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Shakespeare question for Wes


Joel B

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Wes

I saw the Merchant of Venice at the Utah Shakespeare Festival last night.  During the play whenever someone was antagonizing Shylock they would take his yarmulke from him and it would end up on the ground.  He would then dust it off reverently, kiss it and then put it back on his head. When Shylock was forced to convert in the court scene Antonio took his yarmulke from his head and placed a cross around his neck. In the last scene after Lorenzo and Jessica had been told about Shylock's will Antonio whispered something in Jessica's ear and gave her Shylock's yarmulke.  At this point she wailed, wept bitter tears and ran from the stage.  It gave something of a tragic end to what I remember as a happy ending.  I assumed the tears were over Shylock's forced conversion but my wife assumed that Antonio had told Jessica that Shylock had committed suicide. This was done before the comedic ring controversy and the rest of the cast entered the house celebrating.  Is this a common ending?  Is it the director's way of blunting the obvious anti-semitism of the play for a 21st century audience?

Joel 

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That's an interesting and certainly unusual interpretation. Yes, the director is definitely making a choice there that is not usually part of the staging, and I suspect you're right: that it's a way to blunt what usually reads as blatant anti-Semitism to a modern audience. I suspect both you and your wife are correct - it is plausible the director meant to show that Jessica is heart-stricken that her father (1) was forcibly converted, or (2) reacted in the form of suicide. Either way, it restores the sense of a relationship between those characters which has been strained earlier in the play when she sneaks off to marry a Christian and steals her father's money to fund the elopement/dowry. A lot of modern spectators are extremely uncomfortable with the way the play otherwise seems to endorse Jessica's decision to abandon her entire cultural/religious identity and her own flesh-and-blood in order to be rewarded by the majority Christian culture of the play. The version you saw seems to restore some complexity to her interior and show that she is not utterly heartless or unconflicted about such a move.

Interestingly, I've never been convinced the play is actually deeply anti-Semitic. It is certainly the case that Shakespeare is tapping into the anti-Semitic fears and stereotypes of his culture, but he also seems to go pretty tough on the Christians in that play. That makes sense because, in Venice, we would be talking about Catholics, who were also a deep source of anxiety to Shakespeare's (mostly) Protestant audience. (Remember, the Reformation has just occurred about 75 years earlier than when Shakespeare is writing, and tensions between Catholics and Protestants will remain violent for a long time thereafter.) In fact, Protestants were probably more afraid of the dangers of the "Catholic spies" and "evil papists" (it was not unusual for them to call the Pope "anti-Christ") than they were about the more generic, albeit more sensational, stereotypes about Jews. In other words, it might not be a play about bashing Jews so much as it is about exposing the hypocrisy of multiple--perhaps all--religions. I suspect Shakespeare didn't actually think all religious people were hypocrites (he has too much respect for some religious characters... often even Catholic figures like the Friar in Romeo and Juliet), but it is certainly possible that he would be interested in exploring the hypocrisies of the religious, especially at a time when Puritans in his own England were vehemently attacking the "vices" and "ills" of the playhouses (theaters) for which Shakespeare himself was writing. There are other, clearly anti-Semitic plays from the period which go much further than Merchant of Venice in breating up on the Jew stereotypes, such as Marlowe's Jew of Malta, which ends with a strangely sadistic image of the main Jew, Braabas, falling into a boiling cauldron which seems to be an attempt to celebrate the image of the Jew burning in hell. Ouch! By contrast, despite Shylock's overweening vengeance, Shakespeare makes Shylock's motives and anger in that play at least intelligible and human, shows the near-comparable ugliness of the Christians (who are certainly abusing their authority/law also to forcibly coerce Shylock), and lets Shylock make one of the most famous appeals for sympathy and common humanity (the speech about "If you cut me, do I need bleed. If you tickle me, do I not laugh... i.e., I'm just like you.")

I wish I could've joined you for the Merchant of Venice production... sounds very interesting. Shakespeare really is special... so much going on in every character, in every play.

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Wes

Thanks for the critique.  Even though I am not a Shakespeare scholar I have always admired the Bard for his complex characters.  Shylock is not a simple villain. He goes to great lengths to explain Shylock's need for revenge in very human terms.  I agree with you about showing the Catholics in hypocritical terms I had not thought of it that way. I found  his comparison of the Old Testament and New Testament values of justice and mercy as blatant. He portrayed Shylock as absolutely incapable of mercy both in the usury and in his insistence of the pound of flesh. Although he showed the hypocrisy of Antonio he ultimately shows Antonio as merciful.  To me the court scene was much more about showing the virtues of the New Testament and mercy as over and above that of Justice and the Old testament.

I had never seen the play before although I picked up a book and read it a few days before we went.  I found it fascinating and I was wondering how they were going to handle the anti-Semitic aspects

Thanks for your comments

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