Reading "The Merchant of Venice"

Like some of the other Shakespeare plays I’ve read, the play has many more themes and characters other than the one that stands out in the popular mind: Shylock. The Merchant of the title is named Antonio, and in the first scene he worries obsessively about his financial position. He has the same concerns as a Wall Street trader would today. His investments are tanking -- in iambic pentameter. He tells all to his friend Bassanio, who promises to try to help him.

In the second scene, we meet Portia, in a different location entirely. She’s stuck with an odd sort of lottery to determine which of her suitors she’ll marry. She is also trying to figure out who is a really honest, steady, and decent sort of man. This quest eventually puts her in a court of law dressed up as a legal expert (“doctor”) where she has her famous face-to-face with Shylock. The other scenes presenting her elaborate subplot, marriage issues, and charater are all less memorable than the courtroom scene.

Finally, back in Venice, we meet Shylock. Bassanio is asking him to make a loan to his friend. Shylock discusses various credit risks. Bassanio invites Shylock to dine, and Shylock makes his first speech that marks him as an alien: “I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.” When Antonio enters, Shylock remarks in an aside the “ancient grudge” he bears because Antonio loans money without interest and “hates our sacred nation.” By the end of this scene, the famous bargain is complete: Antonio has his loan, and Shylock has the famous bond: if the loan is not repaid by a certain date, a pound of Antonio’s “fair flesh” will be “cut off and taken/In what part of your body pleaseth me.” (I, iii, 36-49 and 150-152)

Shapiro’s Shakespeare and the Jews has convinced me that Shylock fits perfectly into the Elizabethan stereotype of a nasty, unsaved Jew. Further, this characterization continued to feed anti-Jewish fantasies for centuries. In fact, it probably still does. But what struck me in reading the play is the enormous individuality of Shylock.

Shylock has individual problems, individual resentments, a world view about what made him like he is, and a problem with his rebellious runaway daughter. Never mind if we think he’s fundamentally evil or if he is reacting to his life in a way we can understand: he’s a fully developed 3-d character. This must be one of the brilliant Shakespearean features that Shapiro alludes to. Every individualized feature somehow becomes a generalized trait.

Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, hates him and can’t wait to run away and marry a poor man. Children and others in the street make fun of him: the Ducats-Daughter refrain is not put in his mouth, but in the crowd’s mouth as they mock his fury at her disapperance. He doesn’t treat the servants well (another subplot). Portia asks him first for disinterested, idealistic mercy, and he says no. Then she points out that he could be a lot richer if he was paid off than if he insisted on the “bond” – the famous pound of flesh. He still says no, indulging his hatred which by now we know he neither fully understand nor fully controls himself.

Shylock’s personality is of course difficult. He wants to trap and torment others. Shylock describes his hatred and says he doesn’t need to explain it. Of course his description of the emotion of hatred is so on-target that it’s one of the many famous quotations from the play. It’s painful that this individualized portrait became a stereotype of Jewishness in England and elsewhere.

The Shylock plot is complete at the end of Act IV, and then we go back to the subplot about Portia and her tricks on men. Portia’s experiences would be memorable if Shylock didn’t dominate the play, and if the question of how to deal with the most remarkable individual portrait of a stereotype wasn’t so troubling.

Favorite Quote from "Shakespeare and the Jews"

In his "Conclusion," Shapiro summarizes his view of The Merchant of Venice: “I have tried to show that much of the play’s vitality can be attributed to the ways in which it scrapes against a bedrock of beliefs about the racial, national, sexual, and religious difference of others. I can think of no other literary work that does so as unrelentingly and as honestly. To avert our gaze from what the play reveals about the relationship between cultural myths and peoples’ identities will not make irrational and exclusionary attitudes disappear. Indeed, these darker impulses remain so elusive, so hard to identify … that only in instances like productions of this play do we get to glimpse these cultural faultlines. This is why censoring the play is always more dangerous than staging it.” (p.228)

Shylock

Reading Shapiro's book made me curious about portrayals of Shylock, so I googled a bit. Of course it has to be the next play that I read, but that will be a few days. Here are two Shylocks that I found. The engraving is from the early 19th century, and the painting is from the early 20th century. Both are of famous actors of their era.

