Topics will include an overview of Shakespearean theatre, audience, classification of his plays, and the main corpus of significant Shakespearean criticism down the centuries. This course will close-read at least 3 or 4 Shakespearean plays and their more famous re-inventions after the sixteenth century. Genre could be one parameter of selecting the texts, taking a cue from the classifications of the Shakespearean canon. To take a few examples: Shakespeare`s Scottish play will be read in sufficient detail and re-considered in the light of its afterlives. These afterlives could span a wide linguistic and cultural range, from Orson Welles` Voodoo Macbeth and Roman Polanski`s The Tragedy of Macbeth to Akira Kurosawa`s Throne of Blood and Vishal Bharadwaj`s Maqbool.
Similarly, an early comedy like A Midsummer Night`s Dream could be read alongside Neil Gaiman`s graphic novel "A Midsummer Night`s Dream" and Habib Tanvir`s Chhattisgarhi recreation Kamdev ka Apna, Basant Ritu ka Sapna; or a later and mature comedy like Twelfth Night read alongside Atul Kumar`s Piya Behrupiya.
A significant objective of this reading is for comparative analysis, as well as an understanding of how themes and techniques come to be modified and re-envisioned, not just across cultural contexts but also genres and media, like the graphic novel and film.
Questions arising from these correspondences and ranging from the generic to the specific, will find special place in this course:
a) How does a pre-eminently visual medium such as Neil Gaiman’s graphic-novel version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream speak to a play, whose language was seen as a competent substitute for visual accessories including stage props?
b) How, to what extent and towards what intent do Shakespearean rewritings exploit the formulaic nature of his plays?
c) What interpretative dimension has technology added to reinventions?
d) What is the readership/audience projected by the afterlives?
e) How do the plays and their afterlives negotiate with literary, technical and political self-reflexivity? How are creative opportunities provided and identified in the Shakespearean canon?