ABSTRACT
Scholarship on the reception of Shakespeare in Asia, particularly in former British colonies like India, has focused on how his plays, located within the larger project of colonial education, becomes a means of introducing “modern” and “civilized” values to a “benighted” nation. While the problematic construction of Shakespeare as an icon of liberal, secular modernity has been extensively researched,1 less attention has been directed at how his works have also provided Indian readers, adapters, and translators with a site of negotiating with older forms like romance and its interest in the supernatural, the irrational, the illusory, and the magical. These encounters have often led to the revival of traditional literary and performative modes in indigenous cultures. They have also promoted reection on the Enlightenment premises of modernity imbricated in the imperial project.
