The Merchant--and Shylock

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:

Whether Shakespeare ever wrote any more beautiful lines, whether he conjured such richness and truth elsewhere with his words is not a question I'd like to answer. But these lines from Act IV, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice, have to rank among the most beloved.

It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

When I was a. kid, The Merchant of Venice was a high school student's first taste of Shakespeare. Whether or not that was a blessed addition to standard curriculum can be argued I'm sure and likely has been, I first read The Bard back then, 60+ years ago. Basically, I remember two things: first, something or other about justice and mercy, and how the play argued for mercy--I remember the line as blessed. And I remember the Jew, Shylock, the abomination who walked the streets of Venice making a good profit off all of those Gentile businessmen who weren't really supposed to borrow money.

And I remember that dirty rat Shylock having some powerfully pertinent lines the middle somewhere, when he was the object of hate and derision by all those hypocrite Christians. "If you prick us, doth we not bleed?" he says, angered by the hate, the bigotry of time and place--and the play.

Merchant is a comedy, but the treatment of Shylock is so unjust and so pointed, arising from deeply entrenched bigotry in the minds and hearts of the Venetian culture. It's hard to watch the racist vitriol in the context of what is a rowdy band of conniving lovers. 

Which means that should directors choose to stage The Merchant of Venice today, it's impossible not to realize is something is going to have to be altered in the text. The anti-Semitism of the play itself is impossible to look past. nor can it be somehow x-out from the text. Shylock's lines are memorable because they're powerful--and unforgettable. It's been years since I first read the Merchant, but one of the two memories I have, from that time, is the acid truth of Shylock's accusation. 

The South Dakota Shakespeare Festival staged the play over the weekend in a city park in Vermillion. I had no idea what the Festival Director would do with the text, but I was sure she'd have to do something to dull the anti-Semitism. She had to do something, and whatever she'd do, it had to affect the play itself. 

The most obvious change she made was in gender; Shylock was a woman. Gender alters things significantly--or maybe it's just me. It's somehow easier to ratchet up hatred for a slimy male money-lender than it is for a equally shady lady in a prayer shawl doing the same thing, and that may be the case because we know immediately that this Shylock, a woman, has suffered not one but two prejudices, one because she is Jewish, and two because she is a woman. Something admirable there.

South Dakota's Shylock was a fiercely convincing actor who could not be considered slimy. She knew very well not only what she was in the eyes of the Venetian hypocrites, and she wasn't afraid to tell them, even when they knew. Whether or not this production altered lines is something I don't know, but there's no doubt that this woman, this Shylock, suffered in Venice. The anti-Semitism is very real, not cute or funny.

The director redid the play's denouement as well, bringing Lady Shylock back on stage to sing Shalom Aleichem with her daughter who left the partying behind (the marriage of Portia and Bassiano). It was a very touching ending that raised the two woman's heritage to something culturally important, not a blight.

The real artistic trick is to alter what has to be altered without injuring the achievement of the play. It seems to me you want the audience to feel as sincerely blessed by whatever alterations have to be made as they once were when they simply accepted the bigotry. To do any less would be to undercut the beauty of Shakespeare's Merchant.  

In the particular case of The Merchant of Venice, plain and simple, something has to be done. If it can be and still leave the audience enthralled, then something good has been done, as it was last weekend in Vermillion.

T