The Rape of the lock by Alexander pope

Thinking Activity: 

Questions and answers poem The Rape of the Lock by Alexander pope: 

1) According to you, who is the protagonist of the poem Clarissa or Belinda? Why? Give your answer with logical reasons.

Ans, According to me, Belinda is the protagonist of the poem. Because Alexander Pope has designed The Rape of the Lock as the representative works depicting Belinda as the model of the common fashionable ladies of his time. Belinda is the chief attraction and she becomes the heroine of it. She is the only leading character. Yet her screams and the flashes of lightning from her eyes are compared to those of an epic hero.

At the very outset of the poem, we see her as an idle and late-rising aristocratic lady who possesses a keen interest in domestic pets. Her idleness is established when we see her sleeping unto twelve. Besides, they felt interested in the love letters of their so-called beloved. When Belinda, at last, got up from bed after having been licked by Shock, her eyes first opened on a love letter.

Therefore, she is full of vanities and loves gilded chariots and ombre. At the same time, she is ambitious to get married to peers and dukes or to other high officials. This is why she frequently visits the Hampton Court in the river Thames. She passes an aristocratic life and mixes with the Barons recklessly. Moreover, Belinda is the embodiment of coquetry, the art, the artifice and false pride. However, Ariel acquaints us with her flirtatious nature when exhorting his fellow spirits to remain vigilant. Ariel discovers surprisingly that in spite of all her pretence, she is amorously inclined towards a gallant.  

Then, we get the picture of her shallow outlook on religious faiths and beliefs. She is a worshiper of beauty who prays to the goddess of beauty and offers all the items of cosmetics before her. She is a typical presentation of women’s excessive attention to self-decoration and embellishment. She gathers all the fashionable items from all over the world-Indian glowing gems, Arabian perfumes, files of pins, puffs, powders, patches etc. In a satirical passage, Pope describes Belinda in a Confucius mood before her dressing table.

Here files of pins extend their shining rows,

Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux.

Thus, assigned by her maid Betty, Belinda seeks to improve her bodily charms. However, she does not show any respect for the holy book, Bible.

Therefore, the moral bankruptcy of these ladies is further ridiculed when Thalestris points out the need for sacrificing everything, even chastity, for reputation. They consider that virtue might be lost, but not a good name.

among all the outstanding female characters of English Literature, Belinda is a much more complex character than any other. She is not an individual character but a true depiction of the aristocratic class of 18th century England. Her character reveals the aimlessness, shallowness and purposelessness of the women of Pope’s age. Pope worshipped her beauty clearly and had prime respect for a girl of charms. The way Pope used a lofty and sublime wording to pay attribution to her heroine in his poem of the “Rape of the Lock“, no other writer had given such sort of honour to his heroine. 

“If to her share, some female errors fall, 

Look on her face, and you’ll forget all”

So, according to me, Belinda is the protagonist of the poem. 

2) What is beauty? Write your views about it. 

Ans, We are told a lot of different things when we are growing up. As children, we may be made to believe that outer beauty is of the utmost importance. Some of us are raised with quite the opposite told to us. Some people are told inner beauty is the most important thing to tend to. Others are told both are equally vital in our lives.

However, the truth of the matter is that inner beauty is the one we should be focusing on all of our lives. Because in the end, it's what is the most important. Outer beauty fades as we age, but our inner persona never goes anywhere. Beauty is more than what is on the surface. It refers to qualities both internal and external.

What makes someone beautiful is confidence, finding strength in flaws, and feeling good gives power to beauty.

Wish people change their perspective about Beauty and emphasize more on the inner beauty of a person than outer beauty. There's nothing wrong in making efforts to look good and pretty, look presentable but if the same person doesn't have a good heart then what's the point in having beauty outside.

Beauty is the compassion a person has for others. It is the kindness, grace and respects someone encompasses to another, whether a friend or stranger. It is the happiness conveyed from a person's heart, which affects their actions in everyday life. Beauty is something God created, which is untouched by man. It is something that is beyond physical measure and cannot be recreated by any individual. Sunsets, Beaches, Mountains, Oceans-these things are all beautiful. These things are all created by God, who shows us what beauty is in His creation."

"Beauty is the summation of every feature, every small gesture, every flaw, every uniqueness and every trait that reflects an individual's soul. It's never the appearance of someone that sticks with you, but rather how they make you feel that dawdles in the mind even in their absence. Beauty is an amalgamation of the perfect and the imperfect details of every individual that makes every person unique."

 Beauty isn't about having a pretty face, it's about having a pretty mind, a pretty heart and a pretty soul."

"Beauty to me comes from within. It's not the hairstyle, the wardrobe or the makeup. It's being confident in the person you are today no matter what shape, size, colour, etc. Always be the best person you can be. A Beautiful Personality = Beautiful Person with a Beautiful Heart".

 

It is said that Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, but I feel if the beholder has a good heart then only they may find someone beautiful or else they shall always find some of the other flaws in the individual.

"No Beauty shines brighter than that of a good heart" Outer Beauty attracts but Inner Beauty Captivates. Mirror lie, they don't show you what's inside.

Beauty concept in the poem: 

Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” offers a satirical glimpse into 18th-century court life, emphasizing society’s focus on beauty and appearance. Centred around the experience of a beautiful young woman, Belinda, who loses a lock of her hair to the scissors of an infatuated Baron, “The Rape of the Lock” steadily becomes sillier and sillier as it goes along and the characters descend into a kind of pretend battle over the lock. Coupled with Clarissa’s wise speech, which argues that women waste too much time focusing on their looks rather than thinking about how to be better people, it might appear at first glance that Pope’s central thesis is the idea that this kind of obsession with beauty is fundamentally absurd. But the poem’s conclusion, in which the lock ascends to heaven as a new constellation, seems to suggest that perhaps true beauty might really be of some value after all, but only if it becomes the subject of poetry and thus achieves a kind of literary immortality. Pope does seem to suggest that a day-to-day obsession with beauty is fundamentally an absurd and hopeless pursuit. However, he complicates this clear-cut moral by suggesting that ultimately beauty can have a certain kind of power in that it can inspire art, such as poetry, and as such can be part of something which truly is able to transcend time. 

3.) Find out a research paper on "The Rape of the Lock". Give the details of the paper and write down in brief what does it say about the Poem by Alexander Pope. 

Ans, This is the link to the research paper. Click here to open the research paper.

 

 This paper would discuss and evaluate the traces and proofs regarding Pope’s demonstration of disapproval about British Mannerism and exaggerated decency in his world-renowned mock-epic “The Rape of the Lock”.

The most powerful tool used by Pope to show his disapproval of so-called aristocratic and civilized mannerism prevailing in his contemporary British society is implied satire. He reveals in many lines the hollowness and emptiness of exaggerated politeness and frivolous decency found in contemporary society in an enveloped satire technique.

Pope opens the poem with an epic question whose satirical tone signals his intent to ridicule his society. As in traditional epics, Pope’s poem opens with the invocation of a muse. He then asks a question that states the topic that the epic will address. In The Rape of the Lock, the epic convention is inverted because the epic question is of a trivial subject matter.

 Pope suggests that attention to spiritual matters, the strengthening of character, and the development or value of inner beauty are matters to which society does not properly attend. Belinda, the Baron and the society they represent are obsessed with material things, such as the lock and self-worship. This attention to the material and tendency to give in to worldly temptations indicates a frivolous aristocracy, who lack virtue and morality. The Rape of the Lock is an elegantly witty and balanced parody that shows Pope’s literary virtuosity which invokes an ironic contrast between the epics structure and its content.

