From the Folcher Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the

Folcher's director. This podcast is called From the Farthest Steep of India. It's a look at the impact

Shakespeare's writing has on Indian theater, and conversely, how Indian theater has shaped and

altered Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare's interaction with India

came, of course, in the context of India's experience with British colonization and colonialism.

In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I gave a charter to the East India Company to trade with the Shahs,

emperors, and Maratha princes who'd ruled the subcontinent for the previous century.

Over the 150 years that followed, the East India Company transitioned from being merchant traders into a kind of quasi-government.

After Indians rebelled in 1857, Queen Victoria closed down the East India Company and ruled India directly as a British colony.

During the run-up to the rebellion, English had become India's language of instruction, and

among the Indian elite, you needed to know Shakespeare in order to appear truly educated.

All of that is background for our conversation with two experts on this subject.

Joitsna Singh, Professor of English at Michigan State University, and Matamita Roy,

Associate Professor of English at Tufts.

They are interviewed by Barbara Bogave.

All of this was happening in the mid-19th century, and Joitsna, was Shakespeare already in India in 1840, 1850

at the time of this debate? Yeah, yes, exactly. In what form? Well, I mean, you know,

he was being staged on the, there were various Calcutta theaters, you know, the Saint-Susie, the

Chaurangi. So there was the Chorangy Theatre which Henry IV was performed in 1814, Richard the Third.

I'm just reading some stuff.

Mary Wives of Windsor, 1818.

And so this became cultural capital for upper-class, elite Indians,

...