In Shakespeare’s time, the term “comedy” did not necessarily denote something funny or amusing. Rather, through such plays such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice, the playwright examines other defining characteristics of comedic drama—the social interactions of common folks and a focus on the contradictions inherent in everyday life. Readers explore the major themes of Shakespearean comedies, which have enchanted readers and theater-goers alike for centuries.

Comparative study of some plays by William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, Abhijñānaśākuntala of Kālidāsa, and Uttararāma-carita of Bhavabhūti, 8th cent.

According To The Social Historians Of England, After The Economic And Religious Unrest Of The Middle Tudor Period, The Freedom Preached By The Humanists Rejuvenated In A Way The Moral Of The Entire Nation. And Shakespeare Having Chanced Upon The Best Time In Which To Live Had Ample Opportunity To Exercise, With Least Distraction And Most Encouragement, The Highest Faculties Of Man. His Comedies, Therefore, Register Most Comprehensively The Characteristics Of The Congenial Social Atmosphere Of His Time. The Saturnalia Presented In His Comedies Are Not Inimical To The Positive Aspects Of A New Bourgeois Social Set-Up, Which Facilitated The Notions Of Peace And Order. But Inside The Large England, Which Still Retained The Remnants Of Monarchy And/Or Aristocracy, Society Was Afflicted By Many Discordant Elements, Which Shakespeare Never Failed To Notice And Record. As An Assiduous Comic Playwright, He Infused In His Saturnalia The Hints Of Many Social Injustices, The Oppressive Patriarchy (Egeon And His Diktats Against His Daughter For Daring To Choose Her Own Husband In A Midsummer Night S Dream), The Crisis Of Aristocracy (Sir Toby And His Likes), The Degeneration Of Moral Values Leading To An Erosion Of Social Values In A Mercantile Society, And The Historical Retrospection Of The Turbulent Past.The Infusion Though Pronounced In His Early Comedies Is Not Entirely Absent In The Middle Comedies, Which Contain Elements Of Social Realism Behind A Romantic Exterior. The Audience Would Naturally Realize That Both The Early And The Middle Comedies Of Shakespeare Were Interlinked In The Context Of The Social Realism Of The Elizabethan Period. The Delicate Relationship Of Oberon And Titania In A Midsummer Night S Dream, For Instance, Represent A Different Version Of Matrimony Throughout Causing The Reader To Question The Validity Of The Institution. Likewise In The Taming Of The Shrew One Is At A Loss At The End Of The Play When Kate Appears To Be More Subservient Than Either Her Sister Or The Widow. Has Marriage Actually Tamed Her Or Has She Relinquished Her Past Misdemeanours Willingly Because She Has Fallen In Love With Petruchio? The World In Twelfth Night Is Also Clearly Demarcated Into Two Classes The Landowning Wealthy Aristocrats And The Titular Aristocrats Whom Lawrence Classifies As The Declassed Aristocrats . The Historical Retrospection Of The Past Is Made Clearer At This Apparently Incongruent Point, Than In All Other Romantic Comedies. The Book Would Definitely Prove Valuable To Students And Teachers Concerned With Shakespearean Works.

This is the first volume to focus specifically on Rabindranath Tagore’s dramatic literature, visiting translations and adaptations of Tagore’s drama, and cross-cultural encounters in his works. As Asia’s first Nobel Laureate, Tagore’s highly original plays occupy a central position in the Indian theatrescape. Tagore experimented with dance, music, dance drama, and plays, exploring concepts of environment, education, gender and women, postcolonial encounters, romantic idealism, and universality. Tagore’s drama plays a generous host to experimentations with new performance modes, like the writing and staging of an all-women play on stage for the first time, or the use of cross-cultural styles such as Manipuri dance, Thai craft in stage design, or the Baul singing styles. This book is an exciting re-exploration of Tagore’s plays, visiting issues such as his contribution to Indian drama, drama and environment, feminist readings, postcolonial engagements, cross-cultural encounters, drama as performance, translational and adaptation modes, the non-translated or the non-translatable Tagore drama, Tagore drama in the 21st century, and Indian film. The volume serves as a wide-ranging and up-to-date resource on the criticism of Tagore drama, and will appeal to a range of Theatre and Performance scholars as well as those interested in Indian theatre, literature, and film.

A comparative study of classical Indian and Western drama with special reference to comedy reveals interesting similarities and differences between the two in respect of aesthetic theory, theatric practice and elements of dramatic composition. The common ground between Western and Sanskrit theatre relates to the use of stage-devices like pantomime, off-stage voices, soliloquy and play within the play, as well as histrionic elements like dance and music, and the exaggerated costume and make up of the characters. But apart from these, Indian drama, as outlined in Natya Sastra and maintained by stage performances through the centuries is markedly different from the Western, because while the latter mostly depends on realistic devices the former is basically a stylized mode of theatre which caters to an idealized audience. In Western drama, the interest of the audience in watching a play lies in the effective rendering of the dialogue, so that the verbal text is of primary value. But in traditional Sanskrit dramatic practice, the actor is encouraged to resort to an elaborate method of improvisation, using vocal and /or gestural expression, supplemented by the appropriate movements of the face and other parts of the body as well as by musical accompaniment. The written text has therefore only a minimal importance here. The method of dramatic composition of the comedies in both Western and Sanskrit traditions also bears striking similarities and divergences. These may be seen in the methods of employing plot, situation and themes as well as in the creation of character and the use of language. In the present study, the comedies of Shakespeare and Bhasa have been selected for closer analysis, because they seem to encompass within their respective spheres a wide variety of levels and interpretations of Western and Indian comedy. The two dramatists also seem to share a common underlying philosophy of comedy, namely, a joyous involvement in the process of living.

The International Shakespeare Association meeting, held in Tokyo in August of 1991, was regarded by many of the participating academics as a milestone in terms of the quality of the papers given and extent to which the intercultural and cross-cultural study of Shakespeare had been developed. This volume contains the principal contributions (10) to the panel on Acting and Language in Shakespeare and Eastern Drama, specially edited for publication by Minoru Fujita who teaches at the Graduate School of Culture, University of Osaka, and Leonard Pronko, Professor of Theatre at Pomona College, Claremont, California. The papers are presented in three sections: Playhouses and Performances, Literary History, and Interpretation and Theoretical Issues.

This book looks at adaptations, translations and performance of Shakespeare's productions in India from the mid-18th century, when British officers in India staged Shakespeare's plays along with other English playwrights for entertainment, through various Indian adaptations of his plays during the colonial period to post-Independence period. It studies Shakespeare in Bengali and Parsi theatre at length. Other theatre traditions, such as Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi, have been included. The book dwells on the fascinating story of the languages of India that have absorbed Shakespeare's work and have transformed the original educated Indian's Shakespeare into the popular Shakespeare practice of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the unique urban-folkish tradition in postcolonial India.