Pity Silenced

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 20-35
Author(s):  
Alessandra Marzola
Keyword(s):  
Safety Net ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
Scant Attention

While the mercantile value of mercy in The Merchant of Venice has been often highlighted, the diminished role of pity has received scant attention. This article argues that the ways in which mercy is shown to subsume and eventually incorporate pity throw light on the play’s negotiation of contentious religious and political approaches to the spectres of poverty and/or impoverishment that threaten the emerging mercantile economy. A re-reading of relevant scenes retraces the Catholic implications of the safety-net potential of pity which, unlike the Protestant worldly pity of The Sonnets, here seems bound for repression. In Portia’s final donation to the merchants of Venice even the lingering allusions to Catholicism are neutralized and put to the service of vested interests: a conflation of Christian and Jewish usury that cuts across all religious divides; such allusions are possibly reminiscent of the Monti di Pietà (Mounts of Piety) existent in Italy since 1462 to counter Jewish usury.

Intertheatricality and Propaganda

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Publicover
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Controversial Nature

This chapter analyses the ways in which the collaborative drama The Travels of the Three English Brothers defends the Sherley brothers’ real-world political endeavours across Europe and Persia through its intertheatrical negotiations. Explaining the political background of those endeavours and their controversial nature, it illustrates how the playwrights liken the Sherleys to the heroes of dramas that had been popular on the early modern stage over the preceding twenty years, in particular Tamburlaine and The Merchant of Venice. It also examines the significance of Francis Beaumont’s specific parody, in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, of an episode in Travels in which the Persian Sophy acts as godfather to the child of Robert Sherley. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of playing companies in shaping dramatic output.

scholarly journals Racism, Ethnic Discrimination, and Otherness in Shakespeare’s Othello and The Merchant of Venice

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-41
Author(s):  
Shaghayegh Moghari
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Discrimination ◽  
Religious Discrimination ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Comparative Examination

This study aims to present a comparative examination of the traces of racism and discrimination in two plays of Shakespeare, Othello and The Merchant of Venice, written in 1603 and around 1598, respectively in the Elizabethan Period. The attempt in this paper is to explore the construction of racism and the evidences of discrimination as depicted in Othello and the Merchant of Venice by use of the deconstruction of marriage. For this purpose, it deconstructs the marriage by focusing on Othello in Othello, and The Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice; and, depicts racism and discrimination by comparing the characterizations of Othello in Othello and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Both sections critique the cruel issues these people experienced as other. The notion of ‘otherness’ and its application in the characterizations of Othello and Shylock, Othello vs. Shylock, the application of deconstruction of marriage to Othello and The Prince of Morocco, and racism in Othello and The Merchant of Venice are among the major items on which this article elaborates following by a conclusion describing the role of human conscience in racial and religious discrimination.

Bungei Kyōkai

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guohe Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Original Script ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Financial Difficulties ◽  
Training And Research ◽  
A Doll's House ◽  
Second Period

Launched in February 1906 out of a drama club of Waseda University students, Bungei Kyōkai was one of the two pioneering organizations of the modernist movement in Japanese theater, the other being Jiyū Gekijō. Bungei Kyōkai, particularly its second period, is considered the beginning of shingeki for its contributions to Modernism in establishing professional actors and actresses in modern Japanese theater, in its impact on society, and in its having elite intellectuals as its leaders. During its early period Bungei Kyōkai was more reformative in nature; while it produced selected acts of The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet, it also produced Tsubouchi Shōyō’s modern kabuki Kiri hitoha (A Paulownia Leaf), and the role of Portia in Merchant was played by an onnagata (male performer of female roles in kabuki). This led to these resignation of disappointed members and the beginning of its financial difficulties. To overcome these challenges, Shimamura Hōgetsu, Tsubouchi Shōyō’s disciple and the de facto manager of the organization, persuaded his teacher to take direct charge from February 1909. Shōyō started Bungei Kyōkai’s later period by building, on the site of his own residence, a theater academy, intended for both training and research. The two-year co-educational academy program was quite rigorous, with Hōgetsu and Shōyō among the instructors and using as textbooks the original script of The Merchant of Venice and the English translation of A Doll’s House. Later, however, elements of traditional Japanese performing arts, including kyōgen and stage fighting, were added to the curriculum, reflecting Shōyō’s vision of a national theater as the ultimate goal of Bungei Kyōkai.

Shylock in Buchenwald

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-174
Author(s):  
Gad Kaynar-Kissinger
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
World War ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Second World

Can The Merchant of Venice be performed in Germany after the Holocaust, and if so, how? Is the claim that the play is a touchstone for German-Jewish relations, with a philosemitic tradition – and therefore eligible to be performed today – verifiable? The article begins by briefly surveying this tradition from the Jewish emancipation in the mid-eighteenth century, which, with a few relapses, continued – especially in productions directed by Jews and/or with Jewish actors in the role of Shylock – until the rise of the Nazi regime, to be resumed after the Second World War. The main part analyses a test case, staged by the Israeli director Hanan Snir at the Weimar National Theatre (1995), and intended rhetorically to avenge the Holocaust on the German audience: Merchant as a viciously antisemitic play-within-a-play, directed by SS personnel in the nearby Buchenwald concentration camp with eventually murdered Jewish inmates compelled to play the Jewish parts.

scholarly journals How Marston Read His Merchant: Ruled Women and Structures of Circulation in The Dutch Courtesan

Early Theatre ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Male Sexuality ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Source Text ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice

