<p>UK’s National Trust has uncovered a ‘devil-like figure’ in a 230-year-old painting made by 18th Century artist Joshua Reynolds, who died in 1792.</p>

<p>The discovery was made during restoration work. The ‘spirit’ was hidden behind layers of paint and varnish.&nbsp;</p>

<p>The painting depicts a death scene from Shakespeare's "Henry VI, Part 2" with the king witnessing the death of Cardinal Beaufort.</p>

<h2><strong>Why was the ‘spirit’ kept hidden?</strong></h2>

<p>According to John Chu, the Trust’s senior national curator for pictures and sculpture, it might not have been considered appropriate to represent a poetic figure of speech so literally in the form of this monstrous figure at that time.</p>

<p>“While it was considered acceptable in literature to introduce the idea of a demon as something in the mind of a person, to include it visually in a painting gave it too physical a form,” he said.</p>

<p><strong>Watch:&nbsp;The latest dating trend in town: Girlfriend effect</strong></p>

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<p>"There were even people who argued that it should have been painted out, although records of conversations with the artist show he resisted such attempts to alter the work,” he added.</p>

<p>It is believed that after Reynolds’&nbsp;death, some artists hid it behind layers of paint and varnish, and this is how the figure went unseen for over two centuries.</p>

<p><a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/dinner-menu-for-first-class-passengers-onboard-titanic-sold-for-103000-658185"><strong>Also read:&nbsp;Dinner menu for first-class passengers onboard Titanic sold for $103,000 A dinner menu for first-class p</strong></a></p>

<p>"This is a large painting, and we wanted to ensure that it still represented what Reynolds originally painted, which included allowing the fiend to be uncovered through removing all the non-original darkened varnishes and ensuring it still correctly showed its form and perspective with the work we did," said John Chu.</p>

<p>Chu also said that due to several layers of paint on that area which covered the devil, it deteriorated into a small island of paint and became less clear due to the degradation of successive varnish layers.</p>

<p><em>(With inputs from agencies)</em></p>


UK’s National Trust has uncovered a ‘devil-like figure’ in a 230-year-old painting made by 18th Century artist Joshua Reynolds, who died in 1792. The discovery was made during restoration work.

UK’s National Trust has uncovered a ‘devil-like figure’ in a 230-year-old painting made by 18th Century artist Joshua Reynolds, who died in 1792. The discovery was made during restoration work. The ‘spirit’ was hidden behind layers of paint and varnish. The painting depicts a death scene from Shakespeare's "Henry VI, Part 2" with the king witnessing the death of Cardinal Beaufort. Why was the ‘spirit’ kept hidden? According to John Chu, the Trust’s senior national curator for pictures and sculpture, it might not have been considered appropriate to represent a poetic figure of speech so literally in the form of this monstrous figure at that time. “While it was considered acceptable in literature to introduce the idea of a demon as something in the mind of a person, to include it visually in a painting gave it too physical a form,” he said. Watch: The latest dating trend in town: Girlfriend effect × "There were even people who argued that it should have been painted out, although records of conversations with the artist show he resisted such attempts to alter the work,” he added. It is believed that after Reynolds’ death, some artists hid it behind layers of paint and varnish, and this is how the figure went unseen for over two centuries. Also read: Dinner menu for first-class passengers onboard Titanic sold for $103,000 A dinner menu for first-class p "This is a large painting, and we wanted to ensure that it still represented what Reynolds originally painted, which included allowing the fiend to be uncovered through removing all the non-original darkened varnishes and ensuring it still correctly showed its form and perspective with the work we did," said John Chu. Chu also said that due to several layers of paint on that area which covered the devil, it deteriorated into a small island of paint and became less clear due to the degradation of successive varnish layers. (With inputs from agencies)

An 18th-century painting hid a monster in plain sight. It has now been revealed

<p>In order to shield students from "challenging" literature, universities have added trigger warnings to more than 1,000 titles and begun deleting others from reading lists. Ten universities, including three from the prestigious Russell Group, have either removed or made optional texts in case they hurt undergraduates, according to a study.</p>

<p>Affected texts include August Strindberg's timeless play Miss Julie and Colson Whitehead's 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Underground Railroad. Trigger warnings have been placed on the writings of authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and Agatha Christie.</p>

<p>The Times made over 300 freedom of information requests to all 140 UK institutions inquiring about trigger warnings and text removal owing to content issues.&nbsp;</p>

<p>A reading list for an Essex University course has been "removed permanently" from The Underground Railroad due to its "graphic description of violence and abuse of slavery." However, a spokesperson emphasised that the book was still accessible through the library and will continue to be on future lists.</p>

<p>Additionally, Miss Julie has been "permanently withdrawn" from an undergraduate literature course at the University of Sussex because of its discussion of suicide. This decision was made in response to student complaints about the material's possible "psychological" and "emotional effects."&nbsp;</p>

