Transcript Slide 1

The Merchant
of Venice
William Shakespeare
Dr. Gavin Richardson
Usury
Critical Terms: usury: Loaning money at
exorbitant rates of interest, a practice
condemned by Christian society during the
Middle Ages and Renaissance.
EXODUS 22:25
If thou lend money to my people, that is, to the
poor with thee, thou shalt not be as an usurer
unto him: ye shall not oppress him with usury.
LEVITICUS 25:35-37
Moreover, if thy brother be impoverished and
fallen into decay with thee, thou shalt relieve
him and as a stranger and a sojourner, so shall
he live with thee. Thou shalt take no usury of
him nor vantage, but thou shalt fear thy god,
that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt
not give him thy money to usury, nor lend him
thy victuals for increase.
[all quotations are from the Geneva Bible (London,
1560)]
Of Usury, from Brant’s
Stultifera Navis (the Ship
of Fools) Author:
attributed to Albrecht
Dürer
Backgrounds: Medieval
English Anti-Semitism
The Blood Libel. The (false)
accusation that Jews ritually
killed (often crucified)
Christian children.
Sometimes the Blood Libel
involved Jews using
Christian blood to make
ritual foods for the Passover.
Shylock’s cruelty may be
designed to invoke this antiSemitic imagery.
A woodcut of the ritual murder, by Jews, of the Christian boy Simon of Trent, 1453
Backgrounds: Medieval
English Anti-Semitism
1180s: Attempts at expulsion.
1190: The massacre/mass suicide at
York. A mob, incited by Crusade-era
Anti-Semitism and a desire to
destroy evidence of debts, traps
York’s Jewish community in
Clifford’s Tower.
1200s: Heavy royal taxation of Jews;
landholding restrictions.
1290: Jews expelled from England
Shakespeare’s first-hand knowledge
of Jews?
“…Jews in small numbers had begun
returning to England not long after
their expulsion in 1290 . . . The total
number of Jews in England during
the Tudor and Stuart reigns at any
one time probably did not exceed
150 or so.” Oxford Companion to
Shakespeare 223-4.
Jews being persecuted;
Chronicles of Offa, 13th c.
Two Ways of Reading Shakespeare:
The thoroughly Renaissance
Shakespeare: A man of his
time in his acceptance and
promotion of anti-Semitic
attitudes.
The postmodern Shakespeare:
A man whose play exposes
the flaws of his society; his
play show the evils of his age
and he knows it. We should
apply the dramatic principle.
Shakespeare is not antiSemitic, the Venetian culture
is.
Which one is correct?
Act 1
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Why is Antonio so sad?
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The conflict unfolds: read 1.1.122 ff.
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1.3 The crucial loan scene. DVD Chapter 5. Is
Shylock serious about the pound of flesh?
1.3.40: What is the basis of Shylock’s hatred of
Antonio? Is this ill will justified in the text?
Michael Radford DVD
Special Features
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Al Pacino on why he
stayed away from Shylock.
Script adaptation.
Michael Radford on this
complex world.
Jeremy Irons on Antonio
4:00.
Ralph Fiennes on
Bassanio 5:00.
Jeremy Irons on
homoeroticism and male
friendship 7:00-7:40.
Shylocks: A Gallery. What does each Shylock
say about the character’s interpretation?
For more, see:
http://www.geocities.com/athens/acropolis/7221/
stagehistory.htm
Love & Risk
The wooing of Portia: Act 1.2.
The casket test and the theme of
appearance vs. reality.
Odd mix: a most independent
woman still governed by rules of
a dead man. This is a play about
authority; about who is at the
center and who is placed on the
margins. Christian/Jew;
Male/Female. Patriarchy, AntiSemitism, & Racism. And
Antonio?
Act 2.1. Morocco and the racial
element. Theme of appearances
and judgment again. See also 2.7
ff.; DVD chapter 8.
Shylock & Jessica
2.3. Jessica and conversion. Does Jessica’s desertion create sympathy for
Shylock? Or do we cheer her action? Is her “conversion” an uplifting one?
DVD chapter 7 and Act 2.5: the exchanges between Shylock and Jessica.
Jessica steals away in 2.6, 2.8.
In 2.8.12-22 Solanio “quotes” Shylock’s outrage at losing both daughter and
ducats as Jessica runs away with Lorenzo. It is tempting to take Solanio’s
recounting of Shylock’s exclamations at face value. But we should remember
that we are hearing this speech second-hand.
In 3.1 Shylock seems more upset about the loss of his money than his daughter.
Do you believe this to be the case, or is he transferring/displacing his grief
from one object to another?
“ O my Christian ducats….”