More on Shapiro’s Book

Continuing to range broadly in order to gain a perspective on The Merchant of Venice, Shapiro reviews the history of antisemitism. Stereotypes of Jews were numerous, involving both physical and personal characteristics – virtually all ugly! These stereotypes naturally played a role in the depiction of Jewish converts and Jews living as Christians in England in Elizabethan times. “Catalogues of Jewish villainy” appeared in plays in Elizabethan times, Shapiro points out. A Jew could often be depicted as a “murderer, poisoner, usurer, and political interloper.” (p. 92)

Shapiro describes the history of popular English attitudes towards conversion from Judaism to Chritianity. The faith of converted Jews was always in doubt: “When a mouse shall catch a cat, then a Jew converted to be a Christian will remain a firm Christian.” So said Thomas Calvert in 1648. (p. 131)

Jews in Elizabethan England were always aliens without citizenship, though there were ways for them to become more naturalized. Jewish immigrants had both economic and social incentives and disincentives for conversion – in many cases these were more important than religious motives. Women (like Shylock’s daughter Jessica) were often supposed in fiction or popular impressions to convert for love. Shapiro points out that the conventional view of a Jewish woman who converted was that she was young, and that marriage to a Christian movivated her, while male converts were usually depicted as old, unmarried, and undesireable.

“There is no way of knowing whether Elizabethans witnessing a performance of The Merchant of Venice left the theater doubting the sincerity of either Jessica’s or Shylock’s conversion,” says Shapiro. “For some, perhaps, instances of Jewish apostasy they had read or heard about or seen onstage left open the possibility that these ‘Christian Jews’ would turn once again; no doubt, for others, the conversion of Jessica and her father were irreversible and confirmed the rightness of the Christian faith.” (p. 165)

This book is full of interesting detail all adding up to the purpose of showing a cultural history and how Shakespeare’s play fits into it. The Merchant drew on existing ideas of what Jews were and how they fit into English society and self-concept. Then as time went on, The Merchant made a huge contribution to how the English saw the Jews and saw their relationship to society. I can only mention what Shapiro does, not reproduce it.

"Shakespeare and the Jews" by James Shapiro

The early chapters of Shapiro’s book Shakespeare and the Jews establish a method for understanding Shakespeare’s knowledge of, interaction with, and views of Jews. This is a much more technical history than the author’s book A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, which I read recently.

If you want to know the history of the Jews in England, Shapiro says, you first must evaluate the sources of information. This was news to me: all the Jewish history I had read seemed to rely on official records of events. Shapiro details the biases in the historical record, and the biases among scholars.

The author points out that often the historians’ views were not merely biased, but bigoted. Thus, they can’t be cited without careful analysis of what they wanted to prove. Writers were often trying to define what it meant to be English. The expulsion of the Jews in 1290 was an important moment in purifying the English Nation in the eyes of some writers, who also expressed partisan views about the readmission of Jews under Cromwell. He goes into the many extreme cases, as well as trying to separate later prejudices from those that were active in Shakespeare’s own time.

The most confusing myth about Shakespeare’s time is the claim that there were no Jewish people in England between 1290 and Cromwell half a century after him. Shapiro gives an overview of the various Portuguese Jews, Jews from Amsterdam, and visitors or would-be residents from Eastern Europe who were present in Shakespeare’s London. Though the total was only a few hundered people, their presence is significant.

The iconic status of Shakespeare from the eighteenth century onward makes it more difficult to separate later views of social and racial issues from Shakespeare’s own views, and Shapiro’s approach of looking at a broad cultural history addresses these challenges. So far, I have read only the chapters establishing these issues, and will continue with the more Shakespeare-intensive chapters now.

Shakespeare's Church

The Washington Post today described the situation of the church where Shakespeare's bones lie, underneath the famous curse on anyone who moves them (shown in their photo at right). The article described the large numbers of visitors to Stratford, who often know little about the man in the grave.

"Money is a big issue for the 800-year-old church these days because the roof leaks, the metal in the windows is corroding and a small invasion force of deathwatch beetles is boring into the ancient timbers," says the article. "It is a familiar story in England, where hundreds of centuries-old churches, left largely devoid of worshipers by a modern trend toward secularism, need hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of repairs."

The paragraph above doesn't mention that many little towns in England never (or only very recently) recovered the population density that they had before the Black Death in the fourteenth century. And it doesn't deal with later changes to the wool industry -- wealth from wool often enabled the medieval build-up of these churches. So the lack of human and material resources to maintain the churches is due to many more factors than secularism.

When we were in Cambridge for a long stay, and on other trips, I've seen many of these old and poorly maintained churches. Often the parishoners seem to be camping in the middle of a huge expanse of soaring interior space. A small number of pews with modern embroidered cushions and a few banners on the wall around a modern altar suggest a committed but miniscule group of faithful worshippers. In the entryway are often announcements of the activities of the congregation.

