In my endless quest for quarantine diversion, I have started
watching a new Netflix series called Bridgerton. Set in London in the early 19th
century, it could be described as vulgar Jane Austen without the irony but with
sex. The most striking thing about the production – I have watched the first
two episodes now – is that the producers have cast it with a mixture of black and
white actors. For example, the Queen is black and so is a Duke who is clearly
going to be one of the main characters. But rather than just mixing them up
randomly the producers have arranged it so that black adults have black
children and white adults have white children.
The effect of this is quite striking. At first when I saw
young black men and young black women participating in an elegant upper class
dance evening or other social event I thought to myself “is this supposed to
represent in some way the effect of the British Empire?” But after a bit, I
realized that the casting perhaps had not so much ignored race as deliberately mixed the
races of the actors hired.
I consider myself as liberated or “woke” as the next viewer but I confess that it is an effort for me simply to ignore race when watching the show. The plot has nothing at all to do with race – it is entirely focused on the question of whether young ladies of upper-class families will find appropriate husbands. The central character is a young woman who is just “coming out” in society and is looking for a husband. She is paired, at least in these opening episodes, with the young man who has just inherited a dukedom and who wishes never to be married. The actress who plays her is white and the actor who plays him is black but this seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the storyline and indeed is not noticed by any of the characters. It is a bit like having Kathleen Battle play Mimi in La Bohème.
Casting non-white actors in historical or period roles has become something of a thing in British media - other examples are the casting choices in Merlin (basically a teen drama placed in Arthurian legend) and casting a black actress to play Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter play at the West End. I found it jarring at first and then got used to it pretty quick.
ReplyDeleteUntil recently, it never seemed to bother a whole lot of people to see Ben Kingsley in brown-face playing Ghandi. It would be pretty tough to get away with that in any western media market today. Times are changing, in many ways for the better.
Last year I saw performances of Midsummer Night's Dream and Strindberg's Miss Julie with black actors as Bottom and Jean respectively. I thought both were quite good, particularly the Bottom, and race seemed to play no artistic role at all. Likewise with gender: I couldn't see that it mattered in Helen Mirren's portrayal of Prospero. But could a pale Norwegian like the singer Aurora play Othello? I would certainly think so. An actor necessarily displays and puts her body to use in performance. Perhaps to the degree that a black actor is playing an early 19th century English aristocrat in a naturalistic production, the actor's pigmentation can disappear. But in a less naturalistic production, perhaps the situation is more like that exemplified supremely by Rosalind in As You Like It,a boy acting a girl's part who pretends to be a boy who pretends to be the girl. So the actor can put her pigmentation to use in the service of presenting the lability of identity.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's called blind-casting, and it's very common in the theatre scene in the UK. It's just becoming more common in UK film-making too.
ReplyDeleteThe trend is a sign of progress towards a color-blind society. But are there perhaps some limits on its use, in cases where it could be regarded as inappropriate, e.g., a Black man playing Simon Legree in a production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or a Caucasian portraying a slave in a remake of Gone With The Wind, given that Black citizens reject the notion that White people can identify with their persecution? In other cases it could be inconsistent with the plot. Since part of Othello’s jealousy towards Desdemona is his sense the she is betraying him due to his race, and that he has been ill-treated by the Venetians, I do not think a Caucasian could effectively play Othello. On the other hand, Pearl Bailey was acclaimed for her portrayal in the remake of Dolly. I am curious whether others disagree.
ReplyDeleteOn a separate note, last night I watched a tribute to Vernon Jordan on PBS. He was quite a fascinating civil rights leader and political adviser. He said of his mother that she was an unlettered, unschooled daughter of the South, but she had a Ph.D. in life. I had forgotten that there was an assassination attempt on his life when he was the Director of the Urban League, which resulted in his leaving his active role as a civil rights leader to resume his practice as an attorney. He had an amazing ability to speak truth to power, relating to both Democratic and Republican leaders, without modifying his views on race relations. During the Clinton impeachment, he stood by Bill Clinton, stating that a friend does not abandon a friend, even when they have done wrong. He now holds a prominent position with the largest asset management company in the world, Lezard Frees & Co.
