdom wants to take control of the nature of the island by using his magical power. Here, even the handful of individuals, who in an instance of rare good fortune reach the shore after shipwreck, engage in acts of deceit and assassination in order to gain power to rule the island. This game of power comes to an end when the island is finally won over. But nobody can say that this game will end for good.24 In an earlier section of the essay Rabindranath points out how Ariel is nothing more than a “reluctant servant”. Indeed, he is more of a slave who is “vanquished and tortured” and made to act as an agent of his coercive measures. Not unexpectedly there is no “loving, parting words exchanged between him and the father-daughter duo” . . . as “they leave the island”.25 Commenting on the ideology that informs The Tempest, Rabindranath observes: At the centre of all conf lict lies the craving for power and gaining it. [emphasis mine] This tendency is thoroughly disharmonious with the world of nature. From beginning to end it is only disorder. Human beings’ uncontrollable instincts are capable of rising up like tempests.26 In his final assessment of a comparative study of the two plays, Rabindranath asserts: There are workings of power in The Tempest; there is peace in Sakuntala. There is victory achieved by the exercise of power in The Tempest; there is attainment of success through welfare in Sakuntala.27

IV An Early Postcolonial Response to Shakespeare I would like to posit Rabindranath’s essay ‘Sakuntala’ as the first postcolonial ecologically sensitised critique of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I use the term ‘postcolonial’ in a specific sense, one which constitutes an important intervention by Harish Trivedi. He does this by drawing upon the multiple valences of the phrase uttar-upaniveshvad (which is a translation of postcolonial).28 The meaning of the Hindi word uttar is not limited to after (as is understood in the use of the word ‘post’) but more typically as reply or answer, Thus uttarupaniveshvad (postcolonial) carries the radical implication of answering back

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the coloniser. I would argue that Rabindranath’s essay with its critique of Shakespeare’s play as an instance of display of power, one which works against the very environment that nurtured it, instantiates this radical and subversive potential of postcolonial reading. Moreover, this postcolonial reading is also an instance of a hermeneutic sensitive to the question of environment and ecology. In this essay and in many others, Rabindranath identified the tapovana or forest hermitages of ancient India as an ideal in which human beings realised their intimate connections with nature and formed an affective bond of love, nurture and care. In ‘The Message of the Forest’, the essay referred to earlier, Rabindranath elucidated the significance of the tapovana especially as it resolved the binaries of material and spiritual, between enjoyment of life and renunciation: [T]he ideal hermitage of ancient India was not a theatre where the spirit should wrestle with the f lesh, or where the monastic order should try conclusions with the social order, – it was to establish a harmony between all our energies and the eternal reality. That is why the relations of Indian humanity with beast and bird and tree had attained an intimacy which may seem strange to people of the other lands. Our poets have told us that the tapovana is shantarasaspadam – that the emotional quality peculiar to the forest – retreat is Peace, which is the emotional counterpart of perfection.29 The centrality of peace in the tapovan-ashram which Rabindranath wrote so eloquently about is evident in the very name of Santiniketan, the place where he had set up the brahmacharyashram, an ashram school for boys, in 1901. Santiniketan, which literally means the abode of peace, was a piece of land in the district of Birbhum in the western part of Bengal which Rabindranath’s father Debendranath Tagore bought from the original landowners, the Sinhas of Raipur, in 1863. Rabindranath had visited the place with his father en route to the Himalayas and was deeply impressed by the rough undulating terrain which seemed to him to be far more exciting that the f lat Gangetic plains. It is likely that his childhood memories left a deep imprint on him and when he decided to lay the foundations of an alternative educational institution for boys, he felt that the Santiniketan ashram, was the ideal place. The model for the brahmacharyasham was the ancient Indian tradition of imparting learning where young male pupils lived in close proximity with the guru and his family in a forest. Education was not limited to book-learning but extended to developing a keen sensitivity towards one’s environment. Typically, this meant for the young pupils learning to care for cows, for the trees of the forest and a gratitude for the bounty of nature. The poet-philosopher reimagined a modern tapovan in Santiniketan. He dreamt of creating in

