Thursday,21,2019
Prof. Mohit Kumar Roy
Formerly University of Burdwan
(Interviewed by Sri Arunava Banerjee)
What was the years of your passing your B.A. and M.A.? And which were the institutions concerned?
B.A. in 1959 from Siuri Vidyasagar College which was affiliated to the University of Calcutta at that time, M.A. from the University of Calcutta, through Presidency College, in 1961.
When did your first encounter with Shakespeare take place?
For the first encounter I would have to go back down the memory lane because when I was a very small child, my mother and father used to tell us stories, bits of it from The Merchant of Venice and other plays. But the actual encounter with Shakespeare in print, that took place when I was a student of Class VII, and we had a poem from As You Like It called ‘Under the greenwood tree’. That was the beginning, and then gradually as a part of the academic program, we had to first read some scenes at the higher levels and then full length plays at the Honours and M.A. levels. And since then, I have been working on Shakespeare. I have written on Shakespeare in Salzburg Studies on Shakespeare.It is going on, it is an ongoing process. ‘Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.’ So even now we keep on reading Shakespeare.
What were the college and university syllabi like?
There was a big chunk of Shakespeare in the syllabus. We had Macbeth, As You Like It, and other things like when the teachers compelled us to read some other related texts. So suppose we were doing As You Like It then we had to read The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But we did that one text which was prescribed in the syllabus very thoroughly. When we did Macbeth, we were asked to read Hamlet, Othello and King Lear even when they were not prescribed in the syllabus. They appeared in the syllabus at a later stage, at the M.A. level. We were all full of Shakespeare in those days, and we came across the screenplays of Sir Laurence Olivier in so many productions. We particularly liked Richard III very much. Later, of course, I have seen Shakespearean productions at Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal Shakespeare Company staging of A Taming of the Shrew. In New York I saw a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I have seen numerous plays at many places.
What do you feel was the difference in the manner Shakespeare was taught to you in college and the way Shakespeare was taught to you at University?
That is a very interesting question, because all the teachers who taught us Shakespeare, were very good and competent in their own ways. Some were very dramatic, like Professor Arun Kumar Sen who was the principal of Siuri Vidyasagar College at that time. He dramatized Shakespeare, he used to read Shakespeare and had a very rich voice. He himself was a very good actor, and knew Shakespeare very well. In his student days he performed in many plays. He used to read out Shakespeare in a nice way. He had learnt them all by heart, you know, and Shakespeare came to life, almost like the productions of Shakespearean times. There was no setting, nothing, and then with the line, ‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’ we would really see the dagger, and that was one way of teaching and we were enthralled.
There was another teacher who also used to take Shakespeare classes, Professor Mani Gopal Sen, who was actually head of the department of Siuri Vidyasagar College at that time. He was not dramatic, but he was very meticulous about the use of sounds and his focus was on character and poetry. However his focus was mainly on poetry, not so much on character. When I look back I see that we had an experience of some important aspects of Shakespeare but not the whole of it. Nobody can present the whole of it, it was good but not sufficient, but at that time we were very happy. Later at Presidency College, Subodh-babu [Subodh Chandra Sengupta] taught us Shakespeare but he did not teach us any plays. He just taught us about Shakespearean scholarship, what you call the Shakespeare canon. We avidly read his Shakespearean Comedy and Shakespeare’s Historical Plays when they came out, and much later when he passed away, his Aspects of Shakespearean Tragedy was published, and we used to say amongst ourselves that he had followed the Folio pattern, first comedy, next history and finally tragedy. He had some speech defect. He used to stammer, but whatever he used to say was very useful. As the words fell from his mouth we avidly waited for them.
Sailendra Kumar Sen, taught us Coriolanus, and in 1959 his famous essay ‘What Happens in Coriolanus’ was published in Shakespeare Quarterly. He knew Shakespeare almost like the back of his palm. Although the particular paper was on Coriolanus, while teaching it he would refer to other Roman plays such as Julius Caesar or Titus Andronicus as well as other plays. He was also very pedantic, no dramatisation, no gestures or movements. Apparently it was dull and very monotonous teaching, but very good in terms of the exploration of knowledge. He used to tell us many things about where exactly the change came from. And here we learnt how to appreciate sentiments in the play, how Shakespeare was capable of dramatizing emotions in the servant scene, all that he used to highlight.