O: Christ; R: The Doge kneeling before St. Mark;
Doge’s Palace, Venice
Excursus: Radford’s Venetian Prostitutes
Radford’s film implies that Venice is holy and
Christian on the outside, but morally corrupt
on the inside, again furthering the theme of
appearance vs. reality.
“If you prick us do we not bleed?”
Shylock’s speech in 3.1.58–73 may be the most famous of the entire play, and has
been repeated in many different contexts. After reading this speech, review
Ann Barton’s comments on the performing of Shylock in The Riverside
Shakespeare. Barton writes, “Shakespeare’s text suggests a truth more
complex than any of these extremes.” Write a paragraph on what you think
Shylock means to Shakespeare.
Shylock is a closely observed human being, not a bogeyman to frighten children
in the nursery. In the theatre, the part has always attracted actors, and it has
been played in a variety of ways. Shylock has sometimes been presented as the
devil incarnate, sometimes as a comic villain gabbling absurdly about ducats and
daughters. He has also been sentimentalized as a wronged and suffering father
nobler by far than the people who triumph over him. Roughly the same range of
interpretation can be found in criticism on the play. Shakespeare’s text suggests
a truth more complex than any of these extremes.”
– Ann Barton, The Riverside Shakespeare, 285.
The ring of turquoise. Sympathy for
Shylock? Foreshadows another ring
and its loss (cf. Portia’s ring test of
Bassanio).
“The world is still deceived with ornament”:
Bassanio & the Casket Test
Portia’s song and its rhymes; 3.2.65 ff.
3.2 Bassanio chooses correctly.
Can we feel good about the clever Portia
becoming subjugated to the prodigal
Bassanio? 3.2.166. Note curious use
of converted. Portia // Jessica
PORTIA: … Happiest of all is that her gentle spirit
Commits itself to yours to be directed,
As from her lord, her governor, her king.
Myself and what is mine to you and yours
Is now converted: but now I was the lord
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
Queen o'er myself: and even now, but now,
This house, these servants and this same myself
Are yours, my lord: I give them with this ring;
Which when you part from, lose, or give away,
Let it presage the ruin of your love
And be my vantage to exclaim on you. 3.2.166-77
Love & Risk
Why are Antonio and Portia "sad" as the play begins? The word
carried more specific gravitas in Shakespeare's period than
perhaps it does in our own, deriving as it does from the same
word as "satiated" or "sated," having had one’s fill. They are
rich, they are well attended, and yet their lives seem empty.
… Antonio and Portia have to leave the prison of the selfsufficient self and commit themselves to the world, and to
human relationships, friendship, passion, and love. The
common feature of such relationships in this play is risk. In
fact, the message of the leaden casket is, in a way, the most
crucial theme of the play: "Who chooseth me must give and
hazard all he hath" (2.7.9). Giving and hazarding are, in a
way, the opposite of Shylock's usury, security, and interest.
Antonio begins to lose his melancholy when Bassanio
appeals to his friendship and seeks to borrow money from
him. Since he does not have the money on hand he has to
borrow it, to go into debt to Shylock. Taking on this debt is
what, in an odd way, revitalizes him, giving him a purpose for
living, a purpose of love and friendship toward Bassanio. The
Antonio we see in the trial scene, ready to give his life in
payment of the debt, is strangely happier and more alive
than the Antonio of the play's opening lines. And Antonio's
willingness to risk is promoted, in part at least, by Bassanio’s
own risk-taking. Garber, 286-7.
Prologue to a Trial
3.2.265. All of Antonio’s ventures have failed.
3.3 The law of Venice and economic stability depends
on exacting the pound of flesh.
3.4 Portia’s and Nerissa’s disguises. Again,
appearance and reality.
ANTONIO The duke cannot deny the course of law:
For the commodity that strangers have
With us in Venice, if it be denied,
Will much impeach the justice of his state;
Since that the trade and profit of the city
Consisteth of all nations. Therefore, go:
These griefs and losses have so bated me,
That I shall hardly spare a pound of flesh
To-morrow to my bloody creditor.
Well, gaoler, on. Pray God, Bassanio come
To see me pay his debt, and then I care not!
The Trial: DVD Chapters 18-24; 1:23-1:49
(26 mins).
Shylock’s “Pound of Flesh” in Context
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An allusion to the Blood Libel
A parody of Jewish Ritual Circumcision and
Pauline discourse.
See Romans 2:27-29:
“For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither [is that]
circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he [is] a Jew,
which is one inwardly; and circumcision [is that] of the heart,
in the spirit, [and] not in the letter; whose praise [is] not of
men, but of God.”
Duritia cordis;
New Testament
language. Cf. Mark 8.
Act 4: “I stand for law…”
Shylock on Venetian hypocrisy:
SHYLOCK What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?
