The Merchant of Venice Day One Slide Show ENGL 305 Dr. Fike Business • Please underline your thesis statement (if you have one) and pass.
Download ReportTranscript The Merchant of Venice Day One Slide Show ENGL 305 Dr. Fike Business • Please underline your thesis statement (if you have one) and pass.
Slide 1
The Merchant of Venice
Day One Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike
Slide 2
Business
• Please underline your thesis statement (if
you have one) and pass your paper
proposal forward.
•
Note: If you have not used Courier New 12-point, you must reprint your assignment
asap.
Slide 3
Analysis Paper
•
Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed
explanation of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves
using what something says to support a controversial thesis statement.
Slide 4
Nosich 68
• This is the page in your critical thinking
manual that asks ten questions, one per
element. A way to begin your analysis
paper would be to put your topic through
the elements, using these questions.
Slide 5
Review
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Bottom’s name and the word “dream” in the title may refer to various things.
Especially if the queen was present for a performance of MSND, the play
honored her status as the virgin queen, but it may also have gently
reminded her that she had not produced an heir. (Re. power:
Oberon:Titania::Shakespeare:Elizabeth.)
In any case, the play apparently served the same function for its original
audience as Pyramus and Thisbe serves for the court characters.
Consider this homology: P&T:characters::characters:audience::
audience:_________?
“Complementarity”: Theseus is positive and negative, and what we know
about his son Hippolytus undermines Oberon’s blessing.
Imagination: Lover > lunatic. But lunatic and lover are to intrapsychic as
poet is to extrapsychic. Only the poet performs a useful social function.
Theseus’s negative speech is actually Shakespeare’s positive praise of the
poet’s role (i.e., an apology for poetry).
P&T is a tragic version of what happens to the lovers in the woods. It
reminds us that comedy has tragic potential. Tragedy is failed comedy.
Slide 6
Outline
•
Day One:
– Discussion of Antonio.
– Discussion of Shylock.
•
Day Two:
– Mini-lecture on usury. See “Usury Handout.”
– Group One: Discussion of 1.3.69-100 and Genesis 30:25 to 31:16. Bring your
own Bible. What is the relationship between the two texts? How does Genesis
help you read this passage from MV?
– Group Two: Discussion of the casket scenes. Why does Portia’s father
establish the casket test? Why don’t Morocco and Aragon choose correctly?
What about Bassanio? The casket scenes appear in 2.7, 2.9, and 3.2.
– Whole Class: Discussion of a key motif: venturing. Who ventures in MV?
•
Day Three:
– Shylock’s attitude toward the bond.
– Group Activity: Portia’s speech at 4.1.182ff. “The quality of mercy….” Get the
“MV Exercise” on our course calendar (the link is called “Portia’s Mercy
Speech”).
– The ending—Act 5.
Slide 7
Other Resources
• http://faculty.winthrop.edu/fikem/Courses/
ENGL%20305/305%20MV%20Page.htm
Slide 8
Mixture
• Why I like The Merchant of Venice: Christian and classical
elements.
– Isaac, Jacob, Esau; dish of doves; mercy; Old Test. to New; etc.
– Jason and other classical lovers, Endymion and Diana, Hercules and
Hesione.
– “Disappointment in The Merchant of Venice”:
http://faculty.winthrop.edu/fikem/Courses/ENGL%203
05/305%20MV%20Paper.htm.
• Bedford 149: There were “two overriding characteristics of
[Shakespeare’s] practice as an adapter: first, his eclecticism,
his genius for combining classical stories with other materials,
both ancient and modern, to form new creations; and second,
his ability to expand and multiply characters, episodes, and
effects in order to surpass the classical models.”
Slide 9
Which Mode?
• Hard to figure out what kind of comedy it is:
– Not a “festive” comedy like MSND or Twelfth Night.
– Not a full-blown “problem comedy” like Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well
That Ends Well, or Measure for Measure.
– Not a perfect match for our MSND chart. Not a totally happy ending. No
restorative return to Venice (next slide). Hard to figure out how to view
Shylock. Do you know why (see two slides below)? Shylock is our
central problem on days two and three.
Slide 10
Mixed Modes, Bedford 97
“The Merchant of Venice is probably the most illustrative
example of the high cost of comic resolution. The lovers’
gathering at Belmont in act 5, musical and joyous though
it may be, is overshadowed by their intolerable treatment
of Shylock in the trial scene (4.1). The movement
toward assimilation that normally unites the cast in the
last moments is not strong enough to include Shylock,
who is stripped of his wealth, his daughter, and his
religion and who leaves the stage for the last time in act
4. Although the merchant Antonio is present for the
festivities in the last act, he has no partner and must go
home alone.”