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Santiniketan an integrated alternative community which thrived on the affective bond between human beings and nature. Trees had been planted to create the likeness of the ancient Indian forest hermitages as they existed in Rabindranath’s imagination. He described this as a space “where the chasm between man and the rest of creation has been bridged”.30 It was crucial to develop an intimate relation between human beings and the universe, Rabindranath argued, and the best time for this was during childhood, as it was in the early years that one most easily acquired lessons from nature.31 Typically, the groves of mango and other shady trees provided a natural, hospitable pedagogical space. When he wrote the Sakuntala essay, the brahmacharyashram or ashram school was yet to be set up, but Rabindranath had already thought long and deep about the ethical and aesthetic significance of the tapovan, especially as it had existed in the writings of the poets and playwrights of ancient India. Indeed, he would continue to do so long after the ashram school had attained its late adolescence and the university, Visva-Bharati, had been founded. Though the latter was conceived as a world centre of learning and culture, its location was in Santiniketan. The motto of Visva-Bharati is expressed in the Sanskrit phrase ‘yatra visvambhabatyeekneedam’ translated as ‘where the world makes its home in a nest’. This nest was the Santiniketan tapovan-ashram, a hospitable world for humanity. It is worth recalling that by 1918, Rabindranath had already laid the foundation of Visva-Bharati. In his many Bengali lectures delivered during this period he spoke of his university as a tapovan, a space which was uncontaminated by colonial control. Central to Rabindranath’s understanding of the tapovan was a harmonious relation between human beings and nature, Nature’s bounty could only be enjoyed through a respectful and loving attitude and not an attempt to master her. This, he argued in several essays, was how our ancestors lived; their prayers and hymns to nature, contained in the Vedas and the Upanishads and in the Epics in which the protagonists spend much of their time in the forests. Increasingly Rabindranath identified this as integral to the culture of the East. Over the years, he spoke eloquently of the need to revive this relationship without which the world would hurtle to annihilation. Thus Rabindranath’s role could hardly be limited to that of a postcolonial literary critic. He had moved beyond the bardolatry that was then characteristic of Bengali literary criticism because of his ability as an unconventional and radical reader. However, it is also crucial that we recognise that Rabindranath had founded one of the most evolved, ecologically-sensitised habitations in modern India, at the heart of which was an anti-colonial pedagogical experiment. The supposedly imperishable empire of Shakespeare could be challenged only from the knowledge that such an experiment was possible. The colonised had resources of answering the coloniser back not only by reading its ancient texts against the grain but could do this also because of the vantage of living in an alternative community, one which had decolonised the template of living.

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Rabindranath’s critique of The Tempest is linked to his critique of nationalism which he identified with the divisive exercise of power characterising the Western colonial project. His notion of Universalism which pervades his conception of the visva kavi and Visva Bharati University refers not only to the transcending of national boundaries in our understanding of cultures but to an expanded conception of the human intricately and intimately connected with nature which co-constitute the universe – an idea exemplified by Kalidasa’s Sakuntala. In this light the ‘universalism’ of the bard, claimed by colonialists and criticised by postcolonial critics as an imperial imposition, would need to be re-evaluated.

Notes 1. Rabindranath was a multifaceted genius whose talent encompassed verbal, visual and performance arts. He began writing plays with music and song, in the mode of the European Opera and these came to acquire a popular appeal. He wrote fiction and non-fictional prose. When he was 63, in 1924, he took up painting. 2. Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism (London: Macmillan, 1917). 3. Swapan Chakravarty, “Shakespeare and Colonial Modernity in Bengal” https:// shakespeareinbengal.f iles.wordpress.com/2015/03/shakespeare-and-colonialmodernity-in-bengal.pdf. 4. Quoted in Hema Dahiya, Shakespeare Studies in Colonial Bengal: The Early Phase (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 20. 5. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, “Rajani” in Bankim Rachanabali (Collected Works), vol. 1 (Kolkata: Paschim Banga Bangla Academy, 2014), 789. 6. Ibid. 7. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, “Sakuntala, Miranda o Desdemona” in Bibidho Prasanga, Bankim Rachanabali Dwitiyo Khando (Miscellaneous, Bankim Collected Works, vol. 2), (Kolkata: Sahitya Samsad, BS 1411), 179. 8. Ibid., 181. 9. Ibid., 180. 10. Ibid., 181. 11. Ibid., 182. 12. Rabindranath Tagore, “Sakuntala” translated by Dipankar Roy in Prachin Sahitya (Ancient Literature), Rabindranath Tagore: Annotated English Translation and Critical Essays, eds. Nianjana Bhattacharya and Sayantan Dasgupta (Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 2017), 85–117, 85. 13. Ibid., 90. 14. Ibid., 92. 15. Ibid., 90. The reference suggests a parallel between Shakuntala and Rishyasringa, a boy born with deer horns, of Urvasi, the celestial dancer and Vibhandak Rishi who she was sent to seduce by Indra, the king of gods. Urvasi left after giving birth to the boy who was brought up by his father in the forests, isolated from society, never meeting any women and not knowing of their existence. Rabindranath suggests Shakuntala’s innocence is not to be compared with Rishyasringa’s ignorance. 16. Ibid., 93. 17. Ibid., 89. 18. Rabindranath Tagore, “The Message of the Forest” in The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, ed. Sisir Kumar Das, vol. III (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1996), 385–400. 19. Ibid., 386.