However, the best teacher I have come across is Professor T.N. [Tarak Nath] Sen – incomparable, matchless, he used to take classes for 4 hours at a stretch sometimes and cover every aspect of the play. We would never realize how so much time had passed, you know. He would talk about the socio-historical background, the background of every character, the register of their speeches, why Othello made use of sea images, why in The Merchant of Venice there are images of usury, relate vocabulary to the particular character, his experiences, then the entire dramatic effect of the whole thing, and the unpredictable complexity of the human character that is revealed in the course of the actions. But what actually was most impressive about him was that he was a soft-spoken person, and if you were in the second bench you would not be able to hear him, so we used to remain very alert so that we wouldn’t miss any word. I will give you an example. In Act 5 Scene 2, Othello commits suicide, he has been disarmed, and he tells them that when they go back to Venice, they should write about him, but give an objective report. And then he says that although he is a black Moor, he loved Venice. Othello also says that when some Turk was talking ill about Venice or some Venetian, he killed him.
Professor Sen would focus on the very sound pattern of this speech. In most texts the direction at the end is that Othello stabs himself after this. So the punctuation, the use of long and short vowels, and their dramatic necessity in that particular speech is very important. Othello says for example, ‘When you shall these unlucky deeds relate // Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, // Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak // Of one that loved not wisely but too well; // Of one not easily jealous, But being wrought // Perplex’d in the extreme.’ His pauses reflect his thinking, he is turning the whole thing over in his mind, he is summing up and then he says: ‘of one whose subdued eyes, // Albeit unused to the melting mood, // Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees // Their medicinal gum. Set you down this; // And say besides, that in Aleppo once, // Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk // Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, // I took by the throat the circumcised dog, // And smote him, thus.’ I leave out other things and focus on just one word: ‘smote’. ‘I smote him thus’. Now why ‘smote’? He is stabbing, he could have said, ‘I stabbed him thus’, he could have said, ‘I killed him thus’, he could also have said, ‘I finished him thus’. ‘Stabbed’ and ‘killed’ are monosyllabic words, but ‘smote’ is also a monosyllable. So why use ‘smote’?
Tarak-babu used to say, ‘look here, here is an actor, he is playing the role of Othello, and he has a dagger hidden inside, he has to fish out the dagger, he has to lift up his hand, and then he has to stab himself, and he needs time to lift up his hand. He cannot say, ‘I stabbed him thus’, he cannot say, ‘I killed him thus’. But while articulating the long vowel in ‘smote’, his hand is lifting up. Thus the action of stabbing himself and the utterance of ‘thus’ takes place simultaneously. Othello thus cannot say, ‘I killed him’, or ‘I stabbed him’, for it would sound unnatural. In this lay the dramatic wealth of Shakespearean plays and their poetic beauties. Thomas Rymer criticised the closely punctuated speech of the bleeding sergeant and tried to make changes. But Tarak-babu justified the presence of so many commas by saying that the man was bleeding and he would bleed to death very soon, so every moment he has to stop for breath. So these pauses were necessary. For example in Macbeth, Duncan has come, and Macbeth already has been persuaded by Lady Macbeth to kill him, so Macbeth is suffering from an excruciating mental conflict. He has been double tasked, by King and by guest, and this agony is reflected in his language as if somebody is hammering his head. ‘If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly’, such like things you know.
After killing Duncan, he reports to Lady Macbeth saying, ‘But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘Amen’? I had most need of blessing, and ‘Amen’ stuck in my throat.’ Now on the one hand it shows his conflict, agony, hesitation, all these things, in killing his guests, and secondly the sound pattern is also significant. You don’t have to go to Holinshed’s Chronicles for confirmation; the truth of the statement is embedded in the line itself. ‘Amen’ stuck in his throat, the tongue touches the palate and gets stuck there. This consonant cluster, ‘thr’ in ‘throat’ is difficult to pronounce, as it has a ‘thr’ and not ‘th’, the tongue put between two rows of teeth needs to vibrate and this reflects the scuffle that he had with himself in saying, ‘Amen stuck in my throat’. He releases himself but this is a locking consonant, he stops there, he is ultimately defeated, he cannot say ‘Amen’, it shows not only the poetic beauty of the line, but also the character of Macbeth, his poetic and human qualities, his loyalty to his king, which he is not able to fulfill. This is how I can go on for hours, because it is always a pleasure to talk about our teachers you know, because in Sanskrit they say ‘Vaṁśa dvidhā., two ways the family grows, ‘Vidyayā’, I, myself, my student, his student, like this, and ‘Janmanā ca’ by birth, I, my son, his son, etc. and the ‘Śāstrakāra’ put more emphasis on intellectual progeny than on the biological progeny. Because even cats and dogs have biological progeny, but intellectual progeny is something different – ‘Vaṁśa dvidhā vidyayā janmanā ca’. So our teachers are our gurus you know – ‘Gurukṛpā hi kevalam’. Whatever we were able to say, or even if we are able to learn a bit of it, we can never imagine reaching that stature, but even the bit that we have collected from them, is due to their blessings and God’s grace.