The architecture of these village churches is usually quite interesting. Placards point to details like carved seats, an antique pulpit, or a surviving stained-glass window. A volunteer is often present to offer information about the history of the village and the building. In most churches, a sign asks for contributions to such necessities as roof repair. The church at Stratford, with its constant stream of visitors, is comparatively lucky!

See: A Day at Shakespeare's Grave in today's Washington Post. For a photo of the church's exterior, see my earlier post: Stratford upon Avon.

Northwest does its worst

We had a great weekend at Alice's birthday celebration (as written up on the other blogs). But air travel is really trying these days. Our DC-bound flight last Thursday was delayed half an hour. After boarding, the pilot discovered a mechanical problem. The mechanic showed up quickly and fixed it. However, yesterday didn't go quite that well. Here's the sequence:

• 2:00 -- we arrive at the gate for our 4:15 plane. We are early because there was no wait for security. WOW. We think we are so lucky.
  
• 2:30 -- the inbound plane is late because of de-icing problems in Detroit. Flight time changes to 4:30, then to 5:00.
• 5:00 -- we board. Mechanical difficulties discovered. Mechanic can't be found. Passengers speculate that he has gone home to watch the Superbowl. We wonder why so many flights have delays for mechanical problems. The adjacent Minneapolis flight is cancelled for the same reason. As we sit on the ground, passengers from that flight continue to board the plane.
• 5:50 -- the mechanic has finally shown up and determined that the problem will take a long time to fix. Per instructions, we de-board with all our carry-ons. In the waiting area long lines form to rebook people with connections or no patience.
• 6:45 -- we make a backup morning reservation as the agents announce that the new part has finally been found and installed, but that a half-hour test period is required. We warn Evelyn that her guests may be showing up to sleep in her guest room again.
  
• 8:00 -- we reboard, thinking that we could just be beginning the whole thing over again. This time, though, we take off.
  
• 10:00 -- we land in Detroit, 4 hours late.
  

What can we learn? Lenny's answer: "Have patience." Well, ok, this isn't Northwest's worst! We know they can make you much more miserable than this. After all, we're home.

As You Like It: BBC Version

Helen Mirrin played Rosalind in this 1978 BBC production. I think she was a good choice for this role, and the other actors were also quite well-cast, I thought.

The DVD we rented from Netflix seemed faded: the colors were all very pale. The trees in the Forest of Arden all seemed to be a single shade of non-descript green. The faces of the actors all looked a pinkish grey. I suspect perhaps it was colorized. The sun never seemed to shine through the leaves nor to illuminate the castle walls and fields. The sound track was better, with much music that seemed fresh and clear.

Hearing the lines and the many songs made me realize that this play is both totally familiar and totally bizarre. Orlando, face to face with his lady love, can't recognize her because she's wearing a doublet and a man's cap instead of the outlandish headdress she wore in the first act. He comes close enough almost to kiss her in the scene where her disguised persona convinces him to "practice" his wooing. There seem to be almost too many set pieces in speeches like "All the world's a stage" and others, which it's hard for actors to bring to life.

Despite some dramatization, this production lacks the deep excitement and passion that can be a part of a video Shakespeare play. It's probably in part the nature of this play, in part the quality of this particular production.

Claudius the Evil King

What really impressed me as I re-read Hamlet was what a devlish schemer King Claudius is! Quite early in the play, we realize -- through Hamlet's eyes and the ghost's witness -- how effectively he has turned Queen Gertrude to his will. It also becomes clear that he sees Hamlet as an enemy, and is willing to turn others against Hamlet. Polonius too does his bidding, though it's not clear if Polonius ever had any backbone. Still, he inspires Polonius to betray Ophelia, his own daughter, in order to manipulate Hamlet and either make him go mad or look mad.

The players' performance is obviously a turning point, where Hamlet tries to warn everyone of the true Claudius. But Claudius seems determined to hold onto his position. In his prayer Claudius says,"O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven; it hath the primal eldest curse upon't, A brother's murder." So he recognizes his evil. However -- "May one be pardoned and retain th'offense?" he asks, because he won't give up his viciously obtained spoils: "My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen." (III, iii)

But then he continues and compounds his evil. He tries to send Hamlet to England to be killed, but Hamlet returns. His victims are silly Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern -- also inspired by his scheming to betray their friend, before the tables turned.

