| The Merchant Of Venice |
Article Index for The Merchant |
Articles about The Merchant Of Venice |
Website Links For Merchant |
Information AboutThe Merchant Of Venice |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT THE MERCHANT OF VENICE | |
| 1590s plays | |
| antisemitism | |
| english renaissance plays | |
| shakespearean comedies | |
| masterpiece theatre | |
| italy in fiction | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
|
( 1856 - 1879 )]] ''The Merchant of Venice'' is one of William Shakespeare 's best-known plays, written at an uncertain date between 1594 and 1597 . It is a Comedy ("comedy" had a very different meaning at the time; see Shakespearean Comedies ) and is best known for its portrayal of the Jew Shylock , which has raised questions of Anti-semitism . Shylock is a tormented character but is also a tormenter, so whether he is to be viewed with disdain or sympathy is up to the reader. Shakespeare put one of his most eloquent speeches into the mouth of this "villain": :''Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs :''dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with :''the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject :''to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means :''warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer :''as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? :''If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you :''poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? Act III, scene I DATE The play's date of composition is believed to be between 1594 and 1597. The play was entered in the Stationers' Register, the method at that time of obtaining Copyright for a new play, by James Roberts on July 22 , 1598 . It was first printed in 1600 , and again in a pirated edition in 1619 . The play was mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598, so it must have been familiar on the stage by that date. The play seems to be influenced by (and perhaps reacting against) Christopher Marlowe 's immensely popular tragedy '' The Jew Of Malta ''. STORY The title character is the merchant Antonio, not the more famous villain, the Jewish moneylender Shylock . Bassanio, a young Venetian , wants to travel to Belmont to woo the beautiful and wealthy heiress Portia . He approaches his friend Antonio, a merchant, for 3000 Ducat s needed to subsidize his travelling expenditures for three months. As all of Antonio's ships and merchandise are tied at sea, Antonio approaches the Jewish moneylender Shylock for a loan. Shylock, hateful of Antonio, proposes a malicious condition. If Antonio is unable to repay the loan at the specified date, Shylock will be free to take a Pound of Antonio's flesh from where ever he pleases. Although Bassanio does not want Antonio to accept such a condition for his sake, Antonio, surprised by what he sees as the moneylender's generosity, signs the agreement. With money at hand, Bassanio leaves for Belmont with another friend Gratiano. At Belmont, Portia has no lack of suitors. Portia's father, however, has left a , Silver , and Lead . In order to be granted an opportunity to marry Portia, each suitor must agree in advance to live out his life as a Bachelor were he to select wrongly. The suitor who correctly looks past the outward appearance of the caskets will find Portia's portrait inside and win her hand. After two suitors choose incorrectly, Bassanio makes the correct choice, that of the leaden casket, aided by a subtle hint from Portia and knowledge of the Gesta Romanorum which explains which casket to pick. At Venice, all ships bearing Antonio's goods are reported lost at sea, leaving him unable to satisfy the bond. Shylock is determined to exact revenge from Christians after his daughter Jessica flees his home to Convert To Christianity and elope with the Christian Lorenzo, taking a substantial amount of Shylock's wealth with her. With the bond at hand, Shylock has Antonio arrested and brought before court. At Belmont, Portia and Bassanio have just been married, along with their friends Gratiano and Portia's handmaid Nerissa. He receives a letter telling him that Antonio has defaulted on his loan from Shylock. Shocked, Bassanio and Gratiano leave for Venice immediately, with money from Portia, to save Antonio's life. Unbeknownst to Bassanio and Gratiano, Portia and Nerissa leave Belmont to seek the counsel of Portia's elderly uncle Bellario, a lawyer, at Padova . The dramatic center of the play comes in the court of the Duke Of Venice . Shylock refuses Bassanio's offer, despite Bassanio increasing the repayment to many times the specified loan. He demands the pound of flesh from Antonio. The Duke, wishing to save Antonio but unwilling to set a dangerous legal precedent of nullifying a contract, refers the case to Balthasar, a young male "doctor of the law" who is actually Portia in disguise, with Nerissa as his/her cleric. Portia asks Shylock to show mercy in a famous speech (''The quality of mercy is not strained'' — Act IV, Scene I, l 185), but Shylock refuses. Thus the court allows Shylock to extract the pound of flesh. At the very moment Shylock is about to cut Antonio with his knife, Portia points out a flaw in the contract. The bond only allows Shylock to remove the flesh, not blood, of Antonio. If Shylock were to shed any drop of Antonio's blood in doing so, his life will be forfeited under Venetian laws. Compare to this the Norse legend of the making of Mjolnir where Loki loses his head in a bet, but was not forced to give the bet since his neck was not part of the bet. Defeated, Shylock accedes to accept monetary payment for the defaulted bond, but is denied. Portia pronounces none should be given, and for his attempt to take the life of a citizen, Shylock's property and his life will be