The Tragic Death of Bangabandhu: Analyzed through a Shakespearean Trajectory

Abstract

My aim in this essay is to explore some striking similarities between the circumstances of Bangabandhu’s killing and some of the plays by Shakespeare where usurpation and regicide are the themes. The closest bearing that the assassination of Bangabandhu has on any play by Shakespeare, in my opinion, is Julius Caesar, written in 1599, and the first play to be staged in the newly finite Globe Theatre, when it started functioning in the same year, that is, 1599. But usurpation and regicide are themes Shakespeare has dealt with in many other plays too, viz, Richard II, the Henriad plays, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear in tragedies, and As You Like It and The Tempest in comedies, whereas Coriolanus can also be mentioned ds having shown the rise and fall of fortune in the life of a champion soldier-leader.

I have devised to discuss the analogical features between Bangabandhu’s assassination and that of a Shakespearean hero, here Julius Caesar, by suggesting that I riff mainly concentrate on Shakespearean scenes with the minimal similarity they may sustain with the stages of Bangabandhu’s murder. Minimal, because it is never possible to find out absolutely clear-cut resemblances between the events of the lifting of a King or public leader in Shakespeare and those that led to Bangabandhu’s murder.