Shakespeare faced the pressure of quickness. He had less time to finish his work. Also, he was not the most erudite or skilled practitioner of grammar.

“We need whacky stories, something out of the ordinary, and at the same time the audience must connect with it.”

I don’t think Shakespeare was whacky. His stories were simple and the legends were borrowed. His stories contained nothing ‘out of the ordinary’. They were ordinary. What gave them credence was that they were quick and unpretentious. As I told you, the guards in Othello don’t bring out their personal culture and character before describing their fear about the dead king. They immediately describe the action. Thus, the audience connected with the events.

Shakespeare hurried through many of his plays. He wrote and tore pages. But somehow he has managed to attain an audience that speaks highly of his literary skills.

I believe that it is possible to write an artistic stage-play/screen-play within a fortnight.

Every successful play/movie is broken down into a formula. So Shakespeare’s skill is nothing but a formula for many Indian practitioners of cinema and stage. Hence the term ‘masala’ is attached to his writings.

He seems to have been neck deep in masala productions of plays: how did he manage to write such stuff?

Is it that his times was good for strong verbal material and racy script, and ours are degraded by gaming, hysterical serials punctuated by classy advertisement breaks, and the callertunes of cellphones?

No one seems to be paying attention for any amount of time to anything these days.

So people try it play it safe… Regrind the same material with the same faces…

Regards,