India
India.Shakespeare sailed towards India in 1607: two performances of Hamlet apparently took place aboard the Hector commanded by William Hawkins, who was on his way to the court of the ‘Great Mogol’ (see Travel, Trade, and Colonialism). Over the next four centuries, Shakespeare's plays, on the stage as well as in the classroom, were to become a central feature of the English presence and its legacy in India. As the privileged core of colonial English education, they were used to bolster ideas of English superiority over the culture and literature of the ‘natives’. On the stage, Shakespeare was staple fare for amateur theatricals of the English resident in India as well as for Indian students of European-style colleges all over the country. Western-style public theatres were established in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras partly on the strength of their adaptations and translations of Shakespeare's plays.
In Calcutta, among the first...
[The entire page is 972 words long]