If the BBC productions shown on PBS are any indication, I think the Brits are ahead of us in color-blind casting in roles in which race is not a factor. Regarding Othello, 20 or so year ago the Shakespeare Theater in Washington put on a production with Patrick Stewart as Othello and the rest of the cast all black.
ReplyDeleteThough there may have been some browning up of Ben Kingsley to play the part of Ghandi, he is of Indian descent, his birth name being Krishna Pandit Bhanji. However he does have a white mother which means I think that he can play Indian parts and European parts with equal aplomb. (Apparently he has starred in at last one Bollywood movie.) So it seems to me that there is nothing particularly objectionable about his playing Ghandi. However, I do have a problem about his being cast in the role of Mazer Rackham in Ender's Game, the not-very-successful film version of Orson Scott Card's classic SF novel. Rackham is supposed to be a New Zealander and a Maori to boot. Whatever else he looks like, Kingsley does not look like a Polynesian , and his New Zealand accent is diabolical (he sounds much more like a South African to me). Now Rackham's ethnic background does not play a major part in the story and they could have cast just about anyone in the role without doing any violence to the plot. But given that they *were* making Rackham a Maori New Zealander, there are plenty Maori actors who could have done a better job in the role, most notably Temuera Morrison. (I ask think that Harrison Ford was miscast as Colonel Graff who should come across as slimy and unpleasant not gruff and rugged.) It's not like there is a shortage of Maori or Pasifika acting talent, and some of them could have done with the exposure.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteAs is my wont, I cannot resist making a controversial observation. As fine an actor as Patrick Stewart is, casting him as Othello with all of the other characters as Black strikes me as a director’s gimmick to appear avant garde. Did you find him convincing? The theme of Othello is that he is an outsider in Venetian society, accepted only for his skill as a military leader. This is consistent with the history of Western civilization. Having a Caucasian play Othello in a Black dominated world, from my perspective, would not be convincing and would dull the sting that Othello experiences in 16th century Venice, and would mute the jealousy that he experiences in his paranoid belief that Desdemona is being unfaithful to him.
I binge watched the show and later a reason (rather lame) for why there is no racial inequality is given. I’m really looking forward to a full review
ReplyDeleteMS
ReplyDeleteI didn't see that production, but it was more than a "director's gimmick." The Shakespeare Theater in DC was the first place I ever saw mixed casting. One of their repertoire, Fancelle Stewart Dorn, an African aMerian woman, was Desdemona. She's played in a multitude of roles, e.g., Queen Elizabeth in Richard III, the Chorus in Aeschylus' Oresteia, and others I can't recall off hand. As I remember the press coverage, the actors loved the idea. They got to do roles they normally could not do, because of race. It was not a production for someone seeing Othello for the first time, but for for those who would be seeing it for the umpteenth time.
David,
ReplyDeleteYour response insinuates that my comment suggests that I am a racist. But you have changed the facts. I would be perfectly fine with an African aMerian woman playing Desdemona with an African aMerian man playing Othello. And certainly an African aMerian woman can play Queen Elizabeth I in, for example, Elizabeth and Essex. In none of these roles does the race of the character play an integral part of the plot. However, having a Caucasian man play Othello is a different matter. Part of the psyche of Othello’s character – why he reacts as he does to his suspicion that Desdemona is being unfaithful to him - is the fact that he is a Moor living in a Venetian society which accepts him only for his military ability to defeat the Turks at sea. He could have the same reaction to an African aMerian woman playing Desdemona. But Othello being a black Moor is an essential part of his character, and having him portrayed by a Caucasian actor = be it Patrick Stewart, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton or Groucho Marx – to me vitiates the essential racial tension in the play, and, for that reason, I regard it as a director’s gimmick to appear hip.
Post-Script:
ReplyDeleteIn fact, Laurence Olivier did play Othello to great acclaim – but in blackface, something that would be totally unacceptable today.
Point of order:
ReplyDeleteHaving an African aMerian woman play Queen Elizabeth in Richard III would not only break color barriers, it would totally distort history. Richard III was defeated at the Battle of Bosworth Field by Henry Tudor, the future Henry VII, and Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather.