<p>Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/in-pics-trump-supporters-gather-outside-his-mar-a-lago-estate-say-fbi-raid-witch-hunt-505424">IN PICS | Trump supporters gather outside his Mar-a-Lago estate, say FBI raid a 'witch hunt'</a></p>

<p>The investigation found 1,081 instances of trigger warnings on courses around the UK, including Russell Group members Warwick, Exeter, and Glasgow.</p>

<p>Students studying literature from the 18th and early 19th centuries may choose not to read The History of Mary Prince because it involves "racism, slavery and extreme violence," according to the University of Exeter's FOI answer. A spokeswoman said they are "encouraged to contact the convenor to discuss alternatives," but none had done so as of yet.</p>

<p><em>(with inputs from agencies)</em></p>


In order to shield students from "challenging" literature, universities have added trigger warnings to more than 1,000 titles and begun deleting others from reading lists.

In order to shield students from "challenging" literature, universities have added trigger warnings to more than 1,000 titles and begun deleting others from reading lists. Ten universities, including three from the prestigious Russell Group, have either removed or made optional texts in case they hurt undergraduates, according to a study. Affected texts include August Strindberg's timeless play Miss Julie and Colson Whitehead's 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Underground Railroad. Trigger warnings have been placed on the writings of authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and Agatha Christie. The Times made over 300 freedom of information requests to all 140 UK institutions inquiring about trigger warnings and text removal owing to content issues. A reading list for an Essex University course has been "removed permanently" from The Underground Railroad due to its "graphic description of violence and abuse of slavery." However, a spokesperson emphasised that the book was still accessible through the library and will continue to be on future lists. Additionally, Miss Julie has been "permanently withdrawn" from an undergraduate literature course at the University of Sussex because of its discussion of suicide. This decision was made in response to student complaints about the material's possible "psychological" and "emotional effects." Also Read: IN PICS | Trump supporters gather outside his Mar-a-Lago estate, say FBI raid a 'witch hunt' The investigation found 1,081 instances of trigger warnings on courses around the UK, including Russell Group members Warwick, Exeter, and Glasgow. Students studying literature from the 18th and early 19th centuries may choose not to read The History of Mary Prince because it involves "racism, slavery and extreme violence," according to the University of Exeter's FOI answer. A spokeswoman said they are "encouraged to contact the convenor to discuss alternatives," but none had done so as of yet. (with inputs from agencies)

'Trigger warning' on Shakespeare's writing? Elite Russell group wants more than 1000 texts withdrawn

A few surviving copies of William Shakespeare's first folio will go up for auction in New York next month. The folio is often referred to as the most important book in English literature. Now here's the 400-year-old journey of the book take a look.

The journey of 400-year-old book: Shakespeare’s first folio up for auction

May 21 in history: Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, FIFA founded and more

May 20 in history: Shakespeare's sonnets published, Cuba gains independence and more

<p>Hollywood stars have taken on the prestigious role of the heroine in William Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet'&nbsp;for the 2020 Pirelli calendar, which launched on Tuesday (December 3) in Verona, home of literature's most famous star-crossed lovers.</p>

<p>Kristen Stewart, Claire Foy, Emma Watson as well as transgender model and actor Indya Moore were pictured by Italian photographer Paolo Roversi for the "Looking for Juliet" calendar, giving a modern-day spin on the timeless leading lady, who they say is just as relevant now as in the Shakespearean era.</p>

<p>Foy, alongside young actors Mia Goth, Yara Shahidi and Roversi's daughter Stella walked the carpet at the stunning Philharmonic Theatre on Tuesday, just 850 metres away from Juliet's balcony.</p>

<p>Nineteen-year-old U.S. actor Shahidi, who is also a model and activist, said Juliet's resilient spirit was an inspiration for girls her age.</p>

<p>"For me, Juliet really parallels so many of the young people of my generation," she told Reuters.</p>

<p>"Whether it's people that are environmental activists, whether it is people fighting for equity and equality, that kind of passion that Juliet has, and almost unreasonable sense of purpose is what we actually need to keep going."</p>

<p>First released in the 1960s, the Pirelli calendar, which has a limited publication run and is gifted to clients of the Italian tyre maker, has moved away from scantily-dressed models to more artistic themes in recent years.</p>

<p>"Society is changing very, very fast and the Pirelli calendar too is changing," Roversi told Reuters.</p>

<p>"It couldn't stay the same since 30 years (ago) ... it is interesting to see how the Pirelli calendar is following the evolution of society and photography, of the aesthetic, of the idea of beauty of women," he said.</p>

<p>Whoopi Goldberg, 64, who was hosting the launch in Verona, said "Looking for Juliet" was relatable for people of all ages - just like the timeless love tragedy.</p>

<p>"I think every woman who sees it will recognise that no matter how old you are, you are always Juliet," Goldberg, who was pictured in the 2018 Pirelli calendar, said.</p>

<p>The calendar is accompanied by a short film in which Roversi portrays a movie director looking to cast his Juliet.</p>

<p>As well as Watson, Stewart and Moore, this year's edition also features Chinese singer Chris Lee, Spanish singer Rosalia and Roversi's daughter, artist Stella Roversi.</p>


Hollywood stars have taken on the prestigious role of the heroine in William Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' for the 2020 Pirelli calendar, which launched on Tuesday (December 3) in Verona, home of literature's most famous star-crossed lovers.