This essay argues that The Merchant of Venice was highly influential on John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan, guiding the changes Marston made to his source text. Marston extends Merchant’s critiques of nascent capitalism and is especially critical of the commodifying male sexuality embodied by Freevill and influenced by the characterizations of Portia and Bassanio. Recognizing Courtesan’s debts to Merchant also enables a better understanding of how Marston’s move to the Children of the Queen’s Revels affected his dramaturgy. By showing how Freevill self-consciously and inauthentically performs the role of a romance hero, Marston participates in the company’s characteristic ironizing of romance.

scholarly journals Teaching Jessica: race, religion, and gender in The Merchant of Venice

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-287
Author(s):  
Efraim Sicher
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Performance History ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Race And Religion

AbstractThe Jew’s “fair daughter” in Shakespeare’s playThe Merchant of Veniceconverts and marries a Christian, Lorenzo. Recent attention, however, to changing ideas of race and identity in the early modern period has brought into question the divisions of Christian/Jew/Moor. Can Jessica convert and no longer be considered the Jew’s daughter? As “gentle” and “fair” is she to be considered gentile and in no way dark (spiritually or racially)? Jessica’s conversion has apparently little religious meaning, but rather she is saved from the Jew her father by marriage to Lorenzo, who becomes Shylock’s heir. Is Jessica’s conversion to be considered a matter of convenience that might, as Launcelot quips, raise the price of hogs, or is it also to be counted as an ideological and racial conversion that reveals underlying anxieties about gender, sexuality, and religious identity? This essay attempts to argue against the grain of the performance history ofThe Merchant History, which often downplays the role of Jessica or revises the text of the play, and returns to the text in order to contextualize the conversion of Jessica in contemporary discourses of gender, race, and religion in England’s expansionist colonialism and proto-capitalist commerce. The conversion of Jessica can be seen in that context as an exchange of monetary and ethical value, in which women’s sexuality also had a price-tag. These questions have implications for the teaching of the play and for the understanding of its concerns with unstable sexual, religious, and national identities.

Shylock, the Devil and the Meaning of Deception in The Merchant of Venice

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-51
Author(s):  
Jonathan Elukin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The World ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Fallen World

Abstract The article explores Shakespeare’s secularized retelling of the Christian theological narrative of deceiving the Devil, with Antonio playing the role of Christ and Shylock as the Devil. The article argues that recasting the contest between Christ and the Devil in the world of Venice sets the stage for Shakespeare’s larger exploration of the pervasive nature of deceit in human affairs. Although it seems that Shakespeare’s characters are resigned to live in a fallen world where truth is obscured, Portia’s invocation of mercy may be Shakespeare’s attempt to offer some hope of an earthly salvation. The article argues that this portrait of a world filled with deception resonated with Shakespeare’s audience. Men and women in early modern England lived in a world where they often had to hide their religious identities and loyalties. This interpretation challenges more recent attempts to see the play as primarily concerned with race and tolerance.

scholarly journals Translated Plays as a Force for Social Justice

MANUSYA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-115
Author(s):  
Rachod Nusen ◽  
Kamron Gunatilaka
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The West ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Research Studies

During the current political crisis in Thailand, people hold various political standpoints. Despite these different stances, the goal for many of these differences remains the same, namely, a just society. The research Translated Plays as a Force for Social Justice is an attempt to advocate the role of literature in creating social justice. The purpose of the research is to study issues of social justice in translated plays and to suggest ways in which the Thai academic community and Thai society can use plays to advocate social justice. This research studies translations of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Bertolt Brecht’s Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, Jean Anouilh’s Antigone and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The study finds that these plays pose challenging questions which help raise an awareness of the importance of social justice. Critics and theatre practitioners in the West have created a number of works on these plays that help advance social justice. Nonetheless, the issues of social justice in these plays are often ignored by Thai critics and theater practitioners and, because of this, some of them unintentionally offer an interpretation or a production, which is not in line with the concept of social justice.

Shylock, the Devil and the Meaning of Deception in The Merchant of Venice

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-51
Author(s):  
Jonathan Elukin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The World ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Fallen World

The article explores Shakespeare’s secularized retelling of the Christian theological narrative of deceiving the Devil, with Antonio playing the role of Christ and Shylock as the Devil. The article argues that recasting the contest between Christ and the Devil in the world of Venice sets the stage for Shakespeare’s larger exploration of the pervasive nature of deceit in human affairs. Although it seems that Shakespeare’s characters are resigned to live in a fallen world where truth is obscured, Portia’s invocation of mercy may be Shakespeare’s attempt to offer some hope of an earthly salvation. The article argues that this portrait of a world filled with deception resonated with Shakespeare’s audience. Men and women in early modern England lived in a world where they often had to hide their religious identities and loyalties. This interpretation challenges more recent attempts to see the play as primarily concerned with race and tolerance.

scholarly journals Antonio: The other Jew in The Merchant of Venice

Literator ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-25
Author(s):  
S. M. Finn
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Religious Orientation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
State Of Mind

Antonio’s melancholy and his excessive hatred of Shylock are two puzzling aspects of The Merchant of Venice, most critics agreeing that the cause of the first is never revealed. However, the two (melancholy and mutual detestation) are closely linked. Antonio’s state of mind, his confusion, is brought on by his being (or, more accurately, having been) a Jew, too, who will always have to play the role of the born Christian. His original religious orientation is revealed throughout the play, showing him to be a converted Jew, or marrano (from the Spanish meaning “swine”), a type of person distrusted and abhorred by both “Old Christians” and Jews. Remarks throughout the play bear this out, and make it understandable why Shylock insists on Antonio’s heart, this being understood in Shakespeare’s day to be the centre of religious identity: he wishes to reclaim a Jewish soul.

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