Reinterpretation of Myth History and Folklore in the Select Plays of Girish Karnad A Critical Study

Abstract

The present research is centered on the three plays of Girish Karnad namely, Yayati, Tughlaq and Hayavadana. Let s have a brief introduction to the plays: newlineKarnad s first play Yayati published in 1961 launched his career as a playwright and established an approach to mythic narrative that has shaped many of the mature later plays. It reinterprets an ancient Hindu myth on the theme of responsibility and emerges almost like a self-consciously existentialist dream. Regarding this play, Karnad frankly confessed in an interview that he wanted to tell people I had read Sartre, Camus and others. It is a wordy, didactical play in the style of the French dramatist Jean Anouilh, but it prefigures his later works in the modernist thoroughness with which it reshapes mythical material, redistributes thematic emphases and invents new characters to complicate the dramatic potential of the story. newlineHis next play, Tughlaq published in 1964, marked a radical change of direction after Yayati and inaugurated a second genre that has since been central to his dramaturgy. It explores the paradox of the idealistic Sultan Muhammad Tughlaq whose reign is considered to be one of the spectacular regimes of history. In connection with this play, Karnad had also revealed in course of the same interview that he read a work of Kannada criticism which proved that many historical plays written earlier were costume plays and that no one attempted to relate a historical episode to modern sensibility like Shaw. This inspired me to write such a play in Kannada. newlineThe third play, Hayavadana, selected for the analysis, published in 1971, marked another major change of direction, not only in his playwriting but in post-independence theatre as a whole, because it was the first work to translate into notable practice the debate over the usefulness of indigenous performance genres in the development of a new, quintessentially Indian theatre. Having explored the genres of mythic-existentialist and historical drama in Yayati and Tughlaq , Karnad had experi