Byronic Hero

Byronic Hero:  

           

Lord Byron

What is Byronic Hero:

 "The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action."

— Albert Camus, The Stranger 

In the 19th century, English Romantic poet Lord Byron developed the Byronic Hero archetype, which is defined as a protagonist that tends to reject traditional social values.

Definition: 

A Byronic hero is a variant of the anti-hero. Named after the character in the poetry of Lord Byron, the Byronic Hero is usually a man who is an intelligent, emotionally sensitive, and cynical character. While Byronic heroes tend to be very charismatic, they're deeply flawed individuals, who might do things that are generally thought of as socially unacceptable because they are at odds with mainstream society. A Byronic Hero has his own set of beliefs and will not yield for anyone. While it might not be initially apparent, deep down, the Byronic Hero is also quite selfish.

        

 

The archetype, or character type, of the Byronic hero, was first developed by the famous 19th-century English Romantic poet Lord Byron. Most literary scholars and historians consider the first literary Byronic hero to be Byron's Childe Harold, the protagonist of Byron's epic poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. However, many literary scholars and historians also point to Lord Byron himself as the first truly Byronic hero, for he exemplified throughout his life the characteristics of the sort of literary hero he would make famous in his writing.

A Byronic hero can be conceptualized as an extreme variation of the Romantic hero archetype. Traditional Romantic heroes tend to be defined by their rejection or questioning of standard social conventions and norms of behaviour, their alienation from the larger society, their focus on the self as the centre of existence, and their ability to inspire others to commit acts of good and kindness. Romantic heroes are not idealized heroes, but imperfect and often flawed individuals who, despite their sometimes less than savoury personalities, often behave in a heroic manner.

According to many literary critics and biographers, Lord Byron developed the archetype of the Byronic hero in response to his boredom with traditional and Romantic heroic literary characters. Byron, according to critics and biographers, wanted to introduce a heroic archetype that would be not only more appealing to readers but also more psychologically realistic.

The archetype of the Byronic hero is similar in many respects to the figure of the traditional Romantic hero. Both Romantic and Byronic heroes tend to rebel against conventional modes of behaviour and thought and possess personalities that are not traditionally heroic. However, Byronic heroes usually have a greater degree of psychological and emotional complexity than traditional Romantic heroes.

Byronic heroes are marked not only by their outright rejection of traditional heroic virtues and values but also by their remarkable intelligence and cunning, strong feelings of affection and hatred, impulsiveness, strong sensual desires, moodiness, cynicism, dark humour, and morbid sensibilities.

Byronic heroes also tend to appear larger than life and dress and style themselves in elaborate costumes for the purpose of making themselves as different from others as possible.

Isolated from Society: 

      

            

He is usually isolated from Society as a wanderer or is in exile of some kind. It does not matter whether this social separation is imposed upon him by some external force or is self-imposed. Byron's Manfred, a character who wandered desolate mountaintops, was physically isolated from Society, whereas child Harold chose to "exile" himself and wander throughout Europe. Although Harold remained physically present in society and among people, he was not by any means "social".

Byronic Hero as a passionate character: 

Often the Byronic Hero is moody by nature or passionate about a particular issue. He also has emotional and intellectual capacities which are superior to the average man. These heightened abilities force the Byronic Hero to be arrogant, confident, abnormally sensitive and extremely conscious of himself. In one form or another, he rejects the values and moral codes of society's standards often the Byronic Hero is characterized by a quilty memory of some unnamed sexual crime. Due to these characteristics, the Byronic Hero is often a figure of repulsion, as well as fascination.

Characteristics: 

Byronic heroes tend to be characterized as being:

• Intelligent
• Ruthless
• Arrogant
• Depressive
• Violent
• Self-aware
• Emotionally and intellectually tortured
• Traumatized
• Highly emotional
• Manipulative
• Self-serving
• Dedicated to pursuing matters of justice over matters of legality
• Given to self-destructive impulses
• Seductive and sexually appealing

Byronic heroes also tend to only seem loyal to themselves and their core beliefs and values. While they often act on behalf of greater goods, they will rarely acknowledge doing so.

Examples: 

The archetype of the Byronic hero has remained popular and relevant throughout Western literature and entertainment since the early 19th century.

In 19th-century Western literature, there are countless examples of Byronic heroes, including the protagonists of nearly all of Byron's epic poems, particularly Manfred, Don Juan, and The Corsair. Other examples of Byronic Heroes from 19th-century Western literature include Heathcliff from Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights, Mr Darcy from Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, Claude Frollo from Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Captain Ahab from Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

            

There are also countless examples of Byronic heroes in 20th-century Western literature, including the Phantom from Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, Jake Barnes from Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, Ian Fleming's James Bond character, and F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby from his novel The Great Gatsby. All of these Byronic heroes are marked by a dark sensibility, cynicism, arrogance, high intelligence, and a refusal to outright obey authority.

Heathcliff: a Byronic Hero: 

           

Heathcliff

The tragic hero of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff has been regarded along time as a Byronic Hero an idealized but flawed character. The features of a Byronic Hero are also visible in Emily Bronte's character: a troubled or mysterious past ( no one knows where he come from, who he is, who his parents are), cunning and able to adapt (he gains Earnshaw's sympathy and exploits it). Heathcliff shows no qualms in destroying those for whom he does not care, however undeserving of his wrath they may be. Isabella Linton falls in love with Heathcliff and him. In this way, Heathcliff is a prime example of a Byronic Hero.

Not to be confused with a Classical Anti-Hero, a Tragic Hero or a Tragic Villain. Classical anti-heroes have many flaws but without any violent or sociopathic traits that Byronic heroes have. Tragic Heroes suffer from a specific sin in particular, which is treated as their Fatal Flaw, and are often well-intentioned or otherwise blameless. While both characters may ultimately be defeated by their flaws, the Tragic Heroes and Tragic Villains tend to suffer more for them in the end and include An Aesop. However, it's not unheard of to see characters who are both Byronic and Tragic heroes or are both Classical antiheroes and Byronic heroes.

Questions and answers novel pride and prejudice

Thinking Activity: Pride and prejudice:

Pride and prejudice by June Austen: 

    

1) Which version of the novel is more appealing? Novel or film (adaptation)? Why?

 

Ans, Most of the time books are better than movies. Books can let you imagine the setting or events happening in the story. They are also more detailed than movies because movies sometimes leave out some important details.

In some movies, they switch up the characters because in the book they are different and totally the opposite.

When we read a book, we tend to visualise the characters a certain way and in movies, they don’t look the way we want them to. It disappoints us in many ways. I’ve read books before that have a plot twist at the end and in the movie it never happens.

 

Books are portable and can be read online as well, anytime. When reading books, we get more knowledge and it helps us improve our vocabulary. Characters are described much better and with more detail.

One important thing that books do have and movies don’t is that they provide more background information than a movie does.

Novel better than Movie:

Joe Wright's 2005 adaptation Pride & Prejudice had more differences from the Jane Austen novel than just changing the time period, making the film more realistic and romantic in the process. Starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew Macfayden as Mr Darcy, the film was a major departure from the previous, more faithful, BBC miniseries that aired ten years prior. Joe Wright took a more romantic approach to the novel, grounded in realism, that turned Pride & Prejudice into a critical success for blending traditional period-film traits with a modern approach. Wright collaborated with Keira Knightley again after Pride & Prejudice with another critically acclaimed adaptation, Anna Karenina.