MS
ReplyDeleteAs you may know, Washington, D.C. used to be a majority African-American city and it still has a very substantial African-American population, a black mayor, etc. The Shakespeare Theater, located in what is now (though wasn't always) a sort of trendy and bourgeoisified (a better word than "gentrified" perhaps) part of the downtown, has been a significant part of the city's cultural scene for some years.
In that context, making an effort to cast African-American actors in roles where they would not have been seen in the old days is part of The Shakespeare Theater's recognition of its role in the city where it's located. Theater and other artistic companies need to be, for various reasons, part of the communities which, so to speak, house and support them, which is why, for example, they do outreach programs for high school students, etc. etc. Now, the audiences at The Shakespeare Theater for the productions I happen to have attended there have been largely (though not entirely) white, but that's a separate issue and not something that is as much within the control of the theater as casting.
There may well be particular instances where color-blind casting would not work, but probably not all that many. I didn't see the Othello with Patrick Stewart so am not going to comment on it.
Btw, some years ago I saw a version of Romeo and Juliet (not at The Shakespeare Theater) called 'Shakespeare's R&J' in which the cast was all male. I don't have a very clear memory of most of the production, partly because it was a long time ago, but my recollection is that the actors had to walk a fine line between acknowledging, as it were, the "transgressiveness" of what they were doing on the one hand, and, on the other hand, descending into some kind of campy farce: the latter, as I recall, was clearly not the intention of this version, and for the most part the actors successfully avoided that. The extent to which the production "worked" was perhaps an open question, but it was, at the least, interesting.
P.s. And to the extent it didn't entirely work, it was probably because it's inherently difficult to take lines that have become sort of quintessential expressions of heterosexual passion and turn them into something else (?).
ReplyDeleteWell, having opened this can of worms I'll let the commentariat have at it and exit stage right. Or do I mean stage left? Whatever.
MS
ReplyDeleteI did not mean to imply in anyway that you are a racist. From what I've read of your posts, you clearly are not. I was simply trying to make the point that the reverse casting of Othello was more than a director's gimmick.
LFC,
ReplyDeleteI think it’s great to have African-American actors and actresses perform roles which have been traditionally played by white actors and actresses. I am all for it if it does not detract from the plot line. But having a Caucasian play Othello is not doing anything to advance the careers of Black actors. It is, in fact, doing the opposite. It is taking a paradigm role away which should be performed by Black actors (as Lawrence Fishburne did in the most recent Hollywood version) and giving it to a white actor, and thereby detracting from a main theme of the play – the exploitation of a Moor for his military skills, which makes him suspicious of his comrades and jealous of his innocent wife. What does having a white actor perform this role add to the plot? It is sacrificing the main theme of the plot in order to be campy. That’s my opinion, anyway.
A very interesting discussion. Perhaps one source of (seeming) conflict of views stems from conflating distinctive features of films with those of plays. A play is made to be performed, and also to be re-staged with different actors, sets, etc. So Hamlet performed in 1970 in NYC is different from Hamlet performed in Chicago in 1990, but both are instances of the same play. In different instances one expects different choices, so Hamlet may be played by a 'white' man in 1970 and an African-American woman in 1990. But in film successors are not instances of the same film, but rather re-makes: Algiers (1938) is a re-make of Pépé le Moko (1937), and Casbah (1948) is a re-make of both. And in films there's more of a sense that the actor is (identical with) her role. So one might think that it's problematic to cast against ethnicity in film, but allow for such in theater as part of the latter's inherent 're-performativity'. Perhaps.
ReplyDelete@ John Rapko
ReplyDeleteInteresting. That particular point on film v. theater hadn't occurred to me.
@ MS
I understand your point about Othello. But b.c I didn't see the version D. Palmeter referenced I didn't want to comment on it, and b.c it's been a long time since I've seen or read the play, period, I didn't want to express a view on it at all.
Here's the NY Times review of the Stewart Othello:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/21/movies/theater-review-the-green-eyed-monster-fells- men-of-every-color.html
LFC,
ReplyDeleteI understand.
