ABSTRACT
Few people will find all the titles intelligible, as they belong to a number of Indian languages besides English. Few again, except Indians, may be able to locate all the places of publication. Outside the Western world, India has the longest and most intense engagement with Shakespeare of any country anywhere. The author says a series of engagements, as Shakespearean traffic was routed through many languages and cultural contexts across the subcontinent, commencing at various dates from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century. The terms of India's engagement with William Shakespeare are endlessly debated, because the evidence is complex and of contrary purport. It is harder to trace a sustained Shakespearean line through Indian cinema, but individual directors have turned so often to the Bard as to practically build up a tradition. Rajiva Verma takes people through the whole sweep of Urdu and Hindi Shakespearean cinema from the colonial to the global age.
