Nisha Sharma on Adapting Shakespeare for Modern Romances

How do Shakespeare’s timeless themes translate to the South Asian diaspora? Could the playwright be reimagined as a meddling auntie? Novelist Nisha Sharma’s “If Shakespeare Were an Auntie” trilogy takes on this challenge, taking inspiration from The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night to create contemporary romance novels set in the vibrant, close-knit world of the South Asian community.

Sharma’s books explore love, identity, and social norms through characters navigating family expectations and community dynamics. These playful and poignant adaptations highlight Shakespeare’s enduring relevance while addressing modern issues like gender expectations and cultural identity.

Sharma shares her creative process, her lifelong love for Shakespeare, and her approach to blending the playwright’s timeless themes with modern romance. From chaotic weddings to sharp banter, her novels reflect the humor and humanity of Shakespeare’s work while offering fresh perspectives for today’s readers.

Listen to Shakespeare Unlimited on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, or your favorite podcast platform.

Nisha Sharma is the critically acclaimed author of YA and adult contemporary romances including My So-Called Bollywood Life, Radha and Jai’s Recipe for Romance, The Singh Family Trilogy, and the “If Shakespeare Were an Auntie” series. Her books have been included in best-of lists by the New York Times, Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, Entertainment Weekly, and more.   She lives in Pennsylvania with her Alaskan husband, her cat Lizzie Bennett, and her dogs Nancey Drew and Madeline.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published January 28, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

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FARAH KARIM-COOPER: From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I’m Farah Karim-Cooper, the Folger’s director.

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One of the things that makes Shakespeare’s work so timeless is how endlessly adaptable it is. Take The Taming of the Shrew and drop it into an American high school in the 90s. You get 10 Things I Hate About You. The Tempest in outer space? That’s Forbidden Planet, of course.

The author Nisha Sharma has written a trilogy of romance novels loosely based on Shakespearean comedies. She’s set them in the present, drawing her wealthy young characters from the South Asian diaspora. Shakespeare himself takes the role of a meddling older relative—what the characters would call “an auntie.” In fact, the whole trilogy is called “If Shakespeare Were an Auntie.”

The first book in the series, Dating Dr. Dil, is based on The Taming of the Shrew. The second, Tastes Like Shakkar, updates Much Ado About Nothing. And the final novel, Marriage and Masti, adapts Twelfth Night.

Over the course of the trilogy, Sharma’s characters pair off and find love, despite many obstacles and missteps along the way.

Here’s Nisha Sharma, in conversation with Barbara Bogaev.

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BARBARA BOGAEV: You know, I want to start with your second novel in your series, Taste Like Shakkar, because I understand it’s inspired by your favorite Shakespeare play, Much Ado About Nothing. What is it about that comedy that puts it above the rest for you?

NISHA SHARMA: Oh my goodness. I think I resonated with Much Ado About Nothing so much because the most dynamic characters in the play are always in service of others. As the oldest daughter of an immigrant, I felt like that was something that I connected with so well.

So, Beatrice was concerned about her cousin and was putting her family first, and Benedick, of course, was always in service of, you know, the Prince. But then once he shared his feelings for Beatrice, he was in service of Beatrice. So that—in service of others, putting others before oneself—was really a strong theme for me throughout writing the book and when I first really enjoyed the play.

BOGAEV: Oh, so it was kind of you meeting Shakespeare halfway.

SHARMA: Yup.

BOAGEV: And for people who haven’t read the book, tell us about your main characters, your Beatrice and Benedick, who are Bobbi and Bunty.

SHARMA: Bobbi and Bunty are some of my favorite characters I think I’ve ever written just because they’re so silly, fun, but also, very serious.

To, kind of, give like an overview, this is part of a trilogy where three friends meet three male friends, and they all end up pairing up. And the themes in their story are themes that are in Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night.

And so, in Bobbi and Bunty’s story, they are two people who got off on the wrong foot, who misunderstood each other, and who now have to work together to plan the wedding for their friends who are getting married—and their friends are the main characters in the first book—and so, they spend a lot of time together, and in the process, there’s someone who’s trying to sabotage the wedding, similar to Much Ado About Nothing.

