ABSTRACT
"Everyone has Shakespeare at home; everyone may open the original text and read it." This extraordinary claim offers a clue to the ubiquitous and universal presence of William Shakespeare in Bengal's cultural sphere in the nineteenth century. The spread of educational institutions on the Western model - the various schools, colleges and finally universities in India under British domination - witnessed an astonishing demand for Shakespearean studies. The politics behind the enthroning of Shakespeare in the college classroom may be glibly explained as a typically "neutral" state apparatus installed by the farsighted colonial powers to keep insurgency in check. The large-scale growth of theatres is closely linked to the syllabi and pedagogy of the new educational institutions in Bengal on the Western model. The plays were also performed by students at annual concerts, and records exist to show that the students of Drummond's Dhurrumtollah Academy were reciting selected passages from Shakespeare in 1822.