Beyond Bardolatry

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

227

Ibid., 397. Ibid., 386. Ibid. Ibid. Tagore, “Sakuntala”, 100. Ibid., 94. Ibid., 101. Ibid., 116. Harish Trivedi, “India and Post-colonial Discourse” in Interrogating Post-Colonialism: Theory, Text and Context, eds. Harish Trivedi and Meenakshi Mukherjee (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1996), 237. 29. Tagore, “The Message of the Forest”, 394. 30. Ibid. 31. Rabindranath’s educational philosophy had much in common with the thinkers of the radical Enlightenment, who we often tend to dismiss as romantics.

AFTERWORD All the World’s His Stage, 2016 Michael Dobson

Comparisons between the events staged in Shakespearean anniversary years, both across time within particular spaces and across space within particular times, can provide useful indications as to the changing preoccupations and emphases in Shakespearean study and performance worldwide.1 Certainly, the year that marked the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, and the second biennial conference of the Asian Shakespeare Association from which the essays that make up this book are drawn, was a notable one for visible shifts in the political and Bardolatrous world orders alike. Looking back over my diary for 2016, I am reminded that as well as co-hosting a World Shakespeare Congress, which took place sequentially in Stratford and then in London, I accepted, as ever, far too many invitations to hear papers and to see productions outside England. My usual calendar of seminars and lectures and marking and committees in Stratford and Birmingham was in that year variegated with engagements in Scotland (where the resurgence of nationalism was more than visible at the ‘Twa Bards’ conference, comparing the afterlives of Shakespeare and Robert Burns, staged at Burns’ birthplace, Alloway, in January), around continental Europe (Riga, Zagreb, Bucharest, Rome, Craiova, Valletta, Lund, Paris, Lyons, Bonn and Berlin) and in South America (in Florianópolis and in São Paulo, where in November I was lucky enough to see the first ever professional Brazilian production of Troilus and Cressida, an event admittedly rather overshadowed in historical significance by the news that Donald Trump had just been elected President of the United States of America). A number of these events were arranged by the nowadays much-enfeebled arm of British ‘soft power’, the British Council, which staged various festivities around the world in 2016 under the banner of ‘Shakespeare Lives In. . . .’ Sadly my ‘Shakespeare Lives In Paris’ appearance at the Sorbonne, which took place soon after the

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fateful referendum of June 25, necessarily consisted largely of apologising on Shakespeare’s behalf for the British vote to leave the European Union.2 All of these miscellaneous conferences, lectures and theatrical performances around Europe and the Western Hemisphere, some of them given a distinctly old-time imperial look by the British Council’s union-jack-adorned placards beside their podiums, were substantially upstaged by developments in different parts of Asia. The Craiova Shakespeare Festival in April was in practice dominated by its star visiting production, the superb Richard II from the Saitama Arts Centre which was the last show on which Yukio Ninagawa worked before his death a matter of weeks later: after its first performance in Craiova this production received an 18-minute standing ovation. At the World Shakespeare Congress in Stratford in July one of my roles was as the chair of a panel about touring Shakespearean productions in Asia; and by far the most important of my excursions outside the United Kingdom were to Nanjing in October – for the signing of a memorandum of agreement between my university, the literary publishing house Yilin Press and Nanjing University, establishing a collaborative ‘Shakespeare Centre, China’ – and to Tokyo in early December, where I gave a lecture about the (by then) late Ninagawa which inaugurated a comparable research collaboration on Shakespeare with Waseda University (home of the Tsubouchi Theatre Museum, founded by the first great translator of Shakespeare into Japanese Shoyo Tsubouchi). In 2016, then, the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, a town regarded a century earlier as the spiritual home of the British Empire Shakespeare Society, an unquestioned centre of the imperial literary culture, entered into equal partnerships with two Asian institutions. I should add that en route to Tokyo I called again at Nanjing, for the Shakespeare Centre China’s inaugural seminar; and went to Wuzhen for a board meeting of the Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive; and the day before that I took part in a public event at the Shanghai Writers’ Club with Gregory Doran, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), about the RSC’s own major initiative in China, a series of new, actorfriendly translations of Shakespeare’s plays into Mandarin commissioned under the company’s aegis (with a budget partly supplied by the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office).3 The first to be performed was Henry V, which Doran and I saw that evening, November 26th, at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre. Staged in modern dress by a young local cast, in front of an equally young Chinese audience with no prejudices about medieval France and no foreknowledge of the play’s ending, it was electric. And after Tokyo I f lew to Delhi, to see another manifestation of the rise of a self-consciously Asian Shakespeare, the second conference of the Asian Shakespeare Association, ‘All The World’s His Stage: Shakespeare Today’. Delhi was of course in every way memorable, and full of signs of the times, outside the conference as well as within it. My f light arrived at 3 a.m., in thick smog, to an airport all but paralysed by side effects of the Modi government’s

