The Merchant of Venice

by William Shakespeare

  Findlay found this too harsh a reading of the character and after the play transferred to London, changed her performance to what she believed was more in line with Shakespeare’s original conception:

  As an experienced actress she felt that she had a right to the part, that it had an essence which she had intuited: “Portia is never mean. Any choice you make about motivation for this character has to be made with all the generosity of spirit that you can muster. She is as loving, as intelligent, as witty, as brave, as compassionate, as everything as you can make her.” Who is right here? The actress who with all her talent, training, and experience undertakes the part and inhabits it as it makes sense to her, or the director whose vision of the whole play necessitates a re-vision of the heroine? There is of course no simple answer, though the problem is peculiar to the twentieth century and the age of the director.40

  Mercy and Love

  Bill Alexander’s brutal reading of the play left the audience without a redeeming character. Most other modern productions have been less clear-cut in their depictions, but have opted for psychological depth and elements of sympathy to be found in key love relationships. Both Portia and Jessica’s lives are governed by overprotective and domineering fathers—the decree of one and the finances of the other act as the catalyst for the action of the play. Are Portia and Jessica viewed as commodities by their fathers, or are they genuinely concerned about their welfare? What effect does this have on the characters of their daughters?

  When playing Shylock, David Suchet described the importance of the one domestic scene Shakespeare gives us of his home life:

  Shakespeare gives us the shortest scene in the play, which is the domestic relationship between Shylock and Jessica and none of it suggests her life is hell. It is equally wrong to impose such an interpretation of Jessica, and it is also wrong to show a great deal of love because that is not there either. But because of there being a third person present all the time, Gobbo, it is not anyway just a straight scene between father and daughter, it is elevated by the presence of the third person. You see Shylock hesitating as to whether or not to go to dinner, disciplining Jessica over not looking on the Masques, shutting the windows and doors and so on and leaving Jessica to look after the house. She is, for him, both wife and daughter … There are thousands of boys and girls today who want to run away from home and live with someone with whom they’ve fallen in love. Your sympathies can lie either way. He has met these men in the street who, he realizes, asked him to dinner so his daughter could be taken away. I don’t think this is the moment for a great speech of sympathy about the race. He lets out a great stream of bitterness, anger and disillusion about mankind … This is not the same Shylock we have seen before.41

  Does Shakespeare give us enough evidence to judge Shylock’s emotional capabilities? Patrick Stewart believed that with regards to Jessica,

  The real, natural warm, human, affectionate, loving responses have been cauterised in the man and she is a victim of it. So it is impossible for him to show the undoubted love that lies there underneath. It’s so far down it can never be tapped. In our production … we had a controversial moment when I struck her very hard. After the blow I made some attempt at reconciliation … But by then the damage had been done and she was bound to reject him.42

  In Gregory Doran’s 1997 production, actor Philip Voss

  had come to excuse Shylock’s behaviour towards Jessica as deriving from the absence of a mother’s moderating influence … [We’ve] decided—that Shylock’s wife died about five years before—making Jessica, I think, about thirteen. To explain how Jessica has come to loathe her father so much, you need a certain amount of time for his oppressive behaviour to have affected her to that degree. Because, I mean, I see Shylock as a perfectly nice man … The reason that Jessica hates him, I think, is because he is oppressive, because he is a widower, because he has lost his wife, and that she is the woman in the house and he has just demanded too much of her, both in her religion and domestically. And then in every way he has absolutely fed off her, I think. And, if she’s that age, she just wants to get away—the house is hell, because it’s no fun …43

  Voss’s Shylock was destroyed by the loss of his daughter (rather than his ducats). Doran intensified the audience’s awareness of Shylock’s pain by having him witness her elopement:

  Shylock ran into the raucous and nightmarish carnival which had modulated grotesquely from the same masque that he had watched as an entertainment laid on for his meal with Bassanio and Antonio. Apparently coming home after leaving the Christians, Voss’s Shylock stumbled unwittingly into the obscene and drunken cavorting of the Christians’ street party. Attempting without success to avoid the lunging pigs’ heads, the old man was jostled and pushed around on the stage, until, at a point when the goading was at its height, the music stopped and he suddenly saw his daughter, dressed improperly in boy’s clothes and carried high on her lover’s shoulders. Screaming her name, he was dragged into his house and spun around as it revolved in a nightmare sequence which saw him thrown from one wall to another as his daughter made her escape.44

  4. Emma Handy as Jessica, “who has come to loathe her father,” an “oppressive” Philip Voss as Shylock, in Gregory Doran’s 1997 production.