Whenever I have a defamation case representing the plaintiff, I make sure to include in my briefs the following quote from the play:
“[H]e that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.”
Most people who have not read the play, or have read it but forgotten its plot, assume that the speaker is Othello, when, ironically, the words are spoken by the play’s villain, Iago, who is manipulating Othello into believing that his wife, Desdemona, has been unfaithful to him, and expresses the above statement to Othello to persuade him that he, Iago, is an honorable man and is speaking the truth.
David:
I tried to open the link you provided, but the NY Times said Page Not Found. I will try to access the review by other means.
MS
ReplyDeleteTry Googling Patrick Stewart Othello.
David,
ReplyDeleteWell I found and read the N.Y. Times review of Patrick Stewart’s performance as Othello, and I believe the review proves my point. The director, Jude Kelly, executed the play with a total race reversal, with Othello as the only White character, and the other performers all Black. The reviewer, Peter Marks, writes: “Interestingly, the racial turning of the tables does not tilt the play toward ham-handed irony; rather, it tends to take the racial issue off the table.” !!! But that is precisely my point – an Othello without the racial issue on the table eviscerates the play of one of Shakespeare’s main themes in the play – the alienation of the black Moor seeking respect in white European society. If you remove this tension, you essentially castrate the play. In Othello, first performed in Elizabethan England in 1622, Shakespeare is expressing his sensitivity to the plight of Africans living in a Europe which denigrates and enslaves them, themes which still have significance today. Shakespeare was displaying the same understanding of European attitudes to Africans which he had earlier shown to the plight of Jews living in an anti-Semitic Europe in The Merchant of Venice. Shylock’s speech – if you cut us do we not bleed – is arguably the most poignant and insightful expression of Jewish angst in all of literature. (While some dispute whether Shakespeare was himself anti-Semitic, I am of the opinion that an anti-Semite could never have written that speech.)
The reviewer points out the incongruity caused by the race reversal when Iago says of Othello, “I hate the Moor” – but here, the Moor is white. What sense does that make? He asserts further, “In traditional productions, surrounded by a roomful of white faces, Othello seems a figure of strength and sympathy. But when Othello is a white military leader – what more recognizable authority figure exists in Western culture? – it’s hard to feel particularly sorry for him. It’s an instance in which race reversal does not jibe with an audience’s sense of the way the world beyond the theater works.” What merit does a production have if it does not enhance your understanding of the world in which you live, but instead, in an effort to appear hip, offers you a vision irrelevant to the world in which you live.
I stand by my original assessment – Mr. Kelly was seeking to make a name for himself by imposing a theatrical gimmick on a Shakespearean classic which only served to strip the play of its main theme.
Errata (I’m making a lot of these, unfortunately):
ReplyDeleteShylock says, “If you prick us, do we not bleed,” not “If you cut us … .”
If you wish to see a cinematic version of Merchant, I highly recommend Al Pacino’s portrayal – it is a tour de force.
MS
ReplyDeleteYou stand by your assessment and I'll stand by mine. As I said, I didn't see the production, but I recall at the time several discussions about it with friends and co-workers who had seen it. My recollection is that they found the production challenging, that it demonstrated how ingrained our racial assumptions can be. It made imagined world a reality. Imagine how our world would be if all whites were black, and all blacks were white. This was a small realization of that imagined world. To many of us, that's thought-provoking.
David,
ReplyDeleteI was only responding regarding the theater review which you cited as, I assumed, explaining the effectiveness of the race reversal. But the review did not say that – it said the exact opposite, that by having a Caucasian portray Othello, “it tends to take the racial issue off the table,” where the racial issue is one of the dominant themes of the play. The friends whom you consulted who saw this rendition of the play felt that the role reversal worked as forcing white people to contemplate what it would be like if they were the minority and Blacks were the majority, and treated the Whites with the same patronization and offensiveness that Whites thru history have treated Blacks. But the point of the review is that such a departure from reality doesn’t work, precisely because it does not generate the same sense of indignation that the real circumstances generate – seeing a white actor portray a triumphant military commander is so reflective of the real world that the sting of bigotry is essentially dissipated. The effort at tying to stimulate a different perspective just doesn’t work; it falls flat and misses the point of the play. Being innovative just for the sake of innovation does not guarantee that it will succeed, and in this case, I (and the reviewer, for that matter), believe that it fails in a major way.
