Tagore’s Drama Synthesis of Myths, Legends and Folklores: A Medium of Social Reformation

Abstract

Rabindranath Tagore symbolizes the true spirit of Indian thought. He being a philosopher, novelist, poet, painter, dramatist as well as an educator exhibited the problems of society through his dramatic plays and acted as a social reformer. India is well known for its legends, myths, folklores and Tagore brilliantly portrays the same through his drama. Myth is “one story in a mythology-a system of hereditary stories of ancient origin which were once believed to be true by a particular cultural group, which served to explain why the world is as it is and things happen as they do, to provide a rationale for social customs and observances and to establish the sanctions for rules by which people conduct their lives. If the protagonist is a human being rather than a supernatural being, the traditional story is called legend.” (Abrams 170) whereas folklore “is a collective name applied to verbal compositions, social rituals and sayings handed down mostly by word of mouth” (Abrams 100). In the contemporary times man is looking for his roots, values and his quest leads them to folklores, myths and legends. It serves as a beacon not only to the present generation but for future generations as well. It also promotes strong sense of national identity and preserves the history of rituals, practices, culture, important places and persons. Jung holds that a civilized man unconsciously preserves concepts, ideas and values of life which was cherished by his distant forefathers, and such ideas are expressed in a society’s or race’s myths and rituals. Creative writers and critics use myths, folktales and legends in their works to analyze texts and discover mythological patterns. Myths, folktales and legends in a way provide structure and communicative power to literature. Tagore fused images, symbols, levels of reference, illusions, songs together and presented a kaleidoscopic vision of the world of reality in form of drama. Rabindranath Tagore’s plays are a book of celebrated humanitarian ideals. The Nobel laureate was drawn irresistibly to the myths, legends and cultural symbols in order to propagate these ideals in the modern world through his plays. Most of the mythical tales, legends are drawn from either translated or original sources like Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas and Buddhist folktales. Tagore’s drama includes varieties like musical drama, verse drama, poetic drama, prose drama, symbolic drama etc. In musical drama Tagore fused music and drama together where dialogue is sung and not spoken. His plays like The genius of Valmiki (Valmiki Pratibha, 1881), The Fateful Hunt (Kal mrigaya, 1882), and The Play of Illusion (Mayar Khela) comes under the category of musical drama. In verse drama the singing voice changes to talking voice and this heightens the dramatic quality and expressiveness of drama. Plays like Nature’s Revenge (Prakritir Pratisodh), King and the Queen (Raja O Rani), Sacrifice (Visarjan) comes under category of verse plays by Tagore. Poetic drama includes Gandhari’s Prayer (Gandharir Abedan), The Faithful Wife (Sati), Karna and Kunti Dialogue (Karna- Kunti Samvad) and many more. Tagore explored various sub-genre of drama and adventurously continued his journey in the field of drama writing as the architect of new India’s cultural Renaissance.