A Comperative Study - Shakespeare and Kalidas

Nirgatesu va va kasya kalidasseys suktisu Priti rmdhurasadrasu manjarisvi jayate

Bana He(Shakespeare) was not of an age, but for all time: Ben Jonson

The present book has grown out of my love for two of the greatest poets of the world, Kalidasa and Shakespeare. I found in their writings manifold beauties and peculiarities of thought and diction and such gems as are found elsewhere, neither in oriental literature nor in the literature of the west. The thesis assumed form first in the shape of innumerable jotted-down memoranda from my daily perusal of kalidasa's and shakespeare's plays for more than a decade now, it accumulated from minute study of their varied niceties of imagery and gained bulk from the perusal of critical works on them.

I discovered that both kalidasa and shakespere though they optimized two widely different cultures and belonged to periods very remote from each other, had certain affinities that need to be highlighted fro the benefit of the present day reader. The years of research devoted to this work also revealed that in spite of all the differences, cultural, spiritual or intellectual, the two poets shared many a common senthetic pcept. They possessed all the component assentials of style, all the skills necessary for dramatic composition of a very high order and all the sterling qualities that go to make a superb craftsman.

Dr.Pratima Kumari is at present working as Reader and Head of the Department of English at Sri Arvind Mahila College, Patna under Magadh University, Bodh Gaya. She has contributed scores of research articles to national and international journals.As a teacher of English she commands respect and love among her students and colleagues.

Words fail me in my humble effort to express my gratitude, which borders on veneration, to Dr. R.C. Prasad, Ph. D.(Edinburgh), D. Litt.(Patna), professor and head of the Department of English, Patna University, my guide and mentor, who taught me the rudiments of higher research and disciplined my mind and style, perfecting the latter as far as possible. It is to him that I owe my knowledge of Shakespeare and Kalidasa, my insight, however scanty, into literary finesse, my acquaintance, howsoever meager, with the histories of the British and Indian theatres, and my appreciation of oriental and accidental dramatic traditions. Dr. Prasad, a fine gentleman and a widely-read scholar, has been a source of inspiration to many but not to the extent to which he has been inspiring me, now for over a decade. Needless to say, the inspiration has had many dimensions it was academic as well as deeply moral. He shaped my attitude to art in general and to literature in particular and swakended me to the universality and permanence of all great art, especially of such art as was produced by Shakespear and Kalidasa.

**Contents and Sample Pages**