Tagore Meets Shakespeare

Indian subcontinent could view and appreciate. A bronze bust of a head and shoulders, created by Calcutta sculptor Debabrata Chakraborty, was finally dedicated in its permanent location in the garden in September 1996.

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William Hawkes, an architect, created a plinth. It comes with a tablet that has the poem that Tagore penned in honour of Shakespeare and that was carved in Bengali script along with his own translation: "When by the faraway sea your fiery disappeared from behind the unseen, O Poet, O Sun. England's horizon felt you near her breast, and took you to be her own."

It allows one to speculate about the extent to which the British bard influenced Tagore. Shakespeare was first introduced to Tagore in 1874, when he was just 13. But rather than being inspirational, it was more of a challenge. Rabindranath's tutor, Ganchandra Bhattacharjya, chose to use an unusual method to get him to attend his English classes because the young student was resistant to traditional instruction. He assigned him the duty of translating portions of Macbeth into Bengali. The three witches' scene is famously depicted by young Rabi.

Rabindranath's early poetic life was clearly influenced by Macbeth. A lengthy poem, "Abhilash," which appeared in the Bengali periodical "Tattvabodhini" in 1796, was undoubtedly influenced by Macbeth.

Later, Tagore attended Henry Morley's English literature classes while a student at University College, London's Faculty of Arts and Law. "Rabindranath Tagore – A Biography" by Krishna Kripalani tells us that Tagore studied some of Shakespeare's plays with Morley.