Shakespeare and the Shahnama (Persian Book of Kings)

The 2-hour programme, held between 5-7pm on 14 June 2024, entertained close to 50 members of the public. It paid attention to select characters and stories found in Persian lore from the Shahnama, the Book of Kings, and a few of Shakespeare’s histories, tragedies, and comedies. It explored the vehicle of story-telling through oral, translated, and visual media and made cross-cultural comparisons. The event encompassed two performances of poetry conducted by Zahra Afsah with musical accompaniment on the rubab instrument by Milad Yousofi. Zahra first shared with the audience a Persian tale on the disposal of a tyrant oppressing his people that had parallels to themes from Julius Caesar. The other demonstrated the influence of the Shahnama on later story-telling traditions, and presented an adaptation about a slave girl outwitting a conceited royal prince; one could easily envision the repartee between Kate and Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew!

Interspersed were two talks dwelling on transmutation: one on a transfer in language given by Mohsen Qassemi, who discussed his experiences carrying out Persian-to-English linguistic translations of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, and Julius Caesar. He discussed the ways in which translation operates to make tales accessible and activates collective memory; how in the process some concepts are lost while others are gained. He also divulged the reception of Shakespeare in contemporary Iranian society, including the misunderstandings of the regime’s censors to a variant definition of the word “shrew,” and resonances between Shakespearean passages about overcoming tyranny and political corruption and timely protests in Iranian cities upon the death of Mahsa Amini in autumn 2022.

I contributed a lecture on the visual articulation of select tales from the Persian poetry of the Shahnama on various surfaces (paper, wall, and ceramic) and explained the transference between oral and visual media. I discussed paintings from the pre-Islamic period and in post-Islamic manuscripts from Iran and Central Asia across a millennium between the 7th to the 17th centuries to explain the historical and cultural significance of the Shahnama tradition before and after the tales circulated in written verse. I compared these contents to Shakespearean subject matter from the Anglo-European sphere, and examined the religious, political, and cultural relations between England and Iran during the early-modern period. Both Elizabethan England and Safavid Iran in the 16th century were each erecting and exaggerating linguistic, geographic, and confessional distinctions between their own spheres and those of their neighbours. Parallel developments in Iran and England were related to confessional tensions taking place in their realms (Sunni vs. Shi’ite, Catholic vs. Protestant), a heightened interest in preceding dynasties and rulers in their realms, as well as the expansionist ambitions of certain monarchs. By 1588 under Queen Elizabeth I, England had become a great nation with a rich dramatic language. By 1598, Shah Abbas the Great had retaken Iranian provinces previously seized and presided over a highly flourishing capital.

Among the more fascinating discoveries I made while researching my lecture topic, I found that radical Protestants sought to distance themselves from Roman history, both Catholic and imperial, and found a suitable model in ancient Persia! Thus Early-modern England and Iran were laying claim to a common heritage rooted in a pre-Islamic past. Ottoman encroachments into European lands would also alter the English—Iranian relationship and bring them even closer to achieve political fraternity.

The four participants heartily thank the Centre for Early Modern Studies for providing funding to offset travel costs for the performers coming from London, and to treat the audience to a delicious reception at the end of the programme. It was our intention to shift attention to visual and poetic art forms from the eastern Islamic world produced between the 16th-17th centuries. Shakespeare and the Shahnama were both significant in the early-modern period, and the programme explored their rich themes impacting the cultures of English and Persian speakers. By linking two vibrant literary traditions from two distinct cultural spheres, the audience was invited to question whether forms and concepts for epic, romantic, and historical subject matter are universal and independently conceived, or whether there could have been cross-overs of ideas and materials from common sources derived from antiquity.

Report by Jaimee Comstock-Skipp

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford (2024-2026)
Non-Stipendiary Junior Research Fellow at New College, University of Oxford (2023-2024)