Shakespeare's presence in Tagore's works

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is an eternal legacy for academicians and a delicacy for  lovers of literature. Shakespeare has long been presiding over the world stage and the world will celebrate the 455th birth anniversary of the greatest playwright and poet of English literature on 23rd April 2019.

So, no occasion can be better than this to look at the perspective of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) on the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon. In other words, in this article we will explore Shakespeare's presence in the works of the first Nobel laureate of Asia.

He has been sung by many of the great poets of the following ages. Carlyle confessed in his celebrated essay, "The Hero as Poet", that he would esteem Shakespeare over the British Empire. The great Victorian poet Matthew Arnold has also celebrated  the Bard in a sonnet where he writes:

"Others abide our question. Thou art free

We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still…"

However, Shakespeare is also noticeably celebrated in the East. He holds the strongest command over Asian theatres. The present article will look at how our celebrated poet Rabindranath Tagore pays tributes to the Bard.

Tagore's first orientation of Shakespeare was when he was only a teenager and was assigned by a house tutor to translate Macbeth. He did it and his rendering of the three witches' scene is well-known though whether he did the whole play or not is not known to us. Tagore read Shakespeare academically when he first went to London in 1878.

He was a student of the Faculty of Arts and Law at University College, London, where he attended Henry Morley's lectures on English literature. From Krishna Kripalani's Rabindranath Tagore- A Biography we learn that Tagore read with Morley some plays of Shakespeare. However, Dr.Ujjwalkumar Majumdar's research work, published as Rabindranather Porashona, has no mention of Shakespeare in Tagore's reading list.

In his personal life Tagore had an incurable romantic impression. He used to call his sister-in-law Kadambari Devi (wife of Tagore's elder brother Jyotirindranath Tagore)  Heket/ Hey, the name of one of the three witches as Kadambari had a bewitching hold over the psyche of the teenager poet. This issue too is combated by some Tagore enthusiasts who believe that Tagore used to address Kadambari as 'Hey', which stood for Hemangini, a literary character of Jyotirindra's play. 

Tagore's serious contribution or tribute to the great Bard is evidenced in his sonnet dedicated to Shakespeare and included in Balaka (The Flight of Cranes), published in 1916.The volume, dedicated to Tagore's friend Pearson, consists of poems whose spirit is , according to Kripalani, "itself one long dedication to the world-spirit" (A Biography  p.275).

On the auspicious occasion of the quarter centenary celebration of the birth of William Shakespeare in 1964, the Calcutta Art Society held a ceremony at the Shakespeare Center to present an ivory tablet of a poem by Tagore. The tablet attracted the attention of the Indian High Commissioner to London, Dr. L.M. Singhvi, after three decades.

Singhvi took a wonderful step to commemorate the most powerful Indian poet's tribute to the greatest English poet. Dr. Singhvi proposed that a permanent monument to Rabindranath Tagore be set up in the Bard's place at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1996.


The writer is Assistant Professor, Department of English, Daffodil International University