The Merchant of Venice [Format Kindle]

Shylock is the only sympathetic character in the play. Modernity has altered the villain in "The Merchant of Venice" from Shylock to the entire cast of characters EXCEPT for Shylock. Any sense of comedy in the play died for those with a sense of religious tolerance, and Shylock comes off as merely oppressed. I found Act 5 almost nauseating after the forced conversion. That, coupled with the happy racism makes a perversion of decency and happy endings. This play is a tragedy. The recent movie version done starring Al Pacino turned it into a tragedy, and amazingly, a play written as a comedy seems to work very well as a tragedy.

Antonio gladly spits upon Shylock and calls him a dog, but stunningly, when Antonio finds himself in a financial pinch he goes to Shylock for money. More brash is Antonio's promise to act the same in the future: "I am as like to call thee so again, / To spet on thee again, to spurn thee, too." (1.3.127-28) From this point on, sympathy for Antonio is paralyzed in a modern reader's mind, from reminders of past images, from slavery and anti-Semitism, where the dehumanizing of a group of people is accepted by a society. The entire text afterward reads like an indictment of humanity, as if Shakespeare is making the Elizabethans laugh at their own behavior.

In perhaps the best argument in Shylock's defense in the trial, he point out the fact that those who speak of mercy own slaves. "What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong? / You have among you many a purchased slave." (4.1.89-90) Shylock, as fanatical as he is over the pound of flesh, is asking for only a pound of a man, when the slaveholders own the entire person. The play is littered with prejudiced remarks that clearly show how animalistic Shylock was to them.

Every conversation involving Shylock has ridicule from the Christians, without remorse or a feeling of comedy. The Christian children are taught to mock Shylock, they run after him in the street. The merchants spit on him, the Duke reviles him, his daughter renounces her religion and robs him.

Still an amazing story, with a few of the best on mercy and prejudice ever written.

What scholars today call "The Problem Plays" seem to me to be problems more for us because of our changed sensibilities from those of Elizabethan London rather than problems in the plays themselves. "The Merchant of Venice" is called anti-Semitic by eminent scholars such as Harold Bloom. In our post-Holocaust age and our sensitivity to stereotypes of all sorts, Shylock bothers us in a way not dissimilar to watching the great Al Jolson perform in blackface. That is, it is clearly the work of a great entertainer, but it jars us, makes us wince, and we are (justly) unable to watch with the same enjoyment as the audience for whom the work was created.

Still, this is Shakespeare and Shylock is immortal. When I read through the play, I place Shylock as "the other" rather than as a caricature of the Jewish race. More than that, he is simply a vicious person irrespective of his ethnic ties and origins. I do like Bloom's insistence that this play was written as a dark comedy and was performed as such for centuries. The editor of this edition, John Russell Brown also states this. At some time around the 19th century, Shylock acquired pathos and the play has been performed as a drama ever since.

Does it work as a drama? You will have to answer that for yourself. However, if you insist on a moral drama you will have a great many moral contradictions to settle that do not matter as much if the play is done more for simple cleverness and laughs. Can we really take seriously the casket game that Portia's late father left her as the way she must select her spouse? Does Antonio (the Merchant of Venice) seem a proper embodiment of Christian values?

To me, the play does seem awfully light hearted with all of its darkness given to Shylock. He is a villain with infinitely more substance than Snidely Whiplash, but provides much the same function. He must be hated; he must be spat upon and jeered by the audience to fill his role. And he must lose in the end. Not because others are more virtuous (any serious analysis of the play shows everyone in the play wanting in virtue), but simply because he is the bad guy.

Portia is the wonder of the play. Her glow is so bright that it is obvious she is light to Shylock's darkness. Her defeat of Shylock is acceptable in a comedy, in a serious drama she seems to have gone too far considering what is really involved.

In any case, this play has delighted audiences for centuries and will continue to do so. It is a great read and this critical edition aids the reader's understanding. The opening essay is fine and the appendices showing the various sources of the tale are also interesting in helping us see the genius of Shakespeare in what he developed on his own and how he wove the various components into this masterpiece.

As Harold Bloom says, this has become an unplayable play after the Holocaust. This is only an additional reason why one should read it. The play is fantastic and gives us one of Shakespeare's most memorable characters: Shylock. Whether you see him as villain or victim, Shylock is unforgettable. As is his speech defending the Jewish.