Mother Nature In Kalidasa's The Abhigyanshakuntalam And The Tempest

The Abhigyanshakuntalam and The Tempest are beautiful expressions of two of the greatest dramatists i.e. Shakespeare and Kalidasa respectively. In both, there is harmony of mother nature and human nature. Nature provides the background for both the plays. Heroines in both the plays are essentially the children of nature. Shakuntala, the heroine in Kalidasa’s The Abhigyanshakuntalam , is beautiful as blossoming flower, nimble as a deer, happy as the dew-washed leaves of the forest. Similarly, Miranda, in the Tempest, is one of the most lovable heroines in the plays of Shakespeare is the very essence of innocent womanhood nurtured by nature. She gains her childlike innocence and purity in the lap of Mother Nature. She is unaffected, dignified and graceful; she is just the kind of character that any lover of nature and human nature would have liked to create. Both the characters are bred of nature. Present paper deals with the benign nature of Mother Nature nurturing the humane qualities in the characters of both the plays. It

The setting of both the plays is idyllic. The Abhigyanshakuntalam is Kalidasa’s greatest achievement while The Tempest reveals Shakespeare’s maturity in style. Both the plays are romantic, dealing as they do with love in its highest manifestations, and embodying the profoundest thoughts of the poets on the subject. Nature provides the background for both the plays, in The Abhigyanshakuntalam it is equivalent to a character. In this sense, they are both pastoral. The first part of the action of Shakuntla takes place in the hermitage of Saga Kanva, the foster-father of Shakuntala. The heroine is essentially a child of nature, beautiful as a blossoming flower, nimble as a deer, happy as the dew-washed leaves of the forest. She is so much part of nature that later when she leaves the hermitage to join her husband, she creates a gap in