Tuesday, November 3, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org

Drama

Plays from Bengal, in English editions.

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Texts

Chitra — Rabindranath TagoreRabindranath Tagore’s lyrical drama in one act and nine scenes, in the English edition published by the Macmillan Company in New York (first published 1914, this reprint 1926): the Mahabharata story of Arjuna and Chitrangada of Manipur, told as the tale of Chitra, a princess raised as a man, who wins the hermit Arjuna with a year’s borrowed beauty from the gods of love and spring and at the end stands before him as herself.Red Oleanders — Rabindranath TagoreRabindranath Tagore’s drama in one act, published in English by Macmillan in London in 1925: the play of Yaksha Town, where diggers known only by numbers raise gold for a King who lives hidden behind a network, and of Nandini, who wears red oleanders and waits for her lover Rañjan, with all its speeches, stage directions and songs.The Cycle of Spring — Rabindranath TagoreRabindranath Tagore’s play of song and dialogue, in the English edition published by Macmillan in London (first edition 1917, this reprint 1919): a prelude at a troubled king’s court, where the poet Kabi-shekhar answers the king’s fear of age by staging a play, and four acts in which a band of youths chases the Old Man, each opened by a Song-Prelude of the Disrobing of Winter.The King of the Dark Chamber — Rabindranath TagoreRabindranath Tagore’s play in twenty scenes, in the English edition published by Macmillan in London in 1918: the drama of Queen Sudarshana, who meets her husband, a King no one in his kingdom has seen, only in a dark chamber, takes a handsome pretender for him at the spring festival, flees when she sees the King’s true form by the light of a fire, and returns to him on foot along the dusty road.The Post Office — Rabindranath TagoreRabindranath Tagore’s play in two acts, translated from the Bengali by Devabrata Mukherjee and published in New York by the Macmillan Company in 1914: the story of Amal, a sick child kept indoors by his doctor’s orders, who talks from his window with a dairyman, a watchman, a flower girl and the village boys, and waits for a letter from the King at the new Post Office across the road.