Column

The question is not whether William Shakespeare turned in his grave after watching Vishal Bharadwaj’s adaptation of ‘Othello’. He definitely turned but only to take a good look at Bipasha Basu shake her booty and then turned again to wife Anne Hathaway in the next grave shaking his head helplessly, pleading not guilty and trying hard to explain that it’s much ado about nothing.

The question is also not whether Shakespeare actually wrote all those fabulous plays at all. Literary experts have often pointed out they were written by either Francis Bacon, Ben Johnson, Christopher Marlowe or possibly even Alyque Padamsee! The question is, if all those mentioned above wrote Shakespeare’s works, what did Shakespeare do in the meantime? Are we to assume that he slept whole months and only woke up when Mrs Shakespeare asked him to go and buy some sabzi for supper?

So little is known about Shakespeare’s personal life, as there is no record of what he used to eat for breakfast or whether he preferred having toasted sandwich with scrambled eggs and Schezwan sauce or simply preferred to dip cream biscuits in a cup of black coffee! There are some who wonder if he was gay, since some of his sonnets were written for William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. And to think he hadn’t even seen ‘Brokeback Mountain’! As for his death, Shakespeare died of eye cancer as per the study of a death mask supposedly belonging to him. That mask was later used by Hrithik Roshan after which the actor couldn’t stop defying gravity!

Anyway, Shakespeare might just be back in circulation soon. Just like McDonald’s is allegedly introducing a hamburger dedicated to ‘Hamlet’ which would be marketed with the famous line from the play itself - “To Beef or not to Beef, that is the question!” But Indian experts believe this famous Shakespeare soliloquy on suicide was borrowed from an ancient Indian mantra of statecraft which is still popular among our politicians - “Tu bhi aur main bhi, that is the coalition!” Moreover, many in Bollywood have taken to heart Macbeth’s conclusion that life is only “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Shakespeare was also thought to have invented the words ‘assassination’ and ‘foregone conclusion’. We still don’t know who invented him! But then again, all’s well that ends well and… what’s in a name anyway?