Word: gratiano
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...Aldredge is the talkative Gratiano. In the Trial Scene, when the tables are turned on Shylock, Gratiano indulges in not just the usual sarcasm; he positively relishes the chance to stamp on Shylock when he's down. Shakespeare contented himself with telling us that Shylock has oft been spat upon. Here, at Shylock's last exit, we actually see Gratiano (ironic name!) spit upon the Jew-- just as, in an earlier scene, we are treated to the spectacle of seeing his fellow Jew, Tubal spat...
...World War I and has laughed in the face of reality ever since. His new novel, My Fathers and I, is an escape into the past. It is told by a degenerate descendant of proud ancestors who were greatly absurd but greatly revered. The narrator is Edward G. (for Gratiano) Vanbrugh, a seedily broke antique dealer in a shabby English provincial town. His principal stock, symbolically enough, was a menagerie of Staffordshire China figures-shepherdesses, sailors, heroes of the past. As his narrative unfolds, it turns into a gallery of historical portraits redone by a modern caricaturist...
...Marco, where most Venetian festivals are held, he chose an obscure and humble piazza called Campo San Trovaso, bounded by a church, two 16th Century tenement houses and a small canal. Shylock's miserly squawkings came from a bridge still decorated by the arms of the Venetian Republic. Gratiano cruised about the canal in a medieval gondola. A garden wall of one of the tenements was transformed into the avenue to Portia's house on the mainland...
Salanio, Salarino and Gratiano, ordinarily the Wynmen, Blynken and Nod of the Shakespearian first act, were as different as people really are and as alike as gentlemen's ideas are. Hugh Miller, Alfred Jingle in 'Pickwick", played a lively Gratiano to the giggling Nerissa of Spring Byington...