Hollywood stars have taken on the prestigious role of the heroine in William Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' for the 2020 Pirelli calendar, which launched on Tuesday (December 3) in Verona, home of literature's most famous star-crossed lovers. Kristen Stewart, Claire Foy, Emma Watson as well as transgender model and actor Indya Moore were pictured by Italian photographer Paolo Roversi for the "Looking for Juliet" calendar, giving a modern-day spin on the timeless leading lady, who they say is just as relevant now as in the Shakespearean era. Foy, alongside young actors Mia Goth, Yara Shahidi and Roversi's daughter Stella walked the carpet at the stunning Philharmonic Theatre on Tuesday, just 850 metres away from Juliet's balcony. Nineteen-year-old U.S. actor Shahidi, who is also a model and activist, said Juliet's resilient spirit was an inspiration for girls her age. "For me, Juliet really parallels so many of the young people of my generation," she told Reuters. "Whether it's people that are environmental activists, whether it is people fighting for equity and equality, that kind of passion that Juliet has, and almost unreasonable sense of purpose is what we actually need to keep going." First released in the 1960s, the Pirelli calendar, which has a limited publication run and is gifted to clients of the Italian tyre maker, has moved away from scantily-dressed models to more artistic themes in recent years. "Society is changing very, very fast and the Pirelli calendar too is changing," Roversi told Reuters. "It couldn't stay the same since 30 years (ago) ... it is interesting to see how the Pirelli calendar is following the evolution of society and photography, of the aesthetic, of the idea of beauty of women," he said. Whoopi Goldberg, 64, who was hosting the launch in Verona, said "Looking for Juliet" was relatable for people of all ages - just like the timeless love tragedy. "I think every woman who sees it will recognise that no matter how old you are, you are always Juliet," Goldberg, who was pictured in the 2018 Pirelli calendar, said. The calendar is accompanied by a short film in which Roversi portrays a movie director looking to cast his Juliet. As well as Watson, Stewart and Moore, this year's edition also features Chinese singer Chris Lee, Spanish singer Rosalia and Roversi's daughter, artist Stella Roversi.

Shakespeare’s Juliet takes on 21st century in Pirelli calendar

<p>Actors Robert Pattinson and Lily-Rose Depp have joined the cast of Netflix's "The King" starring Timothee Chalamet and Joel Edgerton in the lead.</p>

<p>Directed by "War Machine" helmer David Michod, the film is based on classic Shakespeare plays "Henry The IV" and "Henry V", and follows a young disgraced prince Hal (Chalamet) who inherits the crown at a particularly turbulent time in English history and must learn what it means to be a king, guided by his one true friend, Falstaff (Edgerton).</p>

<p>Pattinson will play French prince The Dauphin, while Depp, the 19-year-old daughter of Hollywood star Johnny Depp and his former girlfriend Vanessa Paradis, will portray French Princess Catherine, who goes on to marry Henry V, the streaming&nbsp;said in a statement.</p>

<p>The film also stars Sean Harris, Ben Mendelsohn, Tom Glynn-Carney and Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie.</p>

<p>Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment is producing the project along with Porchlight Films' Liz Watts, Edgerton, and Michod.</p>


The film is based on classic Shakespeare plays 'Henry The IV' and 'Henry V'

Actors Robert Pattinson and Lily-Rose Depp have joined the cast of Netflix's "The King" starring Timothee Chalamet and Joel Edgerton in the lead. Directed by "War Machine" helmer David Michod, the film is based on classic Shakespeare plays "Henry The IV" and "Henry V", and follows a young disgraced prince Hal (Chalamet) who inherits the crown at a particularly turbulent time in English history and must learn what it means to be a king, guided by his one true friend, Falstaff (Edgerton). Pattinson will play French prince The Dauphin, while Depp, the 19-year-old daughter of Hollywood star Johnny Depp and his former girlfriend Vanessa Paradis, will portray French Princess Catherine, who goes on to marry Henry V, the streaming said in a statement. The film also stars Sean Harris, Ben Mendelsohn, Tom Glynn-Carney and Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie. Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment is producing the project along with Porchlight Films' Liz Watts, Edgerton, and Michod.

