Shakespeare Magazine 01

Bollywood
“The 1947
Romeo and
Juliet starring
Nargis as Juliet
was a copy of
the Hollywood
version
with Norma
Shearer”
starrer Dil Bole Hadippa! (2009) was a
loose copy of She’s the Man (2006), based
on Twelfth Night. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s
Ram Leela (2013) also owes more to Baz
Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) than to
Shakespeare.
The most popular plays in Bollywood are
Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew,
The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of
Venice and Hamlet. Taking one example
alone, there are three versions of Hamlet in
the Parsi theatre tradition: Dada Athawale’s
Hamlet or Khoon-e-Nahak [The Unjust
Assassination] (1928), Sohrab Modi’s Khoonka-Khoon
[Blood for Blood] or Hamlet
(1935) and Kishore Sahu’s 1954 Hamlet.
Eklavya (2007), the upcoming untitled film
by gay rights activist film maker Onir, the
in-production Haider by Vishal Bhardwaj,
as well as another planned adaptation to
be directed by Tigmanshu Dhulia starring
Hrithik Roshan, are also based on Hamlet.
The first Shakespearean adaptation on the
Hindi film screen was Savkari Pash (1925)
directed by Baburao Painter based on The
Merchant of Venice. A social melodrama in
the realist tradition, the film dealt with money
lending – a problem that ruined countless
poor, illiterate farmers. The audience, more
accustomed to escapist mythological fantasies
and historical love stories, did not appreciate
the strong dose of realism and the film did
not do well. However, the shot of a dreary hut
accompanied by a howling dog is regarded
as one of the most memorable moments of
Indian cinema.
The
Comedy of Errors is Indian
With a massive Bollywood audience hungry
for laughs, it’s no surprise that India has
made more film adaptations of The Comedy
of Errors than any other country. There are
three from Hong Kong, just two from the
SHAKESPEARE magazine 35