Afterword: Reflections from Afar, with Hope for our Collective Future

Abstract

Appearing in the wake of a decade of rapid growth in Indian screen Shakespeare as an academic subspeciality, ‘Adapting Shakespearean Romance in Indian Cinema’ reveals how cross-cultural comparison and attention to popular reception can profitably modify inherited critical assumptions for all Shakespeare’s readership. Taking ‘romance’ as a key term, this afterword considers the possibilities and potential problems of recasting its dominant meaning as thematic, focusing on modern love, rather than as a dramatic subgenre. In a time of increasing political censorship and existential threats to gender studies, greater engagement and exchange between those in other areas of Shakespeare studies with this rich cinematic corpus and its aligned subfield of cross-disciplinary criticism provides reasons for hope and renewed community.