This past weekend, I attended two plays at the Utah
Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. I
love the Shakespeare Festival, though I do not get to go very often. The Festival is endeavoring to stage each of
Shakespeare’s plays over the course of eleven years, as part of its “Complete
the Canon” project. This year, they
performed four Shakespeare plays as well as several smaller productions. I attended The Merchant of Venice and The
Merry Wives of Windsor. Both were
performed marvelously well. Merry Wives had me laughing early and
often. However, in this blog, I would
like to focus on The Merchant of Venice.
We owe many of our English idioms to Shakespeare. From Merchant,
we get the phrase “pound of flesh.” We
use this phrase metaphorically now, but it is quite literal in the context of
the play.
To briefly summarize the plot of the play: Antonio, the merchant referred to in the
title, borrows money from Shylock, a Jew, in order to lend the money to his
friend Bassanio, who wishes to woo the Lady Portia. Portia’s father has devised a test for her
suitors: they must choose from one of
three containers or “caskets,” one lead, one silver, and one gold. One of the caskets holds a portrait of
Portia. If the suitor finds the portrait,
he may then marry Portia. Bassanio
chooses the correct casket, the one made of lead, and moves forward with plans
to marry Portia when he receives a letter from Antonio. The merchant has lost his assets at sea and
is unable to repay Shylock the money he owes him. Shylock subsequently takes Antonio to court
to exact his insurance on the loan: a pound
of Antonio’s flesh. At first, Shylock is
adamant that he will have his revenge on Antonio, but over the course of the
trial, he relents. As a condition of not
exacting punishment on the hapless merchant, the court requires Shylock to
convert to Christianity. Earlier in the
play Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, falls in love with a Christian and converts
so she can marry him. The condition of
Shylock’s conversion, therefore, represents a complete loss of identity for
him.
While in Shakespeare’s time Jewish people were viewed with
suspicion and even hate, this play is not, at its heart, anti-Semitic. Shylock is flawed, yes, but so are all human
beings regardless of the faith they profess.
Despite the attitudes toward those of the Jewish faith during Shakespeare’s
day, the play presents Shylock as a man and father who becomes the victim of
Venetian society.
It is important to note that Shakespeare usually does not
include explicit stage directions in his plays apart from when a given
character enters or exits the scene.
Some stage directions are implied by the dialogue, but most are left to
the discretion of the actors and directors.
To this point, the current production at the Utah Shakespeare Festival
makes Shylock and Jessica into sympathetic characters. The actors playing these characters portray
the anguish of having to renounce their faith.
Jessica demonstrates the inner conflict of the character, wanting to be
with Lorenzo, the man she loves, but also clinging to her identity as a Jew,
retaining her former prayer habits and mannerisms. Shylock expresses his dismay and despair at
the loss of his religious identity through his tone of voice as well as his
posture.
The current production thus presents us with a
question: Are the Christians in the play
superior in that they decry physical violence, or are they just as cruel as the
Jews seem to be given their disregard for the Jews in treating them as little
more than animals? Who holds the moral
high ground? These are questions which
are important for us to consider even today.
Do we have deep-seated pre-conceived ideas about people based on our own
cultural upbringing? How can we work to
change our own attitudes? In essence,
What Would Jesus Do?
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