Shakespeare Criticism in Bengal: How Ideology Determines Critical Perspectives

The objective of the present essay is to investigate the critical assumptions and presuppositions about the function of criticism and the role of critic, to look at the political affiliations and theoretical orientations of the critics and to regard the other cultural, social and intellectual factors that determined the formation of the bulk of Shakespeare criticism in Bengal, India. According to a recent critic, ‘in constructing the history of criticism we are not tracing the exfoliation through history of a linear, if irregular process: it is history of criticisms which is at issue.