The Bard in Bollywood

Abstract

‘The Bard of Avon’ William Shakespeare, an English poet, playwright and actor, no one is unknown to his name. Bollywood’s love for Shakespearean literature never loses steam. The Hindi cinema director Vishal Bhardwaj showcases the different shades of Shakespeare’s tragedies through the cinematic adaptations, i.e. Omkara (Othello), Haidar (Hamlet), Maqbool (Macbeth). By these films he has brought out outlandish exaggeration, intense passion and mixture of styles. He successfully recreates Shakespeare’s original at the level of language, setting and plot without diluting the complexities raised by the original tragedies of Shakespeare. My paper will bring out the human emotions that are shown in the films. It will present the way in which director of these above films has modernised the tragedies of Shakespeare. How he has made the Shakespeare’s tragedies comprehensible to all the common people of India, how he introduced Shakespeare to everyone through his beautiful films. My paper will be a modest attempt to reach the ways in which films capture the essence of Shakespeare’s original, by adapting the Shakespeare’s plays how filmmakers cast them in a more modern mould to keep Shakespeare alive, how the masterpieces offers some of the most imaginative and insightful visualisation seen in Hindi cinema.