Construction Zone

Yes! This is the version I just watched tonight. It was excellent.

I... can't really get my head around the amount of antisemitism in the text. It's historically accurate (I guess?) and even as Shylock is a bastard, he's still sort of pathetically sympathetic. And, oh my, Al Pacino knocked that performance out of the park.

I'm both equally amazed that Shakespeare was able to make a stereotypical "bad Other" less stereotypical and horrified at the whole racist aspect of the story. I read a review online tonight which described the final courtroom scene as a showdown between the Jewish religion (Justice) and the Christian religion (Mercy) and am even more disturbed than before.

But... Antonio/Bassanio... wow. Just... wow.

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I read a review online tonight which described the final courtroom scene as a showdown between the Jewish religion (Justice) and the Christian religion (Mercy)

Link, please? That sounds interesting. Especially because I've seen this distinction used before, except probably in a much more positive light. I remember that it was an explanation between the Jewish and Christian ideas of donating money to support the poor. Jews call it tzedakah, which comes from the same root as "justice," while Christians call it charity, which comes from the Latin caritas, which I think means something to do with mercy or caring or feelings or something like that.

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I can't find the article I read last night. I'll keep looking, but here are a few that I also read that at least brushed on the distinction.

http://shakespeare-comedies.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_quality_of_mercy

wsu.edu/~delahoyd/shakespeare/merchant4.html

http://phoenixandturtle.net/excerptmill/stetner5.html

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Interesting -- a lot of these arguments depend on the MoV characters' complete misreading of the ideas of law and justice. The justice implied by tzedakah is not at all the same thing as legalism, which would be more khok. They confuse one with the other and get the idea that Jewish "justice" completely opposes Christian "mercy."

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neotoma.livejournal.com

were Antonio and Bassanio supposed to read like a romantic couple?

My professor back in college certainly thought so. He went on for a while about how homoerotic relationships were kind of an open and accepted secret in Venice of the time period. Though I have no idea if he was talking out of his hat or not, not being an Italian history buff....

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He went on for a while about how homoerotic relationships were kind of an open and accepted secret in Venice of the time period.

Really? That is fascinating. I may have to read more about this...

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hungrytiger11.livejournal.com

I think people have trying to figure out what Shylock was suppose to read as since Shakespeare wrote him.

i thought that Antonio and Bassanio read that way too...and their ladies did too (and were more badass about it too.)

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I think you're right about Shylock. I just... don't know what I think of the text. I may have to actually read it now...

i thought that Antonio and Bassanio read that way too...and their ladies did too (and were more badass about it too.)

Yeah, I read a review talking about Portia's jealousy over Antonio, and I can totally see that shining through in hindsight. It explains that whole ring fiasco thing at the end, which kind of annoyed me initially.

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hungrytiger11.livejournal.com

Merchant of Venice (much like Measure for Measure) feels very uneven as a comedy. It is like half of the story is meant to be a serious drama and the other half is strange screwball comedy. Very weird.

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I am unfamiliar with Measure for Measure. I'll have to look it up. I've read two reviews by other LJ members that talk about how the play is not the same now as it was when it was first produced, because the audience is not the same now as it was when the play was first produced.

It's very interesting.

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bookaddict43.livejournal.com

Oh yes Antonio and Bassanio *nods*. Even my high school teacher (a nun) allowed that they may have had "an unusual" relationship :)

I'm never sure about Shylock. Of course Shakespeare was writing for his (then) audience, and Jews were often portrayed as morally ambiguous. I've always thought the speech was his way of softening that. But, I think, like in all literature, people can interpret his speech anyway they wish and do so :D

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Even my high school teacher (a nun) allowed that they may have had "an unusual" relationship :)

That is awesome. *LOL*

I've always thought the speech was his way of softening that.

I know. Given that was *all* I knew of the play on the way into the film, I was very surprised at how antisemitic it was.

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Shylock was a very progressive character for English theater of the time. Remember, there were almost no Jews in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, since they'd all been expelled in the 13th century. They were portrayed on stage as stock villains, as sort of generic Evil Others. If you needed an Outsider to kidnap children, plot, extort money, or do other nasty things to your characters, you made that Outsider character a Jew, and everyone got the point, even the groundlings.

Shylock is shown to have feelings, reactions, love his daughter, be somewhat justified in his actions, even if he goes too far. That would have been an astounding humanization of a stock villain at the time (1596, I think, or thereabouts). The modern equivalent would probably be if a U.S. filmmaker gave the same sort of treatment to a character who's a member of Al Qaeda.