The adaptation stripped down the Pride & Prejudice subplots to focus on the romance between Elizabeth and Mr Darcy, compressing the novel into 127 minutes — a sharp contrast from the sprawling, six-hour miniseries that came before. Keira Knightley's Elizabeth Bennet was younger than her BBC predecessor played by Jennifer Ehle and significantly feistier than Elizabeth's portrayal in the book, much like Knightley's similar performance as Elizabeth Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean. However, Knightley's modern interpretation of the character and Joe Wright's stunningly-shot film pushed Pride & Prejudice out of the stereotypically perfect Regency-era world, and into one that was visually distinct.

2) Character of Elizabeth:

Ans, The twenty-year-old Elizabeth, sometimes Lizzie, sometimes Eliza, is a most attractive young woman. Not only is she beautiful, with eyes that made her irresistible to Mr Darcy, but she has an exceptional personality. She is high spirited but self-controlled, always guided by her good sense, which few of the other female characters in the novel have. She is self-assured, outspoken, and assertive, but never rude or aggressive.

Elizabeth’s assertiveness and outspokenness would have shocked the readers of the novel when it first came out. Although Jane Austen is criticized for creating characters that reaffirm the expectations about female stereotypes it is clear that the character of Elizabeth Bennet challenges the expected gender norms of her time, particularly when compared with the other females in Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth is willing to express her opinions wherever she is, without fear, and has the confidence openly to challenge the views of those of superior social standing. On her first meeting with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Lady Catherine interrogates her and is surprised by the open, frank replies of the twenty-year-old.

Her rejection of marriage on the basis of economic gain and insisting on happiness in marriage, which could only happen by marrying for love, is something those around her – even her father – do not understand, so far away from societal expectations is that idea.

Throughout the novel, Elizabeth is faced with many challenges pertaining to her sex and social rank, within a British patriarchy and perhaps, in creating Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Austen has given us English literature’s first feminist.

Elizabeth’s conversational skills and sparkling wit are divisive. They often act to her disadvantage, such as bringing on Lady Catherine’s disapproval, but they are also partly responsible for Mr Darcy’s admiration. Lady Catherine is appalled by the willingness of someone so young to give her opinion so freely, and Mr Darcy is impressed by her confidence in doing so as well as with the good sense of her opinions on all matters.

In Elizabeth Benett, Jane Austen has given the world an immortal fictional character, one that we can almost mistake for a real person, in the same way as Shakespeare and Dickens did with some of their characters.

3) Character of Mr Darcy: 

Ans, The son of a wealthy, well-established family and the master of the great estate of Pemberley, Darcy is Elizabeth’s male counterpart. The narrator relates Elizabeth’s point of view of events more often than Darcy’s, so Elizabeth often seems a more sympathetic figure. The reader eventually realises, however, that Darcy is her ideal match. Intelligent and forthright, he too has a tendency to judge too hastily and harshly, and his high birth and wealth make him overly proud and overly conscious of his social status. Indeed, his haughtiness makes him initially bungle his courtship. When he proposes to her, for instance, he dwells more on how unsuitable a match she is than on her charms, beauty, or anything else complimentary.

Elizabeth's rejection of his advances builds a kind of humility in Darcy. Darcy demonstrates his continued devotion to Elizabeth, in spite of his distaste for her low connections, when he rescues Lydia and the entire Bennet family from disgrace, and when he goes against the wishes of his haughty aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by continuing to pursue Elizabeth. Darcy proves himself worthy of Elizabeth, and she ends up repenting her earlier, overly harsh judgment of him.

4) Give illustrations of the society of that time. (Jane Austen's presentation): 

Ans, Jane Austen depicts a society which, for all its seeming privileges (pleasant houses, endless hours of leisure), closely monitors behaviour. Her heroines in particular discover in the course of the novel that individual happiness cannot exist separately from our responsibilities to others.

Learning the social rules:

One of the reasons Austen’s world charms us is because it appears to follow stricter rules than our own, setting limits on behaviour. There are precise forms of introduction and address, conventions for ‘coming out into society (meaning a young girl’s official entry into society and therefore her marriageability), for paying and returning social visits, even for mixing with different social ranks. Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Persuasion are sensitive to questions of social status and can all be seen extending the definition of polite society to include previously excluded members of the professional and merchant classes and the navy. Above all, relations between young men and women are carefully monitored. One reason dance scenes are so prominent in Austen’s novels is that the dance floor was, in her time, the best opportunity for identifying romantic partners and for advancing a courtship, for testing relations between the sexes. 

Pride and Prejudice unfold as a series of public or semi-public events – assemblies, balls, supper parties, country-house gatherings – each one followed by anxious reviews shared by two people in private as they analyse its events. Charlotte Lucas and Elizabeth Bennet, Elizabeth and Jane Bennet, Elizabeth and Mrs Gardiner are discovered reading the behaviour of others, interpreting motives and intentions. In all her novels Austen portrays a society that closely restricts mental and physical space, particularly for women, who are allowed little solitude or independence. Many of the crucial events of an Austen plot take place indoors or in the confining presence of a number of people.

Letters: 

We know that Austen wrote the first version of Pride and Prejudice in the 1790s, almost 20 years before it was eventually published. This early date is important and may have left deep traces on the novel, among them its use of letters. Pride and Prejudice are filled with letters: as many as 42 are mentioned, and there is considerable emphasis on reading and re-reading letters. Many 1790s novels were actually written completely in letter form (epistolary fiction), as an exchange of letters between characters. Novels in letters take on a particular structure, openly inviting interpretation as characters engage in reading one another’s behaviour (literally reading it off the surface of their letters). This openness to debate and interpretation, whatever its deeper structural origin, is written large across the pages of Pride and Prejudice.

5,  If you were a director or screenplay writer, what sort of difference would you make in the making of the movie?

Ans,  If I am a writer or screenplay writer, I change the love story of the film because love is the main theme of the film, and every person sees a different perspective of the Film and its story. that's why I change the love story of the film.

6) Who would be your choice of actors to play the role of characters?

Ans, Here, I would like to compare Hollywood Actors with Bollywood Actors: 

Elizabeth:- Alia Bhatt

Mr, Darcy:-Mohsin Khan

Mr, Bingley:- Varun Dhawan

Jane:- Shraddha Kapoor

Mr, Collins:- Tiger Shroff

Wickham:- Sidhart Malhotra

7) Write a note on a scene you liked the most: 

Ans,

DARCY’S FIRST PROPOSAL 

I know it failed, I know. But this is still one of my favourite scenes in the movie. Let’s start with the location: the garden, the rain, the running. Top tier. Then, there’s Darcy, out of breath with simp eyes. He does this god awful job of proposing, Lizzie yells at him about Wickham and breaking up Bingley and Jane, Darcy yells back at her because he’s sad now, Lizzie delivers a devastating blow, and then they stop. Now that they’ve gotten out all of the stuff that was lingering between them, all that’s left to do is kiss. They don’t, but they totally thought about it.

8) Compare the narrative strategy of novel and Movie: 

Ans, Pride & Prejudice was written by British author Jane Austen and published in 1813. The main character is Elizabeth Bennett and the story follows Elizabeth and her family as they deal with issues such as marriage, social class, and misunderstandings. The Bennett family consists of Elizabeth, her mother, her father, and her four unmarried sisters. The Bennett family is of the landed gentry, they have money but are not insanely rich. The novel is also a love story between Elizabeth and Mr Darcy, although they initially dislike each other when they meet. They get off on the wrong foot, Elizabeth’s pride keeps her from seeing Mr Darcy as anything except the negative first impression she initially had of him. While Mr Darcy’s prejudice towards Elizabeth’s lower social class blinds him to her many good qualities. Other plotlines include Mr Bingley (Mr Darcy’s good friend) wanting to marry Elizabeth’s older sister Jane, but encountering obstacles because of differences in social class and her you the book has family, friendship, and an unconventional love story. This is probably Austen’s most famous novel and is considered to be a classic.