BOGAEV: That would be Don John.

SHARMA: Yeah, Don John. And as they work together to figure out who’s sabotaging the wedding, they also fall in love. But it’s with this understanding that they have these really strong responsibilities to family and community and that ends up somewhat causing conflict with their romance as well.

BOGAEV: And one’s a chef—or one’s a chef and in the restaurant industry, and Bobbi, your Beatrice, is a wedding planner. So yeah, they are both in the service industry. I was curious, you know, first of all, did you conceive of the trilogy all at once?

SHARMA: I did. So, when my husband and I were dating, he was in DC, and I was in Pennsylvania at the time. I had gone down to visit him on the weekend. And we went to the Folger’s library.  I was thinking to myself how interesting would it be to take these themes, these broad human connection themes that Shakespeare has in his plays, and apply it to a particular community or demographic.

I write South Asian characters for South Asian communities—that I hope everyone can enjoy—but my focus is, you know, South Asian diaspora. And, when I first started to, kind of, like, pull apart this idea of taking Shakespeare’s themes and applying it to the South Asian diaspora, I thought to myself, like, “How interesting would it be if you have this, like, Shakespeare character, who’s actually the aunties. And then you have, you know, these women who are just trying to live their lives, who are forced into these situations because sometimes social status, class, community, drive these norms that are just unacceptable to them. But they fall in love anyway.”

BOGAEV: And so when you say—because this is, you know, “If Shakespeare Were an Auntie,” this series—when you say, you have this Shakespeare character who inserts himself and is an auntie, or represented by the aunties. First, you have to maybe flesh out more what an auntie is in South Asian culture. And also, why did you think of Shakespeare that way? I think it’s so interesting.

SHARMA: Yeah. So, there’s always, like, that moment in a Shakespeare play where a character is speaking directly to the audience. The monologue, right? The big monologue that always shows up in some of these plays. And so, I’ve always seen that as a little bit of self-insertion because usually those monologues have a little bit of social commentary and that social commentary—like for example in Othello, is really big on race dynamics; in Taming of the Shrew, it’s whether or not women have like the ability to control, like, their autonomy—

BOGAEV: Lives.

SHARMA: And their lives, right. So, in the Shakespeare trilogy, there are these articles. They’re interstitials that appear every few chapters. It’s from this human-interest column in a local newspaper that appears in this world and these articles are that social commentary Shakespeare insertion that are written by an auntie character, Mrs. W. S. Gupta.

So, the auntie character in South Asian culture, it’s usually like a married woman who is friends with, you know, a mother figure or a member of the South Asian community who is a gossiping busybody, like, is inserting themselves into your lives, is pushing—I don’t want to say problematic, but oftentimes they are problematic.

BOGAEV: Agendas, yeah.

SHARMA: Agendas around, you know, marriage and parenthood and like living your life, essentially.

BOGAEV: They’re telling you what to do.

SHARMA: They’re telling you what to do—and I’m very fortunate to have a lot of aunties in my life who are not like that, who are very modern and wonderful and supportive, aunties can be that as well.

And so, in this particular series, the aunties play this evolving role where they start out in a way that is almost, like, not great for the characters, but they evolve into a support structure that the female characters rely on.

BOGAEV: Yeah, I’m looking through your book right now—I have Taste Like Shakkar, since we’re talking about it—looking for the relationship column, the interstitial from Mrs. Gupta. One of them is, “An Indian wedding is much more fun with chaos. It’s best if children understand that and leave the wedding planning to their parents.”

SHARMA: Mhm

BOGAEV: No judgment there. Okay, all right, so that was, that was your big inspiration. When you write these books, though, do you go back and reread the plays?

SHARMA: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

BOGAEV: Is that the first thing?

SHARMA: I’m very familiar with the place to begin with, just because, like, I enjoy them and I frequently reread things that I enjoy.