Robert Pattinson, Lily-Rose Depp boards Netflix's 'The King'

<p>English, like every other language, has changed over time. So much so, that the form used by writers back in the sixteenth-seventeenth century is&nbsp;today very difficult to comprehend.&nbsp;</p>

<p>A 17th century writer, Richard Stanyhurst, published <em>Contention Between Liberality And Prodigality</em>, where he wrote about the game of tennis. &quot;Every minute tost, like to a tennis-ball, from pillar to post. Free thee poast toe piler with thoght his rackt wyt he tosseth.&quot;</p>

<p>When the book was published, a game of tennis and this phrase was tied to each other. Even before the tennis racket came into existence, there were elements equally important and the game was all about strategy and endurance. The net, nothing more than a rope was tied to a post at one end and to one of the pillars supporting the galleries at the other end, and thus, the idiom from post to pillar began.</p>

<p>This is just one of the thousands of pages that exist today in handwritten documents from 16th&nbsp;to 17th&nbsp;century England. Volunteers are now coming together to transcribe these old English documents as part of an initiative called Shakespeare&#39;s World.&nbsp;It&nbsp;was launched on Zooniverse, a research-crowdsourcing platform in 2015 with an aim to make people understand the English language used around the time&nbsp;of William Shakespeare.</p>

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<p>Old English manuscript (Source: Wikipedia Commons) (Others)</p>
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<p>There is a lengthy list of literature written around the time, now called the Renaissance. The development of the English language is also linked to the consolidation and strengthening of the English state. This idea of Shakespeare&#39;s World&nbsp;was thus conceptualised in 2013 when Zooniverse&#39;s founder, Chris Lintott started discussing with his friend Victoria Van Hyning, a scholar of English literature, what she considered the most pressing problem in the humanities. And what came out of it was that there was a looming problem of text transcription, according to the New Yorker. &nbsp;</p>

<p>Zooniverse has partnered with the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC, and &nbsp;the Oxford English Dictionary. Volunteers for Shakespeare&rsquo;s World can view images of documents from the Folger&rsquo;s manuscript collection and transcribe. The best part about this process is that the volunteers dont have to worry about getting the text perfect. Many transcribe each line independently, and an algorithm originally designed to identify similar DNA or protein sequences compares the strings of letters to determine a likely best answer. Spot-checks suggest that the quality of completed lines is close to that of scholarly work, as reported to the New Yorker.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Till now, Zooniverse users have completed more than 3,300&nbsp;pages.&nbsp;</p>

<p>The Zooniverse project is scheduled&nbsp;to last for&nbsp;two more years. Meanwhile,&nbsp;Folger team will be uploading finished transcriptions to their Early Modern Manuscripts Online database, which launched in beta this month. Volunteers continue&nbsp;to log hours in the evenings, on holidays, and during coffee breaks.&nbsp;</p>

<p>(WION)<br />
&nbsp;</p>


Zooniverse, a research-crowd sourcing platform, is working to transcribe manuscripts written during the time of Shakespeare

English, like every other language, has changed over time. So much so, that the form used by writers back in the sixteenth-seventeenth century is today very difficult to comprehend. A 17th century writer, Richard Stanyhurst, published Contention Between Liberality And Prodigality, where he wrote about the game of tennis. "Every minute tost, like to a tennis-ball, from pillar to post. Free thee poast toe piler with thoght his rackt wyt he tosseth." When the book was published, a game of tennis and this phrase was tied to each other. Even before the tennis racket came into existence, there were elements equally important and the game was all about strategy and endurance. The net, nothing more than a rope was tied to a post at one end and to one of the pillars supporting the galleries at the other end, and thus, the idiom from post to pillar began. This is just one of the thousands of pages that exist today in handwritten documents from 16th to 17th century England. Volunteers are now coming together to transcribe these old English documents as part of an initiative called Shakespeare's World. It was launched on Zooniverse, a research-crowdsourcing platform in 2015 with an aim to make people understand the English language used around the time of William Shakespeare. Old English manuscript (Source: Wikipedia Commons) (Others) × There is a lengthy list of literature written around the time, now called the Renaissance. The development of the English language is also linked to the consolidation and strengthening of the English state. This idea of Shakespeare's World was thus conceptualised in 2013 when Zooniverse's founder, Chris Lintott started discussing with his friend Victoria Van Hyning, a scholar of English literature, what she considered the most pressing problem in the humanities. And what came out of it was that there was a looming problem of text transcription, according to the New Yorker. Zooniverse has partnered with the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC, and the Oxford English Dictionary. Volunteers for Shakespeare’s World can view images of documents from the Folger’s manuscript collection and transcribe. The best part about this process is that the volunteers dont have to worry about getting the text perfect. Many transcribe each line independently, and an algorithm originally designed to identify similar DNA or protein sequences compares the strings of letters to determine a likely best answer. Spot-checks suggest that the quality of completed lines is close to that of scholarly work, as reported to the New Yorker. Till now, Zooniverse users have completed more than 3,300 pages. The Zooniverse project is scheduled to last for two more years. Meanwhile, Folger team will be uploading finished transcriptions to their Early Modern Manuscripts Online database, which launched in beta this month. Volunteers continue to log hours in the evenings, on holidays, and during coffee breaks. (WION)

Making the old English of Shakespeare's time new again

<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to teach you Shakespeare this semester, ha ha ha!&rdquo;</p>