The 2005 movie starred Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett and Matthew Macfadyen. The movie was filmed in England and was marketed towards a mainstream audience. Originally, the movie was going to be very true to the book. All the dialogue was kept the same and almost the entire movie was going to be from the perspective of Elizabeth (like the book). In the end, the dialogue in the film varied between being exactly the same as the book in some scenes, while most scenes had altered dialogue. This was done to help a modern audience better connect with the movie and the characters. The movie also features scenes from the perspective of Mr Darcy, these are additional and not in the book. This was done to show Darcy as more human as well as to show the genuine closeness of his friendship with the character of Mr Bingley. The movie was well-received by critics, with Keira Knightley being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and was a success at the box office. Austen fans and British viewers of the film had divided opinions.

The movie has other differences than just the dialogue. In the movie, Elizabeth keeps secrets from her family and grows apart from her older sister Jane. This is different from the book, while Elizabeth does become frustrated with events related to her family, she never keeps secrets from them. She also confides in her sister after difficult events, they never grow apart. The movie also portrays Mr Bennett as a warmer, more sympathetic father than he is in the book. His role in the family misfortunes, caused by him spending money on the wrong things, is downplayed. His relationship with his wife is much more loving in the movie. However, the movie also makes the Bennetts look poorer than they were in the book. Elizabeth also comes across as much more bold and impatient in the movie, she never yells at her parents in the book.

History: the Neoclassical Era

 Thinking Activity:- 

 The Neoclassical age: English literature 

Neoclassical literature was written between 1660 and 1798. This time period is broken down into three parts: the Restoration period, the Augustan period, and the Age of Johnson.

Writers of the Neoclassical period tried to imitate the style of the Romans and Greeks. Thus the combination of the terms 'neo,' which means 'new,' and 'classical,' as in the day of the Roman and Greek classics. This was also the era of The Enlightenment, which emphasized logic and reason. It was preceded by The Renaissance and followed by the Romantic era. In fact, the Neoclassical period ended in 1798 when Wordsworth published the Romantic 'Lyrical Ballads'. 

The Neoclassical age

1. Compare the general characteristics of the Elizabethan age and Neoclassical age: 

 Elizabethan age: 

• 

• The Elizabethan age began during the year  1558 to 1603, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth l. 
• The age is also known as the age of the Renaissance in England.
• This age is The Golden age in England history.
• Elizabeth's succession brought two important features of the period which is settlement and Development. 

Neoclassical age: 

• The Neoclassical age began during the year 1660 to 1798.
• The 18th century is also known as the neo-classical age during this period great poets like Alexander Pope had translated great works of Homer, Vergil and Ovid and also followed the rules and regulations of the classical era that's why this age is known to age neo-classical age.
• This age is also known as The Augustan age. 

Characteristics of Elizabethan age and Neoclassical age: 

• The Elizabethan age: 
•  
• The Elizabethan Age was characterized by a renewed spirit of adventure and discovery and a renewed attention to older sources of knowledge. In literature, the Petrarchan sonnet was imported and modified by Shakespeare (creating what is now called the Elizabethan sonnet), and the genre of tragicomedy was born.
• Religious tolerance
• Social content 
•  unbounded enthusiasm
•  National spirit and profound patriotism 
•  Exploration of the new world  

The Neoclassical age: 

Neoclassical literature is characterized by order, accuracy, and structure. In direct opposition to Renaissance attitudes, where a man was seen as basically good, the Neoclassical writers portrayed man as inherently flawed. They emphasized restraint, self-control, and common sense. This was a time when conservatism flourished in both politics and literature.

Some popular types of literature included:

• Parody
• Essays
• Satire
• Letters
• Fables
• Melodrama, and
• Rhyming with couplets

The writing style of Neoclassical age and Elizabethan age: 

Elizabethan age:

   in the age of Elizabethan, all doubts about religion vanished and people were free from every religion as well as political bondages Queen Elizabethan's reign brought great sunrise that period. The accession of a queen was the sunrise after a long night. 

In Milton's words, we suddenly see England 

" a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself, like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks".

At the age of seventeen Elizabethan became the Queen of England. At that time the character of Elizabethan was mingling of frivolity and strength which reminds one of that ironic image with feet of clay, we have nothing whatever to do. As the student of literature we can find out two facts about this era: that t Elizabeth, with all her vanity and inconsistency, steadily loved England and England’s greatness; and that she inspired all her people with the unbounded patriotism which exults in Shakespeare, and with the personal devotion which finds a voice in the Faery Queen. Under her administration, the English national life progressed by gigantic leaps rather than by a slow historical process, and English literature reached the very highest point of its development.

Neo-classical age: 

We can divide this particular age into two groups 

1. Augustan age (1700-1750)

2. The age of sensibility (1750-1798)

so many authors believe that the 18th century consist the fundament of the romantic age. in the year 1685 king Charles II was banished and his own daughter and son-in-law marry and William of orange to be the throne, which marks the end of the long struggle for political freedom in England. in the year 1694 marry was died and William of orange also died in1702 and the second daughter of James II, Anne became the queen. In the reign of Charles II, the two great political parties that came out and will become well known among the whole of England is the 'Whig' and 'Tory'; by the year1700 they were in everybody's mouth. 

Major writers of the period: 

Elizabethan age: 

1. William Shakespeare
2. Edmund Spenser
3. Christopher Marlowe
4. Francis Bacon
5. Browne

Neoclassical age: 

1. Thomas Gray
2. Alexander pope
3. John Dryden
4. William Blake
5. Robert Burns

2, write in brief about your favourite major writer of the age: 

English Poets from 1660 A.D. to 1798 A.D. are generally known as Neoclassical poet's. They are so-called because they had great respect for the classical writer and imitated much from them. For them, poetry was an imitation of human life.

John Dryden: 

John Dryden (19 August to 12 May 1700)was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was appointed England's first Poet Laureate in 1668. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Romanticist writer Sir Walter Scott called him "Glorious John".

Dryden’s longest poem to date, Annus Mirabilis (1667), was a celebration of two victories by the English fleet over the Dutch and the Londoners’ survival of the Great Fire of 1666. In this work, Dryden was once again gilding the royal image and reinforcing the concept of a loyal nation united under the best of kings. It was hardly surprising that when the poet laureate, Sir William Davenant, died in 1668, Dryden was appointed poet laureate in his place and two years later was appointed royal historiographer.

His Famous work: 

• The Hind and the panther
• The wild Gallant
• All for love
• Oedipus
• King Arthur
• The secular Masque
• The Madal

Writing for the stage:

Soon after his restoration to the throne in 1660, Charles II granted two patents for theatres, which had been closed by the Puritans in 1642. Dryden soon joined the little band of dramatists who were writing new plays for the revived English theatre. His first play, The Wild Gallant, a farcical comedy with some strokes of humour and a good deal of licentious dialogue, was produced in 1663. It was a comparative failure, but in January 1664 he had some share in the success of The Indian Queen, a heroic tragedy in rhymed couplets in which he had collaborated with Sir Robert Howard, his brother-in-law. Dryden was soon to successfully exploit this new and popular genre, with its conflicts between love and honour and its lovely heroines before whose charms the blustering heroes sank down in awed submission. In the spring of 1665, Dryden had his own first outstanding success with The Indian Emperour, a play that was a sequel to The Indian Queen. November 1675, Dryden staged his last and most intelligent example of the genre, Aureng-Zebe. In this play, he abandoned the use of rhymed couplets for that of blank verse.