But I’m at heart, a scholar. I have an English undergraduate degree. I went to law school. I have a master’s in creative writing and MFA in creative writing. I’m getting a PhD in English. So, like, going back to source text is a critical part of my process.

BOGAEV: Okay. So, you go back—let’s talk about the process—you go back and you reread the play, say in this case it was Much Ado. What do you look for? What happens then?

SHARMA: So, I don’t believe in faithfully following the plays because first of all, they don’t translate to, you know, not every single piece translates directly to a South Asian experience, which is what I’m writing. But I’m looking for the human experience pieces that can resonate across communities.

So, there is a moment in Much Ado About Nothing where Beatrice is talking to the Prince after the masquerade. And the Prince—some would argue, some scholars argue, that it’s in jest, some say it’s serious—proposes to Beatrice. “Would you have me?” And Beatrice says, basically says, “No, my lord.” And there’s this comment on if, you know, on how Beatrice, when she was born her mother cried, but then a star danced. And so, it’s like this really poignant moment where you get, like, a little bit of a glimpse into the slight bit of heartache that kind of, like, still exists within her from her origin story.

That moment I was like, “There has to be some sort of vulnerability that Bobbi experiences with a friend,” because the Prince is a friend of Benedick. And so, there is a scene in Tastes Like Shakkar where Bobbi has, like, a really heartfelt conversation with Deepak, who is Bunty’s friend, and they talk about, like, how her mother had died when she was young, and so, that’s kind of how I look for, like, those kernels of connection and I kind of mine it and translate it over.

Now there are strong, like, structural things that do also make it into the book. It’s not like it’s just based on themes or emotion. So, there is of course someone who’s sabotaging the wedding.

There are two people who are, kind of, pushed together because their friends are getting married. There is a little bit of matchmaking happening that exists between the two of them. And they are in service of other people. Bobbi has loyalty to Kareena, who is the bride, and Bunty has loyalty to Prem, who’s the groom.

BOGAEV: Yeah, I was picturing you going back and rereading Much Ado and looking also for that spark that Benedick and Beatrice have in their banter, and Bobbi and Bunty do banter and spar a bit, like their inspiration. Maybe, you could read this passage for us on page 16. It starts with, “’Bunty,’ Bobbi said.” And if you could give us some context for the scene.

SHARMA: Yeah, sure. So, the context for the scene is that Bobbi has gone over to Prem and Kareena’s house and the hope is that they can start wedding planning because Bobbi wants to get started on planning the best wedding ever for her friends. And, unbeknownst to her, they had invited Bunty and the rest of their friends, Deepak and Veera, to come along because they wanted all of their input into the wedding planning. Bobbi and Bunty had gotten off on the wrong foot about a year before the scene, and so, this is the, they’re seeing each other in the kitchen, similar to in Much Ado About Nothing when Beatrice and Benedick see each other for the first time with their family and friends surrounding them.

 [Nisha Sharma reads a scene from her novel Tastes Like Shakkar (2023), pages 16–17.]

And so, “’Bunty,’ Bobbi said, her chin angling upward. She felt a spark of evil joy when Benjamin’s eye twitched at the sound of his nickname. ‘I don’t know why you’re still talking when literally no one cares about… what was it? Chilis? A little cliché, don’t you think?’”

“‘Bobbi.’ His voice turned saccharine sweet. ‘Your high-strung attitude hasn’t killed you yet?’”

“‘Why do you ask?’ She replied. ‘If you want me dead, all I have to do is try your food.’”

“‘You’d at least die happy then. Unless of course you’d prefer soupy butter chicken garbage that you serve at your weddings.’”

“‘I’ve heard that frozen naan has gotten increasingly more popular, Naan Prince,’ Bobbi said cheerfully.”

Just as a side note, his father owns a frozen food empire.

“‘Maybe I should call your dad to see if he’s interested in working with me.’”

“There was that glorious eye twitch again.”