forfeit, half to amount while taking only the income) until Shylock's death, when the principal will be given to Lorenzo and Jessica. At Antonio's request, the Duke grants remission of the state's half of forfeiture, but in return, Shylock is forced to convert to Christianity and to bequeath the rest of his property to Lorenzo and Jessica (Act IV, scene 1). Bassanio does not recognize his disguised wife. He offers to give him/her a present. First she declines, but after he insists, Portia requests his ring. Reluctantly he gives the ring, although earlier he has promised his wife never to lose it, sell it or give it away. At Belmont, Portia and Nerissa taunt their husbands before revealing they were really the lawyer and his cleric in disguise. After all the other characters make amends, all ends happily (save for Shylock) as Antonio learns that his ships have returned safely after all. SHYLOCK AND THE ANTI-SEMITISM DEBATE The play is frequently staged today, but is potentially troubling to modern audiences due to its central themes, which can easily appear Anti-Semitic . Critics still argue over whether the play is itself anti-semitic, or that it is merely a play about anti-Semitism. The anti-Semitic reading English society in the 1600s was undeniably anti-Semitic. English Jews had been Expelled in the Middle Ages and were not permitted to return until the rule of Oliver Cromwell . Jews were presented on the Elizabethan stage in hideous caricature, with hooked noses and bright red wigs, and were usually depicted as avaricious Usurer s; the best known example is Christopher Marlowe 's extremely popular play '' The Jew Of Malta '', which features a comically wicked Jewish villain called Barabas. They were usually characterized as evil, deceptive, and greedy. Many readers see Shakespeare's play as a continuation of this anti-Semitic tradition. The title page of the Quarto indicates that the play was sometimes known as ''The Jew of Venice'' in its day, which suggests that it was seen as similar to Marlowe's ''The Jew of Malta''. One interpretation of the play's structure is that Shakespeare meant to contrast the mercy of the main Christian characters with the vengefulness of a Jew, who lacks the religious Grace to comprehend mercy. Similarly, it is possible that Shakespeare meant Shylock's Forced Conversion to Christianity to be a " Happy Ending " for the character, as it 'redeems' Shylock both from his unbelief and his specific sin of wanting to kill Antonio. This reading of the play would certainly fit with the anti-Semitic beliefs of the majority of Shakespeare's audience. The sympathetic reading However, many modern readers and theatregoers have read the play as a plea for tolerance as Shylock is a sympathetic character. In fact, according to David Suchet in the book ''Playing Shakespeare'' (which is a transcript of a workshop series of the same name by world-renowned Shakespeare expert John Barton ) Jews love the play in Israel, and seeing the play as anti-Semitic is unique to the west. Religious Perspective This difference in perception derives from a difference in these religions' basic concept of forgiveness of sins. In Christianity, forgiveness comes easily, generally at any time, to those who truly repent, usually through Jesus. In Judaism, Jews atone for their sins on Yom Kippur , which comes once a year. Atonement is not interchangeable with divine forgiveness. According to Judaism, the laws set out by God were designed to make people happy: not to be ritualistic, cumbersome, etc. By breaking God's law, (according to this theory), you are really just harming yourself directly and in this life, so forgiveness from God is irrelevant. It is not a stretch of the imagination to see that the violation of the moral law would quickly degenerate into a chaotic society if everyone lied, killed, stole, and so on. Christianity seems to suffer from a problem: if forgiveness is freely available at any time, what incentive is there to live a moral life? Shylock and the Duke know the law is for the functioning of society, Portia believes forgiveness is the quality which maintains the wellbeing of society. According to this interpretation, Shylock is the most morally upright character (of the main characters) in the play. Supporters of this interpretation tend to describe the other main characters in negative terms: Antonio as a repressed homosexual (immoral by the standards of the day); Bassanio as a Prodigal who does no work except capitalise on his looks and live off of other people, and who ends up with Portia, who, at the end, realises that Bassanio only ever wanted her money despite all his charms; and Jessica as an ungrateful daughter who steals her father's possessions and runs away to marry Lorenzo, a proselytizing hypocrite. Directors such as John Neville who support this interpretation tend to show the 'young love' story in which Jessica escapes her father to marry Lorenzo, ending unhappily, a reading that may be justified by careful reading of the text. In this reading, though the play is light and funny on the surface, the Christian characters' lives are collapsing because of their immoral behaviour and disrespect for duty to God and the law. Meanwhile, Shylock does not deceive, trick, lie, kill, steal, or do anything mischievous. The promise of a pound of flesh upon default of the loan was something Antonio freely agreed to. Many actors who are trained in early modern drama will, for the above reason, identify the ''Merchant of Venice'' as not an anti-Jewish play, but an anti-Christian play. This does not necessarily mean that Shakespeare himself was anti-Christian, but rather that he was using the story of Shylock to attack prevailing hypocrisies. Western Perspective It is difficult to know whether this modern reading is