MS
ReplyDeleteI read the review--perhaps colored by recollection of the conversations I'd had--to mean that the traditional racial issue of the play--the black general--was off the table. But the role reversal was what emphasized the racial issue for the people I'd talked with, and for me when I thought about it. The racial issue wasn't off the table enough for the reviewer not to talk about it. How do we see the play when that issue is reversed? That's my only point: even though I didn't see the production, I found the idea provocative, and so did those with whom I spoke who did see it. It was widely discussed in the local press at the time.
There have been famous Shakespearians who made their names as men acting women or women acting men. In the Chinese opera (Beijing variety) men wear remarkable makeup and act women. And whether they act as men or women, they speak in a remarkable, piercing falsetto! Let me close this remark with the observation that a first rate actor, with the help of a first-rate director, would be capable of playing the role of Clint Eastwood cast as Othello, on all fours -- i.e. as a horse. Of all the world of prestidigitation no one can hold a candle to the Shakespearians. Nobody!
ReplyDeleteBtw, on the PBS NewsHour tonight there was a sort of personal essay on the NYT crossword puzzle (by a fairly well-known writer) that Prof Wolff probably would like. Searching on "PBS NewsHour + NYT crossword" will likely bring it up.
ReplyDeleteI have a great idea for a remake of “Dances With Wolves.” The Kevin Costner character will be played by a female Latino. The Sioux Native Americans will be played by Blacks, and the U.S. cavalry will be played by Polynesians. I’ll have an Irish wolfhound play the wolf. This will, I am confident, expand our imaginations regarding race relations, as well as our relations with wolves. I’m going to pitch it to Warner Bros. in January.
ReplyDeleteM.S.
ReplyDeleteha ha. I realize you're being satirical, but a couple of non-satirical responses might not be amiss.
First, see the point made by John Rapko, above, about differences in this respect betw. stage and screen.
Second, I doubt Dances with Wolves is worth a remake. Not a *bad* movie, and Costner was pretty good, but I doubt it merits a remake, of any sort. I recall for some reason that Pauline Kael, who to be sure was not always right about everything, disliked Costner's direction (he directed as well as starred) and suggested that the movie might have been more aptly titled "Plays with Camera."
LFC,
ReplyDeleteBut were Pauline Kael alive, she might have approved of my proposed changes for “Dances With Wolves.”
Anyway, I’m not sure that Ms. Kael is such a great arbiter of cinematic good taste. See 10 Movies Everyone Enjoys Except Pauline Kael, http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2016/10-movies-everyone-enjoys-except-pauline-kael/. Among the 10 movies she panned are: Space Odyssey 2000; Clockwork Orange; Blade Runner; Casablanca (!); and Raging Bull. All of which I like, with the exception of Clockwork Orange (which even Stanley Kubrick requested in his will no longer be publicly shown because of its tendency to incite violence).
A short anecdote regarding my taste in films. In 1994, a week before the Oscars were to be telecast, I attended a night with Siskell and Ebert at the Detroit Institute of Art, at which the Chicago film critics were going to discuss their picks to win the upcoming Oscars. Among the candidates for Best Picture was the movie “Pulp Fiction,” which I absolutely hated, but which Ebert loved. During the question and answer period, I stood up and took Ebert to task for praising Pulp Fiction and denounced it for its glorification and comedic treatment of gratuitous violence. Ebert stared at me with seething anger. The audience unanimously started booing me. Gene Siskell, to his credit, put his hand up and told the audience to shut up, stated that I was entitled to my opinion, and that I was making a valid point. Fortunately, Pulp Fiction did not win Best Picture that year. A far better, more historically significant film won, a movie which did not glorify gratuitous violence, either in film or in real life – Schindler’s List. But it seems I arouse strong reactions wherever I go, because I just cannot keep my mouth shut (or my typing hands restrained).