Slide 11
Problem?
• Can we understand the play as the original
audience did?
Slide 12
Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The
Invention of the Human 189
• “The Holocaust made and makes The
Merchant of Venice unplayable, at least in
what appear to be its own terms.”
Slide 13
Question
• So how DID Elizabethans view Jews?
• See next slide.
Slide 14
Jo McMurtry, Understanding Shakespeare’s England:
A Companion for the American Reader 146-47
•
•
In theory, at least, the Elizabethans did not know any Jews, for Jews had been
banned from England since the late thirteenth century. There was, nevertheless, a
small Jewish community in London, temporary residents in that the authorities could
throw them out at any time. They were not part of the general environment, and the
typical Englishman had neither a personal acquaintance with individual Jews nor any
detailed knowledge of Jewish culture. Headline cases, so to speak, such as the trial
and execution of Roderigo Lopez, a physician to Queen Elizabeth who was accused
of plotting to poison her, simply confirmed the stereotype.
The stereotype was lurid indeed. Jews, to begin with, were already barred from
spiritual salvation by their ancestors' having preferred Barabbas to Christ when Pilate
offered to free one or the other (Matthew 27:21); there was thus no hope for them
and they could be considered in a sense nonhuman. In the popular imagination,
Jews spent most of their time kidnapping Christian children for sacrifice in secret
rites. During leisure moments, they arranged loans at high interest and extorted
payments from helpless victims. Each possessed piles of ill-gotten wealth which it
behooved honest Christians to take away from them. And each usually possessed,
as well, a beautiful daughter who wanted nothing more than to be rescued from her
cultural fate by some handsome Christian.
Slide 15
Chaucer, “The Prioress’s Tale”
• Jews slit the throat of a Christian boy and
cast him into a “privy drain” (outhouse).
Slide 16
Discussion Questions about
Antonio
• In what sense is Antonio the central
character?
• Why is he sad at the opening of the play?
• What kind of Christian is he?
• What kind of businessman is he?
Discuss one of these questions in a small
group. Go on to another question if you
have time. 7 minutes.
Slide 17
First Question
• In what sense is Antonio the central
character?
Slide 18
In what sense is Antonio
the central character?
Salerio and Solanio
Shylock
ANTONIO
Duke
Jessica Lancelot
Old Gobbo
Bassanio
Lorenzo
Gratiano Portia & Nerissa
Slide 19
Why is Antonio sad at the opening
of the play?
• What are the possibilities?
Slide 20
Possible Reasons for Antonio’s
Sadness
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Loss of ships
Love
Bassanio (2.8.50)
Homosexuality?
Guilt for treating Shylock badly?
Depression? Bipolar disorder?
Birenbaum’s answers (next slides)
Slide 21
A Critical Perspective
• “Antonio might be saying: ‘If only I did not have
to be in a play with this Shylock.’ His sadness is
an emotional bridge from the romance world
[Belmont; cf. Frye’s “second world”] to the
environment of pain” (78).
• Source: Harvey Birenbaum, “A View from the
Rialto: Two Psychologies in The Merchant of
Venice.” San José Studies 9 (1983): 68-82.
• How do you evaluate this statement?
Slide 22
Birenbaum 79
• “It is no wonder that Antonio is melancholy! It is he, the
titular hero, who is central to the testing-out process. It
is he who would live in both worlds, the Christian
merchant, and who is therefore caught most
poignantly between them. His Venetian ducats secure
the golden treasure of Belmont through the humility of
his open-handedness. He does not register the
implications of his ordeal consciously and explicitly,
and he does not undergo any real change of character
as a result of it” (my emphasis).
• What does this quotation suggest about Antonio’s
sadness? Do you agree with Birenbaum?
Slide 23
My Answer
• See 2.6.13-14:
GRATIANO:
All things that are
Are with more spirit chasèd than enjoyed.
• What does this suggest about the
human reaction to life? About
Antonio?
Slide 24
Point
• Antonio may be sad because material
acquisition is disappointing.
• Achievement of any goal brings less
satisfaction than one hopes and expects.
• Acquisition leads to disappointment, and
disappointment leads to sadness.
Slide 25
What kind of Christian is Antonio?
What kind of businessman is he?
• Are there positives? See 1.3.41.
• Are there negatives? See 1.3.110.
Slide 26
Discussion Questions about
Shylock
• What is Shylock’s attitude toward the bond?
– 1.3.38ff.
