Agha Hashar Kashmiri

Agha Hashar Kashmiri
Personal details
Born Muhammad Shah
1 April 1879
Amritsar, Punjab Province (British India), now Amritsar District, Punjab, India
Died 28 April 1935 (aged 56)
Lahore, Punjab Province (British India), now Punjab, Pakistan

Agha Hashar Kashmiri (3 April 1879 – 28 April 1935) was an eminent Urdu poet, playwright and dramatist who was called the "Shakespeare of Urdu." A number of his plays were actually Indian Shakespearean adaptations.[1]

Career

An influential Parsi theatre playwright, Agha Hashar Kashmiri'is first play, Aftab-e-Muhabat, was published in 1897. He started his professional career as a drama writer for the New Alfred theatrical company in Bombay, on a salary of only 15 Rs. per month. Murid-e-Shak, his first play for the company, was an adaptation of Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale. It proved a success and his wages were later raised to Rs. 40 per month in congruence to his growing popularity. In his works, Agha had experience introducing shorter songs and dialogues with idioms and poetic virtues in plays. He then wrote several more adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, including Shabeed-e-Naaz (or Achuta Daaman in Hindi), Measure for Measure, 1902) and Shabeed-e-Havas (King John, 1907).

Yahudi Ki Ladki (The Daughter of a Jew), published in 1915, became his best known work. In the coming years, it became a classic in Parsi-Urdu theatre. It was adapted several times in the silent film and early talkies eras, notably Yahudi Ki Ladki (1933) by New Theatres, and by Bimal Roy, as Yahudi (1958) starring Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari and Sohrab Modi.[2][3]

His most remarkable plays are Sita Banbas, based on the Ramayana; Bilwa Mangal, a social play on the life of a poet with a passion for whores; Aankh ka Nasha (The Witchery of the Eyes) which deals with themes of treachery and the evils of prostitution; and Rustom O Sohrab, a Persian tragedy.[1][4] Several of his notable Shakespeare-inspired plays are Safed Khoon (White Blood), based on King Lear and Khwab-e-Hasti (The Dream World of Existence) described as; "a mutilated version of Macbeth."[4][5]

Towards the end of his career, Agha created the Shakespeare Theatrical Company but could not stay in business for long. He also joined Maidan theatre – a tented theatre to accommodate large audiences – where he earned a credible name in Urdu drama and poetry. He later moved to Lahore to experiment in film production, but died before the completion of his first film on 28 April 1935. He was buried in Miani Sahib graveyard in Lahore.

Agha was married to Mukhtar Begum, a renowned classical singer from Calcutta and elder sister of Farida Khanum.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Bilwa Mangal". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 3 October 2012.
  2. ↑ Ashish Rajadhyaksha; Paul Willemen (2014). Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema. Taylor & Francis. p. 1994. ISBN 978-1-135-94325-7.
  3. ↑ Meghnad Desai (2013). PAKEEZAH. HarperCollins Publishers India. pp. 44–. ISBN 978-93-5116-023-6.
  4. 1 2 Hochman, Stanley (1 January 1984). McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama: An International Reference Work in 5 Volumes. VNR AG. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-07-079169-5. Retrieved 3 October 2012.
  5. ↑ Gāragī, Balawanta (1962). Theatre in India. Theatre Arts Books. p. 156. Retrieved 3 October 2012.


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, April 16, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.