The Little Clay Cart (Mrcchakatika): The Construction of Gender and Emotion in Act V, “The Storm”

The Little Clay Cart (Mrcchakatika): The Construction of Gender and Emotion in Act V, “The Storm”

Mohan R. Limaye, Emeritus Professor, Boise State University

With the Assistance of Ms. Kim Price, Honors College, Boise State University

Abstract

In Act V of The Little Clay Cart, a Sanskrit play written in India about 1600 years ago, the playwright Shudraka constructs a poetic duet between Vasantasena, the heroine, and a Vita, her male companion, as they walk to the house of her lover Charudatta in a raging storm.  It has been recognized that this verse exchange provides the audience with “a feast for the ear” through a cascade of lyrical and descriptive exuberance. What has not, however, been appreciated is that it also creates an enriched gender-specific persona for Vasantasena and develops more fully the dominant emotion of the play, erotic love. The poetic images and figures of speech employed by Vasantasena and the Vita as they describe the storm portray their differences in gender and mood.  Generally speaking, while Vasantasena expresses her nuanced feelings for Charudatta and the pangs of love in separation, the Vita describes the storm in manly images of power and harsh-sounding syllables.  Shudraka, a skillful dramatist, reveals in Act V more facets of Vasantasena’s personality with all her charm, anxieties, vulnerabilities, and sensuousness than anywhere else in the play, and all of this through her poetic description of the storm.  As a result we, the receptive and appreciative ( rasik and sahrudaya) audience, know her, love her, empathize with her and cherish her all the more.  This is the dramatic and aesthetic significance of the poetic duet between Vasantasena and her Vita.  In the Storm scene, Shudraka thus connects the form with the content and the style with the character.  This is how lyrical poetry in a play can serve a dramatic purpose.    

Kālidāsa’s Shakuntala and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: The Child as Redeemer

Kālidāsa’s Shakuntala and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: The Child as Redeemer

Mohan R. Limaye

Professor Emeritus

Boise State University

This paper attempts to demonstrate that, though the three-member family (father, mother and child) is celebrated in Shakuntala and The Winter’s Tale, the child is thematically the most important of the three members and that the child serves as an archetype of “savior” or “redeemer” in both these plays. The child occupies a central place as far as the two plays’ narrative and thematic architectures are concerned. The quest of Dushyanta and Shakuntala, the hero and the heroine, is on a deeper level for a child. The king needs an heir to the throne, and so do his subjects for a stable order. Similarly, in The Winter’s Tale, the stability of Leontes’ kingdom rests on Perdita, his daughter, after Prince Mamillius dies. In Shakuntala, the birth of a son with regal insignia on the palm of his hand not only leads to the reunion of the separated couple, Dushyanta and Shakuntala, but also confers social approval on their match, restores his mother’s reputation, and concludes the play with subdued happiness. Notably, both Perdita and Bharata are discovered and recognized first; and then their respective mothers are “resurrected.” As his name “All-Tamer (Sarva-damana)” indicates, he symbolizes the maturation of his parents’ irrepressible passion into deep and steady conjugal love. The son, born to a king but raised in a hermitage, also resolves another thematic conflict in the play – country versus court. In The Winter’s Tale, Perdita also brings together the court and the country in a similar fashion: born to royal parents but raised by a shepherd, she too harmonizes this opposition between town and country. This is how the child serves as a redeemer in both these plays.