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

[ficwize.livejournal.com]

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.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

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.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

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.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

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 :))

[selenak.livejournal.com]

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.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

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.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

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.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

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.