How was Shakespeare taught? Could you comment on the pedagogy?
What is important is that with regard to the style of teaching there was no difference. All these teachers focused on the text, and they moved from the text to the context, although this movement was sometimes very sketchy and sometimes very elaborate. Nonetheless it was about the context – the historical context, Shakespeare’s biographical context, the period when the plays were written, what his situation was at that time or the philosophical context. Finally when you talk about Iago and the Machiavellian villain or Machiavelli and his contentions, all these things naturally come to light, but it was not simply that. It was never like that, first you think about the Shakespeare biography, the drama, then this, no, they began with the text, moved away to different kinds of contexts, according to each particular period in which it was written. They talked about the socio-historical and economic situation at the time with respect to The Merchant of Venice, the condition of the Jews at that time and how they were looked upon. All these things made up the entire picture. There were no Jews in England at that time; they all had been expelled long back, so why was it called The Merchant of Venice and not ‘Merchant of England’? Some teachers would pay more attention to the historical context, some to the biographical context, or the contemporary dramatic situation, and Shakespeare’s affinity and differences from that context.
What particular trait of which teacher impressed you the most?
I told you that all of them were good, and I touched their feet, but it was Professor T.N. Sen who impressed me most. Especially his attention to meticulous detail, for example he would remark on a particular folio or quarto and ask us to comment on the correct interpretation. At one point in the discussion the word ‘wise’ was brought up, and the small ‘s’ was written like an ‘f’ without that cut, and it was all manuscript, so would it be ‘wife’ or ‘wise’? So in order to determine this he would go through the entire context. As in a quiz or crossword puzzle he would discuss the pros and cons of the arguments for and against the use of ‘wife’ and ‘wise’ and then ultimately come to the conclusion that both were relevant. This could only be done by him you know – the most impressive Professor T.N. Sen.
Did any of the teachers enact any of the scenes in the classroom?
Enact? Enacted the scenes in their own dress you know, they dramatized it. That is reading both the parts, thoseof Othello and Desdemona for example or of Portia and Shylock. They used to do that though not all of them, not T.N. Sen, but Arun Kumar Sen and Tarapada Mukherjee used to do it.
Were any of the teachers particular about pronunciation and accent?
Their pronunciation was all right, as I realized later when went to Reading in UK. In terms of pronunciation they had no problem, because they had the proper accent, so the stress, intonation and rhythm were correct. They were all doing drama, which is really about rhythm, so if your pronunciation is wrong, the entire thing will go down. But of course there are differences. T.N. Sen’s pronunciation was perfect, and Professor Sengupta, used to tell me that Professor P.C. Ghosh [Prafulla Chandra Ghosh], before reading a play with them, used to read the whole play once, and his voice was so rich and sonorous, almost like an English man, so much so that if you put a curtain you would feel that an Englishman was speaking. Subodh-babu used to say that Professor P.C. Ghosh’s reading was so perfect that they would often refer to Aristotle’s commentary on the three unities and mention how there was a fourth unity – that of reading. This impression arose from the way Prafulla Chandra Ghosh read the entire play at a stretch which was very similar to witnessing theatre or more properly an audio play.
What kind of critical material was used?
In the very first period, most of them – again T.N. Sen was very meticulous about it – used to give a long list or bibliography, and he used to put ‘M’ for must, ‘D’ for desirable, ‘O’ for optional against the names of the books. ‘M’ stood for those books that had to be read before the next class. He used to ask us whether we had read the books in question. For example, for Shakespearea’s tragedy, Bradley was a must. Tarak-babu used to categorize the books whereas the other teachers only mentioned them. Professor Nani Gopal Sen said that before we attended the next class, everyone had to read Boas’s Shakespeare and his Predecessors. You know, how Shakespeare comes at the end of a series. We thought about the background and tradition which actually produced Shakespeare. During the course of their teaching they used to keep on referring to books.
To what extent was the socio-historical context discussed in class?
