When our train arrived at Stratford station, it was still early in the morning. About 150 kilometers northwest of London, in the Warwickshire county of England, sits the market town of Stratford-upon-Avon on the River Avon. A big bronze statue of a jester would elegantly greet us at one end of Henley Street, which is now pedestrianized and where we will be in less than ten minutes. As is well known, court jesters were prevalent in medieval Europe and frequently appeared in Shakespeare’s plays. This statue is of Touchstone, Duke Frederick’s court jester from the play “As You Like It.”

According to the sculptor, James Butter, the Jester represents the precarious balance of life: “My point being that we dance through life finely balancing optimism above us, but tragedy lurks behind.” Numerous cafes on both sides of Henley Street are prepared to provide tourists with refreshments. I found the cafe “As You Like It,” to be the most intriguing. Our destination is William Shakespeare’s birthplace, a restored 16th-century half-timbered house that is now a small museum referred to as “a mecca for all lovers of literature.” And how fascinating was it to discover a bust of another poet in the garden as we were leaving Shakespeare’s house from the backyard?

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“Rabindranath Tagore – Poet, Painter, Playwright, Thinker, Teacher – The Voice of India” is the inscription on the York stone plinth. There is a backstory behind this, though. In 1964, during the quarter centennial celebrations of Shakespeare’s birth, the Calcutta Art Society handed an ivory tablet of Tagore’s poem on Shakespeare during a ceremony held at the newly opened Shakespeare Centre. Thirty years later, when Dr. L.M. Singhvi, the Indian High Commissioner to London at the time, saw this tablet on the occasion of the visit to the Shakespeare Centre Library of the VicePresident of India.

Dr. Singhvi, whose own passion for Shakespeare had been sparked by Tagore’s poem while he was an undergraduate at Allahabad in the 1950s, planned for a permanent monument to Tagore at Shakespeare’s birthplace that the annual influx of visitors from the Indian subcontinent could view and appreciate. A bronze bust of a head and shoulders, created by Calcutta sculptor Debabrata Chakraborty, was finally dedicated in its permanent location in the garden in September 1996. William Hawkes, an architect, created a plinth. It comes with a tablet that has the poem that Tagore penned in honour of Shakespeare and that was carved in Bengali script along with his own translation: “When by the faraway sea your fiery disappeared from behind the unseen, O Poet, O Sun.

England’s horizon felt you near her breast, and took you to be her own.” It allows one to speculate about the extent to which the British bard influenced Tagore. Shakespeare was first introduced to Tagore in 1874, when he was just 13. But rather than being inspirational, it was more of a challenge. Rabindranath’s tutor, Ganchandra Bhattacharjya, chose to use an unusual method to get him to attend his English classes because the young student was resistant to traditional instruction. He assigned him the duty of translating portions of Macbeth into Bengali.

The three witches’ scene is famously depicted by young Rabi. Rabindranath’s early poetic life was clearly influenced by Macbeth. A lengthy poem, “Abhilash,” which appeared in the Bengali periodical “Tattvabodhini” in 1796, was undoubtedly influenced by Macbeth. Later, Tagore attended Henry Morley’s English literature classes while a student at University College, London’s Faculty of Arts and Law. “Rabindranath Tagore – A Biography” by Krishna Kripalani tells us that Tagore studied some of Shakespeare’s plays with Morley. Let’s go on to Tagore’s poetry on Shakespeare.

According to Tagore’s remembrance in Shantiniketan in 1921, he wrote the poem “Shakespeare” at Shelaidah in 1915 at the request of the Shakespeare Tercentenary Committee in Britain on the occasion of the English bard’s 300th death anniversary. In the poem’s opening line, Tagore addressed Shakespeare as “Bishwa-Kobi,” or “poet of the world.” A prose translation of the poem in English was published by Oxford University Press in 1916 as part of “A Book of Homage to Shakespeare,” edited by Israel Gollancz, a Shakespeare scholar. In a straightforward but exquisite homage, Tagore depicted Shakespeare’s ascension to the galaxy of world writers in the centuries following his passing, demonstrating how he had become all-conquering and undoubtedly the most beloved author in history, if not the greatest.

“Therefore at this moment, after the end of centuries, the palm groves by the Indian sea raise their tremulous branches to the sky murmuring your praise,” Tagore wrote. Tagore didn’t, however, write a single comprehensive book, essay, article, or chapter on Shakespeare except for that one poem. However, he frequently invoked Shakespeare to support his own writings. The poet appeared to be an impersonal critic of the Bard, despite his profound admiration and appreciation for him. Shakespeare makes multiple appearances in Tagore’s works, just like Maharishi Valmiki’s does. “Shakespeare has opened the doors to a gallery of human character that will be crowded with people for generations to come,” for instance, according to Tagore’s essay “Sahityer Mulya” (The value of literature).

“The ambition of Macbeth, the jealousy of Othello, would be at best sensational in police court proceedings; but in Shakespeare’s dramas they are carried among the flaming constellations where creation throbs with Eternal Passion, Eternal Pain,” Tagore also wrote in his essay “The Creative Ideal.” Crucially, the Bengali poet Purnendu Patri compiled nearly all of his remarks on Shakespeare. How, therefore, would the philosophy and ideas of the two epitomes of genius – Shakespeare and Tagore – who were born centuries apart in two faraway countries having very different cultures, relate to each other?

Let’s look at an illustration. Shakespeare’s and Rabindranath’s conceptions of kingship are briefly but insightfully compared by Dipendu Chakraborty in the centenary issue of the Bengali literary journal of the University of Calcutta in the Bengali year 1422. Chakraborty thinks that Rabindranath’s ideology is the basis for the play “Lear,” which was written by modern English playwright Edward Bond and subverts Shakespeare’s play. April 23rd is Shakespeare’s birthday, and it falls right before Tagore’s birthday on 25th Baishakh. As a result, Bengalis frequently try to celebrate their birthdays together. Given that the British bard is three centuries older than the Indian thinker, it was impossible for the British bard to know him. Thus, we could be left wondering how they could have valued one another if they had been contemporary.

If Shakespeare had had the chance to read Tagore’s works, how would he have assessed him? Obviously, we would never know. Nonetheless, Kolkata witnessed a few instances of an ambitious performance called “William-Tagore Meet,” in which two of Tollywood’s prominent actors, Biplab Dasgupta and Anashua Majumdar, showcased the intrinsic, timeless poetic qualities of Tagore and Shakespeare on stage.

Renowned elocutionist Sujoy Prasad Chatterjee opened the 2016 programme by imagining what may have happened in heaven if the two bards had been amicable. “How could you write so little in one lifetime?” In an intriguing imaginary dialogue, Tagore poses this question to Shakespeare. Would it have been Tagore’s prime question, then? Was there something more profound Rabindranath wanted to ask? And after reading his enormous lifetime work, what questions would Shakespeare have posed to Tagore? Let’s continue to speculate.

(The writer is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.)