The actual Jews who actually lived in actual cities in Italy at that time experienced wildly varying treatment depending on where they lived, and how the ruler of that particular city felt about them. Venice was busy locking them up in ghettos, while in Mantua, they were serving as court physicians and musicians. Go figure.

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I regret that I didn't focus more of my history studies on earlier eras in Europe. I did have a broad English history course, so I knew that about England, but I have no idea what was going on in Italy at that point in time.

The modern equivalent would probably be if a U.S. filmmaker gave the same sort of treatment to a character who's a member of Al Qaeda.

I would very much like to see that.

Do you by chance write any fic for this play? *hopeful* Or know where I may find some?

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Do you by chance write any fic for this play? *hopeful*

Um . . . sort of. There is one Caroverse story that crosses over with The Merchant of Venice. It's called Not In One Bottom Trusted. The POV is Antonio, it's set about five or six years before Merchant of Venice takes place, and some of it is set in Venice.

Or know where I may find some?

Definitely check out the good folks at

bard_slash. They've got some good stuff over there.

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Thanks for the links!

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Also, if you're interested, I saw this movie about a year and a half ago, and I wrote my own review of it.

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I did read your review and I found it fascinating. I like the way you framed it around "careless people," but I cannot help but wonder what happens in the home of Bassanio and Portia in the years to come.

They clearly were both affected. Bassanio seemed almost submissive at the end of the movie, imo, and Antonio promised his soul to Portia if she would take care of Bassanio. I cannot help but feel like those folks are in for a world of hurt of their own making.

Antonio/Bassanio, whether sexual or not, is clearly the supreme pairing of the story and I just don't know how well it's going to work out for them when Portia/Bassanio becomes the default. Perhaps your comparison to the Great Gatsby is even more apt...

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but I cannot help but wonder what happens in the home of Bassanio and Portia in the years to come. . . I cannot help but feel like those folks are in for a world of hurt of their own making.

Oooo, one for the Story Idea Files!

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What production did you see? I tend to be of the school that Shylock is a racist stereotype who gets more sympathy than you would normally expect (especially compared to other racist stereotypes of the same time and place) because sympathy is what Shakespeare specializes in. But Shylock is still a villain, and it's not entirely because he's a Jew. He's a bad person who does bad things, and . . .well, the bad things he does are linked to his Jewishness but they're not JUST his Jewishness. I mean, I don't know if that makes the text less offensive, but I think people who want to make Shylock out to be a tragic hero have to kind of ignore the part where he tries to use the law to commit murder.

And yeah, Antonio/Bassanio is basically canon, and not just in the way slashers always say that. I think the relationship was deliberately implied by the text.

Edited Date: 2010-06-21 03:15 am (UTC)

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The 2004 movie with Jeremy Irons and Al Pacino.

because sympathy is what Shakespeare specializes in

What an interesting concept. I've seen you say similar things before, but this is the first time I think it sort of clicked for me.

But Shylock is still a villain, and it's not entirely because he's a Jew. He's a bad person who does bad things, and . . .well, the bad things he does are linked to his Jewishness but they're not JUST his Jewishness.

It's interesting... I think the story would let you dismiss most of his "villainization" as racism... right up until the end. But, even that said, the end hurt to watch on many fronts. I was both freaked out by what might have happened to Antonio and by what did happen to Shylock. The forced conversion made my jaw drop...

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The "Shakespeare/sympathy" thing is a steal from somewhere but I can't remember where I first picked it up. I think it's a solid generalization about his work, though; his dramas are great because you can step inside just about any of his characters and find motives that make them work.

Re: the forced conversion, I don't think that would have been seen as so out-of-line at the time (from the point of view of Elizabethan society, I mean; it was certainly an awful thing for real-life Jewish people who experienced it). I am not that up on the history but I think that Jewishness was seen as something you could "get over" (which is why Jessica can be a heroine and there's no problem with her marrying a Gentile, from the Gentiles' point of view).

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Re: the forced conversion, I don't think that would have been seen as so out-of-line at the time (from the point of view of Elizabethan society, I mean; it was certainly an awful thing for real-life Jewish people who experienced it). I am not that up on the history but I think that Jewishness was seen as something you could "get over" (which is why Jessica can be a heroine and there's no problem with her marrying a Gentile, from the Gentiles' point of view).

