Thursday,31,2019

Prof. Shobha Chattopadhyay (Jadavpur University)

Formerly of the Department of English, Jadavpur University.

Interviewed by Shri Abhishek Sarkar.

Year of passing B.A. and M.A.
B.A. in 1967 and M.A. in 1969.

Details of institutions concerned.
Both are at Jadavpur University.

When did your first encounter with Shakespeare take place (at school or college)?
I encountered Shakespeare in school. I went to school at Jodhpur Park Girls’, which was under the West Bengal Board. I belong to their first batch. For our Higher Secondary Examination, I had English as the First Language. We had Twelfth Night as a text. We were taught how to study the play in detail, with notes etc. I think we maybe used a Duffin edition [edited by H. C. Duffin], not Arden or Verity. It was a smallish book. It was a very good edition that we were prescribed.

College and university syllabi (Shakespeare plays and poems).
For our B.A. syllabus, we had As You Like It, The Tempest and Macbeth. For our M.A. syllabus, we had to study Hamlet, which was taught by Jagannath-babu [Prof. Jagannath Chakravorty]; The Winter’s Tale was taught by Sati-di [Prof. Sati Chattopadhyay]; and Subodh-babu [Prof. Subodh Chandra Sen Gupta] taught us Richard III. These we had to study in detail for the Shakespeare paper. Then there were other texts on which we had general lectures. We had Othello for Alternative English.

Who taught the texts in question? What techniques were used (e.g., close reading, lecture demonstration, group discussion, seminars etc) for teaching Shakespeare?
We had lots of changes when it comes to teachers in schools. Even Jasodhara Bagchi had taught us for a while at Jodhpur Park Girls’, right after coming back from Oxford. Otherwise, Piali Roy taught us for a significant part as well. In terms of technique, she would prefer to do a close-reading with comments on the scene and some critical analysis on character, scene, plot, sub-plot etc. When I came to Jadavpur, Debabrata-babu preferred to do play-reading. Sheila-di [Prof. Sheila Lahiri Choudhury] taught us Macbeth and she would also do a dramatic reading of the text with us. We were Sheila-di’s first batch at JU; she taught us with a lot of care. She would also give us critical commentary on the play, referring to Dover Wilson and A.C. Bradley. The year I came to JU, Subodh-babu also joined Jadavpur. Before retiring, he had taught us Richard III in our M.A. classes. That was an experience! He would also enact the play in class. His focus was on the character of Richard: its complexities, the deceit, the way he would put up different guises at different times, the evil in him, the apparent goodness he pretends to. He would give very long commentaries on Richard as a tragic hero, on Aristotle’s concept of tragic hero versus Shakespeare’s tragic hero. Dinesh Biswas [Prof. Dinesh Chandra Biswas] had taught us As You Like It. In his own way, he also tried to do some kind of a performance, but his accents and intonations were different. My father, Jogesh Chandra Mukherjee, had been taught by Tarak-babu [Prof. Tarak Nath Sen], P.C. Ghosh and Jyoti Bhattacharya. P.C. Ghosh would do performative readings but give commentary in between. These would be very short commentaries so as not to break the illusion of the performance. My father took these notes diligently; these I have come across. My father and I would discuss my studies a lot. Those of us who had Alternative English, which I had to study because I had First Language English in Higher Secondary, were taught Othello by Sati-di.

Was the teacher very particular about pronunciation and accent?
Sheila-di was very particular about pronunciation. The others were not really very conscious about this. Jagannath-babu was somewhere in the middle. Debabrata-babu had a very good accent, but we were never taught Shakespeare by him.

Did the teacher refer to literature in other languages while discussing Shakespeare? For example, would the teacher mention Dante, Kalidasa or Tagore while reading Shakespeare with the students?
Yes. They would make the traditional comparisons like Shakuntala and Miranda. But not very much.

Were expletives and sexual references omitted?
They would refer to these in a suggestive manner. It is not like they avoided it, but they did not refer to them directly. Sheila-di was a little more modern, so she spoke about these directly. Subodh-babu and Dinesh-babu were older and far more conservative, so they were not quite as open. In the school level, we didn’t quite understand these things. When I first saw the performances at JU, it become apparent that we had missed out on these sub-plots. There was a very famous performance, directed by Jagannath-babu, with these two people who had come over from Exeter University.

How far was the socio-historical context of plays discussed?
Subodh-babu discussed it a little. Sheila-di brought in a lot of this. For example, with the Porter Scene, where she would refer to contemporary society and the laws of the time etc.

Were the sources of the texts discussed?
Sheila-di and Dinesh-babu both discussed sources as well as the changes made to the information gathered from the source. Subodh-babu also referred to sources. This was very typical in those days: discussing the sources of the plays in detail.

