Bollywood Shakespeares

C. Dionne, P. Kapadia, C. Dionne, P. Kapadia

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137386120
• eBook ISBN: 9781137375568
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism

Here, essays use the latest theories in postcolonialism, globalization, and post-nationalism to explore how world cinema and theater respond to Bollywood's representation of Shakespeare. In this collection, Shakespeare is both part of an elite Western tradition and a window into a vibrant post-national identity founded by a global consumer culture.

PART I

Bollywood’s Debt to the Theater: Aesthetic and Cultural Multivalence

CHAPTER 1

Parsi Shakespeare: The Precursor to “Bollywood Shakespeare”

Vikram Singh Thakur

There is but one country in the world, to the best of my knowledge, except possibly Germany, where the plays of Shakespeare have of recent times formed the safest and surest attraction to the indiscriminate masses who attend popular theaters, where the proprietor of a theater could count on a profit on a Shakespeare production. That country is India, and the theaters in question are a group of theaters in the city of Bombay, clustered together in the heart of a poor Indian population.

—C. J. Sisson, Shakespeare in India:
Popular Adaptations on the Bombay Stage.¹

Shakespeare, Parsi Theater, and Bollywood

Shakespeare shares a long history of engagement with India, probably the longest outside his own country. Although his plays have been performed on the Indian stage for two hundred years or so and on the Indian screen for a century, it is a fairly recent phenomenon to include Shakespeare reception and production in India in the domain of Shakespeare studies. With the advent of postcolonial theory, which has made significant contributions and even changed the critical paradigms in understanding Shakespeare’s text, it has become possible for the erstwhile colonies to bring forth various responses evoked by the native productions of Shakespeare. Another important reason for this newfound interest in “Indian Shakespeare” is twofold: recognizing Shakespeare’s influence on Bollywood, and the acceptance of Bollywood as a global phenomenon. Although Shakespeare has always “inspired” Bollywood films, unconsciously in many cases, it is because of the post–Vishal Bhardwaj phenomenon that “Bollywood Shakespeare” is now considered an important and serious area of study. “Bollywood Shakespeare,” as defined by Paromita Chakravorty in her essay “Interrogating ‘Bollywood Shakespeare’: Reading Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear,” “refers to and reflects the growing interest in Shakespearean themes within the mainstream Bombay (now Mumbai) based film industry of India which typically makes popular Hindi movies with melodramatic plots, non-naturalistic narration, stock characters, music and dancing.” Going by this definition, it is not difficult to suggest that Hindi cinema right from its inception has been dominated by “Bollywood Shakespeare.” Shakespeare may have become more visible in Indian cinema with Bhardwaj’s Maqbool (2004) and Omkara (2006) but there is a huge corpus of Bollywood films revolving around Shakespearean themes like star-crossed lovers, feuding families, familial infidelity and ambition overpowering duty, since the 1920s. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, a film scholar, gives Sohrab Modi the credit for bringing Shakespeare to the Indian Screen (1999). One of the earliest Bollywood talkies to be based on a Shakespeare play was Modi’s Khoon ka Khoon (Hamlet) in 1935, which was followed by Said-e-Havas (King John) in 1936. Both the films were in fact recorded versions of his plays. Rajadhyaksha, however, misses a 1927 silent film titled Dil Farosh (Merchant of Hearts) directed by M. Udvadia and produced by Excelsior Film Company featuring Udvadia, Nargis, and Syed Umar among others. The film was based on Agha Hashr Kashmiri’s play with the same name written in 1900, which in turn was an adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. There was yet another film by the same name that was released in 1937 and directed by N. Madhok and featured Ishwarlal. Thus, the early Hindi cinema in general and “Shakespeare-inspired” films in particular were greatly influenced by Parsi theater. In fact, Sohrab Modi had already earned a reputation as a great Shakespeare actor in Parsi theater and it was his desire to film his plays that led him to produce and act in films. Many others, including actors, playwrights, singers, and managers of Parsi theaters joined the Bombay film industry. Thus it is no surprise that Shakespeare’s plays, which had already been “appropriated” freely in Parsi theater, would prove to be a source of “inspiration” for the early Bollywood films.