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sudden withdrawal of certain banknotes from circulation three weeks earlier. The whole place had become one large and frustrated queue for very limited supplies of local currency. The smog easily outlasted the waiting: I remember my relief at having finally found both some cash and a taxi dissipating rapidly between the airport and the city centre as my driver swerved violently at the last moment in the thick darkness to avoid hitting other cabs, themselves the victims of earlier collisions caused by the poor visibility. Reaching the conference in one admittedly jet-lagged piece, however, I was immediately compensated by K. Madavane’s powerful two-hour Hamlet in Hindi, and from then onwards the intellectual and theatrical excitement never f lagged. The conference’s title deliberately foregrounded questions about Shakespeare’s place in world literature, or global culture, and how it might be conceived from different Asian perspectives: a century after Israel Gollancz pioneered what is now habitually called ‘Global Shakespeare’ by publishing A Book of Homage to Shakespeare, the topic of how we might now conceive of Shakespeare as viśva-kavi, world-poet, as Tagore called him in a poem translated for that volume, was both implicit and explicit throughout the conference programme.4 That focus, moreover, has remained a prominent aspect of Shakespeare studies worldwide over the three years that have passed since the Delhi conference. At the time of this book’s going to press, in mid 2020, preparations are well advanced for the first World Shakespeare Congress to take place in Asia since the Tokyo congress of 1991, ‘Shakespeare Circuits’, Singapore, 2021. In China the RSC’s translation project continues apace – the new Mandarin Henry V and Hamlet were published by Yilin in Nanjing in autumn 2019 – and, epidemics permitting, the Shakespeare Centre, China, will stage its first pan-Chinese student Shakespeare festival, originally scheduled for May 2020, early in 2021. Even in provincial Stratford-upon-Avon, a permanent Chinese pavilion was opened during the Shakespeare’s Birthday festivities of 2019 (a gift from the city of Fuzhou, home of Shakespeare’s contemporary Tang Xianzu, author of The Peony Pavilion), and at the Shakespeare Institute the current portfolio of master’s courses includes a whole module on Asian performances of Shakespeare and the current cohort of PhD students includes one studying Shakespearean translations and adaptations in Nepal and another writing about the assimilation and appropriation of Shakespeare in Bangladesh. All the world’s his stage, and while in the West that stage is still preoccupied with the rise of populism and a concomitant crisis of culture (the wave of despairing topical revivals of Julius Caesar and Titus Andronicus which I discussed in Delhi is not quite over even yet),5 in Asia there is another world of Shakespeares coming into being. Some may be funded by the rising global superpower of China and the fading formerly United Kingdom, but the future of the viśva-kavi is likely to exceed both the agendas and the comprehension of both.

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Notes 1. See e.g. Michael Dobson, “Four Centuries of Centenaries: Stratford-upon-Avon” Shakespeare Survey 70 (2017): 50–57. 2. See “Shakespeare and Europe” Sorbonne summer school, July 7, 2016, www.youtube. com/watch?v=u8Tic8guq98. 3. In 2016 the RSC also took its own English-language productions of Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V on tour to Chinese cities. 4. See in particular the essays by Supriya Chaudhuri and Swati Ganguly elsewhere in this volume. 5. See Michael Dobson, “Nationalisms, National Theatres, and the Return of Julius Caesar” in Roman Shakespeare: Intersecting Times, Spaces, Languages, ed. Daniela Guardamagna (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2018), 33–49.

