30 Rupees for Shakespeare: a Consideration of Imperial Theatre in India

30 Rupees for Shakespeare: .a Consideration of Imperial Theatre in India CHRISTINE MANGALA FROST In E. M. Forster's A Passage to India Adela Quested, like Mrs. Moore, wants to see the real India. Instead, both have to sit through an amateur production of Cousin Kate. Adela is appalled: she predicts rather gloomily that her desire to see the "real India" will be thwarted by her compatriots: It'll end in an elephant ride, it always does. Look at this evening. Cousin Kate! Imagine, Cousin KateP Mrs. Moore is equally dismayed when she finds that her son Ronny, who had seen Cousin Kate in London and "scorned it," is now prepared to pretend that it is "a good play." At the "bridge party" given in response to Adela's desire to see the real India, the English avoid the natives and talk among themselves . And the subject of their conversation? - Cousin Kate. Forster does not spare them: They spoke of Cousin Kate. They had tried to reproduce their own attitude to life upon the stage, and to dress up as the middle-class English people they actually were. Next year they would do Quality Street or The Yeomen of the Guard. Save for this annual incursion, they left literature alone.~ Forster's acerbic presentation of the English indulging in what in India might seem fatuous cannot be dismissed as a caricature. In an article entitled "Art in Afghanistan," an army officer reporting to the September 1881 edition of The Theatre recognizes the quaintness of staging English drawing-room comedy in remote parts of India, but exclaims, "What would the Indian station be without its amateur dramatic society? Simply nowhere.'" Unlike Mrs..Moore and Adela, Lieutenant Simpson finds the poor taste of the Englishman in India excusable: Modern Drama, 35 (1992) 90 Imperial Theatre in India 91 In no part of the world is the theatre a more acceptable fo~ of amusement, and no part of the world is. from its climate, more thoroughly unsuited for it than India. ... the enervating effect of the climate produces its evil results on the Englishman. and a play which the same man would watch with interest at home he turns from with disgust in India. It is too heavy for him. "We don't want the legitimate drama out here," he says, "with a thennometer at a century. Give us a light comedy. or better still a burlesque, or comic opera, but not too 100g."4 The writer avers that for all its deficiencies such theatre was valuable because it assuaged home-sickness and promoted a "very healthy bond of union.'" Forster, however, alerts us to the fact that even a poor play like Cousill Kate, performed by amateurs behind closed doors and barred windows so as to prevent the servants seeing their memsahibs acting. can become a cultural symbol potent in its assertion of the collective strength and solidarity of the imperialists. The English in India saw themselves as natural successors to the Moghuls; and, in general, to be an imperialist was regarded as an obligation that few could avoid. As Macaulay pointed out in his Notes 011 the Indian Pellal Code, It is natural and inevitable that in the minds of a people accustomed to be governed by Englishmen, the idea of an Englishman should be associated with the idea of Government. Every Englishman participates in the power of Government, though he holds no office.6 Lord Curzon went a step further. In a letter to Morley, Curzon asserted that he was ... an imperialist heart and soul. Imperial expansion seems to me an inevitable necessity and carries a noble and majestic obligation. I do not see how any Englishman . .. can fail to see that we came here in obedience to what I call the decree of Providence, for the lasting benefit of millions of the human race. We often make great mistakes here; but I do finnly believe that there is no Government in the world that rests on so secure a moral basis, or is more fiercely animated by duty,' It is not surprising that the arts that the rulers brought with them and assiduously propagated have become suspect. In the...