<p>In the summer of 2005, that&rsquo;s how a professor of mine introduced himself in the MA classroom housed in the red-bricked Faculty of Arts building of Delhi University. Most of us were offended by that irreverent laughter and many decided to skip his classes altogether. How could he do this to &ldquo;Hamara (our) Shakespeare&rdquo;?</p>

<p>More than a decade later, I realise the gravitas behind that giggle. A giggle that was a nod to William Shakespeare&rsquo;s lifelong commitment to the idea of &quot;play&quot;&nbsp;in all the ways possible. An idea that may find consonance with the idea of &ldquo;Leela&rdquo; in Hinduism. Professor Harish Trivedi never took Shakespeare more seriously than the playwright took himself.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Yet, it&#39;s&nbsp;wrong to think of him as an embodiment of humility. As a matter of fact, what irked his contemporaries- the University Wits especially- was his utter disregard for the idea that creative genius was directly proportional to immersion in intellectual ideations. His acceptance of his &ldquo;little Roman and lesser Greek&rdquo; was firmly rooted in his confidence that he would still hold to ransom the attention of his readers&rsquo; and audience.</p>

<p>But, was Shakespeare anti-intellectual? Nay, far from it. Shakespeare&rsquo;s works prefigure almost all the modern day intellectual enquiries in the world of liberal arts. While his Othello and Lucrece talk about killings and suicides for honour, his Shylock asks questions on persecution based on religious stereotypes. Look around in India, we are grappling with similar challenges. His Prospero takes us back to Platonic mimesis, his Lear performs Aristotelian catharsis. His Juliet and Cleopatra live and die beatifically as equals to the men they loved. His Lady Macbeth wants to unsex herself to rid herself of the frailties of womanhood, his Rosalind cures young men of their flippancy. His Antony speaks of the Renaissance ideals of statecraft and manhood, his Titania raises the question of sexual slavery.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Yes Shakespeare was playing to the gallery. Yes he was giving his audience what they desired: exotic locations, outlandish situations, phrases that titillated, stories that reinstated national pride and songs that could be set to music to soothe their souls. So much so, he probably wrote his scenes to suit the architecture of the theatres they would be performed at. Historian Julian Bowsher speculates that the battle scenes of Shakespeare&rsquo;s Henry V may have been written to suit the long, narrow stage of one of the earliest purpose-built theatres in London, the Curtain. Yet, there is an underlying aspiration to expose his audience to ideas they were not exposed to hitherto. He chose performance over pedagogy. Maybe because he understood both his limitations and strengths very well. He made the most of the conflicts and contradictions of his age. &nbsp;</p>

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<h5>Yes Shakespeare was playing to the gallery. Yes he was giving his audience what they desired</h5>
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<p>Now going back to playing to the gallery bit, does the idea sound familiar? That&rsquo;s what our cinema does. No wonder, Shakespeare is such a hit with filmmakers. From Baz Luhrmann of Hollywood to Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Vishal Bhardwaj of Mumbai, from Spanish Jose Maria Cartellvi to Italian Franco Zeffirelli, every noted filmmaker has tried his craft to bring Shakespeare&rsquo;s Romeo and Juliet alive on screen. The quantum of Shakespearean adaptations lends itself to be treated as a separate genre.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Habib Tanveer&rsquo;s &ldquo;Kaamdev ka Apna Vasant Ritu Ka Sapna,&rdquo; a Chhattisgarhi adaptation of A Midsummer Night&rsquo;s Dream, has little in common with Rajat Kapoor&rsquo;s irreverent clown adaptations of Hamlet, King Lear, As You Like It and Macbeth. Yet, they are all acculturative tributes to the Bard. While Benedict Cumberbatch sets TV screens on fire in a BBC skit based on Hamlet, Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo in Luhrmann&rsquo;s cinematic extravaganza wins many a heart apart from that of his Juliet&rsquo;s. Paapa Essiedu as a black Prince Hamlet and Phyllida Lloyd&rsquo;s all women Julius Caesar and Henry IV, push the envelope further. Dr Poonam Trivedi, a Shakespeare scholar at University of Delhi, recalls her conversation with an office clerk who casually remarked, &ldquo;Everyone in our film industry has been earning a livelihood courtesy Shakespeare&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

<p>India has a strange love-hate relationship with William Shakespeare. Much to the chagrin of the post-colonial intelligentsia, it is easier to find people who have at least heard of Shakespeare than, say, Kalidas. Blame it all, first, on the East India Company and then Mr Macaulay. Shakespeare was being performed in Calcutta in as early as 1755, barely a century and a half after his death. It was only natural, then, that in the Merchant Ivory production Shakespeare Wallah we come to know about the story of a British family troupe &ldquo;Shakespeareana&rdquo; managed by Geoffrey Kendall that found itself traversing across the length and breadth of India, performing Shakespeare to dwindling audiences. Shakespeareana, by the way, was also responsible for one of the most endearing real life Romeo Juliet stories: that of Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendall, Geoffrey Kendall&rsquo;s beautiful daughter. Kapoor and Kendall elope to marry each other since Mr Kendall did not approve of the young man, who was but an actor in the troupe. Good for onstage courting, not the green room dilly-dallying: Thus thought the Sahib till it was time for the empire to strike back!</p>

