Yet another from an old archive. This piece was jointly written, rather written by a friend and edited by me while I was in college. It featured in ‘Sans Frontiers’, the official Umang magazine. Umang is one of the popular cultural festivals – the fun and frolic of Indian colleges. I take the freedom to post this here since there is no online archive for the same and of course, I bear the editorial rights to this piece 
—————————————
Shakespeare has gained great adulation for his fabulous work in the stream of literature. His praise is beyond words, maybe even if we gave him this task (praising himself), he would have been unsuccessful. However here is an interesting review of his famous contributions.
We owe the core story of the scripts of our popular desi movies to Monsieur Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’. The story of lovers caught between the belligerent families, lives from Qayamat se Qayamat tak to Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Even Hollywood’s Leonardo Di ‘Romeo’ Caprio is indebted for his popularity to Mr.Shakespeare much before the sinking of the legendary Titanic, through ‘The Tempest’.
In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare illustrated in words how a man (that too the king!) fell in love with a woman disguised as a man. Some men like George Michael and Elton John got so inspired by this play that they didn’t wait for women to disguise as men instead they fell in love with other men itself.
We must also not forget that Shakespeare fell in love many centuries back and Gwyneth Paltrow won an Oscar for it in the last century. I bet many Oscar aspiring heroines wish that there were more Shakespeares who had fallen in love centuries back.
We all remember ‘Catherine the Shrew’ of Shakespeare’s ‘Taming the Shrew’. Some husbands got so excited reading the play that they actually started taming their wives even if they were not shrews originally and then the helpless Catherines had no choice but to turn into shrews. Also the legend of vamps with Lady Macbeth lives forever. In a way, vamps have become immortal in our world.
Shakespeare was not only a writer but also a fashion designer much above his times. He had rejected gold as the fashion statement many years back in the ‘Merchant of Venice’ when a gold casket had been deemed to be unfit to contain the portrait of the beautiful ‘Portia’. And now gold is becoming outdated and metals like silver, platinum make a fashion statement. Also, hold on to the lead in your pencil. It won’t be long before lead is in fashion because Portia prefers lead to gold and silver so soon most of the girls will follow in her footsteps.
So next time you pick up a Shakespearean play, try to read between the lines and make the ‘behind the scenes inferences’ and you’ll discover there’s lots more to learn from it than Shakespeare.
In a way, William Shakespeare changed the world’s perception ‘As he liked it’ but what the heck ‘All’s well that’s ends well’!