“‘Hey, that sounds like a great idea,’ he said, snapping his fingers. ‘I bet you can’t tell the difference between fresh and frozen anyway. Can you even appreciate traditional cuisine?’”

“‘I prefer originality.’”

[End of reading]

And so, the banter goes on for another page, but you get this, like, sense that there is this tension between them and they’re hitting each other right at the points that hurts them the most.

BOGAEV: And at one point she rolls her eyes, and she says, “I’d rather hear dogs howling outside my window in Jersey City all night than hear a man tell me he loves me.” So that is, that’s the first, I think, little Easter egg from Bobbi that echoes Beatrice’s line, “I’d rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.”

SHARMA: Exactly. And there are a few throwaway moments for, like, my Shakespeare scholar readers, I put those moments, like, throughout all of the books. Just because, not everyone, of course, is, like, a Shakespeare fan. Not everyone has familiarity with the plays. But I wanted to respect the source text in this way and give, like, my readership an opportunity to have, like, an immersive experience with the book as well.

BOGAEV: So, that’s how you thought about borrowing from Shakespeare. Did those echoes just bubble up or did you consciously look for opportunities?

SHARMA: Honestly, I just thought of, like, what were my favorite scenes. And that’s—

BOGAEV: How fun.

SHARMA: Yeah, and that’s what made it in. Because, I mean, the writing process to me has to be fun. I do this because I love it. That’s why the pieces that made it in are things that make me laugh personally, and I hope it makes other people laugh too.

BOGAEV: Yeah, it is very funny. But it also, it’s interesting. In Much Ado, we mentioned Don John is of course the jealous wedding saboteur in Much Ado, and he masterminds this dastardly scheme to persuade everyone that Hero is cuckolding her fiancé, Claudio. So, that’s the Shakespeare—and at the end of the play, the scheme’s revealed and everyone gets married.

But there are all these lingering, complicated questions in your mind as you get to the end of Much Ado, about misogyny and gender norms and patriarchy. Is Hero going to forgive anyone for immediately assuming she had betrayed Claudio and for the men all ganging up on the women in different scenes? So, there’s a lot going on there that’s deep.

Your romance is a romance, and it has a true, I think, happy resolution of the wedding sabotage plot. So how did you think about resolution? And is it dictated wholly by the fact that you write romance?

SHARMA: So, when I looked at the ending within Much Ado About Nothing, yes, like, it’s that, like, the ugly, like, misogyny pieces that honestly don’t translate to a happily-ever-after romance novel written today. But I also wanted to pay respect to, like, how misogyny has not gone away, it’s still here, and how some of these social norms are still problematic.

So, the way that I did that was, like, misogyny doesn’t necessarily live with just men. It’s a trait that even women can carry. The aunties are complicated, like as a community, and so, it’s an auntie that ends up being the Don John character in the story. I mean—

BOGAEV: Oh, spoiler! Spoilers!

SHARMA: Spoiler! So, you see that like some of the men are confused and the women are horrified, but, like, there’s, like, everyone is wrestling with it in a little bit of a different way because I feel like that’s how we see it today, like, everyone’s relationship with misogyny, and prejudice, and sexism, and the way that some of these community rituals and traditions can cause more harm than good. Like, everyone has a different relationship with them.

And so, if I put that pressure on the characters themselves, like on the bride and groom themselves, I think it would take away from, like, the happily ever after. And it would make it more about, like, right and wrong. And I didn’t want this book to be about right and wrong.

I wanted everyone to understand that, like, listen, “This is a problem. We’re calling it out as a problem. But as you can see, everyone has a different relationship with it. And, look, these two are having a happily ever after. Because despite this problem we’re addressing it. And, like, we’re having this happily ever after regardless.”

BOGAEV: You know, the other thing I kept thinking as I was reading this particular book, that weddings in general—well, really, it’s the whole series because it’s all about, it’s romance and it’s everyone’s coupling off. Weddings in general are such powder kegs for families, but I can only imagine Indian weddings are exponentially so. I mean, you have days and days for people to get their knickers in a bunch, right?

