Prologue:-
Shakuntala begins with a prologue that frames the rest of the play. After a poem praising Shiva, an actor acting as the director of the play has an exchange with the lead actress in which he doubts the quality of the performance and she reassures him with a song.
Act 1
The first act opens with Dushyanta, the king, stumbling on a hermitage as he hunts. He listens as a monk tells him he should not hunt there, and he proceeds, finding Shakuntala—a beautiful maiden. While he initially believes her to be a commoner, it is later revealed that she is a water nymph who was adopted by one of the monks at the hermitage. The play makes it clear that she is an object of sexual desire and a symbol of beauty. Dushyanta introduces himself under a false identity, and the two begin to fall in love.
Act 2
One of the king's companions, a fool, gives a monologue noting how smitten the king is and providing him an excuse to stay at the hermitage. The king attempts to hide his true feelings for Śakuntalā, given that at this point he still believes her to be a commoner.
Act 3
Śakuntalā and Dushyanta confess their love for each other. While Śakuntalā is initially worried about rushing into a marriage, she eventually decides to give in to her feelings, and the lovers consummate their relationship between the third and fourth scenes.
Act 4
The king returns to his palace to attend to some duties, and Śakuntalā, distracted by love, fails to feed a sage who arrives at the hermitage. Full of anger, the sage curses her so that Dushyanta will not remember her unless she can provide an object to remind him of their love. The king has given her a ring, so she does not worry about finding a suitable object.
Act 5
Śakuntalā arrives at the palace, having lost the ring. Dushyanta fails to recognize her, and she is thrown out of the palace and abandoned by the monks who traveled with her.
Act 6
A fisherman finds the ring in the mouth of a fish. He is interrogated by the police because the ring bears a royal symbol on it, and the ring eventually makes its way back to the palace, where Dushyanta sees it and remembers Śakuntalā.
Act 7
Finally, Śakuntalā and Dushyanta are reunited in heaven, along with their son. The gods are pleased and send the three back to earth to live together.
Summary:-
The powerful Dushyant king comes hunting in a peaceful forest of hermits and meets three young girls, watering flowers and trees. In one of them, Shakuntala, he falls in love at first sight. Posing himself as a servant of the king, Dushyanta asks who she is, for she fears that, being of a different origin than he, according to the law of caste, he can not belong to him. However, from the friends of Shakuntala, he learns that she is also the daughter of King Viswamitra and the divine maiden Menaka, who left her in the care of the head of the monastery of the sage Kanwa. In turn, when demons-rakshas attack the monastery and Dusyantes have to defend it, it turns out that he is not the king’s servant, but the great king himself.
Shakuntala is captivated by the courage, nobility and courteous conduct of Dushyant no less than he is by her beauty and modesty. But for some time the lovers do not dare to open their feelings to each other. And only once, when the king accidentally overhears the conversation of Shakuntala with her friends, in which she confesses that she is burned day and night by passionate love for Dushyanta, the tsar makes her reciprocal confession and swears that although there are many beauties in his palace, “only two will make up the glory of his kind: the sea surrounded by the seas and Shakuntala. “
Receiving father Shakuntala Kanwa was not at this time in the monastery: he went on a long 
pilgrimage. Therefore, Dushyant and his beloved conclude a marriage union according to the Gandharva rite, which does not require the consent of the parents and the wedding ceremony. Shortly thereafter, called for by urgent tsarist affairs, Dushyanta briefly, as he hopes, leaves for his capital. And just in his absence the abode is visited by the sage Durvasas. Immersed in the thought of the Dushanate, Shakuntala does not notice him, and the angry sage curses her for involuntary hostility, condemning that the one she loves does not remember her, “like a drunk does not remember the words spoken before.” Friends ask Durvasas to soften his curse, which, fortunately, Shakuntala did not even hear, and, propitiated by them, he promises that the curse will lose power when the king sees the ring,
Meanwhile, Father Kanwa returns to the monastery. He blesses the marriage of his adopted daughter, who, according to him, is already waiting for a child that brings benefit to the whole world, and, giving her wise instructions, sends two of her disciples to her husband-king. Shakuntala comes to the majestic palace, amazing with its splendor, so not resembling its modest monastery. And here Dusyantha, bewitched by the curse of Durvasas, does not recognize her and sends him away. Shakuntala tries to show him the ring he gave himself, but discovers that there is no ring – she lost it on the way, and the tsar finally rejects her. In desperation, Shakuntala is praying for the earth to open and absorb it, and then in lightning lightning her mother Menaka descends from heaven and carries her with her.
