Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection.

While reading the Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection, I was confused with the intro of the play because I did not see the point of the conversation between the director and the actress or how they are related to the rest of the story. Now that we have covered it in class, I understand the purpose of that act. However, that scene made me wonder if the actress talking to the director was the woman that took on Sakuntala’s role later on in the play or is she completely irrelevant?


I like the language or at least the translation of the play, which was way easier to read and understand than the language in Gilgamesh. One of my favorite scenes in the play was when the king was jealous (or at least I think he was), of the bee that was attacking Sakuntala. I thought that it was sweet of him to admire how close the bee is to Sakuntala and to wish that he could be in the same position as the bee.

Another scene that caught my eye and reminded me of many books or movies I have seen, is when the poor fisherman gets caught and brought into the police station for questioning. It seems as if in every other movie or a book, a poor innocent man gets accused of a crime, and I found this a little funny. I like the irony in the scene, once they find out that the fisherman and the ring incident actually helped them all by making the king happy and reminding him of his wife again. Maybe the fisherman scene was used for somewhat of a comic relief.

I didn’t like the use of so many unnecessary names, because when they would refer to a name I would think it’s somebody important and then I would find out it’s only a maid or somebody totally irrelevant (not that maids aren’t important, but I saw no need for their names to be used in the play). Maybe I am missing an important theme of the play. I guess this is a typical storyline where an almighty king falls in love, gets the girl of his dreams, has to overcome a challenge, somebody gets heartbroken, yet at the end everybody lives happily ever after. Why does it sound like I have heard this before? It sounds familiar because I have seen and read something similar to this so many times, and I feel like the only thing missing was a scene where Sakuntala kisses a frog and it turns into King Dusyanta.

Overall, the play was easy to follow if you ignored the variety of unnecessary names and although the plotline was not as original, it was still interesting and attention-grabbing. By the way, I think this would make a great Bollywood movie that would have hilarious scenes such as the creepy King Dusyanta spying on Sakuntala from behind the bushes.