Last season, actor Al Pacino, who'd made the documentary Looking for Richard about his rehearsal of Shakespeare's Richard III, continued his flirtation with the Bard with his portrayal in New York of Shylock, the Jewish money-lender in The Merchant of Venice.
Pacino was praised for his sincerity if not for his ability to become truly part of a Shakespeare ensemble. And, inevitably, the play itself came in for comment about its supposed lack of political correctness.
Will Shakespeare lived in a time of rampant anti-Semitism and Shylock's villainy has often been thought to play into that reprehensible social reality. But does it? And is Shakespeare really as anti-Semitic as so many of his contemporaries? (See Christopher Marlowe's rabid The Jew of Malta.)
Plot summary: Young and broke Bassanio needs his courtship of heiress Portia underwritten. Bassanio's older friend, Antonio, the merchant of the title, with funds tied up in trading ventures abroad, borrows for Bassanio from the Jewish money-lender, Shylock, despite their contentious connection.(In their past, Antonio had gleefully lent money without charging interest, thus undercutting Shylock's means of making his living.)
Shylock reveals his enmity--and his humanity--in the eloquent "...Hath not a Jew eyes....?" speech. But he agrees to lend Antonio the money and presents as a joke the stipulation that, in the event of default, the forfeit be "a pound of your fair flesh" taken from whatever part of the borrower's body the lender designates.
Of course Antonio's ships don't come in and he finds himself unable to repay Shylock. The matter goes to court and Portia, disguised as a young lawyer, pleads Antonio's case with the memorable "quality of mercy" speech.
But Shylock is adamant and it appears Antonio will die--until Portia (having had the advice of a lawyer-uncle) points out that the bond does not provide for the shedding of any blood in the exaction of the penalty.
Shylock is undone. The contract with Antonio voided, the money-lender is now vulnerable to prosecution under a law against endangering the life a Venetian.(Antonio is a citizen; Shylock is not.)
Having pleaded with Shylock for mercy, when the tables are turned the Christians show him. He is forced to surrender half his treasure and to leave the rest to his traitorous daughter and the young Christian with whom she's run off, taking with her a goodly portion of her father's ducats. And, turning aside his plea to "take my life," the Christians force Shylock to convert, thus effectively cutting him off from his own community.
He will be ostracized, forced to live out the rest of his old age isolated and in considerably reduced circumstances. For him the death he sought would have been a mercy.
Make no mistake. Shakespeare's apparent even-handedness here does not dilute Shylock's villainy. The money-lender has done his very best to pervert his Old Testament Law of Justice in order to revenge himself against a business rival.
But the Christians, glamorous and engaging as they are, ultimately pervert their Law of Love. For Shakespeare, a Christian, the New Testament is the expansion and completion of the Old. The Christians' perversion of their portion of the Bible is therefore the greater violation.
Perhaps Shakespeare understood that to leave things there would have made the play unacceptable to his largely Christian (and anti-Semitic) audience. He tacks on an Act Five of unparalleled lyricism, with the lovers trilling comic/romantic verses to each other, in effect glossing over the destroyed Jew's grim Act IV exit from the courtroom.
Some years ago, I directed an outdoor "Merchant." We used a lawn and the low roof of a background building as a two-level playing area. So that the Christians' refusal of forgiveness would not be wholly muted while the lovers rhapsodized on the lawn, up top we staged a dumb show of the broken SShylock being led to his christening.
As the waters of baptism rained on his head, Tubal, his best Jewish friend, and others of the money-lender's community slowly and emphatically turned their backs.
Sorry, Will. I was just trying to illuminate your own revelations to a newer, and, one hopes, somewhat less biased audience.
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