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INDEX OF NAMES

Acharya, Baburam 103 Acharya, Tanka Prasad 90 Aden, Andronicus 7 Anzai, Mariko 7 Appadurai, Arjun 161, 172, 173 Apter, Emily 196, 202, 210, 211 Auerbach, Erich 197 Austen, Jane 3, 168, 173 Banerjee, Trinankur 5 Barthes, Roland 69 Bartlett, Vanessa 189, 192 Bate, Jonathan 46 Bennett, Susan 30, 32 Bhardwaj, Vishal 7, 17, 21, 92, 119, 121 Bharucha, Rustom 18, 61, 62, 65, 190 Bhattarai, Govinda Raj 103 Bird, Tom 28, 32 Biswas, Moinak 112, 113, 127 Bladen, Victoria 158 Bloom, Harold 100, 102, 105 Bourdieu, Pierre 172, 202 Boydell, John 208 Brailowsky, Yan 158 Branagh, Kenneth 133 Brandon, James R. 190 Brook, Peter 28 Brooks, Mel 163 Brown, John Russel 190 Bucknall, Joanna 187, 188 Burnett, Mark Thornton 3, 11, 92, 94, 102, 103, 105, 116, 125, 127 Burt, Richard 143, 150, 158

Calvo, Clara 212, 234 Carlyle, Thomas 205, 211 Carruthers, Ian 191 Carson, Christie 30, 32 Casey, Jim 147, 155, 158 Cavallaro, Dani 155, 159 Castells, Manuel 173 Cervantes, Miguel de 7, 67, 68, 72, 85, 87; Don Quixote 7, 67–73, 76, 79, 82, 84–7 Chakraborty, Showli 125 Chakravarti, Paromita 8, 125, 126 Chakravarti, J.K. 211 Chakravorty, Swapan 210, 212, 215, 226 Chan, Rupert 50 Charlesworth, Ric 26, 32 Chatterjee, Partha 111, 125, 173 Chatterjee, Sudipto 174 Chattopadhyay, Bankimchandra 205, 211, 212, 216–20, 226; Rajani 208, 216, 226; ‘Sakuntala, Desdemona and Miranda’ 208, 217–18 Chaudhuri, Sukanta 32, 190, 210, 211 Chaudhuri, Supriya 10, 231 Cheah, Pheng 196, 197, 210 Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich 34, 71, 81, 82, 86, 87, 91 Chikamatu, Monzaemon 34 Ching, Lai Yuk 63 Ching-Hsi 191 Chopra, Rohit 121, 173 Choudhury, Nagendranath 92

Index of Names

Chowdhury, Anjan 111 Chowdhury, Sayandeb 111, 125 Comte, Auguste 216 Coupland, Nicholas 173 Curran Jr., John E. 97, 103 Dahiya, Hema 226 Damrosch, David 196, 201, 211 Dapeng, Wang 149 Darwin, Charles 216 Das, Sisir Kumar 30, 103, 120, 162, 210, 226 Dasgupta, Sayantan 226 Datta, Anik 112, 113 Datta, Sangeeta 125 Davis, Carol C. 92, 101, 103, 105 DeBevoise, M. B. 211 Deleuze, Gilles 147 Derrida, Jaques 178, 181, 182, 190–2, 203 Desmet, Christy 29, 32, 146, 152, 155, 158, 173 Dickson, Andrew 109, 125, 204 Dijkstra, Bram 152, 158 Dikshit, Narendra Mani Acharya 91 Dobson, Michael 10, 29, 31, 32, 231 Donaldson, Peter 177 Doran, Gregory 229 Dun, Tan 135, 136, 143 Dutt, Utpal 110, 116, 123–5, 206, 207, 211 Eckermann, Johann Peter 196, 210 Elfman, Rose 11, 29, 30, 32 Ellias. Yuki 15, 25–7, 30 Engels, Friedrich 196, 210 Escolme, Bridget 29, 32 Estill, Laura 180, 191 Fazel, Valerie M 147, 158 Featherstone, Mike 173 Fisher, James 90, 103 Fletcher, John 68 Fotheringham, Richard 212 Foucault, Michel 98, 103, 177, 178, 191 Freedman, Jonathan 203, 211 Gajowski, Evelyn 49, 50, 65 Ganguly, Swati 10, 231 Garrick, David 205 Geddes, Louise 147, 158 Ge’er, Teng 136 Gellner, David N. 97, 98, 103 Genet, Jean 19, 21

