That Shakespeare’s work is remarkable — for he reinvigorated old tales by punctuating them with significant questions and lasting observations about the human condition — is a fact for audience members or readers of his works to explore, debate, and perhaps even question. Oftentimes in countries with a colonial history — particularly Pakistan — the word ‘Shakespeare’ elicits a high-flown, rather hackneyed response. That you must praise Shakespeare in extravagant terms is a given. Speaking about things this way echoes an unspoken but pervasive subservience to a foreign culture. It also makes way for unreflective pseudo-intellectualism.
William Shakespeare, the English dramatist with obscure origins and an aura of mystique surrounding his person, has been gone 400 years. The English in which the 37 plays have been written is hardly comprehensible to English speakers today. Most of the speeches are long and verbose but the popularity of the plays has not waned. Will Grompertz of BBC News Magazine says, “Shakespeare is more popular today than ever.” It may be because the plots portray people facing dilemmas that are to be found in any culture in any historical epoch. Some believe the plays are so adaptable they can be molded to a Broadway musical, a sci-fi movie set in the future, or a traditional theatre play in any regional language. In any case, in media and literary circles, the emphasis has conventionally been on stressing the ingenuity of Shakespeare the Bard, overlooking other reasons that might explain the much-touted universal success and appeal of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare, John Milton and the English Bible have traditionally been advertised as works emblematic of the literary prowess of the English language and the genius of the English mind. It would be hard to believe that William Shakespeare fell out of fashion for some time in England. In the 1800s, it was not unusual to edit, remove potions of, and revise scenes and acts from the Bard’s plays. The ending of King Lear, for instance, was deemed inappropriately violent and bleak for 19th century family viewing. A young princess whose dead body is held in her father’s embrace was changed so that father and daughter are reunited and go on to live happily after protracted tragic suffering. Shakespeare would often be ‘bowdlerised’, after the manner of one Thomas Bowdler who snipped and revised parts he considered unsuitable for public viewing.
Some writers have argued that the aura of Shakespeare was rediscovered (invented?) in the late 19th century. English naval supremacy, overseas expansion and literary progress seem to have gone hand in hand. The ‘richness’ of the English language and its amenability to verse and prose composition was propagated in England and programmed into the institutional mindset of the institutes established in the overseas colonies. When the English founded institutes of liberal education — colleges and universities — across India, the curriculum was carefully planned to propagate English/western superiority. The natives would also partake in the machinations of colonialism. By the very act of attending these colleges, Indians would concede that the liberal institutes offered modern knowledge as diametrically opposed to the outdated, folktale-ish knowledge coming from their own educational establishments. This modern education was essential for social mobility under the Raj. Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, et. al., were components of the curriculum taught at places like the Calcutta and Punjab Universities, Government College Lahore and FC College. English literary studies were also made part of the public service curricula. English drama, prose and verse were in the reading list for the civil service exams. Indians attending college would first be imbibed with the superiority of the English language, the diversity and beauty of English literature, and then be required to discuss the power of Wordsworth’s imagery, for instance, or Shakespeare’s deft use of the blank verse, or Bacon’s divine wisdom in the essays. An efficient reinforcement mechanism, the civil service examination would prepare the required Anglicised Indian. It still produces Anglicised Pakistanis who bring cars, ambulances and carts to a halt to make way for their entrance to places like the Civil Secretariat Lahore.
In the heyday of colonialism, performing arts clubs and dramatics societies were also founded at colleges and universities across India. A dramatics club was established at the Government College Lahore in 1890. Its first performances were scenes from Shakespeare. With time, the club started staging complete plays for select audiences — professors, English memsabs, babus, civil servants and other dignitaries. These performances were meant to entertain the English and educate the natives in the literary taste of the progressive western world. The English gave us the ‘theatre’, notwithstanding that different regions of the subcontinent had their own forms of theatre in nautanki, juggat bazi, and the related bhand tradition. Most English-speaking Pakistanis today scoff at the mention of these native forms of drama and recognise only western histrionics as legitimate theatre.
With the colonial baggage, Shakespeare is nearly a status symbol among the English-speaking classes of Pakistan. His poetic genius, his greatness is a given. When you ask a gentleman or lady singing high praises of Shakespeare what is it exactly that they find extraordinary about him, you get a refrain of clichés. It is the ‘splendour of the blank verse’, how ably he depicts human ‘passions’ and ‘Oh, the soliloquies — what beauty!’ For the most part, these are hollow phrases. The soliloquies are hardly comprehensible without an annotation. A number of websites based in the US and England use the word ‘translation’ for the paraphrases they offer in modern English. In other words, Shakespeare’s is another language today, even to native speakers of English. Quite possibly, many (definitely not all) among the Anglophiles of Pakistan, have learned to mention Shakespeare without really having an understanding of his writings. Many more offer critiques of the plays, the sonnets and local performances, and ‘insights’ into Shakespeare just to look scholarly. The inaccessibility of the 17th century English allows many Anglophiles to parade as experts. Shakespeare’s work is truly profound. Many of the ideas explored in the plays resonate today and will continue to do so for ages to come. But good theatre need not be Shakespeare. Good theatre needn’t even be in English. Apart from the occasional performance of a foreign play, theatre has to be indigenous. That is what Shakespeare did. The Bard chose to write in English when Latin and French were considered superior languages. He wrote for all Englishmen and Englishwomen. Good theatre has to cater to all, not just secondhand memsaabs and would-be babus.
The writer is a lecturer in English Literature at Government College University, Lahore. He may be reached at [email protected]