– 1.3.159ff.
• What causes his attitude to change? Does it
really change?
• What is his motivation? Friendship? Revenge?
Both? Neither? Something else?
END
The Merchant of Venice
Day One Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike
Slide 2
Business
• Please underline your thesis statement (if
you have one) and pass your paper
proposal forward.
•
Note: If you have not used Courier New 12-point, you must reprint your assignment
asap.
Slide 3
Analysis Paper
•
Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed
explanation of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves
using what something says to support a controversial thesis statement.
Slide 4
Nosich 68
• This is the page in your critical thinking
manual that asks ten questions, one per
element. A way to begin your analysis
paper would be to put your topic through
the elements, using these questions.
Slide 5
Review
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Bottom’s name and the word “dream” in the title may refer to various things.
Especially if the queen was present for a performance of MSND, the play
honored her status as the virgin queen, but it may also have gently
reminded her that she had not produced an heir. (Re. power:
Oberon:Titania::Shakespeare:Elizabeth.)
In any case, the play apparently served the same function for its original
audience as Pyramus and Thisbe serves for the court characters.
Consider this homology: P&T:characters::characters:audience::
audience:_________?
“Complementarity”: Theseus is positive and negative, and what we know
about his son Hippolytus undermines Oberon’s blessing.
Imagination: Lover > lunatic. But lunatic and lover are to intrapsychic as
poet is to extrapsychic. Only the poet performs a useful social function.
Theseus’s negative speech is actually Shakespeare’s positive praise of the
poet’s role (i.e., an apology for poetry).
P&T is a tragic version of what happens to the lovers in the woods. It
reminds us that comedy has tragic potential. Tragedy is failed comedy.
Slide 6
Outline
•
Day One:
– Discussion of Antonio.
– Discussion of Shylock.
•
Day Two:
– Mini-lecture on usury. See “Usury Handout.”
– Group One: Discussion of 1.3.69-100 and Genesis 30:25 to 31:16. Bring your
own Bible. What is the relationship between the two texts? How does Genesis
help you read this passage from MV?
– Group Two: Discussion of the casket scenes. Why does Portia’s father
establish the casket test? Why don’t Morocco and Aragon choose correctly?
What about Bassanio? The casket scenes appear in 2.7, 2.9, and 3.2.
– Whole Class: Discussion of a key motif: venturing. Who ventures in MV?
•
Day Three:
– Shylock’s attitude toward the bond.
– Group Activity: Portia’s speech at 4.1.182ff. “The quality of mercy….” Get the
“MV Exercise” on our course calendar (the link is called “Portia’s Mercy
Speech”).
– The ending—Act 5.
Slide 7
Other Resources
• http://faculty.winthrop.edu/fikem/Courses/
ENGL%20305/305%20MV%20Page.htm
Slide 8
Mixture
• Why I like The Merchant of Venice: Christian and classical
elements.
– Isaac, Jacob, Esau; dish of doves; mercy; Old Test. to New; etc.
– Jason and other classical lovers, Endymion and Diana, Hercules and
Hesione.
– “Disappointment in The Merchant of Venice”:
http://faculty.winthrop.edu/fikem/Courses/ENGL%203
05/305%20MV%20Paper.htm.
• Bedford 149: There were “two overriding characteristics of
[Shakespeare’s] practice as an adapter: first, his eclecticism,
his genius for combining classical stories with other materials,
both ancient and modern, to form new creations; and second,
his ability to expand and multiply characters, episodes, and
effects in order to surpass the classical models.”
Slide 9
Which Mode?
• Hard to figure out what kind of comedy it is:
– Not a “festive” comedy like MSND or Twelfth Night.
– Not a full-blown “problem comedy” like Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well
That Ends Well, or Measure for Measure.
– Not a perfect match for our MSND chart. Not a totally happy ending. No
restorative return to Venice (next slide). Hard to figure out how to view
Shylock. Do you know why (see two slides below)? Shylock is our
central problem on days two and three.
Slide 10
Mixed Modes, Bedford 97
“The Merchant of Venice is probably the most illustrative
example of the high cost of comic resolution. The lovers’
gathering at Belmont in act 5, musical and joyous though
it may be, is overshadowed by their intolerable treatment
of Shylock in the trial scene (4.1). The movement
toward assimilation that normally unites the cast in the
last moments is not strong enough to include Shylock,
who is stripped of his wealth, his daughter, and his
religion and who leaves the stage for the last time in act
4. Although the merchant Antonio is present for the
festivities in the last act, he has no partner and must go
home alone.”
