Merchant of Venice

[ficwize]

I just saw the Merchant of Venice for the first time. (Yes, I am also shocked by the lack of education here.) I have a mix of reactions. All I knew of the play before was the "Has not a Jew..." speech which seems to be quite progressive for Shakespeare's time. Then I saw it in context and I... don't know anymore. Was it a mockery? Was it intended to be sympathetic? Or was Shylock supposed to be a simple villian, which he does not come across as.

Also, is it my slash glasses, or were Antonio and Bassanio supposed to read like a romantic couple?

Finally, I cried in the court scene. I also got heart palpitations and freaked out a bit when I though it might go badly...

I will be adding this to my Yuletide list this year.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

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.