Were Shakespeare’s contemporary dramatists given the same amount of importance in the classroom?
Webster’s Duchess of Malfi would be taught by Jagannath-babu and Marlowe’s Edward the Second was taught by Maithili Rao in the B.A. Class. And in the M.A. Class, Dinesh-babu taught us Tamburlaine. We were also taught Ben Jonson’s Volpone. I also taught The Duchess of Malfi later.

Were you given the sense that Shakespeare was at the centre of the canon and was superior to these playwrights?
Such comparative statements were not made. No. There was a slight reverential treatment dealt out to Shakespeare, even though it was not mentioned explicitly.

Were students encouraged to think independently and challenge the teacher?
Not very much, but students would sometimes put forth questions which would be entertained. But it was never like interactive session. The tutorial system greatly encouraged this interaction between students and teachers though.

Editions and critical material prescribed and used.
Sheila-di had said categorically, “I want Arden and Arden only”’. And after using the Arden edition once, we felt that it was the best and used that henceforth. In terms of criticism, Bradley was very important. We had others, but especially Bradley.

Examination and question pattern.
We would have traditional essay-type and locate-and-annotate questions, like the concept of the tragic hero, the concept of tragedy etc. We would have questions on the supernatural in Macbeth, about the sleepwalking scene, about Lady Macbeth etc. There would be questions on the structure of the play, a little on the socio-historical context of the plays. Mostly things which you can find in Bradley. Jagannath-babu had once asked us to write an essay on Shakespeare’s prose for which we had to consult a lot of other books.

Did the teacher refer to stage and film productions of Shakespeare?
This wasn’t really a trend in those days. We saw them outside the classroom, if we were interested, but they were not discussed in class.

On other performances and screenings.
If there were screenings at the British Council, we would go. They would also sometimes bring in theatre companies, which we were very enthusiastic about. I had seen Orson Welles’ Macbeth, I remember. This group had performed The Comedy of Errors, I think. I did not really see any other Shakespeare around this time.

Whether the text was related to performance conventions.
Not much, very little, for example the Witches scenes in Macbeth. Sheila-di taught us the themes and conventions of Elizabethan theatre in great detail. We had to read Tillyard, Bradbrook and a third book and write a long essay on theatre conventions. It is a pity that Debabrata-babu, the best performer and the best teacher at Jadavpur at that moment, never taught us Shakespeare.

Whether there was any performance of Shakespeare at the institution.
The theatrical productions of the Jadavpur University Department of English, directed by Debabrata-babu, were quite famous and of a very high standard. They did As You Like It, Twelfth Night (1966) and Measure for Measure (1968). I was a prompter in the last play, which meant I had to attend every rehearsal.

Did teachers from other institutions ever teach you?
There was Professor Quatermaine from Exeter University, who taught us Arms and the Man. There were very few conferences back then. There would be very few seminars, but we would go for that. British Council would sometimes organize lectures by famous professors. We would also diligently attend this. Molly Mahood had come once.

Was there ever any interaction with the Comparative Literature department?
Sometimes teachers from their department would teach us and vice versa. When someone came from abroad at their department, we would make it a point to attend those lectures.

Account of classmates who later distinguished themselves as teachers, performers etc.
Jagannath Guha was my classmate through both B.A. and M.A. He was a part of the plays Debabrata-babu directed, and later went on to become a professional actor, director and documentary film-maker.

On teaching Shakespeare.
After Dinesh-babu retired, I taught As You Like It for many years. We would have the students act out the scenes. I really liked that. I had also taught Othello in the Alternative English course.

Noticeable changes in Shakespeare pedagogy and student reaction over the decades.
When I taught Shakespeare in the 70’s, I never saw any changes. In the earlier generation, teaching Shakespeare used to be a matter of great prestige. But the younger generation is perhaps more inclined towards postcolonial literature.

Do you think that Shakespeare is an overrated author?
This is a difficult question. It is true that the focus on Shakespeare results in his contemporaries being ignored at times, and I feel that there are layers of richness in these authors too. But no, I cannot say that Shakespeare was overrated.

How would you react to the present trend of deglamorizing and decanonizing Shakespeare?
In terms of Shakespeare moving away from the canon, I have seen it recently in the syllabus-making process. I personally feel that a total exposure to Shakespeare is very important. It becomes useful when it comes to reading other texts as well.

How would you react to the phenomenon of reading Shakespeare in a simplified language or in paraphrase, now popular among students in the West?
I am a little conservative in this matter. I know, it can be a little difficult to grapple with Shakespeare’s language, but I feel that it is good for students. I don’t think you can get the real taste of Shakespeare if you do not read him in his own language.