পাতা:মাইকেল মধুসূদন দত্তের জীবন-চরিত - যোগীন্দ্রনাথ বসু.pdf/৭০২

VO জীবন-চরিত । wealthy gentleman who had not the good fortune to receive an invitation from the Rajas offered a hundred rupees or more for the purchase even of a single ticket. The idea was no doubt preposterous, but it shows the eagerness evinced by the people at the time to witness the performance of the 13elgatchia Amateurs. A respected old gentleman who had witnessed, half a century ago, the famous performance of Vidya Sundara in which women were for the first time introduced on the stage to perform the part of female characters, in a theatre set up at a considerable expense by the late Babu Nabin Kissen Bose in his house at Bagbazar, one who had never seen an English performance, observed to me that it surpassed his highest anticipations, and that he had not the remotest idea that human actions and human manners could be so faithfully and vividly portrayed on the stage. Here it was, as 1 have already told you, that Modhu's Muse was roused to a sense of the duty that he owed his country, and here it was that Modhu received his first inspiration to sing in his mother tongue. After his admission to the first rehearsal, and before he had entered upon his task of the English translation of the Ratnavali, Modhu, with his partiality for English taste exclaimed to me (aside), “what a pity the Rajas should have spent such a lot of money on such a miserable play. I wish I had known of it before, as leould have given you a piece worthy of your Theatre.' I laughed at the idea of his offering to write a Bengali play, and Thaffingly asked if it was his wish to see us introduce a wretched Vidya Sundar on our stage. Conscious of the dearth of really good plays in our language, he could not but feel the sting of my remark as a home-thrust and simply muttered, "we shall see, we shall see.' The next morning he called on me at the rooms of the Asiatic Society for the loan of a few Vernacular and Sanskrit books, dramas specially, and in the course of a week or two read to me the first few scenes of his Sarmishtha which struck me as having the ring of true metal. I wished to take the MS. with me to Belgatchia, but he said I must wait till he had finished the First Act. It was, I believe, the very next week that he handed over to me the MS., with a request to show it to my friends the Rajas and Babu (since Maharaja) Jotundro Mohun. t. On my reading to thena the first few MS. leaves they were not a little astonished r It was at my suggestion, that Modhu was engaged by the Rajas to translate the play. t Modhu was then living in a two-storied house close to the Police Court; on the eastern side of the Chitpore Road. It was in this memorable house that he wrote his principal works Sarmistha, Tillottama and Meghnadbadha. Had Bengal been England, this house would have been purchased and maintained, by the public, for being visited by the admirers of his genius.