You have among you many a purchased slave,
Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts,
Because you bought them: shall I say to you,
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?
Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds
Be made as soft as yours and let their palates
Be season'd with such viands? You will answer
'The slaves are ours:' so do I answer you:
The pound of flesh, which I demand of him,
Is dearly bought; 'tis mine and I will have it.
If you deny me, fie upon your law!
There is no force in the decrees of Venice.
I stand for judgment: answer; shall I have it?
Portia and
Shylock,
Thomas Sully
(English, 17831872)
CQ: Why won’t Shylock take the
6,000 ducats Bassanio offers? He
even pledges 30,000 more later!
Portia’s role as judge: the actor
would’ve been a boy playing a girl
playing a boy. Exteriors vs.
interiors.
Act 4: “The quality of mercy is not strained…”
JUSTICE VS. MERCY & THE PRICE
OF LEGALISM
4.1.204: Shylock says that the sin be
upon his head.
Shylock is instructed to go hang
himself. 4.1.375.
CQ: In Act 4 of this play, Shylock is
forced to convert to Christianity. Is
this forced conversion of Shylock
an act of Christian charity or an act
of hatred and intolerance?
Barbara Lewalski on Shylock’s Conversion
“Shylock’s ‘forced conversion’ (a gratuitous addition made
by Shakespeare to the source story in Il Pecorone)
must be viewed in the context of the symbolic action
thus far described. Now that Shylock’s claim to legal
righteousness has been totally destroyed, he is made
to accept the only alternative to it, faith in Christ . . .
Thus the stipulation for Shylock's conversion, though it
of course assumes the truth of Christianity, is not
antisemitic revenge: it simply compels Shylock to avow
what his own experience in the trial scene has fully
‘demonstrated’—that the Law leads only to death and
destruction, that faith in Christ must supplant human
righteousness. In this connection it ought to be noted
that Shylock’s pecuniary punishment under the laws of
Venice precisely parallels the conditions imposed upon
a Jewish convert to Christianity throughout most of
Europe and also in England during the Middle Ages and
after. All his property and goods, as the ill-gotten gain
of usury, were forfeit to the state upon his conversion.”
“Biblical Allusion and Allegory in The Merchant of Venice”
(1962), p. 341. Click here for full article in JSTOR.
Was Shakespeare Anti-Semitic?
Shakespeare as Everything and Nothing
Jonathan Bate in The Genius of Shakespeare writes:
Shakespeare’s greatest cunning is never to give too
much away. He lets his characters speak for
themselves, while keeping his own counsel.
There is a whiff of crypto-Catholicism about some
of the plays, but no firm evidence. He knows that
there is more drama in a complex question than a
pat answer. So it is that he leaves space for us to
project our opinions on to him. For radical theatre
directors in the 1960s, the plays were joyously
anarchic and contemptuous of authority: for Tory
politicians in the 1980s, Shakespeare was
spokesman for national pride and hierarchical
social order. According to Jorge Luis Borges,
literary sage of South America, the key to
Shakespeare is that he is at one and the same
time “Everything and Nothing.” (354)
The Ring Test: 4.2, 5.1
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Antonio’s pressure to pay the scholar
Portia’s ring: 4.1.62 ff. DVD Chapter 25: 4
mins.
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Portia’s ring test and threats of infidelity.
(Gratiano and Nerissa also have a test of
their own.)
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Bassanio’s gift and the theme of love and
risk (“venture”). See Lewalski on the ring
test.
Lewalski:
With the ring test, Bassanio can fulfill pledge to give
his all to save Antonio. If he loses it, he loses Portia
and all he’s worked for.
Act 5: Portia taunts Bassanio for giving her ring away,
but “Belmont is the land of the spirit, not the letter.”
“Bassanio’s comic trial suggests the judgment
awaiting the Christian soul as it presents its final
account and is found deficient. But Love, finally, is the
fulfillment of the Law and covers all defects…” 343
The Comedic Ending: Antonio’s ships
come in; the lovers married.
Bros before … Wives?
Does the conclusion of the play
disrupt the homosocial
emphasis of the preceding act,
or is the talk of marriage and its
consummation an anticlimax to
the intense love the men have
pledged to one another during
the trial scene?
Resources
See the fine essay on MV in Shakespeare
After All, by Marjorie Garber
Primary texts on the Internet:
http://www.webpdf.com/Download/SHAKES
PR/COMEDY/MERCHANT.PDF
http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/
Selected websites:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/merchantofven
ice/SONY-VEMI-04/TeachersGuide.pdf
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/merc
hant/index.html
http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/
Emma Smith’s Oxford podcast.
The Merchant
of Venice
William Shakespeare