ABSTRACT
Shakespeare said once that the world is a stage. Each of us has a little role to play in its cosmic drama and traverses the world in search of transparent meanings. Yet, the Shakespearean stage is a Western stage with a particular brand of cosmopolitics in which humans lament their loss of purity. The Shakespearean cosmic stories convey ideas standing beyond the ephemerality of petty political polarities and host the dramaturgy of human sociality. Where place is rumoured to be ‘untouched’ by the corrosive passage of time, the West visits to recover and preserve its essence in polaroid and digital cameras as testimony to ‘man’s’ common cause. The visit rebuilds this commonality even as the exotic man’s achievement and uses it as tribute to a glorious age that has already been transformed en route to new domains.