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<h5>It was not till the late nineties that Indian universities thought of thinking beyond the canonical British literature in their English departments. Names like Ilanko Atikal, Andal, Bhavabhuti, Lal Ded, R K Narayan, Jayanta Mahapatra, G M Muktibodh sat beside the smug Sidneys, Spensers and Donnes on the syllabi</h5>
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<p>It was not till the late nineties that Indian universities thought of thinking beyond the canonical British literature in their English departments. Names like Ilanko Atikal, Andal, Bhavabhuti, Lal Ded, R K Narayan, Jayanta Mahapatra, G M Muktibodh sat beside the smug Sidneys, Spensers and Donnes on the syllabi. Shakespeare largely survived this long-awaited cultural and academic revisionism. In Delhi University BA and MA students still study a fair chunk of Shakespearean plays and poetry. My speculation on Shakespeare&rsquo;s academic survival is simply this: not only are our students more familiar with his name than most of his contemporaries or successors, his works invite our students to embark on a journey of identification and self-identification. Harold Bloom has fiercely argued for Shakespeare&rsquo;s neat invention of the &quot;human&quot;.&nbsp;Not only did he carefully craft his own poetic persona, he crafted human characters that other human beings, his readers, could identify with admiration or repugnance. &nbsp; &nbsp;</p>

<p>If we can make the most conspicuous cultural and literary icon of the coloniser our own -- through wrongly spelt street names, insults like &ldquo;Shakespeare ki Aulaad&rdquo; hurled at a westernised upstart and many such nonchalant allusions to him -- what can we not do for our indigenous culture pool! I see Shakespeare&rsquo;s enduring legacy in India as nothing threatening. On the contrary, it is a portent that art and literature have the power to mitigate the horrors of bad politics or even genocides. The bloody wounds of our colonial history received a salve in the form of cultural enrichment.</p>

<p>Now, I do not mean to&nbsp;oversimplify&nbsp;colonialism and its ills. I am no apologist for it. My limited point here is that when artists and writers find transnational acclaim, it enriches the cultural sum total of humanity. Our Kalidas and their Shakespeare can co-exist. While we have many flashpoints in terms of race relations in Shakespeare, it is a bit unfair to anachronistically expect him to conform to our liberal worldview. Intermingling of fools and royals that irked many a Shakespearean scholar was indeed a sample of Shakespeare&rsquo;s liberalism. Something that Bakhtin calls the celebration of diversity, the carnival.</p>

<p>If we expect the dead writers to sing in our voice, is it a tall order, then, to lend them that voice? Shakespeare has been worked upon in many countries, many contexts. He belongs to all those who claim him as their own. Noted Tamil author and playwright Padmashri Dr Indira Parthasarathy&rsquo;s transcreation of The Tempest has the story of Dashavataram, a Hindu legend on ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu. A theatre festival in Chennai &ldquo;Hamara Shakespeare&rdquo;, organised by an arts foundation closes the case on who &quot;owns&quot;&nbsp;Shakespeare. It is endeavours like these that have gone into the making of the legend of Shakespeare.</p>

<p>This brings us to the issue of disputed authorship of some of Shakespeare&rsquo;s texts. Recently, Christopher Marlowe has been acknowledged as his co-author of Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III by the editors of The New Oxford Shakespeare. Is the disputed authorship an outcome of willing suspension of disbelief on the part of Shakespeare&rsquo;s fans? Whatever is good, if the authorship is unclear, attribute it to the Bard! I doubt if poor Shakespeare would have intentionally passed off someone else&rsquo;s works as his own. It must be remembered that the Elizabethan Age was an age of collaborations. &nbsp;</p>

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<p>An oft repeated comment on the commentaries on Shakespeare is that the critics invented him just as he invented his characters. It is true of any writer/artist and truer of Shakespeare. No wonder extrapolations, speculations are an integral part of Shakespeare studies. The recently concluded biennial conference of Asian Shakespeare Association in New Delhi commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Bard&rsquo;s demise was a momentous occasion.&nbsp;</p>

<p>The conference saw the participation of more than 70 foreign delegates who brought along Shakespeares from their respective countries and cultures. Scholars and artists from across the world came together to ensure that Shakespeare remains relevant, not necessarily venerated. When noted actor, director and theatre personality Rajat Kapoor made his repertory perform I Don&rsquo;t Like It, As You Like It in front of these scholars at National School of Drama, he received more applause than criticism. The irreverence of his motley cast of clowns was acknowledged as a befitting tribute to the playwright whose &quot;fools&quot;&nbsp;are immortal.</p>

