ABSTRACT
The broad lines of development in the history of film adaptations of William Shakespeare in India are by now well delineated. The earliest period, or the appropriative phase, which stretches from the silent era to around the middle of the 1950s, was dominated by adaptations in the Parsi theatre mode, with the 1930s being the most prolific decade. Though excerpts from the play constituted the first ever film made anywhere on a Shakespearean play, it is unlikely that Agha Hashr had seen it. Another possible reason for the choice of King John could have been an interest in the history plays for their resonances with an evolving national consciousness, but of this too there is little evidence in Said-e-Havas or other Parsi theatre plays. Kenneth Rothwell divides films based on Shakespeare's plays into two broad categories of "adaptation" and "derivative," the major difference being that "adaptations rely heavily on Shakespeare's actual words, and derivatives abandon his language altogether."
