Nanda‐bangshochchhed and Hariraj: Re‐configuring Politics and the Private Mind in Two Bengali Adaptations of Hamlet

Abstract

My essay will examine how two nineteenth-century Bengali adaptations of Hamlet negotiate the Shakespearean text and try to re-configure its approach towards politics and the private mind. The two Bengali plays in question are (i) Nanda-bangshochchhed ("The Destruction of the Nanda Dynasty"; published 1873) by Lakshminarayan Chakraborty, a text that was sparingly staged and is yet to gain adequate recognition as a case of Shakespearean appropriation; and (ii) Hariraj by Nagendranath Chaudhury ( first staged in 1897), commercially the most successful adaptation of any Shakespeare play in the nineteenth-century Bengali theatre. The major point of departure for the first play is the question of political intriguewhich is to a large extent upstaged in the Shakespearean original by the focus on Hamlet's subjectivity. The first play curiously amalgamates the mythos of Hamlet with suggestions of a semi-legendary past, especially as derivable from the classical Sanskrit play Mudrarakshasa (4th-8th century CE). Accordingly, the Fortinbras-equivalent of the play is Nanda's half-brother Chandragupta (identifiable as the historical Chandragupta Maurya, 340-298 BCE), and it has references to the historical figures of Rakshasa, Chanakya and even Alexander the Great. Similarly, the second play, which is set in a pseudo-historical Hindu state, greatly emphasizes elements of political and sexual conspiracy. It shows the Gertrudeequivalent as a Lady Macbeth-like figure who conspires with her lover to kill her husband, later plans against her son Hariraj, and commits suicide when the monstrosity of the crime dawns on her. Thus, the plays revise the dominant reading of Hamlet as a tragedy of deeply interiorized suffering, and alert one to the political catastrophe attendant upon the extinction of Hamlet's family line. These two Bengali adaptations choose to show the Hamlet-figure as subject to the contingencies of a communal existence, which are not always filtered through his consciousness. However, these two plays, which incidentally embody early attempts in Bengali at adapting the tragic to the received aesthetic repertoire of India, also evoke at key moments Hamlet's celebrated contemplativeness and engage on indigenous terms with a Western model of staging interiority. This essay will examine how two Bengali adaptations of Hamlet refract Shakespeare's play through their own cultural preferences and reveal at the same time their alertness to subtexts of the original.Two Bengali adaptations of Hamlet from the nineteenth century are widely recognized by the scholarship in this field. These are Amarsingha by Pramathanath Basu, which was published in 1874 and probably never staged, and Hariraj by Nagendranath Chaudhury, which was published in 1896 and first staged in 1897 Chakravarty 185). The latter play, often erroneously attributed to the actor-manager Amarendranath Dutta who produced it at the Classic Theatre, Kolkata, and essayed the title role, happens to be the greatest commercial success among all the Bengali adaptations of ...