Word: shylocks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like most comedies, The Merchant of Venice is about the conflict between law and the powers above law. Throughout the first four acts we are shown, as we are shown in most tragedy, the conflict of two irreconcilable rights: Shylock's right to "justice" and Antonio's to humane treatment. Mercy and justice seem to be at odds. But the whole point of Shylock's Judaism is that only the old dispensation, the Mosaic law of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," is incompatible with mercy. The coming of Christ means that mercy becomes...
...SHYLOCK remains unreconciled. How satisfied can we be about any "happy" ending that makes its sine qua non his humiliation? Director George Hamlin has taken a wise hint from Walter Kaiser and ended the play, not with the happy sight of lusty couples marching off to bed, but on a note of melancholy. Silhouetted against a night sky, Antonio wordlessly stares into a fountain, suggesting that the solutions on the play's surface are far from final...
This goes part of the way to solving the Shylock problem, though nothing can gloss over the fact that Shakespeare has given Shylock the motivations, actions and retribution that properly belong the stock stage Jew, but has written speeches that (at least to the modern ear) make him something better. And the production seriously stumbles at a critical point in the interpretation of Shylock's position in the play's scheme of redemption. When Portia confounds Shylock by allowing him his pound of flesh but condemning him to death if an iota of blood be spilled in its excision...
Jonathan Epstein's Shylock at the Loeb exhibited the inherentdifficulties of the role, many of which were overcome by the sheer force of his voice. At times he played a foolish old man, strangled in verbal tics, though always too terrible to be funny. More often he was the lofty, dignified representative of Judaism and its haughty law. In any case, his Shylock was more sinned against than sinning--the temptation that this production, not without provocation, succumbed to. One suspects that Esptein really wanted to play Lear or Coriolanus. Epstein was the only actor in the entire cast...
...agent of reconciliation. Antonio (Peter Henderson) was properly grave and honorable; Bassanio (Jeffrey Rubin) was in higher spirits but equally good. Both played straight men, but the success of the play depended on them; unless we are made to feel that they are men of higher moral value than Shylock the play is a heap of incoherence. I would also single out the Prince of Morocco (Curt Anderson), Salerio (John Sedgwick), Nerissa (Meg Vaillancourt), and Jessica (Andrea LaSonde) for their well-executed performances. Launcelot Gobbo (Kevin Grumbach) did some unexpectedly successful things with some of Shakespeare's least inspired clown...