ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Shakespeare, who entered the arena of literature and drama in Tamil from the late nineteenth century, returned to the popular realm through cinema. A Shakespeare's passage was made possible by the playwrights and artists who were part of both Tamil drama and cinema. The chapter documents the overlapping space of these two genres in terms of form. Apart from translations and adaptations, Shakespeare appears as citations in school or college programmes, or even as performances staged by drama companies, as in the case of films like Rajapart Rangadurai. The chapter deals in detail through its analysis of Ratha Thilagam, with how the citation of Othello in the Tamil context shifts the theme of suspicion, not jealousy, from the personal, sexual realm to the political one of loyalty to the Indian nation.