Later life and career:  

After the Restoration, as Dryden quickly established himself as the leading poet and literary critic of his day, he transferred his allegiances to the new government. With the reopening of the theatres in 1660 after the Puritan ban, Dryden began writing plays. His first play The Wild Gallant appeared in 1663, and was not successful, but was still promising, and from 1668 on he was contracted to produce three plays a year for the King's Company in which he became a shareholder. During the 1660s and 1670s, theatrical writing was his main source of income. He led the way in Restoration comedy, his best-known work being Marriage à la Mode (1673), as well as heroic tragedy and regular tragedy, in which his greatest success was All for Love (1678). Dryden was never satisfied with his theatrical writings and frequently suggested that his talents were wasted on unworthy audiences. He thus was making a bid for poetic fame off-stage. In 1667, around the same time his dramatic career began, he published Annus Mirabilis, a lengthy historical poem that described the English defeat of the Dutch naval fleet and the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was a modern epic in pentameter quatrains that established him as the preeminent poet of his generation and was crucial in his attaining the posts of Poet Laureate (1668) and historiographer royal (1670). He felt strongly about the relation of the poet to tradition and the creative process, and his best heroic play Aureng-zebe (1675) has a prologue that denounces the use of rhyme in serious drama. His play All for Love (1678) was written in blank verse, and was to immediately follow Aureng-Zebe. 

Dryden's greatest achievements were in satiric verse: the mock-heroic Mac Flecknoe, a more personal product of his laureate years, was a lampoon circulated in manuscript and an attack on the playwright Thomas Shadwell. Dryden's main goal in the work is to "satirize Shadwell, ostensibly for his offences against literature but more immediately we may suppose for his habitual badgering of him on the stage and in print." It is not a belittling form of satire, but rather one which makes his object great in ways that are unexpected, transferring the ridiculous into poetry. This line of satire continued with Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and The Medal (1682). His other major works from this period are the religious poems Religio Laici (1682), written from the position of a member of the Church of England; his 1683 edition of Plutarch's Lives Translated From the Greek by Several Hands in which he introduced the word 'biography' to English readers; and The Hind and the Panther, (1687) which celebrates his conversion to Roman Catholicism.

Poetic style Edit: 

What Dryden achieved in his poetry was neither the emotional excitement of the early nineteenth-century romantics nor the intellectual complexities of the metaphysical. His subject matter was often factual, and he aimed at expressing his thoughts in the most precise and concentrated manner. Although he uses formal structures such as heroic couplets, he tried to recreate the natural rhythm of speech, and he knew that different subjects need different kinds of verse. In his preface to Religio Laici, he says that "the expressions of a poem designed purely for instruction ought to be plain and natural, yet majestic... The florid, elevated and figurative way is for the passions; for (these) are begotten in the soul by showing the objects out of their true proportion... A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth."

Translation style Edit: 

While Dryden had many admirers, he also had his share of critics, Mark Van Doren among them. Van Doren complained that in translating Virgil's Aeneid, Dryden had added "a fund of phrases with which he could expand any passage that seemed to him curt." Dryden did not feel such expansion was a fault, arguing that as Latin is a naturally concise language it cannot be duly represented by a comparable number of words in English. "He...recognized that Virgil 'had the advantage of a language wherein much may be comprehended in a little space' (5:329–30). The 'way to please the best Judges...is not to Translate a Poet literally; and Virgil least of any other' (5:329)."

For example, take lines 789–795 of Book 2 when Aeneas sees and receives a message from the ghost of his wife, Creusa.

iamque vale et nati serva communis amorem.'

haec ubi dicta dedit, lacrimantem et multa volentem

dicere deseruit, tenuisque recessit in auras.

ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum;

ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago,

par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno.

sic demum socios consumpta nocte reviso

Dryden translates it like this:

I trust our common issue to your care.'

She said, and gliding pass'd unseen in air.

I strove to speak: but horror tied my tongue;

And thrice about her neck my arms I flung,

And, thrice deceiv'd, on vain embraces hung.

Light as an empty dream at break of day,

Or as a blast of wind, she rush'd away.

Thus having pass'd the night in fruitless pain,

I to my longing friends return again

Dryden's translation is based on presumed authorial intent and smooth English. In line 790 the literal translation of Haec ubi dicta dedit is "when she gave these words." But "she said" gets the point across, uses half the words, and makes for better English. A few lines later, with ter conatus ibi collo dare brachia circum; ter frustra compensate manus effugit imago, he alters the literal translation "Thrice trying to give arms around her neck; thrice the image grasped in vain fled the hands," in order to fit it into the metre and the emotion of the scene.

In his own words,

The way I have taken is not so straight as Metaphrase, nor so loose as Paraphrase: Some things to I have omitted, and sometimes added of my own. Yet the omissions I hope, are but of Circumstances, and such as would have no grace in English; and the Addition, I also hope, are easily deduced from Virgil's Sense. They will seem (at least I have the Vanity to think so), not stuck into him, but growing out of him. (5:529)

In a similar vein, Dryden writes in his Preface to the translation anthology Sylvae:

Where I have taken away some of [the original authors'] Expressions and cut them shorter, it may possibly be on this consideration, that what was beautiful in the Greek or Latin, would not appear so shining in the English; and where I have enlarged them, I desire the false Criticks would not always think that those thoughts are wholly mine, but that either they are secretly in the Poet, or maybe fairly deduced from him; or at least, if both those considerations should fail, that my own is of a piece with his, and that if he were living, and an Englishman, they are such as he would probably have written.

Besides being the greatest English poet of the later 17th century, Dryden wrote almost 30 tragedies, comedies, and dramatic operas. He also made a valuable contribution in his commentaries on poetry and drama, which are sufficiently extensive and original to entitle him to be considered, in the words of Dr Samuel Johnson, as “the father of English criticism.”

Words count:- 2,406 

        

        

A study of Film Adaptations of Macbeth

"Macbeth" by William Shakespeare: 
                              

                                                 

 

1. Compare various Film Adaptations on 'Macbeth': 

Many films have been made from the plays of William Shakespeare. When a literary work or a part of a literary work is used as a base for a film and TV series, it is called film adaptation. Here the written text is turned into visual text, linguistic signs are replaced into visual signs. Few of Shakespeare's works have been adopted in Indian films too.2003 film ‘Maqbool’ by Vishal Bhardwaj is an adaptation of Shakespear’s one of the best tragedies, ‘Macbeth’.

So, here I would like to compare ‘MACBETH ’by William Shakespeare with the film ‘MAQBOOL’ by Vishal Bhardwaj.  

                 

When we are trying to compare ‘MACBETH’ with ‘MAQBOOL’ we find so many similarities, as well as contrasts in both of these. Maqbool, was Vishal Bhardwaj’s second film as a director. The film had its North American premiere at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival. And it was also screened in the Marche du Film section of the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.  

The film has a great star cast: Pankaj Kapoor (he wins two awards for this role), Irfan Khan, Tabu, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, and Piyush Mishra. The screenplay was developed from the drama by Vishal Bhardwaj and Abbas Tyrewala.  