<p>Dr Poonam Trivedi, organiser of the conference, shared how managing funds through sponsorships was a momentous task. The committee got some unexpected responses. Why should we spend even a dime for Shakespeare, he&rsquo;s not our own, or, isn&rsquo;t it time to move beyond Shakespeare asked the potential sponsors. If such questions are being asked in a cosmopolitan city like Delhi, it does not bode well for the health of our cultural wealth which is only enriched by making &ldquo;others&rdquo; our &ldquo;own&rdquo;. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

<p>(WION)</p>


Even 400 years after his death, the Bard continues to play across the world. Not everyone in India is happy about it, writes Nishtha Gautama

“I’m going to teach you Shakespeare this semester, ha ha ha!” In the summer of 2005, that’s how a professor of mine introduced himself in the MA classroom housed in the red-bricked Faculty of Arts building of Delhi University. Most of us were offended by that irreverent laughter and many decided to skip his classes altogether. How could he do this to “Hamara (our) Shakespeare”? More than a decade later, I realise the gravitas behind that giggle. A giggle that was a nod to William Shakespeare’s lifelong commitment to the idea of "play" in all the ways possible. An idea that may find consonance with the idea of “Leela” in Hinduism. Professor Harish Trivedi never took Shakespeare more seriously than the playwright took himself. Yet, it's wrong to think of him as an embodiment of humility. As a matter of fact, what irked his contemporaries- the University Wits especially- was his utter disregard for the idea that creative genius was directly proportional to immersion in intellectual ideations. His acceptance of his “little Roman and lesser Greek” was firmly rooted in his confidence that he would still hold to ransom the attention of his readers’ and audience. But, was Shakespeare anti-intellectual? Nay, far from it. Shakespeare’s works prefigure almost all the modern day intellectual enquiries in the world of liberal arts. While his Othello and Lucrece talk about killings and suicides for honour, his Shylock asks questions on persecution based on religious stereotypes. Look around in India, we are grappling with similar challenges. His Prospero takes us back to Platonic mimesis, his Lear performs Aristotelian catharsis. His Juliet and Cleopatra live and die beatifically as equals to the men they loved. His Lady Macbeth wants to unsex herself to rid herself of the frailties of womanhood, his Rosalind cures young men of their flippancy. His Antony speaks of the Renaissance ideals of statecraft and manhood, his Titania raises the question of sexual slavery. Yes Shakespeare was playing to the gallery. Yes he was giving his audience what they desired: exotic locations, outlandish situations, phrases that titillated, stories that reinstated national pride and songs that could be set to music to soothe their souls. So much so, he probably wrote his scenes to suit the architecture of the theatres they would be performed at. Historian Julian Bowsher speculates that the battle scenes of Shakespeare’s Henry V may have been written to suit the long, narrow stage of one of the earliest purpose-built theatres in London, the Curtain. Yet, there is an underlying aspiration to expose his audience to ideas they were not exposed to hitherto. He chose performance over pedagogy. Maybe because he understood both his limitations and strengths very well. He made the most of the conflicts and contradictions of his age. Yes Shakespeare was playing to the gallery. Yes he was giving his audience what they desired × Now going back to playing to the gallery bit, does the idea sound familiar? That’s what our cinema does. No wonder, Shakespeare is such a hit with filmmakers. From Baz Luhrmann of Hollywood to Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Vishal Bhardwaj of Mumbai, from Spanish Jose Maria Cartellvi to Italian Franco Zeffirelli, every noted filmmaker has tried his craft to bring Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet alive on screen. The quantum of Shakespearean adaptations lends itself to be treated as a separate genre. Habib Tanveer’s “Kaamdev ka Apna Vasant Ritu Ka Sapna,” a Chhattisgarhi adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has little in common with Rajat Kapoor’s irreverent clown adaptations of Hamlet, King Lear, As You Like It and Macbeth. Yet, they are all acculturative tributes to the Bard. While Benedict Cumberbatch sets TV screens on fire in a BBC skit based on Hamlet, Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo in Luhrmann’s cinematic extravaganza wins many a heart apart from that of his Juliet’s. Paapa Essiedu as a black Prince Hamlet and Phyllida Lloyd’s all women Julius Caesar and Henry IV, push the envelope further. Dr Poonam Trivedi, a Shakespeare scholar at University of Delhi, recalls her conversation with an office clerk who casually remarked, “Everyone in our film industry has been earning a livelihood courtesy Shakespeare". India has a strange love-hate relationship with William Shakespeare. Much to the chagrin of the post-colonial intelligentsia, it is easier to find people who have at least heard of Shakespeare than, say, Kalidas. Blame it all, first, on the East India Company and then Mr Macaulay. Shakespeare was being performed in Calcutta in as early as 1755, barely a century and a half after his death. It was only natural, then, that in the Merchant Ivory production Shakespeare Wallah we come to know about the story of a British family troupe “Shakespeareana” managed by Geoffrey Kendall that found itself traversing across the length and breadth of India, performing Shakespeare to dwindling audiences. Shakespeareana, by the way, was also responsible for one of the most endearing real life Romeo Juliet stories: that of Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendall, Geoffrey