"Shylock and Jessica" by Maurycy Gottlieb (1856-1879)

The Merchant of Venice is one of William Shakespeare's best-known plays, written at an uncertain date between 1594 and 1597. It is a comedy ("comedy" had a very different meaning at the time; see Shakespearean comedies) and is best known for its portrayal of the Jew Shylock, which has raised questions of anti-semitism. Shylock is a tormented character but is also a tormenter, so whether he is to be viewed with disdain or sympathy is up to the reader.

Shakespeare puts one of his most eloquent speeches into the mouth of this "villain":

In his essay "Brothers and Others", published in The Dyer's Hand, W.H. Auden describes Antonio as "a man whose emotional life, though his conduct may be chaste, is concentrated upon a member of his own sex." Antonio's feelings for Bassanio are likened to a couplet from Shakespeare's Sonnets: "But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,/Mine be thy love, and my love's use their treasure." Antonio, says Auden, embodies the words on Portia's leaden casket: "Who chooseth me, must give and hazard all he hath." Antonio has taken this potentially fatal turn because he despairs, not only over the loss of Bassanio in marriage, but also because Bassanio cannot requite what Antonio feels for him. Antonio's frustrated devotion is a form of idolatry: the right to live is yielded for the sake of the loved one. There is one other such idolator in the play: Shylock himself. "Shylock, however unintentionally, did, in fact, hazard all for the sake of destroying the enemy he hated; and Antonio, however unthinkingly he signed the bond, hazarded all to secure the happiness of the man he loved." Both Antonio and Shylock, agreeing to put Antonio's life at a forfeit, stand outside the normal bounds of society. There was, states Auden, a traditional "association of sodomy with usury" with which Shakespeare was likely familiar. (Auden sees the theme of usury in the play as a comment on human relations in a mercantile society.)

Similarly, some readers interpret the relationship between Antonio and Bassanio to be paederastic.^{citation needed} Contemporary historians say that the practice experienced a revival in the city states during the Italian Renaissance as ancient Greek documents idealizing such relationships were translated and available to commoners for the first time in nearly one thousand years.^{citation needed}

Bassanio, Portia and fidelity

Portia and Bassanio marry, with the proviso that he will never give up her ring. The ring is a symbol of marital fidelity. The Elizabethans were obsessed with wifely fidelity, and a whole subgenre of jokes were devoted to the subject.^{citation needed} An Elizabethan audience may have seen the significance of Bassanio giving Portia's "ring" back to her as an emblem of his potential for infidelity.

Film adaptations

The Shakespeare play has inspired several movies. The following are the best known. (They are given in chronological order.)

• 1914 — silent movie directed by Lois Weber
  • Weber, who also stars as Portia, became the first woman to direct a full-length feature film with this film.
  • The Merchant of Venice at the Internet Movie Database
• 1973 — television film directed by John Sichel
  • The cast included Laurence Olivier as Shylock, Anthony Nicholls as Antonio, Jeremy Brett as Bassanio, Joan Plowright as Portia, Louise Purnell as Jessica.
  • The Merchant of Venice at the Internet Movie Database
• 1980 — A BBC television film directed by Jack Gold
  • The cast included Warren Mitchell as Shylock and John Rhys-Davies as Salerio
  • The Merchant of Venice at the Internet Movie Database
• 2001 — A BBC television film directed by Trevor Nunn
  • Royal National Theatre production starring Henry Goodman as Shylock
  • The Merchant of Venice at the Internet Movie Database
• 2004 — The Merchant of Venice (2004 film) directed by Michael Radford.
  • The cast included Al Pacino as Shylock, Jeremy Irons as Antonio, Joseph Fiennes as Bassanio, Lynn Collins as Portia, Zuleikha Robinson as Jessica.
  • The Merchant of Venice at the Internet Movie Database

Pastimes

• The device of three caskets with riddles has been used for logic games in works like What is the name of this book? by Raymond Smullyan. The coffers assert about the truthfulness of their and the other inscriptions (e.g. the golden casket has the portrait, two of the caskets are lying,...), to discover the portrait of Portia, and the reader of the pastime has to find which is telling truth.

Notes

1. ^ Philippe Burrin, Nazi Anti-Semitism: From Prejudice to Holocaust. The New Press, 2005, ISBN 1565849698, p. 17.

   It was not until the twelfth century that in northern Europe (England, Germany, and France), a region until then peripheral but at this point expanding fast, a form of Judeophobia developed that was considerably more violent because of a new dimension of imagined behaviors, including accusations that Jews engaged in ritual murder, profanation of the host, and the poisoning of wells.

2. ^ Adler erroneously dates this from 1847 (at which time Kean was already dead); the Cambridge Student Guide to The Merchant of Venice dates Kean's performance to a more likely 1814.
3. ^ Adler 1999, 341
4. ^ Adler 1999, 342-344
5. ^ Adler 1999, 344–350

References

• Adler, Jacob, A Life on the Stage: A Memoir, translated and with commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld, Knopf, New York, 1999, ISBN 0679413510.
• Rob Smith, Cambridge Student Guide to The Merchant of Venice. ISBN 0-521-00816-6.