As the play concludes, Claudius continues to defend his evil spoils. He prods Laertes to seek revenge with a poisoned duelling weapon, and at the same time prepares a poisoned drink, determined to be rid of Hamlet. As everyone knows, all Claudius's plans fail, bringing all but Horatio to their deaths, and returning the kingdom to those whom his nobler brother had once conquered.

We don't have a clue what made Claudius so evil. There's nothing about jealousy of his brother, dislike of his nephew, love of his sister-in-law, or any hint about what he was doing throughout the many years of his brother's long and successful reign. I don't think we are meant to ask these questions. Claudius is a given of Hamlet's environment from the first moment of the play. Maybe that's why I never focused on him before.

I find Prince Hamlet's complex character as fascinating as ever. I find doubly betrayed Ophelia as tragic and romatic or pathetic as ever. But I hadn't thought so much about Claudius before.

Ophelia

Reading Hamlet, I have thought of the vast number of works inspired by this play. In Smithsonian this month, an article discussed how much the Pre-Raphaelites loved to illustrate themes from Shakespeare. Here is the painting of Ophelia by John Everett Millais:



From the Tate Gallery website: "Ophelia was part of the original Henry Tate Gift in 1894 and remains one of the most popular Pre-Raphaelite works in the Tate's collection. Shakespeare was a frequent source of inspiration for Victorian painters. Millais's image of the tragic death of Ophelia, as she falls into the stream and drowns, is one of the best-known illustrations from Shakespeare's play Hamlet." -- Tate Work In Focus: Millais's Ophelia

Here is another Pre-Raphaelite work: Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Hamlet and Ophelia" --

I've alredy mentioned Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: a post-modern take on the play. Every era reinterprets the themes and decides which characters suit the spirit of the times.

Romeo and Juliet

I just watched Zeffirelli's dazzling film of Romeo and Juliet. My impressions for the moment are from that version of the play, and no other. I have no idea of how the script compares to the original play.

Indeed I am dazzled by the sets, the costumes, and the richness of the chosen music. I love the color and bustle of the market place where the film's first scenes take place, the stark stone buildings of the medieval locations, the clang of swords in play, the howls of the mob-like Montague and Capulet followers, the youth and beauty of the actors, and the elaborate balcony with trees and night-time lighting. I felt that they mesh wonderfully with the Shakespearean poetry that elevates the emotions of gang-like teenage rage and hopeless, tragic love. The first half of the film is full of such visual dramatization.

"A plague on both your houses," ends the scene where both Tybalt and Mercutio lie dead. And both houses are clearly represented by the color-coded costumes, which I assume were also in the play in Shakespeare's time, delineating the two irrational factions.

When Romeo and Juliet -- now married -- wake up after their brief night together, she tries to pretend that she hears a nightingale; Romeo knows that they hear the morning sound of a lark. Thus she hopes that the night is still lasting, morning has not yet broken. The poetry of this interchange told everything for the audience of a stage play. But I find the introduction of actual bird songs to add to the beauty. (Some purist might dispute my impression.)

The film's Friar Lawrence, in a scene in his "cell," explains the elixir that will put Juliet into a death-like sleep. Meanwhile he stands behind a high laboratory set up of beakers, retorts, and other achemists' equipment. Before he starts, he lights a thick candle; when he is done, he blows it out. As he speaks his lines, he pours drops from a series of vessels into a tiny vial to give to wide-eyed Juliet. This visual drama underscores the impact of what he's saying.

Similarly, during Juliet's entombment, we see Baltazaar, Romeo's faithful servant, observing what has happened. Then we see Baltazaar mount a swift horse and gallop past Friar Lawrence's envoy. We know the envoy, riding a slow donkey, is bearing the Friar's letter that should have warned Romeo that she is not really dead. So the words of Shakespeare's play are made visible. Finally we reach the painful scene within the tomb where the two lovers die: the torch-lit scene is surely melodramatic, but it works. Should I like it? I don't know. Do I like it? Yes.

As You Like It

So many fools, so much wisdom! This play has such a variety of detached observations about human nature, love, and self-deception too. Yet it's all so good natured -- irresistible Touchstone and his Audrey; the melancholy Jaques. And so many changes of direction from evil to good!

As the play comes to an end, the clever Rosalind promises everyone what they want. Of course she's disguised as Ganymede the boy, so she can make what sound like conflicting promises, and we the audience join her in knowing that all her conditions are clever plays on this deception.

