Fifteen Plays of Rabindranath Tagore _ In his won English version

Rabindranath Tagore worte more than sixty plays both short and full length which could be classified into verse musical allegorical, social, comical plays and dance dramas. While many consider Tagore as the greatest playwright of Bengali literature some think that his dialogues are too heavy with literary layout which fail to communicate to the general audience and structures of some of his plays lack dramatic interest. Unfortunately, compared to his wide acclaim as a poet or lyricist, he did not get the expected recognition as a playwright during his lifetime….

The 150th birth anniversary of the poet-playwright opened an opportunity to revisit him plays. Though most of his plays were produced both in India and Bangladesh, the occasion generated a fresh interest among the theatre workers to present new interpretation of his plays At the same time we thought why not bring out a compilation of his plays in English so that the non-Bengali readers and theatre producers can have an opportunity to know Tagore as a playwright and the chances are some producers find interest in his plays resulting in production of his plays in the world stage. The ideal thing would have been to put together the best known translations of his plays by different people. But because of copywright complications, we decided to go for only those play which were written or translated by Tagore himself.