The distinction between a play and a movie is an important one. Movies are seldom re-done, while plays are constantly repeated. I’ve seen only one production of Casablanca (several times over the years) but many productions of Hamlet and Macbeth.
ReplyDeleteWhen my wife and I went to England a few years ago, we wanted to see a play at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, and one at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. As it happened, both theaters were doing Merchant of Venice at that time.
The RSC production was excellent, but conventional. They did it in modern dress, and Shylock wore a light blue cardigan and gray slacks. (He was played by Makram Khoury, a Palestinian Christian who lives in Israel). To repeat: it was excellently done, but conventional.
The Globe’s production was something else entirely. In the dispute over whether this is anti-Semitic play or a play about antisemitism, the Globe came down firmly on the side of it’s being about antisemitism. They wore period costumes, but that was just the beginning. The production opened with a group of young men chatting, inaudibly to the audience. Two Jews walked by and the young men suddenly attacked them, knocking them down and kicking them. The stage went dark, and only then opened with Antonio’s lines about not knowing why he was so sad.
Another addition was at the end. Shylock was marched through the groundlings in the audience and out of the theater on his way to forced baptism, while onstage Jessica, on her knees, wept at what she had done to her father. Neither of these wordless scenes is in Shakespeare, but they fit perfectly and served to heighten the sanctimonious hypocrisy of the Christian Venetians. In between, every anti-Semitic line or event was heightened while the comedic scenes were done hilariously. The result was that the audience over and over again was taken from the side-splittingly funny to the most wrenchingly cruel. It was the most memorable production of any play I have ever seen. And the difference between it and the excellent, but conventional, RSC production was the difference between night and day.
Another notable example is Waiting for Godot with Patrick Stewart-Ian McKellen. Without changing a line, just through tone of voice and facial expressions, they turned this otherwise largely somber play into a comedy. Not everyone liked it. Hilton Als at The New Yorker was outraged. After reading Als, we went prepare to be disappointed, but luckily we loved it. It was fascinating to see two superb actors totally change the tone of a play without changing a word of the playwright.
@ David Palmeter
ReplyDeleteInteresting recollections. I think Waiting for Godot is sort of a dark comedy in some ways; Endgame perhaps even moreso.
Probably the worst production of any play I've ever seen happened to be in London, years ago. It was Shaw's The Devil's Disciple, at the Barbican. To work, the play has to be done at a brisk pace -- a good deal of the dialogue is akin to banter. This production was at the pace of molasses, all the comedy drained out of it, and it was awful. It's probably not one of Shaw's best plays anyway, but it certainly can be given a decent production if directed properly. Then there was the time I saw Shaw's Heartbreak House (not in London) in an ok production, but the actor playing Capt. Shotover, who is the central character (or one of them), seemed either to forget or to not get right large swaths of his lines toward the end. The cast seemed to improvise and maneuver and they managed to get through it, but it was weird. Neither of these recollections speaks to the point about different interpretations, though there probably is more than one way to interpret Heartbreak House (Devil's Disciple, not so much).
David,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your discussion of the London production of Merchant of Venice and its endorsement of the view that the play is not anti-Semitic, but about anti-Semitism. A lot of people interpret the trial scene as Shakespeare endorsing anti-Semitism. I believe that the trial scene, reinforced by the “if you prick us, do we not bleed” monologue, clearly shows that Shakespeare was not anti-Semitic, but was portraying contemporary Europe, through Venetian society, as hypocritical in its treatment of Jews.