Very much, like the relationship between Africa and Venice, the contemporary condition of the Jews, the attitude towards them although they had been expelled at that time. ‘Marrano’ meant a Jew who had later become a Christian. Antonio was a Marrano. These Marranos had embraced Christianity only for the sake of social security. They followed their Jewish culture and religious rites privately even though they went to church. All such things were talked about.
Were Shakespeare’s contemporary dramatists given the same amount of importance in the classroom?
Not the same amount, but Marlowe came up often. In the course of Shakespearean comedy Ben Jonson was referred to and Webster while doing tragedy. So not really with the same kind of importance, but whatever was relevant in the context of what was being taught was discussed.
Were students encouraged to think independently and challenge the teacher?
Yes, very much. This is what all the teachers used to stress at the very beginning, that whatever they said was not the gospel truth. Every drama can have a thousand interpretations and all interpretations are valid. Provided you are able to give supporting evidence, I will accept it. What you say may be entirely different from what I say but I will not penalize you. I will award you as much marks as you deserve. So, you can always argue with your teacher about this, and if you are right you can make that kind of interpretation also. It was not just about teachers giving something and students taking it, it was an interaction you know. Most of the teachers used to meet the students’ half-way through the class or in the next class and ask them if there were any questions. They used to ask the students if they agreed or disagreed with their interpretation and to tell them about it in any case. We were never hesitant as to what would he think if we happened to differ from him, there was no shyness or fear at all.
What editions and critical material were prescribed?
We were asked to read Arden very seriously but in the classroom the Warwick edition was followed. And I told you in the very beginning about the list.
Would you by any chance have a copy of the list?
It was more than fifty years ago, I don’t have the list. But later I saw that there was hardly an important book that was left out.
Did the teachers talk about stage and film productions?
Very much so.
Who were the teachers who brought it up?
Mainly T.N. Sen, and also Arun Sen of Siuri Vidyasagar College. Since Presidency College had a rich library, he used to bring copies and show us. For example in Granville-Barker’s Prefaces to Shakespeare there are a number of pictures of Shylock. I have got it here with me. I have brought out reprints, from Atlantic Publishers of which I am the chief editor. There are so many other actors, whose pictures have been presented.
Was the text related to performance conventions?
Yes.
Were there any performances of Shakespeare at the institution?
Not the whole play, but parts of it at Siuri Vidyasagar College and Presidency College. The trial scene from The Merchant of Venice, the last scene of Othello, like that you know, but only scenes, not the whole play.
What changes have you noticed in the way students have been taught over the decades, and how do you think students have reacted to these changes?
I see that there is a progressive degradation. For example, our teachers used to spend hours and hours on end, for teaching a single play. I remember how many hours T.N. Sen spent on a play or how many classes Professor Sailen Sen took for teaching. Every line was read and discussed, lingering over some lines and rapidly rushing over others. There has been, if you allow me to say this, a commercialization of teaching. The teachers know that their students don’t enjoy learning, which is a very sad fact. The students are interested in knowing the ways of obtaining 55% marks, they do not have the time, nor the desire or the necessary background for reading Shakespeare properly. It works both ways, you know. The teacher does not, though not all of them, but most of them, read line by line. I have taught in so many universities and I am associated with so many of them, that I know what they do. The students just have to answer one/two questions, so the teachers will discuss four questions. They will bring up the relevant passages and discuss those questions, and out of four, two will come, and during moderation, one question will be set by the external paper setter, so at least one (out of the original four) will be retained. So you can prepare just those four questions, which may be read and edited by one of your tutors to make it different from some other notes. Thus classroom teaching is no longer necessary. That is what they are doing now, because I have seen how very good students who later became teachers and who in the beginning were very bright, serious and idealistic and who were 1st Class 1st with Honours or had a 1st Class M.A., have gradually drifted into this kind of commercialization. And I jokingly say that all our students are ‘Marks-ists’ – I do not mean that they read Marx or follow Marx, what I mean is that they are interested only in getting marks.
Do you think Shakespeare is given undue importance? How do you react to the present trend of deglamourizing and decanonizing Shakespeare?
I resent it and I have a very strong objection to it, because we should not look upon Shakespeare as a British playwright, he belongs to World Literature. If we want Tagore to be read by all and sundry, what is wrong with Shakespeare? And that he is great, is not a political judgment, it is the intellectual judgment of the world for the last four hundred years. Even Ben Jonson had the foresight to say that Shakespeare was for all time. Shakespeare means different things to different people. When a student is young the story might be interesting, at another level you are interested in the character or the situation or the plot construction, at still another level you are interested in the psychological insights of Shakespeare, and at a still higher level in the subtle nuances of sound. He has something to give to people of all ages and of all intellectual capacities.
