Macbeth becomes Maqbool; Difficulties of Adaption

One of the most common opening lines on Shakespeare is “Shakespeare’s genius needs no introduction” which is true indeed. We are not only aware of his genius already but have our own ideas and arguments regarding his greatness, glory and genius! One of the chief characteristic of his writings is its durability and universality. Shakespeare remains the most adapted of writers in the 20th century with his works translated in many languages and transformed into movies and other kinds of screen adaptations. The present paper tries to explore the difficulties of contextualizing a Shakespearean play into an Indian movie and the process of appropriation that the director Vishal Bharadwaj undertakes