entirely due to changing sensibilities among readers, or whether Shakespeare, a writer who clearly delighted in creating complex, multi-faceted characters, deliberately intended this reading. One reason for this interpretation is that Shylock's painful status in Venetian society is emphasised. To some critics, Shylock's celebrated "Hath not a Jew eyes" speech (see above) redeems him and even makes him into something of a tragic figure. In the speech, Shylock argues that he is no different from the Christian characters. Detractors note that Shylock ends the speech with a tone of revenge: "if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" However, those who see the speech as sympathetic point out that Shylock says he learned the desire for revenge from the Christian characters: "If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute". Even if Shakespeare did not intend the play to be read this way, the fact that it retains its power on stage for audiences who may perceive its central conflicts in radically different terms is an illustration of the subtlety of Shakespeare's characterizations. Shylock on stage Jacob Adler and others report that the tradition of playing Shylock sympathetically began in the first half of the 19th century with Edmund Kean Adler erroneously dates this from 1847 (at which time Kean was already dead); the ''Cambridge Student Guide to The Merchant of Venice'' dates Kean's performance to a more likely 1814., and that previously the role had been played "by a comedian as a repulsive Clown or, alternatively, as a monster of unrelieved evil." Kean's Shylock established his reputation as an actor.Adler 1999, 341 From Kean's time forward, all of the actors who have famously played the role, with the exception of Edwin Booth , who played Shylock as a simple villain, have chosen a sympathetic approach to the character; even Booth's father, Junius Brutus Booth , played the role sympathetically. Henry Irving was among the most notable late 19th century Shylocks, and Jacob Adler certainly the most notable of the early 20th Century . Adler played the role in Yiddish -language translation, first in Yiddish Theater Manhattan 's Lower East Side , and later on Broadway , where, to great acclaim, he performed the role in Yiddish in an otherwise English-language production.Adler 1999, 342-344 Kean and Irving presented a Shylock justified in wanting his Revenge ; Adler's Shylock evolved over the years he played the role, first as a stock Shakespearean villain, then as a man whose better nature was overcome by a desire for revenge, and finally as a man who operated not from revenge but from Pride . In a 1902 interview with ''Theater'' magazine, Adler pointed out that Shylock is a wealthy man, "rich enough to forego the interest on three thousand ducats" and that Antonio is "far from the chivalrous gentleman he is made to appear. He has insulted the Jew and spat on him, yet he comes with hypocritical politeness to borrow money of him." Shylock's fatal flaw is to depend on the law, but "would he not walk out of that courtroom head erect, the very apotheosis of defiant hatred and scorn?"Adler 1999, 344–350 Some modern productions take further pains to show how Shylock's thirst for vengeance has some justification. For instance in the 2004 Film Adaptation directed by Michael Radford and starring Al Pacino as Shylock, the film begins with text and a montage of how The Jewish Community is cruelly abused by the bigoted Christian population of the city. One of the last shots of the film also brings attention to the fact that, as a convert, Shylock would have been cast out of the Jewish community in Venice, no longer allowed to live in the ghetto. SEXUALITY IN THE PLAY Antonio, Bassanio and pederasty Many observers have interpreted the relationship between Antonio and Bassanio to be Paederastic . Contemporary historians say that the practice experienced a revival in the city states during the Italian Renaissance as ancient Greek documents idealizing such relationships were translated and available to commoners for the first time in nearly one thousand years. Antonio's unexplained depression — "I know not why I am so sad" — and utter devotion to Bassanio has led some throughout the centuries to say that he is deeply in love with Bassanio and is depressed because Bassanio is coming to an age where he will marry a woman. Bassanio too has been subject to this interpretation, especially pertaining to Act IV Scene I, when Antonio says: "Commend me to your honorable wife:/Tell her the process of Antonio's end,/Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death;/And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge/Whether Bassanio had not once a love." Bassanio replies: "But life itself, my wife, and all the world/Are not with me esteemed above thy life;/I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all/Here to this devil, to deliver you." in the play as a comment on human relations in a mercantile society.) This interpretation of the play is sometimes linked to the common interpretation of Shakespeare's Sonnets as love poems addressed to a beautiful young man. Bassanio, Portia and fidelity Portia and Bassanio marry, with the proviso that he will never give up her ring. The ring is a symbol of marital fidelity. The Elizabethans were obsessed with wifely fidelity, and a whole subgenre of jokes were devoted to the subject. An Elizabethan audience may have seen the significance of Bassanio giving Portia's "ring" back to her as an emblem of his potential for infidelity. By winning back the ring, Portia reclaims control over her husband. FILM ADAPTATIONS The Shakespeare play has inspired several movies. The following are the best known. (They are given in chronological order.)
PASTIMES
NOTES REFERENCES
EXTERNAL LINKS
|