The Hindu Business Line : The Bard is a global brand

A substantial part of the Indian population is still illiterate, and only "a small privileged minority understands and speaks English with any degree of competence." Yet, `at over 50 million,' we have "more speakers of English in India than probably in any country of the world except the UK and the US," writes Harish Trivedi in one of the essays included in Shakespeare without English. The book edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri and Chee Seng Lim, from Pearson Longman (www.pearsoned.co.in), is about the assimilation of the Bard, happening in many countries, `in new ways'.

Trivedi informs, "Many Shakespeare enthusiasts in Germany have famously claimed that they understand and appreciate Shakespeare better than the poor British themselves, into whose lap the poet fortuitously fell." What is the situation closer home? "In India, on the other hand, there has been a contrasted tradition of not finding Shakespeare great enough — or at least `philosophical' enough — by local literary standards." Paradoxically, many Indians read the Bard's works `to learn the English language'. Trivedi cites A. Menezes thus: "Shakespeare is not only a book written in a certain language; he is an experience."

That may find affirmation in R. K. Narayan's The English Teacher. Trivedi retells the tale of how in the opening chapter, the hero goes to teach King Lear to `the junior B.A. class'. Alas, he is not only under-prepared but also uninterested. "But once he does open the book, at the storm scene, `the sheer poetry of it carried me on', and he goes on reading the scene out, with apparently not a word of explanation or commentary, until the bell rings to mark the end of the lecture."

English is now the vehicle of information technology and universal communication, and India, despite being called a non-anglophone country is `rapidly turning more and more anglophone'. Trivedi observes, "The English language is spreading faster in the present postcolonial period than ever before... The `sheer poetry of Shakespeare' can no longer ride piggyback on the pragmatic and economic need to know a bare and functional language of contemporary usefulness."

To those who would love to go for `a direct engagement with Shakespeare's text', Trivedi cautions that even the most erudite Shakespearean scholars go for something mediated, such as `in modernised spelling and punctuation'. An interesting snatch that he cites from Stephen Orgel is this: "Shakespeare loves loose ends... Shakespeare also loves red herrings... Shakespeare sometimes seems to court confusion deliberately... Implausibilities and even impossibilities abound in Shakespeare's plays... Shakespeare, not Iago, is the real villain... [for] the deception is not being practised on Othello by Iago, it is being practised on us by Shakespeare."

On that there can be arguments. But what can't be denied is that Shakespeare has "a worldwide `brand recognition' on a scale comparable in some ways to that of Coca-Cola and Microsoft (with the crucial material difference that Shakespeare's secret formula is not locked up in a vault in Atlanta — nor is he under copyright or, as we say now, intellectual property rights, and can hence circulate even more freely)." So much so, "all the world's a stage for him in many of the world's languages."

Still wondering, `To read, or not to read'?

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