245

Gere, Richard 161, 173 Ghosh, Girishchandra 206, 211 Ghosh, Rituparno 111, 112, 125 Ghosh, Sankha 210 Gilbert and Sullivan 69 Gillies, John 3, 11, 191 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 10, 196–8, 201, 204, 210 Goldberg, Jonathan 204, 211 Gopalan, Lalitha 121, 122, 127 Grady, Hugh 49 Greenaway, Peter 36 Greenblatt, Stephen 2, 7, 11, 48, 58–60, 65, 67–9, 71, 72, 82, 85–7, 95, 99, 103, 127, 143 Greig, David 48, 61, 62 Grossman, Edith 87 Guattari, Felix 147 Hall, Stuart 50 Hardt, Michael 168, 173 Hartley, Andrew James 158 Hawkes, Terence 49 Hayley, Emma 154, 159 Hayot, Eric 211 Hemming, Sarah 65 Henderson, Diana E. 105 Hirata, Oriza 35, 85–7 Hitler, Adolf 163 Ho, Bong Joon 1 Hoenselaars, Ton 28, 32 Holderness, Graham 168, 174 Holmes, K. J. 164 Hu, Sherwood 8, 92, 94, 133, 137–43 Huang, Alexa 3, 11, 136, 177, 191 Huayi Brothers 136, 143 Hughes, Ken 119 Hugo, Francois-Victor 205 Hugo, Victor 205, 210 Hulme, Peter 46 Huxley, Aldous 216 Ibsen, Henrik 34, 65, 91 Ick, Celine Judy 3, 9, 11, 45, 46 Ingham, Mike 7, 19, 32 Ippolito, Jon 188, 192 Iwabuchi, Koichi 39, 153, 158 Jameson, Fredric 134, 140, 143, 209, 212 Jiang, Xian 130, 131, 138, 143 Johnson, Eric M. 195 Jones, Sir William 208, 212 Joubin, Alexa Alisa 31, 46, 158

246 Index of Names

Kahn, Coppélia 212, 234 Kalidasa 208, 212, 218, 221; Abhijnanasakuntalam 10, 221; Meghduta 218; Sacontala 208 Kapoor, Rajat 21–4, 32 Kapur, Sohaila 32 Kazura 157 Keenan, Siobhan 173 Kendal, Felicity 109 Kennedy, Dennis 3, 11, 32, 60, 65, 90, 94, 103, 175, 190, 211 Kirwan, Pete 22, 32 Kullmann, Thomas 9 Kuo, Wuo Hsing 2, 29 Kurosawa, Akira 133 Lal, Ananda 32 Lanier, Douglas 47, 146–8, 158, 159, 168, 174 Latour, Bruno 211 Leday, Annette 2, 29 Lee, Ang 65, 134, 143 Lei, Bi-qi Beatrice 3, 11, 177, 191 Lepage, Robert 28 Lequoc, Jaques 26 Li, Gong 136 Li, Ruru 190 Liangying, Zhang 136 Lidke, Jeffrey S. 89, 103 Liu, Siyuan 87 Loper, Natalie 147, 158, 159 Luhrmann, Baz 167 Lupton, Julia Reinhard 103, 105 Madavane, K. 18–22, 32 Majumdar, Sarottama 211, 218 Mandela, Nelson 204 Manovich, Lev 184, 191 Marx, Karl 10, 90, 196, 197, 199, 201, 210 Maxwell, Julie 168, 173 Mee, Charles 7, 67–9, 71, 87 Menon, Madhavi 204, 211 Meyer-Kalkus, Reinhard 66 Mill, John Stuart 216 Millais, John Everett 150, 152 Miller, Vincent 46, 173 Milton, John 199 Minami, Ryuta 3, 31, 32, 175, 191 Miyagi, Satoshi 2, 34 Miyazaki, Hayao 152 Miyazawa, Akio 7, 67, 69–75, 77, 79, 81–7 Mnouchkine, Ariane 28 Modi, Narendra 229