I've read a couple of reviews (both linked here in the comments) from LJ users that talk about how different the play is to audiences now than it was to audiences then. I can totally agree with this, but yeah... that scene killed a tiny part of me watching it. It was clear that the "Christian" viewpoint actually thought it was being merciful, and that was what made it so terrifying.

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Now I'm wondering if there is any modern fiction dealing with the point of view of Jewish characters living in England in this time period. Because it seems like that would be an interesting thing to explore.

I know Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (which was written a few centuries later, but set in England a few centuries earlier than Merchant) has a sympathetic Jewish woman as a central character. And it doesn't end with forced conversion but with the hero and the woman realizing they can't be together because of their religious differences. There are still a lot of stereotypes by today's standards, I'm sure (I read it when I was a lot younger and more attuned to the adventure and romance than anything else), but I think that might be the first major treatment of the issue in English lit. Come to think of it, though, that book might be set before it was actually illegal to be Jewish in England. I know the Shakespeare bio Will in the World (which I believe is by a Jewish writer, though I'm blanking on his name) goes extensively into the status of Jews in Shakespeare's England and how this interacted with his work.

But going back to my original point, it would be interesting to see a historical novel that addressed the situation.

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Re: Ivanhoe - as it's set during Richard I.'s lifetime, it's more than a century before the Jews were officially expelled from England (happened under Edward II, though Edward I already started the process). I am not sure, though, whether I would call this description:

with the hero and the woman realizing they can't be together because of their religious differences

accurate, considering Ivanhoe is engaged to Rowena the whole time and considers Rebecca a non-option even if he weren't precisely because of her being Jewish. Also, Rebecca's father Isaac, as opposed to the film versions where he's a dignified nice man, is the repulsive miser of antisemetic stereotype in the novel. In short, no brownies for Scott, because the cliché of the beautiful Jewess in love with a Christian and her repulsive father predates him by centuries.

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Oh, interesting, thanks! Obviously, it's a long time since I read the book. (I may have gotten my idea of the Wilfred/Rebecca relationship from the film :))

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Actually, I was a tad too harsh on Scott, since he writes clearly with sympathy for Rebecca and her situation, but still, looking it up, here is the passage in question:

"Noble damsel,"—again the Knight of Ivanhoe began; and again Rebecca hastened to interrupt him.

"Bestow not on me, Sir Knight," she said, "the epithet of noble. It is well you should speedily know that your handmaiden is a poor Jewess, the daughter of that Isaac of York, to whom you were so lately a good and kind lord. It well becomes him, and those of his household, to render to you such careful tendance as your present state necessarily demands."

I know not whether the fair Rowena would have been altogether satisfied with the species of emotion with which her devoted knight had hitherto gazed on the beautiful features, and fair form, and lustrous eyes, of the lovely Rebecca; eyes whose brilliancy was shaded, and, as it were, mellowed, by the fringe of her long silken eyelashes, and which a minstrel would have compared to the evening star darting its rays through a bower of jessamine. But Ivanhoe was too good a Catholic to retain the same class of feelings towards a Jewess. This Rebecca had foreseen, and for this very purpose she had hastened to mention her father's name and lineage; yet—for the fair and wise daughter of Isaac was not without a touch of female weakness—she could not but sigh internally when the glance of respectful admiration, not altogether unmixed with tenderness, with which Ivanhoe had hitherto regarded his unknown benefactress, was exchanged at once for a manner cold, composed, and collected, and fraught with no deeper feeling than that which expressed a grateful sense of courtesy received from an unexpected quarter, and from one of an inferior race. It was not that Ivanhoe's former carriage expressed more than that general devotional homage which youth always pays to beauty; yet it was mortifying that one word should operate as a spell to remove poor Rebecca, who could not be supposed altogether ignorant of her title to such homage, into a degraded class, to whom it could not be honourably rendered.

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The more that I think about it, the more I think that my 12 year old self* wrote mental fanfic about this book in which Wilfred & Rebecca DID get together, and that's what I was remembering. But that passage was definitely the basis of it.

Though maybe I was more like 18, and am maybe just embarrassed to admit it.

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Well, you weren't the only one; Thackeray wrote Rebecca and Rowena in which the same thing happens. (19th century, time without copyright and with unauthorized sequels!) And Thackeray was much older than 18, so there's no need to be embrassed. Though I have to say, I'm surprised you didn't write mental Brian de Bois-Guilbert/Rebecca redemption fic instead, because at least he declares his love and is unashamed of it. *g*

But to return to Scott's attitude re: status of Jews in England, have another passage:

From her father's example and injunctions, Rebecca had learnt to bear herself courteously towards all who approached her. She could not indeed imitate his excess of subservience, because she was a stranger to the meanness of mind, and to the constant state of timid apprehension, by which it was dictated; but she bore herself with a proud humility, as if submitting to the evil circumstances in which she was placed as the daughter of a despised race, while she felt in her mind the consciousness that she was entitled to hold a higher rank from her merit, than the arbitrary despotism of religious prejudice permitted her to aspire to.