                     

At the very outset of the film, we are confronted with a strongly patriarchal set-up: gangster heroes in Bollywood replace families with the mafia and allegiance to the clan becomes synonymous with fealty servitude to the Boss. The world of this mock-family structure in the film is predominantly Muslim as is evident through the characters’ appearances (dresses, countenance, spoken language), repeated visits to the “Darga”, the funeral at the beginning of the film, the ritual slaughter of a goat, a henchman’s refusal to resort to alcohol, the recurrent scenes of characters conducting themselves in prayers, references to “Ramadan”, a celebration of “Eid”, where the Hindu characters Kaka and his son Guddu occupy a subordinate role in the hierarchy of power and organized crime. Thus, Maqbool’s treachery and the consequent death race in the film may apparently seem very much a result of intra-communal conflict, where Muslims kill Muslims. Maqbool, on the other hand, being the protagonist of the film is constantly plagued by the need for legitimacy. Both in terms of time devoted, and in terms of poignancy, Irfan Khan as Maqbool occupies the centre of the narrative. In fact, Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri, both very prominent figures in the Bollywood hierarchy, had to be made comical in appearance so that they could look dwarfed by Irfan’s presence on the screen. Despite occupying the centre of the film’s narrative, Miyan Maqbool is assailed by doubts. His doubts regarding the yet-to-be-born child of Nimmi, Nimmi’s desperate efforts to assure him that their love is pure (peak), and Maqbool’s agonizing attempts to be convinced that the child belongs to him, are instances of an illegitimate Muslim overreacher’s craving for legitimacy through assimilation. His struggles may be read as a desperate cry for generational survival as he stands outside each and every category of what is known as the “centre”. Bhardwaj here mirrors Shakespeare’s sentiment that no defeat is complete until the vanquished themselves acknowledge their lives’ inadequacy. 

The most significant turn in the adaptation is that the film is about Mumbai Underworld. King Duncan of Scotland is actually an underworld don, Abbaji. Macbeth (Maqbool) and Banquo (Kaka) are two of his goons who look after his business. And Lady Macbeth (Nimmi) is actually a mistress of Abbaji and not a wife of Maqbool. 

If we talk about the role of three witches in this film ‘Maqbool’ two corrupt policemen predicts the reign of Maqbool in Abbaji’s kingdom. It means the role of witches from the drama is taken by these two corrupt policemen: Pandit and Purohit. But unlike drama, they are not passive fortune tellers. In fact, they are active in manipulating future events. These ’witches’ believes in the ’balance of power’. And they act according to increase the rivalry between the gangs and within the gang. They are the first to ignite the lust for power in Maqbool and psychologically prepare him to question his loyalties to Abbaji. The second deciding factor is Nimmi, mistress of Abbaji. Abbaji secretly falls for Maqbool cool and contrives him to be the next head of the gang and also helps him to achieve the motive.  

Analysing the Opening Scene: 

 The opening of the play is always important as it sets the mood and atmosphere of the play; it alerts the audience or the readers about the future action and therefore captures their attention from the very beginning of the play. It is an important theatrical device, which helps in exposing the plot, theme, setting, and environment and also in highlighting the main issues and concerns of the play. Shakespeare uses certain techniques to open his plays in a more effective manner. Macbeth, for example, opens with thunder and lightning and with the entry of the three witches. Through the conversation of the witches, the audience gets to know about the battle that has already taken place and it is further revealed through their discussion that they intend to meet Macbeth in the near future. Similarly, the thunder and lightning with which the play opens suggest menace and violence.

The opening of both Macbeth and Maqbool is marked with vivid darkness, gloom, heavy rain, thunder and lightning. This “special atmosphere of a Shakespearean tragedy” is brilliantly portrayed by Bhardwaj in Maqbool from the very opening. However, as a director, or more appropriately as an adapter of the play, he has taken certain liberties to mould the film according to his cinematic demands. Therefore, the court of Scotland is replaced with the Mumbai underworld and the two corrupt policemen (Pandit and Purohit) play the role of the three weird sisters. In a preface to Maqbool’s screenplay Bhardwaj explains:

Like every filmmaker, I also wanted to explore the juiciest genre of cinema—the world of gangsters. I was looking for a story that could give me the scope to have the underworld as a backdrop but with a strong human story. During this period, whatever I read, any story or article I read it with only one agenda in mind—to find a story for my gangster film … The first breakthrough in the screenplay was the discovery of witches in our story. What could have made the best parallel to the witches in contemporary India? Of course, cops. (Bhardwaj and Tyrewala vi)

When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in the year 1606, the idea of witches worked well to heighten the suspense and mystery in the play. This idea of introducing supernatural elements into the play was welcomed by the audience in Elizabethan times but when Bhardwaj decided to make Maqbool in the year 2003, no audience would have accepted the concept of witches making prophecies for the protagonist. It would have become an unreal and unimaginative idea to believe in. Therefore, these changes on the part of the director added a real perspective to the film.

Shakespeare’s intention to weave witches into the fabric of the tragedy was to create the atmosphere of fear, the task that was assigned to the two policemen by Bhardwaj in Maqbool. Maqbool has innumerable instances of encounters, either by Pandit or Purohit or by Maqbool’s gang. In fact, the film witnesses a police encounter, where inspector Purohit shoots a local gangster Sadiq from point-blank range. He dies on the spot and blood splashes all around. These encounters help to create an atmosphere of fear in the film. Other than creating an atmosphere of fear, the witches in the play also act as the soothsayers.  witches confront Macbeth and Banquo when they are returning from the battlefield and make prophecies first for Macbeth and later on for Banquo as well. They greet Macbeth first as Thane of Glamis, then as Thane of Cawdor and finally as the king. Bhardwaj draws an interesting parallel in Maqbool through the character of inspector Pandit, who like the witches of Macbeth is able to make prophecies through reading a horoscope. From the very opening of the play till the end “we are confronted by mystery, darkness, abnormality, hideousness: and therefore by fear” The similar patterns of fear, mystery, suspense and darkness also brood upon the film.

Role of Witches: 

Significantly, these two police inspectors are projected as quite prominently Hindu. Their eager zest for astrology, the wearing of their hair in “shakhas”, their elaborate discussions on the power of “Shani”, “Mangal” and “Shukra”, and their repeated references to the ill-effects of “grahan”, gives us an uneasy sensation that we are after all dealing not with intra-communal, but inter-communal violence. A shot of red-turbaned Hindus confronting Maqbool’s prominently Muslim followers in front of Kaka’s house; and after Kaka’s assassination, the close shot of a Hindu deity dissolving into a very pronounced Muslim ambience where Abbaji’s death ceremony is being conducted, brings forth an uneasy reminder of the cyclic storms of religiously fomented violence that plagues India even today.

When Macbeth asks about his demise, witches tell him that the jungle arriving at Places will bring his doom. A similar prediction is used here. On Maqbool's query Policemen tells him the sea's arrival at his palace will bring his room. Such a prophecy, on a literal level, is impossible to turn true. But the custom comes to Maqbool's palace to arrest him, due to his smuggling from the sea route.

