Word: shylocks
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Chary of overdoing trial scenes, Shakespeare made them as airtight as a Supreme Court brief-perhaps most notably in The Merchant of Venice. At issue is Shylock's 3,000-ducat loan to Antonio, who borrowed the money to help Bassanio sue for Portia's hand. If Antonio fails to repay in three months, says Shylock...
Flesh v. Blood. Unable to pay on time, Antonio is haled before the Duke's court in Venice, where Shylock, refusing even 6,000 ducats, insists upon the letter of the bond, a pound of flesh to be sliced off Antonio's breast. The law's the law-the hard English common law with no mercy for a laggard debtor...
Something Superhuman. At 64, Carnovsky has played many of the classic character parts - Shylock, Prospero and Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. But Lear, obviously, is something else again, and Carnovsky says that when the role was offered to him he "fainted inside." The part, he says, "demands almost super human strength. The actor must learn to tell the truth...
...himself? The role is in the hands of Morris Carnovsky, a staple of the Festival's company during its early years. Though Carnovsky came to Shakespeare late as a performer, he had come to him early as a student; and he soon showed he had the necessary gifts. His Shylock can never be surpassed, and his Prospero was extraordinary...
Carnovsky's Shylock was perfect; his Lear is not. Yet his Lear is the greater achievement, and raises him, at sixty-five, to the pinnacle of a distinguished career. For let's face it: Shakespeare's Lear is the supremely difficult task for an actor (as his Cleopatra is for an actress), and its full realization is not humanly possible. The marvel is that Carnovsky has immersed himself so deeply into a character for which real-life experience offers no preparation, and has been able to project so much of it so meaningfully...