The Art of Adaptation: Shakespeare's Macbeth and Vishal Bhardwaj's Maqbool

This paper focusses on the comparative analysis of William Shakespeare's play, Macbeth and its screen adaptation Maqbool (2004) by Indian film director Vishal Bhardwaj. Shakespeare is one of the most produced screen writer in cinematic history and his works have transcended the barriers of language and culture (Brown, 2011). Although, the Hindi film industry, popularly known as Bollywood is replete with examples of producing films which are inspired by the Bard's works (Kapadia, 2014) Bhardwaj's films stand out because the filmmaker expresses his indebtedness to Shakespeare in no uncertain terms (Shahani and Charry, 2014). The Researchers through this exercise have studied the extent to which Vishal Bhardwaj has adapted the Bard's play into his film. The degree to which the screen adaptation has remained true to the original text has also been analyzed. The Researchers have also analyzed how similar or different the major characters represented on the screen are from those portrayed in the play. The effect of change in language, culture and lifestyle have also been discussed in this paper.