I can hardly say anything new about this play. I simply enjoyed reading and remembering it after a long time away from it.

Oh, no! Not more weather?

Now it's an ice AND snow storm

Ice Storm

Rozenkrantz & Guildenstern are dead

I decided to read Stoppard's play. I'm totally baffled. I don't feel that I obtained any insight into Shakespeare's play (or even know if I was supposed to get any such insight). I don't know what the two characters are about. Of course I "get it" -- they are weaving in and out of Shakespeare's Hamlet. It's about illusion and reality in a play. But I don't see why that's a good way to make that point.

Yesterday I watched the Beatles' movie "Hard Day's Night" which dates from the same era as this play and maybe asks some of the same questions. I like the Beatles' questions better. Who are you if you are onstage? Well, you aren't you and you are you. You can start giving silly answers to silly questions from your adoring public at cocktail parties. OK. I'm done.

Shakespeare in History

To continue my Shakespeare project, this week I read A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro. I am delighted by the approach of this book. The author explains how little actual information is available on the person Shakespeare. We have no diaries, personal papers, or memoirs of Shakespeare -- and no such intimate documents for any of his contemporaries. Recording of personal thoughts seems not yet to have happened in that time. Many previous scholars have sought a retrofitted portrait of Shakespeare in his works. The speculative nature and dangers of this approach were already obvious to my Shakespeare teachers years ago.

Shapiro tries something different: to look at the social and political scene, as recorded in the materials of chroniclers, social history, and annalists. He holds up the details of the year 1599 (fascinating in and of themselves) to the plays that Shakespeare wrote. The work of the censors and licensers, and the records of publications and so on make it possible to date 4 of Shakespeare's plays to 1599: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. He connects each one to the fascinating events of that year.

Also in 1599 an unscrupulous publisher obtained several sonnets by Shakespeare. Some were poems that Shakespeare had circulated in confidence and wished to remain unpublished, others lifted from plays. The publisher produced a pirate edition of these and others not by Shakespeare as The Passionate Pilgrim.

Here in brief are some of those events. First, a perceived threat to England by a second Spanish Armada, which caused a somewhat panicky organization of a defense of the country. Next, military action in Ireland led by Essex whose relationship with Queen Elizabeth was in very bad shape. Essex was engaged in a power trip that also led to his attempt to create a number of new Knights whose titles would bind the holders to him. These events led to the fall of Essex, but from the Shakespeare angle -- they generated interest in the questions of how monarchs hold power, which are explored in the plays. In contrast to this last gasp of feudal relations, 1599 was also the date of the founding of the East India Company, with plans to equip ships for long commercial voyages and so to change the orientation of English greatness. Shakespeare also pursued the award of a coat of arms to his family, and a lawsuit to restore property from his mother's family to which his father had formerly lost the title.

These are bare-bones examples. The book makes all the connections fascinating.

Where in the world have I been?

I learned that there was a website where I was able to create the following map of countries where I have been. My trip to Hong Kong (with a day in Gangchow/Canton) means I get to count China, and my trip to a dive resort across the border of Israel in Egypt allows me to count that whole country too. The map also shows a Scandinavian country too many: I really only highlighted Denmark.


Here is the link if you want to make your own map:
create your own visited countries map

It's fun to make this map and also to look at the comments on the site from people discussing what should be meant by a "country." There is an option for a US map of states one has visited as well.

Stratford upon Avon

The photo above shows the church where Shakespeare is buried, reflected in the Avon river.



These photos date from several years ago, when we visited Stratford-upon-Avon, England and toured several of the houses and sites associated with Shakespeare.

The Taming of the Shrew

While I found The Tempest and Twelfth Night much more delightful than I recalled, I found The Taming of the Shrew to be disappointing. From the first long scene that just leads up to the real play, it seemed scattered --a total contrast to the compact and efficent presentations of character, plot, and emotion of the other two plays.

"Such a mad marriage never was before" (III, ii, 184) says Gremio, one of the servants whose prose-expressed antics reflect Shakespeare's view of them. The Bard reserved prose for the lowly, bawdy, disorderly classes, I learned once. And the lowly, bawdy, disorderly servants seemed to me to dominate this play. What sticks in the mind is one scene where Petruchio pretends to protect shrewish Kate from bad food, poorly made clothing, and improper beds: thus depriving her of nourishment, proper dress, and sleep. And so he tames the shrew. But it's only one little scene in a long play.

At least I'm still keeping my resolution.