Word: shylocks
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Fiedler, the portrait of Shylock is proof positive that Shakespeare is antiSemitic. But is it? Shylock was a moneylender, and usury was long held by Christians to be a horrific sin. In deed, Jews entered the field by default rather than design. Is the Mafia loan shark or the friendly neighborhood bank really less intent than Shylock on getting its pound of flesh? In addition, in the matter of both women and Jews, one should always remember that Shakespeare's world was the world of Christendom. A mind steeped in the Christian tradition had to be wedded...
...uncanny command of stagecraft, that arsenal of small gestures and bits of business that an actor uses to establish his character for the audience. In the final scene of a 1962 production of The Merchant of Venice, Scott, playing Shylock, held a handkerchief belonging to his daughter Jessica. The production was staged outdoors, near a lake in New York's Central Park, and every night a gentle wind blew across the stage. To signify Shylock's loss of Jessica, Scott simply released the handkerchief, and the wind carried it away. In O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms...
...early '60s, Scott had won his second Oscar nomination for The Hustler?and refused it. He had been acclaimed for his Shylock in another Papp production ("the greatest acting experience of my life"), almost stolen the show from Peter Sellers in Strangelove, and played in Desire Under the Elms opposite his wife Colleen. They now had two sons, but as his talent matured, his personal life began to crack. Everything broke open in 1964, after Scott left for Rome to play Abraham in John Huston's behemoth film The Bible...
...script and staging mesh at a truly first-rate level: Ingmar Bergman's production of Hedda Gabler and Jonathan Miller's of The Merchant of Venice, both for the National Theater. Yet even these are star vehicles, Hedda for Maggie Smith, and Merchant for Laurence Olivier as Shylock (at least until recently when a thrombosis forced him off the stage for three months). In most of London's other notable productions, playwrights and directors more or less suffer stellar eclipses...
...audience's sympathies, but holds to an avid, harshly funny portrayal of the cruelty of human justice and the bitter ironies of human mercy. At the end of Shakespeare's text, Jessica and the merchant, the two characters whose triumphs have been bought at the cost of Shylock's downfall, pause alone and silently onstage before the final curtain. The moment apparently is intended by Director Miller to evoke Shylock, and it works. Such is the flinty power of Olivier's unorthodox performance that his unseen presence dominates the stage at that moment as few actors...