Monday,15,2019

Prof. Ajoy Ranjan Biswas (formerly of Burdwan Raj College)

Interviewed by Arunava Banerjee

The year of passing BA and MA?

First, you please note that I am a retired person, I taught at Vivekananda College Burdwan, and also at Visva-Bharati, for more than a decade. I was a student of Dhaka University, In Dhaka University, you know, the BA course and MA course, it is perhaps still, an integrated course, a 3 year degree course and a one year MA course. So I did my BA in 1959 and my MA in 1960.

When did your first encounter with Shakespeare take place?

It was an interesting encounter with Shakespeare. In the Intermediate course (IA), we had a poem, ‘The Seven Ages of Man’. You know, it is an excerpt from As You Like It. So, we were quite surprised and glad to read such a poem. And our teacher explained the context and the text.

Where did you study for your IA and who was the teacher who taught you Shakespeare?

At IA level? I don’t remember the name of the teacher. I read at Chittagong Govt. College. I did my IA from Chittagong Govt. College.

Could you tell us something about the way the poem was taught there?

It was just the ordinary method - the teacher read out the poem, we also followed him line by line, and he explained words meanings, etc.

Could you tell us something about the syllabi at Dhaka University?

I told you that it was an integrated course and syllabus, 3 year degree course and then one year PG course, in all subjects perhaps. Functional English was an extra course. One Mrs Miller taught us spoken English.

What were the Shakespearean texts taught there?

Oh, there were quite a few! In the BA course, 3 year Honours course, the syllabus was so structured that it covered the four phases of Shakespeare’s development. We began with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, then Love’s Labour’s Lost - the first phase of Shakespeare’s development. In the second year we had Henry IV parts 1 and 2, The Merchant of Venice, and Julius Caesar. And in the third year we had Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Othello. King Lear was perhaps taught in the MA class. And finally in the MA class, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale and all the major sonnets.

Do you remember the people who taught Shakespeare?

J.S. Turner, he was the only Englishman who taught us. Dr Sajjad Hussain, who was very particular about pronunciation; Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, he was killed later, in 1971; Sorwar Murshed. These four - I think. They taught us Shakespeare in the Honours course and the MA course.

Could you tell us something about their style of teaching?

Actually they gave emphasis on textual analysis. Dr Murshed emphasized the necessity of dramatic representation, but we never saw any dramatic representation by students or teachers. Only once did the British Council invite our department for a show of some Shakespearean play by a team who came perhaps from London. They were foreigners.

Which particular teacher impressed you most and what trait of theirs impressed you most?

Well, Sajjad Hussain, whom I remember still. He always insisted that we pronounce the word clearly, and in a stylized way, which was phonetically correct. While teaching Chaucer he was particular that we must pronounce Chaucerian words in that way. I still remember him pronouncing in the Chaucerian way. We had to learn the methodology of pronouncing Medieval English.

Were expletives and sexual references omitted during teaching?

Yes. Not exactly Bowdlerized, you know, but we did not have to explain those words, we had to see those commentaries and annotations in the text.

How far was the socio-historical context of the plays discussed?

Socio-historic context was the main area of exploration. They were thoroughly studied, these contexts, socio-historical contexts.

Were Shakespeare’s contemporary dramatists given the same amount of importance in the classroom?

Yes - Kyd, Marlowe, Ben Jonson. We had separate papers on them.

Were students encouraged to think independently and challenge the teacher?

No, actually, we had no students who challenged the teachers. We did not feel like that also.

What editions and critical material were used for studying Shakespeare?

Mostly we had Verity editions. As far as I remember, we also had some Granville Barker editions.

What was the examination and question patterns like for Shakespeare?

Text based.

Was there a Shakespeare paper?

Yes, yes, in MA and BA course we had a separate Shakespeare paper. It was a heavy course full of many texts.

Did the teacher discuss stage or film productions in the classroom?

No. There was no scope for that. They always referred to some famous critics, for example, A.C. Bradley. It was an indispensible reading for us, Shakespearean Tragedy. And then we also got hold of Tillyard - The Elizabethan World Picture, Shakespeare’s Problem Plays, Shakespeare’s Last Plays. But we did not get the Early Plays, because that edition was not published at that time.

