Adaptation of Shakespeare's Plays into Assamese Farce: A Study on Historical Perspective

William Shakespeare has always been unanimously the most accepted model to follow for the writers of tragedy, comedy and other types of dramas. He enjoyed a great fascination in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first few decades of the twentieth in India and almost all his works were translated to or adapted into different languages. As the Assamese writers did not lag behind in this respect too, they were inspired to translate and adapt Shakespeare in 1887 starting with The Comedy of Errors as Bhramaranga in Assamese. In this article, the researcher aims to examine the available Assamese translations and adaptations of Shakespearean comic plays and studied how far they contributed to the growth and development of Assamese comedy in particular and modern Assamese drama in general. With the help of the comparative method of analysis, the researcher found that Assamese comedy specially farces and the complete pre-independent Assamese dramatic literature have been impacted by the dramas of Shakespeare.