KARACHI Scholarly presentations, rib-tickling mimes and serious but ill-rehearsed enactments of scenes marked the celebrations related to playwright and poet William Shakespeare's birth anniversary organised by the English department of the University of Karachi at its arts auditorium on Thursday.

Two students of the English department, Sana and Yusra Husain, told the receptive audience in their introductory remarks that the day was dedicated not only to the bard but also to a former teacher of the department, the late Rafat Karim, who was a known Shakespeare lover.

A third-year student, Ammarah Saqib, then began the proceedings by reading out a Shakespearean sonnet. It was followed by a presentation by Khurram Ali Shafique on William Shakespeare and Allama Iqbal. Comparing the two literary figures, he said that Iqbal held the bard in high esteem just as he had enormous respect for Rumi and Jesus Christ.

He informed the audience that this year, on Shakespeare's birth anniversary, a plaque was going to be put at his birthplace on which Iqbal's 14-line Urdu poem on the great English playwright was written.

Mr Shafique then spoke on an alternative reading to the play The Tempest and highlighted the seven points of conflict that exist in the drama that are similar to the elements mentioned by a classical Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi in his poem Seven Beauties.Dr Farhana Wazir Ali of the English department then recited her poem on Shakespeare which she said was a spoof on a certain publishing house. She sounded eloquent and was heard by the audience with rapt attention.

A scene from Shakespeare's play, King Lear, enacted by second-year students left much to be desired. The actor who played the part of the king, not to mention those who were in the characters of his three daughters (Regan, Goneril and Cordelia) fluffed their lines and looked under-prepared.

After that Prof Kaleem Raza Khan presented his paper “Shakespeare on the subcontinental stage before 1947”. Although the professor had read the paper on quite a few previous occasions, its noteworthy research work made it refreshingly interesting. He briefly traced the history of theatre in the subcontinent, telling students and literature buffs that King Richard III was the first original play put up by British soldiers in the subcontinent in 1808.

But the most interesting part of Prof Raza's talk was the info on early Urdu translations of Shakespeare's plays. For example, the title of As You Like It was translated as Jo Aap Pasand Karein by Narain Parshad Betab; or Love's Labour Lost became Yaron Ki Mehnat Barbad in Urdu. Also, when adaptations and borrowing started to happen, one of the most discussed Shakespearean tragedies Hamlet was altered with a happy ending by Ahmed Husain Khan.

Then fourth-year students performed a scene from The Merchant of Venice, followed by third-year students' enactment of a scene from Julius Caesar. Both acts had their plus points and flaws, mainly because the students were overexcited and under-rehearsed. Not so the final-year (evening classes) batch their funny take on Hamlet was well received, particularly the intermittent appearance of the ghost of Hamlet's father from the coffin amused everybody. The script however lacked the punch that could've complemented the acting.

Faisal Nazir's paper “Shakespeare not of an age but for all times” was a thought-provoking one.

It pertinently raised the question of the universal relevance of the bard as opposed to the humanist paradigm.First-year students' mime of A Midsummer Night's Dream was a bit amateurish but the day was brilliantly rounded off by final-year's take on Elizabethan Stock Characters (borrowed from a Rowan Atkinson skit). The three girls who took part in the skit were good and had the audience in stitches.

In the end, the chairman of the department of English, Dr Munir Wasti, appreciated and acknowledged the teachers and students for putting up a decent show, and remarked that Shakespeare was fixed in his age with elements that are related to later ages.