![]() ![]() ![]() Obviously, the play is not American, and historically, Shakespeare took liberties with the assassination of Caesar in this 400+-year-old play. The speeches are so notable that this year, to teach argument and rhetorical devices, we added the play to begin the American Literature unit. “Every act of storytelling is an act of re-telling the story,” says Jonathan signing off.Act III in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is known for the funeral speeches given by the characters of Brutus and Marc Anthony. He would take something and twist it to create something else. That's exactly what the playwright was doing out of his 37 plays, only one was original. The kids began to find that the language is a little less mysterious, less alien.” When students realise that what these adaptations do is take some ideas from Shakespeare and play with them, and that as people, they can talk back to Shakespeare, that’s when his plays become most enjoyable. “I got them to read passages out loud, hear the rhythms of Shakespeare’s speech and asked them what it does to them. In his workshops, organised for students of classes XI and XII, Jonathan found that children wanted to like Shakespeare but they could not get themselves to like him. “There’s something about Shakespeare’s plays which is very similar to the storytelling that we find in India - couples from boring families who get together, forbidden relationships, conflicts between masters and servants, happy endings that come from nowhere and completely arbitrary interruptions of song and dance routine with lots of wordplay.” The comparison to Indian culture does not end here. His latest film, Haider, based on Hamlet, is one of the many films adapted into the local context. ![]() Movie director Vishal Bharadwaj's films, Maqbool (2003) and Omkara (2006), were adapted from Macbeth and Othello respectively. arguably, we can say that his work has survived so long because it lends itself repeatedly to so many interpretations.” Local adaptation “We have got to be irreverent to have the opportunity to play with ideas and play with interpretation. It's the reverential attitude towards Shakespeare that often makes us resentful. “People will recognise that Shakespeare’s plays are not boring repositories of English wisdom but, in fact, spoken phenomena very close to the tradition within the Indian culture,” he notes. Professor Gil Harris is the president of The Shakespeare Society of India and enjoys looking through Shakespearean plays, which have been adapted in the local Indian context. There are so many aspects of Indian culture which revolve around the spoken word, be it old traditions of storytelling or music from Hindi films or even Honey Singh and his wordplay. Indians are unusually well equipped to enjoy his plays. “Shakespearean plays were not particularly meant to be read on the printed page but to be heard,” says Jonathan Gil Harris, Professor of English at Ashoka University. It is the powerful impact of words, which has kept Shakespeare alive in the imagination of the public. “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears.” is a legendary line of a dialogue from his play William Shakespeare’s plays have been enacted down the ages despite sweeping changes in genres of writings and evolving tastes of people. ![]() You will fall in love with his plays if you relate to them in the right way. Shakespeare is not a traditional boring read. ![]()
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