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CHAPTER VII

THE PLAYWRIGHT

Constable.—Who are you making an uproar here at this late hour of the night?
Stage Manager.—We are jatrawalas (actors), and who, pray, are you?

When living in Calcutta a boy of fourteen or fifteen, Rabindranath wrote a play for an amateur dramatic company in that city and acted in it himself; and since then he must have written fully a score in all, of which the best known in India have not yet been translated into English. Chitra, The King of the Dark Chamber, and The Post Office are however available now; and the two last have been produced by the Irish Players in Dublin and at the Court Theatre in London, with perhaps as near a bid at the Indian stage illusion as one can hope to get under the circumstances. Another play associated with his name and referred to in an earlier page, The Maharani of Arakan, was not of his own writing, but adapted by Mr. Calderon from one of his stories. Judged by a London stand-

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