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My current read is The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare's seminal play about greed and revenge. The play is often criticized for its anti-Semitic tone and rightfully so. The characters' main beef with ruthless money lender Skylock is he's a Jew. And yet, Will seems to be giving Elizabethan England a well-deserved punch in the eye for it. After all, this is where the line, "Tickle us, do we not laugh; prick us, do we not bleed? Wrong us, shall we not revenge?" (And I cannot not hear that in Christopher Plummer's voice.) It's Shakespeare's way of saying, "Well, if you treat me like a monster, don't be surprised if I become one."
But Shylock is by no means a hero. The prejudice against him fuels his rage, but at only five scenes in, I've only seen him in one. That's actually a brilliant piece of writing. (Well, it is Shakespeare. Even his duds are impressive. Except Edward III, and he was likely the script doctor on that one. "Why didn't I give this to Marlowe to fix. Joan of Kent? Zounds!") Shylock is such a presence that he shifts the center of gravity in every scene he's in. I'm just reading this, not watching Plummer or Patrick Stewart or Al Pacino play him, and he immediately grabs one's attention, a malevolence rivaling Shakespeare's Richard III in the play of the same name.
But we know Shakespeare for two types of plays: Histories and comedies. His comedies are hit or miss, and I admit, I don't really connect with those very much. They are probably best seen performed rather than read. The histories, more often than not, are what grab my attention. But Shakespeare wrote in a transitional period, moving from poems to prose, from the epic to the everyday. Had Shakespeare lived two centuries later, might he have adapted Tom Jones (current Audible listen), complete with all the bawdiness he held back on in the days of Elizabeth and King James I? (Yeah. The Bible guy. Who clearly never read it. That's a rant for a different forum.)
Henry V and Julius Caesar and Richard III, however, are epic figures, heroes and villains (and sometimes both) who operate on Olympian levels. But what of The Merchant of Venice? It's the titular merchant, Antonio, who takes out a loan for his friend, Bassanio, then defaults on it. The penalty is, legally, "a pound of flesh."
Wait a minute. You take out a loan and, instead of debtors prison or the lender taking all your stuff, as usually happens, he gets a literal piece of you? That sounds a lot like...
A loan shark. Now, I've known an actual loan shark, as in he worked for one of the Five Families back in the day. You hear stories of leg-breaking, but more often, an actual loan shark would prefer breaking things and intimidation. Your broken leg impedes your ability to earn the vig. However, Shylock is, to put it mildly, a bit of a jerk. There's animosity between Shylock and Antonio, and it goes beyond the prejudice Shakespeare saddles his characters with. Shylock hates Antonio's guts, and helping himself to a pound of those guts drives that home. Antonio knows this and takes the loan intending to pay it back and rub Shylock's nose in it. Antonio is not a nice guy, nor is he Shakespeare's standard hero. Like Shylock, he's ruthless.
So, does that mean The Merchant of Venice is noir?
In some ways. Typically, in noir, the protagonist is screwed and comes either to a bad end or winds up diminished. (If Shylock had his way, Antonio would be diminished by a pound.) But the First Folio listed Merchant as a comedy. Why? Because the fair Portia and her friend Nerissa pose as lawyers and con Shylock in a move worthy of Tom Cruise in the movie version of The Firm. (I still like that better than what Grisham wrote, if only for the look on Paul Sorvino's face when he realizes the kid he came to whack just outmaneuvered his own law firm.) So the comedy aspect, in terms of the classical definition of a comedy, fits.
But this is really, really dark. Antonio's scheme to put one over on Shylock backfires. We already know Shylock is a vengeful, angry man. So while his methods are abhorrent, you have to recall the old Chris Rock line, "I'm not saying I approve, but I understand!" Kind of like watching a Hannibal Lector movie and wonder when he'll just eat some annoying character. (They were legion in Hannibal.)
But Antonio is the arrogant rich man. Shylock is the ruthless money lender. The mob even named the slang for loan shark after him. Head-to-head, it's almost an episode of Penguin or Tulsa King.
Great commentary. There's also the homoerotic element to the Bassanio / Antonio relationship: Antonio's lent (or given?) Bassanio money more than once, and Bassanio knows he can get Antonio to mortgage himself to Shylock to find Bassanio money to go woo and win the fair Portia. Shylock is being used, Antonio is being used, and as for Bassanio... he knows he's spent everything he inherited and everything Antonio's given him, but if only he can raise enough money to be eligible to woo Portia, he'll be fine. Yes, she's young and fair, but his real reason for going after her is that she's rich. Bassanio is no hero. I'd rank it as Shakespearean noir.
ReplyDeleteI've read "The Merchant of Venice" several times. I even had to memorize Portia's plea for mercy (The quality of mercy is not strained...") the first time I read it, way back in the seventh grade. I enjoy the way that parts of this play were incorporated into the Broadway musical "Something Rotten," which features Shylock as a much more benign character and includes a scene in which a woman dresses as a male lawyer to plea on her husband's behalf in court.
ReplyDeleteBetween 1990 and 2006, I directed six Shakespearean productions. I acted in several others, including Hamlet, where I played Claudius. I'd include that play as noir, too.
ReplyDeleteThe Merchant of Venice is not an antisemitic play, but all the "Christians" in it are horrible people. THEY are antisemitic, but the play isn't. That's one of the plays I directed, and we set it in America in the 1920's, when antisemitism and racism were soaring in America. I used a Gershwin score because I felt having music written by two Jewish composers made a statement.
Many of Shakespeare's history plays are filtered through the Elizabethan lens, where those who wrote content that displeased Good Queen Bess risked having their hands cut off. Richard III wasn't a horrible king, but since Elizabeth's grandfather committed treason by overthrowing him, Shakespeare made the safer choice. Shylock may not be the main character in Merchant (Antonio's the merchant), but how often does Julius Caesar appear before being killed in Act III, scene 1? BTW, the First Folio identifies the play as "The TRAGEDY of Julius Caesar," not a history.
You never mention the tragedies, but Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, and Othello are also towering figures, and both Othello and Macbeth are superb noir plays.
Shakespeare wrote his plays to be PERFORMED, not read. It makes a huge difference, especially with good actors. You slight the comedies, but Twelfth Night, As You LIke it, and Much Ado About Nothing all deserve better. I suggest the version of Much Ado from around 1990 (?) with Blythe Danner, Sam Waterston, and Kevin Kline. That play has men returning from a war. Both ASLI and 12N use the same boy actors playing women masquerading as men, and that shows up in other plays, too. The Comedy of Errors has the xenophobia that certain political figures are stoking today ( I set our production in the 1950s and had a McCarthy figure to carry that theme). Many of the comedies are still very topical. Midsummer Night's Dream has never gone out of style, and now the law permitting Hermia to be executed could be compared to the proposed treatment of women in Project 2025.
Yeah, there's the homoeroticism of Antonio and Bassanio, but look also at Brutus and Cassius, and maybe even Iago for Othello. The most popular play in Shakespeare's lifetime was Titus Andronicus, no longer one of our faves, but it proves that sex and violence sold even in the 1590s.