 The motives for the crime:

“Dark secrecy and night are in Shakespeare ever the badges of crime”. Both Macbeth and Maqbool use the darkness of night as a shield to hide their heinous crimes. Seeking refuge in the night’s dark hour they fulfil their deepest desires. A.C Bradley is of the opinion that “all the scenes which at once recur to memory take place either at night or in some dark spot. The vision of the dagger, the murder of Duncan, murder of Banquo … all come in night-scenes”. However, it is important to note here, that though the murder of Abba Ji also takes place at night as the murder of Duncan in the play yet the motives behind the crime are different. In the play, the “ambition” of Macbeth to become the king was the sole motive behind killing Duncan, who was like a father figure to him. But unlike the play, Maqbool murders Abba Ji because of his sexual jealousy. His primary motive is to gain Nimmi’s love and therefore taking Abba Ji's position becomes secondary. Before tracing the journey of Maqbool from Abba Ji's right-hand man to his murderer, it is important to mention that, in the play, the murder of Duncan is not the focal point: “the action … hurries through seven very brief scenes of mounting suspense to a terrible crisis, which is reached, in the murder of Duncan, at the beginning of the second act”. In other words in Macbeth, the murder is committed at the very beginning of the second act but in Maqbool, the murder of Abba Ji takes place when half of the film is over. It is at this juncture that the film reaches its climax. This shift points out the change in the perspective of Bhardwaj – he wanted to weave his crime thriller around the theme of sexual jealousy, where Nimmi is a throne for Maqbool and killing Abba ji is the route to achieve that throne. Therefore more than half of the film revolves around the murder of Abba Ji.

The art of characterization: 

However, it is important to note that characters undergo a transformation when they are shifted from one literary medium (text) to another (film). This happens mainly because the power of visual media is entirely different from that of print media. For example, a writer may need a thousand words to explain a particular scene, a parallel of which can be easily shown in only one scene of a film. Similarly, a character has to change according to the changed time and space also; for instance, Shakespeare’s Macbeth is totally different from Vishal’s Maqbool in terms of appearance. In place of shields and armour, Maqbool uses guns; he wears no crown and speaks the typical language of a local gangster.

However, Bhardwaj’s portrayal of Maqbool’s character depicts a similar journey to that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth “is introduced to us as a general of extraordinary prowess,” – he was thought to be “honest,” “honourable” and “too much of the milk of human kindness.” King Duncan and other generals of his army are full of praise for him when he returns from the battle. But, by the end of the play, he becomes a cruel and inhuman tyrant. Now, he is no longer “infirm of purpose: he becomes domineering and even brutal, or he becomes a cool pitiless hypocrite”. He now “welcomes disorder and confusion … he is plunging deeper and deeper into unreality … forgets that he is trafficking with things of nightmare fantasy. His ambition led him toward a life of destruction. The constant pressure from his wife and the prophecies made by the witches compel him to murder the noble king Duncan. Lady Macbeth “rouses him with a taunt no man can bear, and least of all a soldier – the word “coward” … her passionate courage sweeps him off his feet.

The character of Maqbool also follows a similar pattern. When the film opens, he is seen as the most loyal and trusted member of Abba Ji's gang. Abba Ji loves him as his own son and he also treats him like his own father. But soon all love and respect vanish and he shoots Abba Ji. He gets swept away by the prophecies of Pandit and Purohit and by Nimmi’s evil warnings. Like Lady Macbeth, Nimmi also rouses Maqbool with a taunt that no man could bear. She calls him “a wimp”. 

 

Bhardwaj has taken certain liberties to replace or add some characters according to his requirements. Therefore, in place of Malcolm and Donalbain, Abba Ji has only one child – a daughter called Sameera, the three witches are replaced by the two policemen Pandit and Purohit, the character of Usman plays the part of Duncan’s drugged chamberlains and other than these, there are many rustic characters such as Bhosle, Tawde, Chinna, Palekar, Mohini and others who help in furthering the actions of the play.

One very important character that Bhardwaj introduces in the film is that of Nimmi’s child. Unlike the play where there is no such mention of Lady Macbeth having any children, Nimmi gives birth to a child before dying. However, who is the father of her child is not made clear, the child could be Abba Ji's or Maqbool’s; this remains an unsolved mystery in the film. When Nimmi dies and Maqbool gets killed by Boti (Macduff’s counterpart) Guddu and Sameera take care of Nimmi’s child. Bhardwaj thus ended his story on a humane note, and the order that was disturbed by the corrupt actions of Maqbool and Nimmi gets restored by Guddu and Sameera’s kind act of humanity.  

 The dramatic devices: 

 Soliloquies and asides: 

In the play, Act 1, SC. 7 opens with the first soliloquy of Macbeth. Through this long soliloquy of Macbeth, the audience gets to know of his conflicting views. He is yet not sure of killing Duncan but his “vaulting ambition” compels him toward the crime. The next soliloquy of Macbeth occurs in Act 2, SC. 1. The dagger scene is one of the important scenes of the play. The soliloquy of Macbeth clearly reflects his state of mind and the dagger becomes the symbol of his conscience.

Music:

In Macbeth, there is no pleasant music at all; it is only the unpleasant sound of rain, storms, thunder and lightning that balances the un-musical situation somehow. But in the movie, Maqbool has very rich music. Keeping with the conventions of a typical Bollywood film, Bhardwaj has crafted beautiful music for the film and there are many songs and dance sequences.

Other than these lyrical songs, the film also has instrumental theme music, which is played throughout in the background to foreshadow something foul that might happen.

Setting:

The setting has been changed from the royal court of Scotland to the Mumbai underworld. In the words of Stephen Alter, “Foggy moors and dank castles give way to mildewed Havelis and the stark cityscapes of Mumbai. Horses are replaced by Mercedes – Benzes and swords with pistols. But the real magic of the film lies in the way Vishal is able to reconstruct a Scottish melodrama within the dangerous and twisted domain of Mumbai’s criminal underworld. Not only does he relocate the story in a different time and place but, like a familiar theme in music that gets remixed, Vishal sets it in another key”.

This has been done deliberately by Bhardwaj to cater to the needs of Bollywood. In place of kings and noble generals the film depicts men who belong to the underworld and most of them are from the Muslim community. But despite making the changes in setting, language and location, the film remains honest in its theme of Shakespearean tragedy.

Ending:

In both Macbeth and Maqbool, the order that is disturbed in the beginning gets restored in the end. In the play, Macduff kills Macbeth and carries his head onstage and Malcolm is placed on the throne. Order is restored because the legitimate heir of Duncan is crowned the king. In the film, however, the order gets restored when Guddu and Sameera lovingly accept the child of Nimmi. Their kind act of humanity compensates for all the bloodshed and enmity. 

Comparison of Macbeth and Maqbool: 

Shakespeare’s Macbeth initially tries to come to terms with the terrible fact he discovers the potential for evil within himself. Herein resides Shakespeare’s difficulty. Hamlet, however deranged, constantly attempts to do the right thing. Othello and Brutus, despite their fatal errors, cannot be labelled as evil. Shakespeare’s real challenge lay in transmuting a man, like Richard III who consciously performs evil deeds, into an eponymous tragic hero. Macbeth is Shakespeare’s study of duality, of man, swinging between the good and evil within. Shakespeare could surprisingly evoke sympathy for a man who consciously embraces evil, knows the consequences, and yet continues down the aberrant path without paying much heed to the outcome.

Bhardwaj’s Maqbool, on the other hand, is a natural extension of the murky underbelly of the Mumbai mafia world. He is born into an “evil” space. So evil is not an option for him, it is a compulsory part of his existence. It is in this space of all-pervading evil that he tries to retain some vestige of loyalty towards the lord of the mafia don. Yet he remains acutely conscious of his secondary position. Thus the sudden spark of hope brought on by Nimmi precipitates his sudden rampage. Macbeth is a once-loyal hero who chooses to yield to his latent desires, though not without self-examination. Maqbool seems to be more a character acted upon, acted upon not by Nimmi, but by a more sinister power structure at work. Although it may seem that it is Nimmi’s taunts of Maqbool’s masculinity and her unabashed sexuality which really disrupts the mock-family structure of Abbaji. However, a closer examination shows that the comical and corrupt police inspectors (“Purohit” and “Pandit”), a version of Macbeth’s three hags, who prophesy Maqbool’s ascension to power and also bring about Maqbool’s death are the real choreographers who chart the rise and fall of these characters, under the pretext of retaining a balance of power. 

