The Seduction That Is Shakespeare

My first fascinations for Shakespeare grew quite unnoticed and I don't remember how he came to be my favourite poet in English . So, I can hardly say what was the first thing that made me marvel at his poetic genius . It was probably his poems or rather songs from his dramas that bade me , " Ducdame , ducdame , ducdame."

If you look askance at ducdame , let me quote from Shakespeare himself :-

Amiens : What's that "ducdame"?

Jaques : Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle . (As You Like It , Act -II, Scene - V )

So the musical in him perhaps made the first appeals to the musical in me and even before I was in my early teens , in the sky of my mind , some Shakespearean songs blew with their music of :

Then heigh-ho , the holly!

This life is most jolly . (As You Like It , Act -II, Scene - VII )

Finding from the old books in my house , I read those poems . I loved to sing them . I liked a lot the song sung by Ariel in 'The Tempest '. But, in those days I hardly knew that it was casting a permanent spell on me .

Until I came to Patna College and studied something more of English and Sanskrit literatures ,

I did not know that I had already developed an adoration for Shakespeare and a somewhat similar feeling was growing in me for Kalidasa in Sanskrit .

In the library of the college , Shakespearean Tragedies by A C Bradley was one of my best loved books . The spell grows ever more and makes me write on him .