In the play ‘Abhigyan-Shakuntalam’ of Kalidasa (400 C.E.), King Dushyanta forgets the name and identity of Shakuntala. The name is the identity. However, Shakespeare (1564), the Kalidasa of the West, had a different view on names in his play ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Goethe (1749) doesn’t agree with Shakespeare in his play ‘Faust’.
“Juliet:
Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.
Romeo:
I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.”
Goethe doesn’t follow this argument of Shakespeare as seen his play ‘Faust’, the following epigram based on Kalidasa’s ‘Abhigyan-Shakuntalam’.
“Wilt thou have charms and delights,
Wilt thou have strength and support,
Wilt thou with one short word encompass the
earth and the heaven,
All is said if I name only, Shakuntla, thee.”
AZIMVTH Ashram 