  In David Thacker’s 1993 modern dress production, he included an extra scene in which Shylock was seen looking lovingly at his wife’s picture while listening to classical music. Shylock’s grief and loneliness at the loss of his wife signaled his capacity for love and heightened the audience’s sympathy for him. It also threw “an enormous light on the bond between Jessica and her father”:45

  His private world contains touchstones—Jessica his daughter being the most important. His love of his daughter is tainted by over protectiveness, which is endemic to many societies … When his daughter is stolen from him by a Christian the profound pain, insult and shame push him onto a road from which there is no return.46

  As a reminder to the audience in the trial scene, “a sob escapes this Shylock as he recalls his daughter”:47 “and when he is finally tricked of justice, Calder’s hollow laughter and sudden physical frailty leave no doubt that here is a man with a broken heart with nothing left to live for.”48

  Sinead Cusack (1981) played Portia as a woman in a state of grief over the death of her father. She even wore her father’s shabby raincoat in order to relate herself to “the wise and ‘ever virtuous’ old man who understood the law and money and marriage.”49 The casket test was put in place in order to stop her from marrying someone who would treat her as a commodity, to weed out opportunist fortune hunters (ironically, like Bassanio). However, even here Portia’s father’s test succeeds, as Bassanio finds his own true worth in this match:

  Receiving her suitors almost in a melancholic trance, Sinead Cusack invests Portia with translucent intelligence. The caskets are simple boxes thrown vigorously aside as Bassanio picks the right one. At last this Portia comes alive, dropping her inhibitions with her grey cloak and, turning on Bassanio, blossoming as an ecstatic vision in primrose. The liberation of Portia continues through the court scene, where Miss Cusack’s lawyer is less an impersonation than a revelation of her true crop-haired self. In the exchanging of the rings she asserts her independence, for Bassanio now sees he is married to a woman of wit, steadfastness and resource.50

  Other Portias have been less fortunate, with their Bassanios’ sexual ambiguity becoming one hurdle too far to happiness. Of Clifford Williams’ 1965 production, one critic commented on the treatment of Antonio and Bassanio:

  in this production it’s clear from the start that between him and Bassanio there is what is euphemistically described as a romantic friendship. Brewster Mason’s heavy, ageing Antonio is the counterpart of today’s wealthy bachelor stockbroker with a big house in Surrey and aberrations so tidily exercised that only his more intimate friends know about them … Even in imminent danger from Shylock’s knife, he keeps his eyes affectionately fixed on the boyfr
iend whose extravagance has brought him to this situation. Peter McEnery, a graceful, handsome, very young Bassanio, fond of his old protector, who has given him so much—fonder, in fact, than he is of Portia. I suspect he’s not really very fond of Portia at all; but she’s a rich and “with it” girl, and marrying her will be a smart thing to do. So when he is with her, when he is actually professing his love for her, his eyes wander round the company to see what kind of impression he’s making. There is a lot of Lord Alfred Douglas* in this Bassanio …51

  Despite his centrality to the plot, Antonio comes across as a despicable racist to a modern audience. Again to redress the balance and find elements of sympathy, directors have emphasized the character’s loneliness, also making him an outsider by dint of his sexuality. In 1987 John Carlisle’s Antonio “became agitated as Portia became a threat to his homoerotic love for Bassanio. Carlisle remained on stage as the scene changed from Belmont and fixed Portia with a confrontational glare.”52 His moroseness was attributed to his unrequited love for Bassanio; like Orlando at the start of Twelfth Night, he was lovesick to the point of suicide:

  But the strength of the production … is that the action springs from a precise social and psychological context; and one of the undoubted beneficiaries is John Carlisle’s excellent Antonio, presented as a tormented closet-gay.

  That is not especially original. What is new is the idea that in such a rabidly conformist world Antonio would actually prefer death to restricted life; and Mr Carlisle greets his salvation with sullen, angry resentment.53

  In these interpretations the genuineness of Bassanio’s feelings is called into question, leaving the audience to ponder whether Portia will receive the expected happiness at their union. In 1971:

  [As] Tony Church plays him there is no question of his love for Bassanio, but it is a melancholy undemanding love with no physical expression; thus it becomes acceptable within the production’s romantic terms … in scenes like that following the trial, where he tries to hold polite conversation while on the brink of nervous collapse, he makes old situations brand new … [Michael Williams’ Bassanio] makes an opening display of smothering Antonio in grateful kisses, but after that he reverts to the perfect lover: while [Judi] Dench turns her radiant resources on Portia so as to burn up personal characteristics in the sheer experience of love.54

  Due to the inherent doubts over Bassanio’s motivations—he makes it clear that he is initially out for a wealthy match, and at the trial states that his love for Antonio is greater than his love for his new bride—the portrayal of the wooing of Portia has also become a means of differentiating Bassanio from her other suitors. In Barton’s 1978 production:

  The first two suitors approached her from behind, avoiding eye contact, whereas Bassanio knelt in front and addressed her directly over the caskets … creating a silent moment of human contact … The exchange of lovers’ rings occurred underneath a central spotlight emphasising the importance of the exchange and creating a strong image that would later prove significant … an important learning process …

  Antonio rejoined the lovers’ hands, reconciling the worlds of Belmont and Venice, and the rings were once again held in the central light used during the betrothal scene. This was evidence of a greater understanding gained through experience, and as Portia pronounced, “It is almost morning” [5.1.313] it promised an understanding that would develop and mature in future.55