Kendall’s beautiful daughter. Kapoor and Kendall elope to marry each other since Mr Kendall did not approve of the young man, who was but an actor in the troupe. Good for onstage courting, not the green room dilly-dallying: Thus thought the Sahib till it was time for the empire to strike back! It was not till the late nineties that Indian universities thought of thinking beyond the canonical British literature in their English departments. Names like Ilanko Atikal, Andal, Bhavabhuti, Lal Ded, R K Narayan, Jayanta Mahapatra, G M Muktibodh sat beside the smug Sidneys, Spensers and Donnes on the syllabi × It was not till the late nineties that Indian universities thought of thinking beyond the canonical British literature in their English departments. Names like Ilanko Atikal, Andal, Bhavabhuti, Lal Ded, R K Narayan, Jayanta Mahapatra, G M Muktibodh sat beside the smug Sidneys, Spensers and Donnes on the syllabi. Shakespeare largely survived this long-awaited cultural and academic revisionism. In Delhi University BA and MA students still study a fair chunk of Shakespearean plays and poetry. My speculation on Shakespeare’s academic survival is simply this: not only are our students more familiar with his name than most of his contemporaries or successors, his works invite our students to embark on a journey of identification and self-identification. Harold Bloom has fiercely argued for Shakespeare’s neat invention of the "human". Not only did he carefully craft his own poetic persona, he crafted human characters that other human beings, his readers, could identify with admiration or repugnance. If we can make the most conspicuous cultural and literary icon of the coloniser our own -- through wrongly spelt street names, insults like “Shakespeare ki Aulaad” hurled at a westernised upstart and many such nonchalant allusions to him -- what can we not do for our indigenous culture pool! I see Shakespeare’s enduring legacy in India as nothing threatening. On the contrary, it is a portent that art and literature have the power to mitigate the horrors of bad politics or even genocides. The bloody wounds of our colonial history received a salve in the form of cultural enrichment. Now, I do not mean to oversimplify colonialism and its ills. I am no apologist for it. My limited point here is that when artists and writers find transnational acclaim, it enriches the cultural sum total of humanity. Our Kalidas and their Shakespeare can co-exist. While we have many flashpoints in terms of race relations in Shakespeare, it is a bit unfair to anachronistically expect him to conform to our liberal worldview. Intermingling of fools and royals that irked many a Shakespearean scholar was indeed a sample of Shakespeare’s liberalism. Something that Bakhtin calls the celebration of diversity, the carnival. If we expect the dead writers to sing in our voice, is it a tall order, then, to lend them that voice? Shakespeare has been worked upon in many countries, many contexts. He belongs to all those who claim him as their own. Noted Tamil author and playwright Padmashri Dr Indira Parthasarathy’s transcreation of The Tempest has the story of Dashavataram, a Hindu legend on ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu. A theatre festival in Chennai “Hamara Shakespeare”, organised by an arts foundation closes the case on who "owns" Shakespeare. It is endeavours like these that have gone into the making of the legend of Shakespeare. This brings us to the issue of disputed authorship of some of Shakespeare’s texts. Recently, Christopher Marlowe has been acknowledged as his co-author of Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III by the editors of The New Oxford Shakespeare. Is the disputed authorship an outcome of willing suspension of disbelief on the part of Shakespeare’s fans? Whatever is good, if the authorship is unclear, attribute it to the Bard! I doubt if poor Shakespeare would have intentionally passed off someone else’s works as his own. It must be remembered that the Elizabethan Age was an age of collaborations. If we expect the dead writers to sing in our voice, is it a tall order, then, to lend them that voice? Shakespeare has been worked upon in many countries, many contexts. He belongs to all those who claim him as their own × An oft repeated comment on the commentaries on Shakespeare is that the critics invented him just as he invented his characters. It is true of any writer/artist and truer of Shakespeare. No wonder extrapolations, speculations are an integral part of Shakespeare studies. The recently concluded biennial conference of Asian Shakespeare Association in New Delhi commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s demise was a momentous occasion. The conference saw the participation of more than 70 foreign delegates who brought along Shakespeares from their respective countries and cultures. Scholars and artists from across the world came together to ensure that Shakespeare remains relevant, not necessarily venerated. When noted actor, director and theatre personality Rajat Kapoor made his repertory perform I Don’t Like It, As You Like It in front of these scholars at National School of Drama, he received more applause than criticism. The irreverence of his motley cast of clowns was acknowledged as a befitting tribute to the playwright whose "fools" are immortal. Dr Poonam Trivedi, organiser of the conference, shared how managing funds through sponsorships was a momentous task. The committee got some unexpected responses. Why should we spend even a dime for Shakespeare, he’s not our own, or, isn’t it time to move beyond Shakespeare asked the potential sponsors. If such questions are being asked in a cosmopolitan city like Delhi, it does not bode well for the health of our cultural wealth which is only enriched by making “others” our “own”. (WION)

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