It has often been argued that Parsi theater and the subsequent Hindi cinema are essentially “hybrid,” since both developed in close conjunction with Western forms of theater and cinema. Mukul Kesavan in “Attitude Bollytude” criticizes such an approach to Bollywood and argues that the emphasis on “hybridity” is “part of a larger post-colonial anxiety, the uneasy sense that desi efforts and achievements are time-delayed re-runs of things that have already come to pass in Europe or America.”² To some extent, this is true of theater in India as well. This is explained in part by the criticism and rejection of Parsi theater in the nationalist discourse on theater in post-Independence India on the grounds that it was “hybrid” and hence “inauthentic.” The underlying assumption was that modern theater did not grow “organically” from Indian traditions of performance but took to Western conventions of drama and theater.³ One cannot deny the fact that modern Indian theater grew in “imitation” of the English theater as it was practiced in the colonial cities like Calcutta and Bombay. Poonam Trivedi, in her essay “‘Bananas on a Mango Tree’: Colonial Mimesis, Hybridity and Modern Indian Theater,” argues, “Not just in politics and governance but in the arts too, and particularly in literature, the engagement with the West began with the imitation of Western forms.”⁴ The argument can be extended to the domain of theater as well. The reasons for this “imitation” were many. Classical Sanskrit theater had almost disappeared by the eleventh century and theater activity in India was sustained by sparse folk and traditional performances, which too were on the decline by the eighteenth century due to the lack of patronage. There was a void as far as theater activity was concerned. At this juncture, the decline of folk and traditional performances and the rise of English theater paved the way for “modern” Indian theater. This was furthered by the quest of the Indian middle class for a distinct cultural identity, which the English theater seemed to offer. For instance, talking about the Bengali middle class quest for a cultural identity Sudipto Chatterjee states that it could, “at some level, set them on a par with their European overlords.”⁵ Homi Bhabha’s statement, “To be different from those that are different makes you the same,” explains this phenomenon.⁶ Thus, the model provided by Western theater was followed in terms of conventions, techniques, and devices. However, I argue in this essay that any quick assessment of Parsi theater and Bollywood as “hybrid” needs a more careful accounting of Shakespeare’s long history in India. Since Parsi theater provides a paratext for the historical understanding of Bollywood, my primary focus in this essay will be on Parsi theater and its Shakespeare productions.

The Beginnings of Parsi Theater

Somnath Gupt, in The Parsi Theater, has defined Parsi theater more comprehensively than any other Parsi theater scholar⁷ has, in the following words:

The phrase “Parsi theater” signifies the playhouses built and operated by the Parsi community, along with Parsi playwrights, Parsi dramas, Parsi stages, Parsi theatrical companies, Parsi actors, Parsi directors, and so on. Also included are those playwrights and actors who were not Parsis, but who worked on a salaried basis for the Parsi theatrical companies. Further, those companies, owners, and actors are counted who, while not being from the Parsi community and not being residents of Bombay, added the words “of Bombay” to their theater companies in order to show their connections to the Parsi theater.⁸

Thus, Gupt helps one understand Parsi theater as a genre rather than an etymologically defined and a community-specific affair that fails to acknowledge the complex nature of Parsi theater. Also, Gupt’s definition provides Parsi theater with a pan-Indian identity. It is important to note here that Parsi theater emerged as a result of the general discourses on cultural philanthropy and social reform that the nineteenth-century Bombay was witnessing. Parsi theater, at least during this time, was seen “as the public manifestation of the respectable, ‘gentlemanly’ civic culture of the mercantile and administrative elite in that city, and not merely as a source of popular entertainment for the masses.”⁹ Even the English and Gujarati newspapers of Bombay supported the cause of Parsi theater and played an important role in its establishment and consolidation. There was extensive coverage by these newspapers of Parsi theater performances in the form of advertisements, reviews, and previews. Kathryn Hansen maintains that “this coverage established a bourgeois, public space for theater, linking it to adjacent discourses of respectability, civic order and moral reform.”¹⁰ One may find ample evidence of equating theater with civic-mindedness. For instance, Rast Goftar, a Gujarati newspaper, on December 15, 1867 informed its readers about a performance of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, emphasizing the fact that the proceeds would go to contributing to a public gymnasium.

Parsi theater came into being with the opening of Grant Road Theatre in 1846.¹¹ The location of Grant Road Theatre played an important role in determining the nature of Parsi theater. The neighborhood of the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Shakespeare and Bollywood: The Difference a World Makes
• Part I   Bollywood’s Debt to the Theater: Aesthetic and Cultural Multivalence
• Part II   Shakespeare’s Local Face: Using Shakespeare to Rearticulate Indian Identities
• Part III   Bollywood’s Cultural Capital: Bollywood Sells Shakespeare
• Index