A discussion of the cultivation of Shakespearean literature and drama in the region that was East Bengal and East Pakistan and is now Bangladesh, is indubitably bound up with the social and cultural development of that region and with the linkage and parallelism that such a development had with similar events in what was East Bengal's intellectual and historical elder if not mentor, Calcutta. If the emergence of a strong interest in Shakes- pearean literature and performance in Calcutta in the nineteenth century is to be seen and understood in the light of both, a strong spate of translational activity in the vernacular medium and in the rise of amatuer and pro- fessional playhouses in Calcutta from about the middle of the century, then the arrival and prevalence of Shakes- pearean literature in East Bangal is also to be sought on