SHARMA: One hundred percent. I mean, in India, some weddings go on for two weeks. I mean, it used to be a month. My wedding was so long. It was four-and-a-half days. And so, like, by the end of it, you’re just like—

BOGAEV: It’s like an eternity.

SHARMA: Yeah, and your filter is very thin.

So, yeah, the series itself is structured, like, the first book is about dating. Tastes Like Shakkar is about weddings. And then the last book that just came out, Marriage and Masti, is about marriage. So, I wanted to kind of show how the way that, like, couples are often, like, encountering these, like, society expectations in different ways, depending on the stage of life that they’re in.

BOGAEV: So, we have so many people talk on our podcast about, people of color talk about when they first encountered Shakespeare’s work, and that, you know, with the colonial history of Shakespeare, that they felt shut out and they had to, they felt they had to earn a way in. How and when did you first encounter Shakespeare, and did you immediately identify with it?

SHARMA: That’s a really great question. I was always an advanced reader because reading was my one outlet growing up. I was like a little bit of a listless kid until my mom put books in my hands, and then I felt like I had direction.

So, I was in the fifth grade when she bought me this collection of Shakespeare comedies that was actually, like, not in play form, but it was like summaries of the comedies that were written for, like, kids. It was like an early intro to Shakespeare, essentially. And the way that I flew through that, I was just obsessed with it. And that was my first real introduction to Shakespeare.

BOGAEV: Why do you think you were obsessed with it?

SHARMA: I think because… so, I grew up in a South Asian household. My parents are immigrants. I was the first one on both sides of the family, born and raised in the US. I was always seeing, like, media from the US and then media from India, and I—like many immigrant children or children of immigrants do—grew pretty skilled at being able to, kind of, make the connections between the two. And so, as I was reading the Shakespeare comedies, I would see so many of these comedic beats that I just felt like I resonated with because, we would laugh at the same things, you know, in my South Asian household.

And the comedies have, like, such fun romances, like, just silly, rompy romances that just were a joy. So, I felt like that was something that just, I really wanted to be able to, like, bottle that emotion, and, like, share it or, like, sip from it myself whenever I needed it. And so that’s, I think, why I resonated so much with it.

Then, you know, I continued to just study Shakespeare and enjoy Shakespeare for what it was, and it wasn’t until, I think, very recently that I read James Baldwin’s article, Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare, that everything started to really start to come together and make sense. In the article, Baldwin makes this point of the way that Shakespeare is introduced to a lot of communities is the reason why the global majority can sometimes have a hard time relating to Shakespeare. In classrooms, we’re seeing Shakespeare introduced as the elite, English elite, right? It’s like, “This is like the pinnacle of English literature.” But why is that important to us? Like, why is Shakespeare being the pinnacle of English literature, important to South Asian communities. I mean, it’s not. If anything, it furthers reinforces this connection to colonialism, which is not a positive connection.

And in what, to me—what I think Baldwin’s message that really makes sense—is that Shakespeare should be evaluated for the human connection that we can see within the plays that can be translated across communities. That is how Shakespeare being used as a tool for decolonization is really successful.

BOGAEV: And that’s how you see your own romance novels?

SHARMA: I always hesitate to, like, put a label on, like, any of my work being used as a tool for decolonization, or a tool for teaching diversity, or for a tool for, you know, XYZ.

BOGAEV: Right, it’s reductive.

SHARMA: Right, it’s reductive. And honestly, like, my goal is to have a conversation about something that I really enjoy on the page, and enjoy the writing process, and share it with people and hope they fall in love the way that I fall in love with these characters. Like, that is, that’s really like my goal. But if people feel like my books can help them in decolonizing Shakespeare, then I mean, amazing. I’m so glad that I can put something out in the world that can help you connect with Shakespeare in a way that feels less traumatic from your childhood education.

BOGAEV: Oh, definitely. I think you accomplished that. We’ve talked a lot about this, weirdly, we’ve talked about the second novel in your series of three. But the latest one, the last one is, Marriage and Masti. What is “Masti”?