Moore, Samuel 210 Moretti, Franco 196, 202–4, 209, 211 Motohashi, Ted 6, 7 Mottin, Monica 91, 103 Mukherjee, Meenaksi 227 Mukherjee, Shirshendu 110, 112, 114, 118–22, 124–6 Mukherjee, Srijit 126 Mukherjee, Tarini 124, 127 Munch, Edvard 20 Natsume, Soseki 152 Nayar, Pramod K. 173, 174 Negri, Antonio 168, 173 Newman, Karen 204, 211 Ninagawa, Yukio 2, 29, 65, 229 Nivedita, Sister (Margaret E. Noble) 169, 174 Noda, Hideki 150 Oh Tae-suk 2 O’Neill, Stephen 147, 158, 159 Ong, Keng Sen 2, 4, 29, 65 Owen, Richard 216 Panja, Shormistha 125 Paster, Gail Kern 126 Paul, Heike 65 Pérez, Elena 189, 192 Perng, Ching Hsi 191 Petronius 1 Pollock, Sheldon 173 Ramchandra 102 Rana, Jung Bahadur 89, 90, 91, 95–7, 99 Rasmussen, Eric 46 Ray, Satyajit 110, 112, 125 Rgyal, Purba 139, 143, 145 Richards, Thomas 183, 191 Richardson, D. L. 205 Rinehart, Richard 188, 192 Ritzer, George 160, 173 Rivlin, Elizabeth 47, 158 Robertson, Roland 173 Robinson, William I. 167, 173 Romanska, Magda 152, 159 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 165 Ruvie, David 2 Said, Edwad 174, 179, 210 Sama, Balkrishna 91, 92 Sanders, Julie 49, 65 Sarkar, Abhishek 93, 104

Index of Names

247

Sarma, Tana 91, 104 Sawyer, Robert 174 Schiller, Friedrich 58 Schopenhauer, Arthur 216 Sedgman, Kirsty 187, 188, 191, 192 Sen, Aparna 112, 114–17, 126 Sen, Jai 127 Sen, Mrinal 110 Sen, Taraknath 211 Serres, Michel 207, 208, 211 Seth, Vikram 174 Shen, Lin 48, 50, 61, 143 Sherman, William H. 46 Shimura, Takako 151 Shu-wing (Shuwing), Tang 7, 48, 49, 52, 55, 56, 60, 63, 65 Singh, Chandra Prakash 103 Sivaraman, Deepan 31, 32 Stanton, Sarah 11 Sullivan, Erin 11, 32, 69 Supple, Tim 2, 4, 25, 31 Suzuki, Tadashi 2, 29, 65 Swar, Lt. Pahalman Singh 7, 91

Trump, Donald 167, 228 Tsubouchi, Shoyo 229

Tagore, Rabindranath 10, 122, 127, 195, 196, 198–201, 204, 206–215, 218, 224, 226, 227, 230; Balaka 39, 198–201, 213, 214; ‘Message of the Forest’ 221–2, 224; ‘Sakuntala’ 216–27; visva-kavi 10, 196, 198–200, 211, 213–15, 230 Takahashi, Nobuyuki 149 Taylor, Diana 189, 192 Taylor, Neil 210 Tezuka, Osamu 150, 151, 158 Thompson, Ann 102, 210 Tolstoy, Leo 90 Trivedi, Harish 223, 227 Trivedi, Poonam 3, 11, 31, 32, 104, 126, 175, 190, 211

Yamashita, Hiromi 151 Yang, Lingui 8 Yasuda, Masahiro 2, 34–6, 38–41, 43, 46 Yimou, Zhang 134, 136, 143 Yip, Tim 136 Yong, Li Lan 3, 11, 60, 65, 90, 94, 103, 136, 137, 143, 175, 177, 182–5, 190, 191 Yoshihara, Yukari 8 You, Ge 136

Upadhyay, Samrat 89, 103 Vashishtha, Somendra 90 Vasudevan, Ravi 127 Voltaire 90 Wallerstein, Emmanuel 202 Warhol, Andy 141, 142 Weaver-Hightower, Rebecca 46 Wells, Stanley 11, 31 Williams, Raymond 48, 60 Wilson, Richard 28 Wu, Daniel 136 Wu, Sherwood 7, 8, 29, 65, 92, 94, 133, 136, 137, 143 Xiaogang, Feng 133–6, 138, 140, 141, 143 Xi Xi 65 Xun, Zhou 136, 143