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I'm surprised you didn't write mental Brian de Bois-Guilbert/Rebecca redemption fic instead

Oh, umm. I totally shipped that too. I don't think I fixated on Wilfred until the Templar was out of the running.

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Simplified, I think Shylock is a racist stereotype written as a human being with actual understandable motivations because Shakespeare was a genius and fleshes out his stereotypes that way. But he was writing in a context where the audience simply LOVED their Jewish villains - an earlier stage hit had been Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, the main character of which betrays, poisons and pimps, every antisemetic stereotype in the book - and where the people cheered the execution of Elizabeth I.'s Jewish court physician on what was almost certainly a trumped up charge, only a few months before Merchant of Venice was first staged. In short, my own guess is that Burbage & Co. concluded this was the hour for a play with a Jewish villain for people to hiss at, surefire cash in the box office, and asked Will S. to write one. He made Shylock something more complex because of his writerly skills, not because Shylock was actually intended as something to COUNTER that stereotype, let alone as a genuine plea for tolerance.

The film version you saw is interesting but suffers a bit, imo, from the director wanting to have his cake and eat it. I've written a post about it here.

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First, I have no idea why I've never friended you before. I am going to rectify that now, if you don't mind.

Second, thanks for the link to your review. It was highly educational and helped me put some things in context. I really don't know what to make of all the contradictions inherent in the text, and I'm not sure how anyone at any point could have overlooked them so completely as to pretend that Shylock was just a villain.

He made Shylock something more complex because of his writerly skills, not because Shylock was actually intended as something to COUNTER that stereotype, let alone as a genuine plea for tolerance.

This is about the only explanation that makes sense to me. Although, Shylock's speech... I dunno. It's hard to discount the aspects of social justice in the words as something just thrown in to make him more well rounded.

Jessica is particularly problematic. I thought that the actresses performance was surprisingly subtle. I really did think that she looked torn and it made me wonder what her home life had been like before she ran away. I'm guessing it wasn't very good. I thought her words of warning at the end about Shylock's intent to harm Antonio were almost made in the hopes that she could spare her father the consequences of his success.

I don't know. It's all muddled.

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Friend away!

I really don't know what to make of all the contradictions inherent in the text, and I'm not sure how anyone at any point could have overlooked them so completely as to pretend that Shylock was just a villain.

I think there is a reference in Pepys' diary to such a production in the Restoration era so yes, lots of people could and did. Most recently, as mentioned in my review, in the Third Reich. The contemporary reviews make a depressing reading.

As to authorial intention - we'll never know. I mean, Edmund in King Lear gets Now Gods, stand up for bastards! and some heartfelt lines before that about the injustice of illegitimate children being treated differently from legitimate ones. It's hard to see any production of the play and not to feel for Edmund at this point. He's still the villain who ends badly, so did Shakespeare make a comment about the injustice of birth contributing to people turning criminal? I don't know. Falstaff in Henry IV, part I, has this whole great "the better part of valour is discretion" speech, some of the most memorable and most popular lines of the play. Are we to conclude Shakespeare thought the knightly code was stupid? Again, I don't know. (Otoh, I'm reasonably sure the recruitment scene in Part II was a pointed comment on similar practices in Elizabethan England.) Then there is Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus, most certainly a villain (he encourages two minor villains to rape and mutilate an innocent girl, among other misdeeds), and he gets both a heartfelt declation on why he loves a white woman and down with all racial separation, and is humanized by his love for their baby, whose survival becomes more important to him than his supervillain existence. The very first example of Shakespare unable to leave a villain one dimensional.

The most interesting comparison is to Othello, because if Shylock is a tragic character in a comedy - and Merchant was billed and staged as a comedy for centuries, though obviously we can't do that anymore today - in Othello we're actually dealing with a tragedy and the outsider character is not the antagonist but the protagonist. It's the villain, Iago, who gets to spout all the racial diatribes this time. However, Othello does kill Desdemona, so is the play a plea for interracial marriage or the opposite? No idea, other than that the topic must have interested Shakespeare since he used it more than once.

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