'''Aga Hashr Kashmiri (1879-1935)'''


Scenarist and best-known early 20th C. Urdu-
Hindi playwright of enormously influential
Parsee theatre plays. On contract to the Alfred
Theatre in Bombay (1901-5) and then (after
1916) to the Madan Theatres’ Elphinstone and
Corinthian companies in Calcutta, providing
adaptations of Shakespeare (A Winter’s Tale
became Mureed-e-Kash, 1899; Measure for
Measure became Shaheed-e-Naaz aka Achhuta
Daman in Hindi, 1902; King John became
Saeed-e-Havas, 1907; Macbeth was Khwab-e-
Hasti). Made a big impact with his linguistic
transpositions of Shakespearean tragedy’s
feudal elements of blood ties and blood feuds,
honour, sacrifice and destiny into Farsi, Arabic
(he knew both languages) and Moorish
legends, simultaneously taking on board the
European baroque’s Orientalist treatment of
such sources. He extended his Shakespearean
matrix to several partially original plays like
Meethi Churi (1902), Safed Khoon (influenced
by King Lear, 1907) and his best-known play,
Yahudi Ki Ladki (1915), all of which were
repeatedly filmed in the silent and early sound
periods. His initial writing style followed the
post-Indrasabha convention of mixing Urdu
prose and poetry with Hindustani music. Later,
with plays like Pehla Pyar (1911) and Van Devi
(1916), he started writing in Hindustani,
shifting away from historicals into socials and
Pauranic mythologicals treated in the social
genre: Bhishma (1925: filmed under his
direction in 1933s), Seeta Banwas (1927). This
linguistic and generic convergence helped,
through his scripts, shape the films of Madan
Theatres (Pati Bhakti, 1922; Paper Parinam,
1924; Dharmapatni, 1926; Aankh Ka Nasha,
1928 and Bharati Balak, 1931, which he also
directed) and formed the persona of New
Theatres’ famed tragedian, K.L. Saigal,
scripting his influential Chandidas (1934),
Yahudi Ki Ladki (1933) and writing his lyrics
(e.g. Prem nagar mein banaoongi ghar main
and Dukh ab din beetat nain). Turki Hoor,
staged 1922 and filmed by J.J. Madan (1924),
cast the male Narmada Shankar in the female
lead, leading to censorship and the deletion of
one scene.

[[Writer]]