1. Shakespeare

1.1. Second

l thanneyanu—’ [Oh, King Pericles! You are indeed…you are indeed…] ennithrayum paranyaprose and slokas.8 For Lear’s blank verse, A. Govinda Pillai used Sanskrit upajati, while K. M. Panikkar in 1959 used local keka.9 A. J. Varkki’s 1923 Hamlet retains Shakespearean names and translates the text ‘word for word’ into Malayalam prose, keeping poetry for Hamlet’s love rhyme and Ophelia’s songs.10 Varkki’s preface observes that most Malayalis know Shakespeare already through English dramas enacted by college students and through Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales of Shakespeare.11 The Lambs’ book compiled family-friendly versions of twenty Shakespearean plays in a simple prose edition. The book was popular nationwide with students preparing for the Civil Services exam, as well as with translators.

Many colonial-era translators preferred to ‘nativise’ Shakespeare through the strategic relocation of names and places to more familiar Malayalam-language equivalents. In 1891, P. Velu, local head revenue clerk for the Nilgiris and Malabar area, used the Lambs’ version to translate Shakespeare’s Pericles into Paraklēśarājāvinṯe Katha [The Tale of King Pericles]. Velu’s translation holds themes familiar to a South Indian readership: sea voyages and fishermen; the adventures of a royal warrior in exile; a kidnapped princess; the blessing of a deity. Velu re-words the language so that Pericles’ queen Thaisa becomes ‘Dayesha’, or the ‘kind lady’; the princess Marina is ‘Samudrika’, or ‘maiden of the sea’; and the city of Tyre alters to ‘Tharapuram’, or ‘city of the stars’ (2). Thaisa’s surprise reunion with her husband, where she exclaims ‘You are, you are—O royal Pericles!’ (1.22.30) here becomes, ‘Allayo Paraklesharajave! Ningal thanneyanu—ningappozhekku mohalasyappettu veenupoyi [speaking thus, she fainted dead away]’.12

In Kerala, since Independence, translators have continued to nativise Shakespearean names and imagery with local metaphors. One such poet was V. Sambasivan, exponent of the Hindu kathaprasangam [story-declamation] art that evolved from keerthana [hymns] and harikatha [stories of Vishnu]. Sambasivan introduced world classics through kathaprasangam as part of the 1950’s Marxist Literacy Movement, presenting over decades, Malayalam ‘Shakespeare for the masses’ before thousands of people at temples, church festivals, colleges, clubs, and parties in one-hour long recital adaptations including Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Othello.13 He added colourful and descriptive flourishes—the Capulet and Montague families are described as ‘poisonous snakes waiting to bite each other’ while the lovers’ hearts are swathanthra, or ‘free and boundless’.14 Romeo opens Juliet’s tomb as ‘skulls and bones laugh at him’, and ‘trees shed tears of dewdrops’; the forefathers’ ‘bones and joints’ (4.3.40, 51) and ‘eyeless skulls’ (5.3.126) become the rhyming talayodukalum tudayellukalum [skull and thigh bone].15 In Sambasivan’s Othello, the Moorish hero becomes a ‘moonless night’ or ‘amavasi’ made bright with ‘the full moon’ or ‘purnima’ of his fair lady Desdemona. The prostitute Bianca is similarly embellished by being compared to the lovelorn courtesan Vasavadatta, heroine of the work by Keralan poet Kumaran Asan.16