SHARMA: Masti means like mischief.

BOGAEV: Great, and that one’s based on Twelfth Night, so appropriate. Are there more or fewer Easter eggs in this third book? I mean, as you went on writing, did you get more Shakespeare-y?

SHARMA: No, actually. So, the third one was more based on the thematic elements, just because Twelfth Night doesn’t translate well.

BOGAEV: Yeah, how so? I mean, I can imagine but tell us.

SHARMA: I think there’s the cross-dressing element that can be very transphobic the way that it’s—that many people have tried to translate it today. There’s also the element of whether or not you have your hero who is, like, obsessed with love versus obsessed with the female main character and that is never a really good quality for a hero in a romance novel. You want someone who only wants the female main character, who sees her value and appreciates who she is. And that doesn’t exist in the original source text.

BOGAEV: No, it’s very complicated. Did you start working on this and think, “What am I doing? How is this going to work?”

SHARMA: I think whenever I start any project, I ask myself, “What am I doing?” But for Marriage and Masti, oddly enough, that was the one that I felt the clearest about.

I was the most scared for Tastes Like Shakkar just because I loved Much Ado About Nothing and I was so worried about the way that it was going to, like, end up translating over. But with Marriage and Masti, it felt like an easy writing process for me, just because I knew it was going to be friends to lovers, I knew that it was going to be twins, and I knew that Sana was gay. And I also knew that the hero was, like, not obsessed with love, but obsessed with her. Like, that is—

BOGAEV: As he should be, as they, the main character, should be in any romance.

SHARMA: As he should be. Right.

BOGAEV: Okay, let’s talk about sex because the sex gets really steamy in your books. And I—this is kind of a weird question—did you ever wonder if Shakespeare would have been even more sexually explicit if he could have been in his day?

SHARMA: A hundred percent, like there’s no doubt in my mind.

BOGAEV: I mean, he does get awfully bawdy, you know, already. If—

SHARMA: His jokes were, are the foundation of some of the crudest jokes that exist today when it comes to sex so I would have no doubt in my mind if he had, like, free reign the way that so many people have today, he would be just like blatantly saying things.

BOGAEV: All over it.

SHARMA: All over.

BOGAEV: Okay, another Shakespeare question. While you were writing this trilogy, did you come to different perspectives or insights into the plays or Shakespeare’s work as a whole?

SHARMA: So, yes and no. So, I think because I spent quite a bit of time in the classroom studying Shakespeare, I had the gift, the ability to kind of, like, lean on that knowledge and understand, like, some of the nuances in the plays.

But as I was writing these adaptations and, like, really tapping into some of this knowledge, like, it became very clear to me how Shakespeare was having conversations we’re still having today. And that’s something that I think was surprising to me.

Like, I knew it, I think, conceptually. But as I was writing and I really, truly understood that in Taming of the Shrew, the question is, like, “Who’s the shrew?” Right?

In the end, there’s this monologue, and she talks about, like, her role as a wife. And I was thinking in that moment, like, there’s two ways to read it. And there’s two ways that Shakespeare scholars have read it, right? Some say that this is Kate, truly broken and bending to her spouse. But then there are others who say that actually in this monologue, Kate is just saying that she’s getting her way because she has figured out a way to manipulate the system again, because this is what women have to do sometimes.

BOGAEV: Right, she had to work an angle.

SHARMA: She had to work an angle. So, when I was reading the play again and I was writing it, it really resonated with me in that moment. That I was like, “Oh, wow, this is… women have to make sacrifices and have to work an angle to this day to get what they want sometimes.”

BOGAEV: Yeah. Nisha, Thank you so much. It’s really fun to talk with you and fun to read the books too.

SHARMA: Oh, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation. This is great.

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KARIM-COOPER: Novelist Nisha Sharma. The entire “If Shakespeare Were an Auntie” trilogy is out now from Avon, an imprint of HarperCollins.

This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had technical help from Andrew Stelzer in Philadelphia and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Our web producer is Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts.

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