Slide 11
Problem?
• Can we understand the play as the original
audience did?
Slide 12
Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The
Invention of the Human 189
• “The Holocaust made and makes The
Merchant of Venice unplayable, at least in
what appear to be its own terms.”
Slide 13
Question
• So how DID Elizabethans view Jews?
• See next slide.
Slide 14
Jo McMurtry, Understanding Shakespeare’s England:
A Companion for the American Reader 146-47
•
•
In theory, at least, the Elizabethans did not know any Jews, for Jews had been
banned from England since the late thirteenth century. There was, nevertheless, a
small Jewish community in London, temporary residents in that the authorities could
throw them out at any time. They were not part of the general environment, and the
typical Englishman had neither a personal acquaintance with individual Jews nor any
detailed knowledge of Jewish culture. Headline cases, so to speak, such as the trial
and execution of Roderigo Lopez, a physician to Queen Elizabeth who was accused
of plotting to poison her, simply confirmed the stereotype.
The stereotype was lurid indeed. Jews, to begin with, were already barred from
spiritual salvation by their ancestors' having preferred Barabbas to Christ when Pilate
offered to free one or the other (Matthew 27:21); there was thus no hope for them
and they could be considered in a sense nonhuman. In the popular imagination,
Jews spent most of their time kidnapping Christian children for sacrifice in secret
rites. During leisure moments, they arranged loans at high interest and extorted
payments from helpless victims. Each possessed piles of ill-gotten wealth which it
behooved honest Christians to take away from them. And each usually possessed,
as well, a beautiful daughter who wanted nothing more than to be rescued from her
cultural fate by some handsome Christian.
Slide 15
Chaucer, “The Prioress’s Tale”
• Jews slit the throat of a Christian boy and
cast him into a “privy drain” (outhouse).
Slide 16
Discussion Questions about
Antonio
• In what sense is Antonio the central
character?
• Why is he sad at the opening of the play?
• What kind of Christian is he?
• What kind of businessman is he?
Discuss one of these questions in a small
group. Go on to another question if you
have time. 7 minutes.
Slide 17
First Question
• In what sense is Antonio the central
character?
Slide 18
In what sense is Antonio
the central character?
Salerio and Solanio
Shylock
ANTONIO
Duke
Jessica Lancelot
Old Gobbo
Bassanio
Lorenzo
Gratiano Portia & Nerissa
Slide 19
Why is Antonio sad at the opening
of the play?
• What are the possibilities?
Slide 20
Possible Reasons for Antonio’s
Sadness
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Loss of ships
Love
Bassanio (2.8.50)
Homosexuality?
Guilt for treating Shylock badly?
Depression? Bipolar disorder?
Birenbaum’s answers (next slides)
Slide 21
A Critical Perspective
• “Antonio might be saying: ‘If only I did not have
to be in a play with this Shylock.’ His sadness is
an emotional bridge from the romance world
[Belmont; cf. Frye’s “second world”] to the
environment of pain” (78).
• Source: Harvey Birenbaum, “A View from the
Rialto: Two Psychologies in The Merchant of
Venice.” San José Studies 9 (1983): 68-82.
• How do you evaluate this statement?
Slide 22
Birenbaum 79
• “It is no wonder that Antonio is melancholy! It is he, the
titular hero, who is central to the testing-out process. It
is he who would live in both worlds, the Christian
merchant, and who is therefore caught most
poignantly between them. His Venetian ducats secure
the golden treasure of Belmont through the humility of
his open-handedness. He does not register the
implications of his ordeal consciously and explicitly,
and he does not undergo any real change of character
as a result of it” (my emphasis).
• What does this quotation suggest about Antonio’s
sadness? Do you agree with Birenbaum?
Slide 23
My Answer
• See 2.6.13-14:
GRATIANO:
All things that are
Are with more spirit chasèd than enjoyed.
• What does this suggest about the
human reaction to life? About
Antonio?
Slide 24
Point
• Antonio may be sad because material
acquisition is disappointing.
• Achievement of any goal brings less
satisfaction than one hopes and expects.
• Acquisition leads to disappointment, and
disappointment leads to sadness.
Slide 25
What kind of Christian is Antonio?
What kind of businessman is he?
• Are there positives? See 1.3.41.
• Are there negatives? See 1.3.110.
Slide 26
Discussion Questions about
Shylock
• What is Shylock’s attitude toward the bond?
– 1.3.38ff.
– 1.3.159ff.
• What causes his attitude to change? Does it
really change?
• What is his motivation? Friendship? Revenge?
Both? Neither? Something else?
END