Bard’s birthday letter

By Amit Roy

WILLIAM SHAKE­SPEARE was remem­bered last week by his fans all over the world, especially in India, on the occasion of his 456th birthday on April 23, 2020, according to the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Greg Doran.

In a birthday letter to “Dear Shakespeare”, Doran said that “more than any other writer I know, you give us the words to explain us to ourselves. We need you. We need your wisdom, compassion, and your phenomenal under­standing of our vulnera­bility and frailty. We need you to help us rel­ish the simple and artic­ulate the complex.”

Shakespeare himself had experience of work­ing in isolation, Doran pointed out.

“When he was just starting as a playwright in London, the theatres were commanded to close, at which point Shakespeare wrote two magnificent narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece,” he said.

“Then again, when the Globe (theatre) was told to haul down its flag and bolt its doors again in 1609, he published his collection of 154 sonnets.”

Many visitors from India make a point of visiting his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon. This is where I saw an innovative, Indianised version of Much Ado About Nothing in 2012, directed by Iqbal Khan.

Meanwhile, another drama group, the But­terfly Theatre Company, has released a video en­titled, We are Human, with a little twist to Shy­lock’s famous mono­logue from The Mer­chant of Venice. The word “Christian” is re­placed with “human”.

The video features 150 people from all over the world, making such observations as, “I am a black man from east London”, “I am a Mus­lim”, “I am an LGBT Jew”, and a Chinese woman saying, “Hath not a Chinese hands?”