Zohreh Taebi - Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
Azra Ghandeharion - Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
Leili Badrlou - Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

Countless directors have used Shakespearean plays as the basis of their adaptations. Vishal Bhardwaj is an Indian director whose Haider (2014) is considered a modern adaptation of Hamlet to talk about his contemporary society sengagements. Bhardwaj chose Hamlet because of its potential to reflect his society s current anxieties; however, hemade some changes to fit it into the Indian context. This article seeks to analyze the relationship between Hamlet and itsIndian adaptation with special focus on similarities and differences in characterization, setting and the plot s mostpivotal elements in the light of the intertextual theory to answer the following questions: Why is Hamlet an appropriate choice for adaptation What features of Hamlet have been reinforced or differed in Haider What features underlinethe significance of intertextuality in Haider How has Bhardwaj produced a contemporary Hamlet and expanded itsthemes Intertextuality as this study s main framework will result in discovering new meanings and aspects in Hamlet and Haider because as Hutcheon (2006, p. 21) declares adaptation is inexorably a subcategory of intertextuality if the receiver knows the adapted text

Adaptation; Comparative Analysis; Haider; Hamlet; Intertextuality