The Bhand Tradition in Shakespearean Comedy: Twelfth Night and As You Like It

Abstract

Bhands or Mirasis are the traditional entertainers of Pakistani and Indian Punjab. Their wit and wisdom; dancing and singing; humor and satire; and skill and craft, resemble those of Shakespearean Clowns. Touchstones and Feste, the two fools of Shakespearean comedies, exhibit several characteristics like those of Bhands or Mirasis. Both Touchstone and Feste speak wisely, make satirical remarks, give ironical statements, involve in a chain of repartee and use several other comic devices to create humor. Bhands practice almost the same comic weapons. Touchstone’s use of scatology and lampoon, Festes’ singing and aphoristic speech bring them very close to the traditional Bhands or Mirasis of Pakistan and India. This study juxtaposes the Bhands and Mirasis with Shakespearean clowns on the basis of the commonalities of the means and skills they use to produce humour. This study also explores the Shakespearean comic aspects in Twelfth Night and As you like it under the theoretical framework of Subjective Readers Response Theory focusing on Touchstones and Feste in As You like it and Twelfth Night respectively. This research paper also tries to reveal how the traditional Bhands outshine Shakespearean clowns in a way as the latter were the mouthpieces of Shakespeare and the former did not follow any scrip and spoke extemporaneously on the stage, especially, in the Punjabi stage dramas in Pakistan.