Shaksepeare was making a subtle point about the hypocrisy with which Christians historically treated Jews. When Antonio, who has spat on Shylock in public, is unable to repay Shylock the money he has lent him, Shylock demands that he obtain his “bond,” i.e., the pound of flesh Antonio agreed to pay if he breached the agreemetn. At the trial, the Christians scoff at Shylock for his cruelty. They offer him double, triple the amount of money which Antonio owes him. Shylock rejects their offers, insisting on his pound of flesh. The Venetian court calls upon an eminent legal scholar to address the legal issues in the case. The legal scholar is actually a woman (Portia) dressed as a man. She appeals to Shylock to show mercy and gives her famous “the quality of mercy” soliloquy. Shylock rejects her plea to show mercy. Then, as he is about to cut the flesh from Antonio’s breast, she intercedes and points out that his contract states that he is only entitled to a pound of flesh, no blood. She tells Shylock that if he spills a drop of blood, or cuts more than exactly one pound of flesh, he will have violated the contract and will himself be subject to the law’s penalty for violating the contract – the loss of his entire fortune. Shylock relents and says he will now take the money instead. Portia tells him that is too late – by previously rejecting the money, he has given up the right to elect to take the money now. She then tells him that under the law, since the cutting of Antonio’s flesh was likely to result in his death, the contract was unlawful, and the law requires that Shylock forfeit all his wealth, half going to Antonio, the other half to the state. In addition, since the contract would have resulted in Antonio’s death, by law the state has the right to execute Shylock. The eminent scholar advises Shylock to beg the court for mercy, which Shylock abjectly does. The mercy which the court shows Shylock? He must forfeit his fortune and convert to Christianity. Shylock leaves the court a broken man.
Portia beseeches Shylock to show mercy by foregoing the pound of flesh and taking the money instead. Because he rejects this offer, he is regarded by the Christians as cruel and merciless. Shylock, the Jew, was expected to show mercy by taking the money and forgoing his revenge against the Christian who has mocked and spurned him. Yet what mercy does the court show Shylock? It does not allow him to take the money instead – the form of mercy it expected Shylock to show. No, it requires that he surrender his fortune and convert to Christianity. Have the Christians shown Shylock the same degree of mercy which they expected the him to show Antonio? No, their display of justice is far less merciful.
Some have interpreted the end of the trial to demonstrate that if you insist on the enforcing the law to the letter, and are unwilling to show mercy, that the law, in turn will show you no mercy. But I believe that ignores what Shakespeare is actually saying. If the Christians are so merciful, as they insist the Jew should be, they should allow their sense of mercy to override Shylock's insistence that the law be enforced as written. They do not - they are hypocrites. And this theme is arguably reinforced by the fact that Portia has to disguise herself as a man in order to be allowed to argue before the court, underscoring the society’s demeaning view of women as incapable of arguing logically in a court.
Some have argued that Shakespeare had sympathetic ties to Catholicism, or perhaps was secretly a Catholic himself. If that line is accepted, then, given the Catholic-Protestant strife and tension in England (and Europe more generally) during his lifetime, it might not be a stretch to infer that this gave him a heightened sensitivity to issues of religious persecution and also religious dissenters/minorities (which Catholics in some sense were in England after Henry VIII's break with the Pope), which in turn might lend some further support to the interpretation of Merchant as being "about anti-Semitism," rather than anti-Semitic itself.
ReplyDeleteLFC
ReplyDeleteGodot certainly is a dark comedy. It's just that the Stewart-McKellen version eliminated a good part of the darkness. It clearly isn't the way Beckett wrote it. His own version is on YouTube and it is done, not surprisingly, in the traditional way. Why not? He started the tradition.
There are some trailers of the Stewart McKellen performance on YouTube as well. There's also an excellent Irish production of the entire play, with Johnny Murphy and Barry McGovern. Stephen Brennan's Lucky in this production is the best I've ever seen.
And here's Stewart and Stephen Colbert, waiting for Trump's replacement for Obamacare:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQI06jiNsR8
Thanks, David P., for the YouTube references.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the existence of anti-Semitism in court, in the course of my 40-year legal career I have encountered two flagrantly anti-Semitic incidents in a legal setting. (That I am Jewish is readily discernible by my surname and demeanor, although, in the absence of knowing my surname, strangers have mistaken me for Iranian, Greek or Italian.) In 1981, just three years out of law school, I was representing a plaintiff whom I alleged had been defrauded by a major financial management company. The case involved a substantial amount of money and was assigned to mediation in which three attorneys would evaluate whether the defendant was liable, and, if so, recommend a settlement amount. In this case, the three mediators were very prominent lawyers in Michigan. The chief mediator was the former chief judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, and a person both esteemed and feared for his political power. There had also been rumors that he was corrupt and had taken bribes. One of the other mediators was the then President of Wayne State University. (I cannot remember who the third mediator was.) After the attorneys had made their arguments regarding liability, the mediators all agreed that the defendant was liable to my client for fraud. We then turned to the issue of damages. I made my presentation, and, in accordance with my legal obligation on behalf of my client, made an argument demanding the largest amount warranted by the facts. The chief mediator (who was not Jewish) stared at me and said, “Don’t be a gonoph.” Well, my Yiddish was a bit rusty, and I interpreted him to be calling me a different Yiddish word, “chazah,” which means “pig.” Although I was offended – after all, I was only doing my job – as I thought to respond “You should know,” I bit my tongue (a rarity for me), swallowed my pride and reduced my demand, which they awarded as a settlement amount.