Was the text related to the performance conventions of Elizabethan theatre?

No.

Can you tell us about any of your classmates who have later distinguished themselves as Shakespeare scholars or performers.

No, there were no classmates known to me who became famous like that, but one teacher was there, Kabir Chowdhury, and perhaps his brother Munir Chowdhury, who was killed later on. They produced plays, quite many of them. Kabir Chowdhury was a Shakespeare scholar, he was a teacher of the Bengali department, a famous teacher. He was a Bengali literature man. He was an actor. He wrote plays.

You have seen Shakespeare being taught at Dhaka University as a student, and you in turn have taught Shakespeare in West Bengal, so what kind of changes have you noted in pedagogy and student reaction both spatially as well as over time?

When I came over here, my teaching career mostly started over here and continued over here. I also taught for one year in Bangladesh (East Pakistan), but here everything happened. I wanted my students to read and analyze Shakespeare texts, the historical contexts, the poetic contexts, the dramatic contexts, these are things I emphasized, and I encouraged them to see any production anywhere.

But what kind of differences did you notice in between the classes at Dhaka University and the classes at Visva Bharati?

At Dhaka University, the teachers pedagogical thrust was text analysis. They spoke about dramatic presentation, but there was no possibility of seeing one. We were advised to go to the British Council Library as it was quite near our campus. But here the difference is, you know, here in West Bengal, as a teacher I faced this problem - students, mostly depended on tuition and they ignored class teaching. The good students followed our class teachings, but the majority of students depended on private coaching. Strangely enough, the private coaching students fared well in comparison with other students. But only very good students, there were very few of them, did not depend on private coaching, they followed our academic advice. In East Pakistan, in Dhaka or in Chittagong, I did not find so much dependence on private coaching. And in West Bengal students depend mostly on notebooks. In East Pakistan, there were no notebooks, no bazaar notebooks, at the time when I myself was a student, and also when I became a teacher there for one year.

From the time that you started teaching up till now, how do you think that the way students receive Shakespeare has changed? Has it changed over time at all?

Yes, mostly, I am speaking about the ideal situation, the good students. There are many good students, who are the products of this ideal academic situation and norms. Now Shakespeare teaching has changed a lot, mostly because there are many new books, new aspects, of Shakespeare teaching which have developed. You know, more exploration, newer kinds of areas of Shakespeare pedagogy are developing. For example, the play Hamlet edited by Graham Holderness, it projects a totally new kind of approach, you know. It tries to combine images, techniques of performance, and then the moral question about revenge in Hamlet, you know, with the religious question of the revenge, revenge action, and also with its Freudian subtext in the play, then contemporary approaches, post-structuralist views, feminist questions, these are being explored. The central question about this play, is this catharsis or catastrophe? The serious question has been raised in the analysis. There are other new approaches, discussed by the likes of Jonathan Dollimore and Ania Loomba. The postcolonial questions are being explored, these are very important.

Do you think Shakespeare is overrated? How do you react to the present trend of deglamourizing and decanonizing Shakespeare?

Shakespeare being overrated? Absolutely not. Deglamourizing? Like decaffeinated coffee? Shakespeare should be like that? You see one thing, glamour must be there, Shakespeare is a traditionally glamorous personality, his works are really glamorous. What is life for if we remove Shakespearean glamour from life? The question of deglamourizing Shakespeare does not arise for us at least. And for decanonizing, what does it mean? Does it mean to remake Shakespeare? I think Shakespeare should not be de-centered, Shakespeare studies is important for all students of literature. Shakespeare is so important and deeply significant that he should be studied by all students of literature, the question of decanonizing should not be entertained at all. I read somewhere that someone was re-making Macbeth and there he has tried to focus on a really filthy aspect of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene, there the director was trying to focus on how scantily Lady Macbeth was dressed while sleepwalking. Can it make any significant addition to Shakespeare study? Can he remove the tragic suffering of Lady Shakespeare in any such manner? I don’t believe it.

Students in the West have started reading Shakespeare in paraphrase even at the college level, what is your reaction to this?

I am really shocked.