Decanonization, I just can’t stand it, you know. I think it is a trivialization of Shakespeare. Shakespeare is a poet, and any poem has two major components, one is sonic, and the other is semantic, the semantic part you can somehow paraphrase, but the sonic part cannot be translated. And it is in the sonic aspect that the ‘poesis’ of a poem exists. For example if you change ‘tender’ in the line, ‘tender is the night’, you can use the soft and liquid sounding ‘mellow’, which is of two syllables. The meaning is the same. Mellow or tender – what difference does it make? But when you say, ‘tender is the night’, with ‘t’ in the beginning, and ‘t’ at the end, the tenderness is arrested, between these two ‘t’s. When you say, ‘mellow is the night’, this feeling fizzles out, it goes away. But in ‘tender is the night’, the effect stays and continues, so sound is very important. If you paraphrase Shakespeare, then it is not Shakespeare anymore, it is just a story by Shakespeare. The stories do not make up Shakespeare, for all the stories are borrowed. They were taken from different sources. They received the stamp of his genius, that is what makes them Shakespearean.
What is your reaction to the fact that many students in Anglophone countries are reading Shakespeare in paraphrase even at the tertiary level?
Shakespeare in paraphrase is not Shakespeare. You read only the stories, written by Shakespeare, which you can get anywhere else. Shakespeare’s greatness lies in the way he uses the story, whether dramatically, poetically or in so many other ways. For example, the story of Oedipus was familiar to everyone. The Greeks knew the story of Oedipus and its conclusion, there was no question of suspense, then why did they go to see its dramatized representation? They went to see how it was being presented, how it was played, how the dramatist manifested the whole thing. It is the construction that is very important. I know French, German, Latin, Arabic and Sanskrit, but unfortunately I do not know Greek, and so I can never know how the play really sounded like. My knowledge of Latin is o.k.; I have absolutely no problems with Sanskrit. Tirupati University conferred the degree of D.Litt honoris causa on me for my contribution to Sanskrit studies, comparative poetics, Western poetics and Indian poetics. I tried learning Greek but I am so busy that there is no time. Therefore, what I say is that Shakespeare in paraphrase is not Shakespeare. It is an absolute trivialization of Shakespeare; it is meant to make Shakespeare un-Shakespearean.
Currently the English syllabi in universities all over India are changing very rapidly to include various newer aspects like Indian Writing in English, literatures from other countries, New Literatures, so what should be the relevance of Shakespeare amidst this rapidly changing arena of English Studies?
If you are doing an M.A. in English Literature, then you cannot do away with Shakespeare, with or without Empire! If you don’t want Shakespeare, then you should change the nomenclature and use M.A. in New Literatures or M.A. in Indian English instead of M.A. in English Literature. No problem at all! But if it is M.A. in English literature, then without Shakespeare, it is like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.
What is happening is that the Shakespeare components are being reduced from syllabi all over India, from a whole compulsory paper to being a part of a paper on the Renaissance, so how do you think that works out?
I cannot immediately make up my mind. But in the changed political situation, where we are no longer under British rule, there is naturally more emphasis on our literature than on British Literature, but then again, I say that if the label is ‘English Literature’, then Shakespeare must have his share and a good part of it. Yes, the Renaissance is a must, which is the background, unless one knows about the Renaissance, one’s knowledge of Shakespeare would be poor, limited and slipshod, and that is not desirable. Reduction is all right, but you cannot do away with it. If a teacher is good and even if there is one play, she can give you an idea of the entirety of Shakespeare, he can give you an idea of the playwright, his merits, his qualities, his achievements, why he is so great. You may just introduce all the 37 plays, but even then you may not be able to give them an idea of Shakespeare. As T.S. Eliot said, Shakespeare derived more history from Plutarch, than one could from the entire British Museum, so it largely depends on the teacher. She must have something to hold on to, at least one tragedy and one comedy, otherwise what would I say? We could have other M.A. degrees such M.A. in New Literatures. Different departments can be made, such as the one we have in Comparative Literature. In many universities in different parts of the globe there is an M.A. in Cultural Studies. So, even that is possible.
Is there anything else you want to say about Shakespearean pedagogy?
I have taught The Merchant of Venice and King Lear, so my model was of course T.N. Sen. I took a whole year doing Shakespeare. I tried to do the best that I could. My capacity is very limited, my knowledge is very limited, but even then I have tried hard, and I have the satisfaction that I have given the best that I could.