ReplyDeleteAs I was driving back to my office, it hit me, shmuck, you misinterpreted “gonoph,” which means “crook,” and, as a lawyer, was a worse insult than being called a pig. I was angry that I had not in fact responded, “You should know.” When I got back to the office, I met with the senior partner of the firm and recounted what had happened and expressed dismay that my Yiddish had been rusty and that I had not said what I wanted to say in response. The partner told me that I was lucky my Yiddish was rusty, for if I had said what I was thinking, I would never have practiced law in Michigan again. So, this was a case where ignorance turned out to be bliss.
(There is not sufficient space for me to explain the second incident, so I will leave that for another day, should it be relevant to another post.)
There are different schools of literary criticism, but the tendency when I was in the university back in the 60's was to read a work of literature within the historical cultural context. Thus, to understand Shakespeare and his contemporaries, we read works such as the Elizabethan World Picture by Tillyard.
ReplyDeleteIn that frame it is extremely unlikely that Shakespeare wrote the Merchant of Venice as a protest against anti-semitism. While there may have been voices in the Shakespearian age in favor of religious tolerance of a sorts, for example, Montaigne, I don't think that religious tolerance extended to Jews. I may be wrong.
I doubt that even if Shakespeare was a Catholic and felt persecuted because of that, he would have felt a kinship with persecuted Jews since as a persecuted Catholic, he was being persecuted for the Truth (according to his point of view) and the Jews were being persecuted for their errors and sins.
Now it is always possible that being a genius, Shakespeare saw beyond his time and thus, was one of the first writers in history to protest against anti-semitism, but there's not much in Shakespeare, as I recall, that would lead one to suspect that he was so farseeing as he tends to have quite conventional views about the divine right of kings and other issues.
Of course there are other schools of literary criticism which posit that a work of literary transcends or escapes its author. Thus, a writer with entirely conventional conscious views about the Jews might, in spite of him or herself, pen a work which belies his or her conscious views. For example, there are Greek tragedies, say, Antigone, which can be read as feminist texts even though there weren't any feminists around during that era.
So depending on what is your literary critical point of view, the Merchant of Venice can or cannot be read as a condemnation of anti-semitism.
s. wallerstein,
ReplyDeleteAside from the text of the Merchant of Venice (i.e., Shylock’s monologue) and the plot (i.e., the hypocrisy depicted in the trial), the contention that Shakespeare was expressing his animosity towards anti-Semitism, which, as you state, would have been an anomalous view in Elizabethan England (from which the Jews had been expelled in 1290 by the Edict of Expulsion issued by Edward 1, and which was reversed by Oliver Cromwell), there is the comparison between Shakespeare’s play and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, subtitled The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta, which Marlowe wrote in either 1589 or 1590, some 4 to 7 years before Shakespeare wrote Merchant. In Marlowe’s play, the Jewish merchant Barabbas (note the use of the name of the thief who, according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Jewish crowd attending Jesus’s trial before Pilate, demanded that Brabbas’s life be spared, so that Jesus would be crucified in his stead), is clearly a villain, who plots the death of those in power who have stripped him of his wealth. Shakespeare’s Merchant was arguably written in response to, and as a more sympathetic counter-example of, his rival’s stereotypical portrayal of a Jewish merchant as a greedy, loathsome individual.