The Bard first made his way into India through the medium of stage – mainly in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Bombay (now Mumbai). Whether you call them ‘adaptations’ or ‘inspirations’ or something-in-between, Shakespeare had found a firm stronghold in Indian entertainment, performed in venues as diverse as stage, film, radio, folk theatre and digital medium. Indian ‘Shakespeares’, therefore, became an amalgamation of current dramatic tropes and Shakespearean characters, cloaked in disparate forms at disparate times. His universal appeal lies in the familiarity of his themes and tropes – star-crossed lovers and separated twins, loyal friends and jealous courtiers, palace intrigues and treachery, ghosts and witches, drama and melodrama. Both classes and masses would discover in these plays something that resonated with them. The beautiful wordplay and deep philosophies that he espoused mingled freely with farting jokes and puns.

What makes Shakespeare so popular, especially to Indian audiences? Is it merely, as some critics posit, an urge to be seen as ‘highbrow’? If so, there’s delicious irony in the fact that in his own time, Shakespeare wrote mostly for the layman. Shakespeare wrote, ‘All the world’s a stage…’ In the over four centuries since he wrote those lines, perhaps they can be modified to read, ‘All the world’s my stage.’ His plays have transcended barriers of geography and time, and have lent themselves to adaptations in different languages in different settings in different lands.

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