Some Examples of Movie Adaptations 'Macbeth': 

Anthony Davies describes Macbeth as a complex study in character, as one who is “human in his reflections and inhumane in his actions”. Vishal Bhardwaj succeeds in projecting this contradiction in Maqbool, while directors like Orson Welles and Roman Polanski fail. In Welles’ Macbeth (1948), Macbeth is a “dislikable protagonist” from the first scene to the last, while Polanski’s Macbeth (1971) fails to stage a human drama as Macbeth does not gain any profundity of character with the progression of his career. He simply seems to be a counterpart of the static villain Richard IIIFootnote1. On the other hand, Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth is a tragic hero from the very first scene. Kurzel significantly departs from Shakespeare as he opens his film with the burial of Baby Macbeth. The very opening exonerates the bereaved parents from the sins they are about to commit in the audience’s eyes. Macbeth in Kurzel fails to become evil. The career of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in Kurzel becomes an unending reminder of a loss that can never be compensated; Kurzel’s Macbeth (2015) becomes a saga of how power remains a poor substitute for grief. Shakespeare’s Macbeth depicts a psychological journey where the protagonist is ultimately transformed into a “sadder but wiser” character at the end of the play, one who gradually realizes his limited place in the universe. Maqbool, on the other hand, begins his journey with full realization of his limited and thoroughly marginal place in society. Maqbool, like Macbeth, is a man who constantly oscillates between the twin forces of ambition and guilt. Yet apart from the urge to usurp authority, Maqbool is further goaded by his love for Nimmi and by his craving for legitimacy. Unlike Shakespeare, the issue of legitimacy runs deeper in Maqbool. The craving for a “proper” social recognition is an added layer in which we do not find in other major adaptations of the play. While Roman Polanski or Justin Kurzel remain faithful to the time and setting of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, thereby making it unnecessary for the protagonists to contemplate their legitimate status in society, even Washizu (based on the character of Macbeth) in Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957) is an integral part of the Japanese warrior class, one who is more a representative of the spirit of his age than an outsider. Like Maqbool, The Throne of Blood is not a direct cinematic rendition of Shakespeare’s eleventh-century Scottish world. Deeply steeped in the tradition of Noh theatre, Kurosawa’s portrays Washizu as a type, a warrior of medieval Japan, one who very much belongs to the mainstream and hence not in need of pondering over issues of legitimacy

Conclusion:

In order to reconstruct or adapt, a film director heavily relies on the source text, keenly observes each word, scene, character etc. However, he is bound to deviate from the original text to cater to the needs of cinema. Also, to fit into the present time certain changes and modifications are necessary. If a filmmaker sticks to such demands the adaptation loses its true essence and instead becomes an appropriation. Such is the case with Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool. Therefore, after the analysis of the two genres (text and film), it can be concluded that the film is an appropriation of the text, rather than being a strict adaptation of the source text, though there are many instances in the film where a strong parallel can be drawn with the text the differences are more coherent. However, it is important to mention that despite making the changes in setting, location, language and plot, the film remains loyal to Shakespeare in its essence. The idea of crime, the concept of fear and evil, the portrayal of the disturbed natural order are the same as in the original source text maintaining the Shakespearean spirit. 

2. Macbeth- the tragedy of Ambition: How do you view ambition in today time? 

Macbeth a Tragedy of Ambition:

In Macbeth, ambition is presented as a dangerous quality. It is the driving force of the play. It is an ambition that causes the downfall of Macbeth and triggers a series of deaths in the play. Macbeth is inspired by the prophecies of the Witches to be ambitious and his ambition is driven by Lady Macbeth.

 

When the Witches meet Macbeth and Banquo, they greet Macbeth as the Thane of Glamis and the Thane of Cawdor and predict that he will be the king of Scotland. Of Banquo, the Witches predict that he will be the begetter of a line of kings. When Rosse and Angus inform Macbeth about the conferment by King Duncan of the title of the Thane of Cawdor on him, Macbeth hopefully begins to look forward to the fulfilment of the final prediction, that is, of his becoming king. Thus, the prophecy of the Witches had made a deep impression on Macbeth’s mind. When Duncan nominates Malcolm to be the heir to the throne, Macbeth thinks it to be an obstacle in the way of his becoming king. So, the thought of murdering Duncan has taken a firm root in his mind. It is evident that the Witches have stimulated in Macbeth an ambition that would have remained dormant if the Witches would make no prophecy.

But the Witches are not fully responsible for Duncan’s murder. It is Lady Macbeth who gives the fuel to the fire of Macbeth’s ambition to kill Duncan. When Duncan arrived at Inverness, Macbeth controlled his ambition for the time being and did not kill Duncan. But his wife, Lady Macbeth brings him back to his original decision. Lady Macbeth convinced Macbeth that the murder would go undiscovered, and this was what gave Macbeth the courage and determination to proceed with his plans. Her forceful arguments revive his ambition and cannot but agree to his wife’s plan. So, he says:

I am settled and bend up

Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

Thus, Macbeth kills Duncan being influenced by his wife. Having taken the road of self damnation, he is now unable to stop. Macbeth is now always ready to remove every obstacle from his way to remain in his state of power. Realizing the danger from Banquo and thinking of the prophecy that the throne will eventually pass to the descendants of Banquo, Macbeth hatches a conspiracy against that man and has him murdered. It is Macbeth’s second crime. He commits another crime warned by the first apparition. The first apparition warned Macbeth to beware of Macduff and Macbeth has already been feeling apprehensive of Macduff’s attitude towards him. As a result, he decides to massacre Macduff’s family.

Here Macbeth degenerates into a butcher. His tragedy lies in this degeneration. At last, comes the time of his doom. When he faces Macduff on the battlefield, he tells him that nobody born of a woman can kill him. At the time Macduff reveals that he was removed from his mother’s womb prematurely by means of a caesarean operation and that he is not therefore born of a woman in the normal sense. On hearing, this Macbeth gives up all hopes and within moments he is slain by Macduff.

Thus, ambition is the root cause of Macbeth’s downfall, as it planted the seeds of murder, which grew into an uncontrollable monster that eventually destroyed anyone who got in its way.

How do you view ambition in today time? 

“Macbeth is relevant for young people in our 2020-2021 society, mainly because it examines the idea of corruption and how easily it is to be led astray by ambition. This is very relevant for today’s society because some leaders are corrupt, run a dictatorship and do not listen to their people. It is also relevant because of the unbalanced gender relationship; there are very few Shakespeare plays where the woman takes the lead.

There are lots of morals to be learnt from the play. Firstly, I think the main moral of the play is not to be tempted to do bad things in order to gain power. In addition, another moral of the play would be that even if you think you are in too deep there is always a way out; and you can stop. It also teaches you to trust yourself and to stand up for yourself.

I have learnt that sometimes your ambition can lead you astray and you can do bad things. I have learnt that with enough pressure you can do something you never thought you could do. Furthermore, that people can use you because of what you have.

Personally, I think women have almost equal power to men nowadays. But sometimes it is easy to slip into typical gender stereotypes; for example, nursing is mainly considered a woman’s job, whereas a doctor is considered as a role for men. As a woman, I feel I should be equal to men. 

Thank you  

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