Zafar, Bahadur Shah 114 Zeffirelli, Franco 132 Zhongjun, Wang 136 Ziyi, Zhang 136 Zupanov, Ines 66

INDEX OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS AND ADAPTATIONS

All’s Well That Ends Well 17, 30; Piya Gaye Rangoon 30 Antony and Cleopatra 2, 8, 16, 32, 63, 110, 118, 122, 125, 204; Zulfiqar 8, 110, 113, 118, 119–23 As You Like It 15, 22, 24, 30, 32, 151, 222; I Don’t Like It 6, 15, 21–4, 30 Cardenio 2, 7, 67–9, 71, 74, 76, 80, 84–5, 87; Motorcycle Don Quixote 7, 67–88 Comedy of Errors, The 2, 17, 204; Double Di Trouble 17 Cymbeline 221 Hamlet 3, 6, 7, 15–21, 30, 31, 41, 55, 89, 91–103, 105, 110, 123–5, 130, 131, 133–8, 140–1, 143, 145–51, 154, 156, 158, 162–6, 170, 195, 204, 210, 230; Atal Bahadur 7, 91–103; Banquet, The 8, 56, 133–8, 140–3; Drama for Life 8, 130–2, 138, 142, 143; as Empress 134; Haider 7, 17, 21, 92, 103; Hamlet The Clown Prince 22; Hariraj 7, 92–5, 98, 100, 102–3, 105; Hemanta 17, 110, 123, 124; Khoon-e-Nahq 93; as Legend of the Black Scorpion 134; Lion King 16; Prince of the Himalayas 7, 8, 92, 94, 102, 133, 137–3, 145 Henry V 229–31 Julius Caesar 8, 110, 118, 120, 125, 230, 231; Zulfiqar 8, 110, 113, 118, 119–23

King John 32 King Lear 17, 25, 34, 63, 155, 207, 222; Last Lear, The 109, 111, 112; Lear Dreaming 2; Natsamrat 17; Nothing Like Lear 22; Safed Khoon 207; 36 Chowringhee Lane 109, 112, 113 Macbeth 7, 17, 21, 25, 26, 48–65, 91, 93, 97–100, 105, 110, 119, 121, 127, 150, 206, 207, 216, 222; Dunsinane 48, 57, 58, 61, 62; Joe Macbeth 119; Karmabir 206; Khwab-e-hasti 207; Manajirao 206; Makbet 29, 32; Maqbool 17, 119, 121, 124; Rudrapal Natak 206; Veeram 17; What Is Done Is Done 22 Merchant of Venice, The 25, 93, 102, 150, 206; Bhanumati Chittabilas 206; Venice ko Mahajan 102 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A 2, 25, 31, 32, 150, 167 Much Ado about Nothing 2 Othello 17, 110, 152, 153, 158, 173, 216; Desdemona 2; Hrid Majharey 17, 110, 123; Omkara 17, 119 Pericles 204 Richard II 229 Richard III 17, 151, 156 Romeo and Juliet 8, 17, 22, 110, 114–16, 124, 125, 127, 132, 142, 148, 149, 151,

Index of Shakespeare’s Plays and Adaptations 249

154, 156, 166, 167, 170, 171; Arshinagar 8, 17, 110, 113–18, 123, 125, 127; Bhuli Naai Priya 117; Sairat 17; Shakespeare as Love Tutor 141; Time to Love, A (Forever Shakespeare/Qingren jie) 130–2, 142–3; West Side Story 115, 125 Taming of the Shrew, The 206 Tempest, The 6, 10, 33–6, 38, 41, 43, 44–6, 156, 204, 213, 219, 221–3; Prospero’s Books 36 Timon of Athens 63 Titus Andronicus 34, 49, 50, 62, 230 Troilus and Cressida 228 Twelfth Night 17, 30, 169; Piya Behroopiya 30

Fate/Apocrypha 146, 148, 155–7 Fullmetal Alchemist 146, 148 Girls Born under Aries 151 Ophelia 146–53, 156–8 Poe Clan, The 151 Ponyo 152 Princess Knight 151, 158 Requiem of the Rose King 151 Romeo x Juliet 146, 148, 154, 155, 157, 158

Manga /Anime Shakespeare

Seven Shakespeares 151 Sons of Eve 151

Black Butler, The 146, 149, 152, 153, 157 Blast of Tempest, The 156, 157

Wandering Son 151, 158