After some time, the palace guard leads a fisherman suspected of stealing a precious ring. It turns out that this ring is the ring of Shakuntala, which the fisherman found in the belly of the fish he caught. As soon as Dusyantha saw the ring, his memory returned to him. Love, remorse, sorrow of separation torment him: “My heart was asleep when it was knocked gazelleokaya, and now it has awakened to learn the torments of repentance!” All the efforts of the courtiers to comfort or entertain the king are in vain, and awakens the Dushan from hopeless sadness only the arrival of Matali, the charioteer of the king of the gods of Indra.
Character Analysis
Shakuntala:-
Shakuntala is the heroine of the play. A beautiful young woman, she is the daughter of a royal sage and the nymph Menaka, and the foster daughter of Kanva. She lives as an ascetic in Kanva’s hermitage, where she tends the sacred trees and loves them like sisters. When King Dusyanta visits the hermitage, she is instantly attracted to him and vice versa. However, she is shy and modestly conceals her feelings in his presence. When Dusyanta is to leave, she becomes gravely ill with longing. Her friends Anasuya and Priyamvada hatch a plan to convey Shakuntala’s feelings to Dusyanta, but he overhears a love poem she’s written, and they’re quickly married by common consent. She soon becomes pregnant with Dusyanta’s son, Sarvadamana. After Dusyanta returns to the capital, Shakuntala is distracted and accidentally incurs the curse of Durvasas, ensuring that when she joins Dusyanta in the capital, he fails to recognize her or to remember their marriage. Though she boldly defends herself against the King’s denial, it’s to no avail, and Shakuntala begs the earth to swallow her whole. Then she’s spirited away by nymphs to the celestial realm, Marica’s hermitage, where she gives birth and raises her son. When Dusyanta discovers her there six years later, she doesn’t recognize him at first, but they’re quickly reconciled and return to his capital together, along with their son.
King Dusyanta:-
King Dusyanta, a member of the Puru lineage, reigns in northern India, with his capital at 
Hastinapura. He is the hero of the play. He is attentive to his royal duties, especially those of caring for the oppressed and protecting religious practitioners. At the beginning of the play, he visits Kanva’s hermitage and immediately falls in love with Shakuntala. When he learns that their feelings are mutual, he quickly marries her in secret. After his business at the hermitage is concluded, however, he must return to the capital, and Durvasas’s curse ensures that he forgets Shakuntala and the fact that they are married. Accordingly, when Shakuntala travels to the capital to join him, he rejects her, but he is uneasy about their encounter. After he sees the signet ring he’d given Shakuntala, breaking the curse, he is overwhelmed by remorse. A demon-fighting assignment from Indra’s charioteer, Matali, recalls him to his duties. When, six years later, he is rewarded with a visit to Marica’s celestial hermitage, he discovers his son, Sarvadamana, and is reconciled with Shakuntala.
Sarvadamana:-
Sarvadamana is King Dusyanta’s and Shakuntala’s son. He is destined to become a world emperor, a fate prophesied by Vaikhanasa at the beginning of the play. He doesn’t appear in the play until the final act, when Dusyanta visits Marica’s celestial realm (where Sarvadamana was born and raised) and discovers that the willful, spoiled little boy is his son. Sarvadamana then goes to Dusyanta’s capital with his reunited parents. In later life he will be called Bharata, “Sustainer.”
Durvasas:-
Durvasas is a hot-tempered sage who visits the hermitage, then places a curse on Shakuntala and King Dusyanta because Shakuntala, distracted by her new husband’s absence and her pregnancy, fails to welcome him with appropriate formality. Durvasas’s curse causes Dusyanta to forget Shakuntala and the fact that they’re married, with the exception that if the King sees a memento, such as his signet ring, the curse will be lifted.
Marica:-
Marica is the father of the god Indra and a divine sage, the head of the celestial hermitage to which Shakuntala was spirited away by nymphs and has since lived with her son, Sarvadamana. At the end of the play, he explains Durvasas’s curse to Shakuntala and King Dusyanta, blesses their family, and sends them to live together in the King’s court.
---------
1 Comments
Thank you 😊
ReplyDeletePlease do not enter any spam link in the comment box