  Deborah Findlay (1987) pointed out that in the wooing scenes:

  Both Morocco and Aragon want to dominate Portia, Morocco by machismo and Aragon by a patronizing approach. We felt that Morocco would treat a wife as his property, appropriate her physically, so there was a bit of manhandling in the scene which Portia reacted against. This may have been seen as reacting against his colour but it is much more to do with being treated as a sexual object—an interesting conundrum: who is the oppressor?56

  In this production both Jew and woman were the oppressed races, at the mercy of the charity of the white Christian male. This was driven home by a very startling final image of Antonio and Jessica, two characters who themselves will always remain outsiders because of sexuality and race. However, Antonio, being a man and a Christian, powerfully demonstrated which sex and which religion remained on top. Jessica was left

  … half kneeling before Antonio, trying to get back the long chain and cross she has dropped in her haste to keep up with Lorenzo. Antonio draws it from her, mastering for a moment a victim who is still nothing but a Jew and a woman. And then there is darkness.57

  The link between Portia and Shylock has been emphasized in many productions. Of John Barton’s 1981 revival of his 1978 production, Sinead Cusack explained:

  A lot of people ask why then does Portia put everyone through all that misery and why does she play cat-and-mouse with Shylock. The reason is that she doesn’t go into the courtroom to save Antonio (that’s easy) but to save Shylock, to redeem him—she is passionate to do that. She gives him opportunity after opportunity to relent and to exercise his humanity … It is only when he shows himself totally ruthless and intractable (refusing even to allow a surgeon to stand by) that she offers him more justice than he desires.58

  One critic commented:

  Besides her apt resemblance to a fairytale princess Miss Cusack is one of the rare Portias who can stay in character while enlarging on the quality of mercy (which she plays as a strictly forensic argument) … There is no trace of the bitch or the boss lady. All the essential characteristics are there, but for once human accuracy does not disfigure the fable.59

  Portia’s reaction to Antonio’s demand that Shylock renounce his faith can also be a key moment in which to demonstrate her innate decency. In David Thacker’s 1993 production, Penny Downie played her “with glowing intelligence, as a decent woman visibly upset by Shylock’s forced conversion to Christianity.”60

  This reaction again came from an empathy with Shylock’s plight as a victimized section of society: “[She] subtly and generously portrays a Portia who is both imperious and victimised, a woman who knows she has been made into a bargaining counter and clings to her dignity as to a lifebelt.”61

  The actor playing Portia has the difficulty of creating a character that a modern audience can believe has an immense capacity for love and generosity of spirit, despite the many dubious lines Shakespeare has given her. As a result, it is often Portia herself who is on trial in the courtroom, as she will be judged by her actions and reactions to the bigoted Venetian mentality. Surely Shakespeare’s intention was to have us believe that “Belmont becomes the soul which Venice has lost.”62 As director David Thacker explained: “Belmont offers us something that can renew and reform. It allows the quality of mercy to spread throughout the whole civilization and heal.”63

  THE DIRECTOR’S CUT: INTERVIEWS WITH DAVID THACKER AND DARKO TRESNJAK

  David Thacker’s directing career spans more than thirty years, during which time he has directed over a hundred productions. He is particularly known for his close working relationship with the American playwright Arthur Miller, directing the British premieres of four of his plays. He has been artistic director of the Young Vic and Lancaster’s Dukes theater as well as director in residence at the RSC, for whom he has directed The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice (discussed here), Coriolanus, and Pericles, which won the Olivier Awards for Best Director and Best Revival. At the Young Vic he directed An Enemy of the People, Ghosts, Some Kind of Hero by Les Smith, A Touch of the Poet by Eugene O’Neill, and Comedians by Trevor Griffiths. He also works prolifically in television, having directed more than thirty TV productions. In 2008 he was appointed artistic director of the Octagon Theatre in Bolton.

  Darko Tresnjak is a prominent American theater director. He has received the Alan Schneider Award for Directing Excellence and several other awards. Born in the city of Zemun, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), he emigrated to the United States with his mother when he was ten years old. He graduated from Swarthm
ore College in 1988, then attended the Columbia University School of the Arts MFA theater directing program. From 2004 to 2007 he was artistic director of the Old Globe Shakespeare Festival in San Diego, California, where he is now resident artistic director. His productions there have included Pericles, The Winter’s Tale, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and Antony and Cleopatra. He talks here about his modern dress (Wall Street–style) production of The Merchant of Venice with Theater for a New Audience in New York, which transferred to Stratford-upon-Avon in 2007 as part of the RSC Complete Works Festival. Shylock was F. Murray Abraham, winner of an Oscar for his role as Salieri in the movie Amadeus.

  The Merchant of Venice is the play that has changed in our common estimation and viewpoint probably more than any other, because of twentieth-century history. What implications did that have for your production? Does the play demand that you take a particular line on it?

  THACKER: It had very profound implications for the production. I’m not sure I’d ever describe it as a particular “line,” but I think that you have particular responsibilities in directing that play. Your primary responsibility is to William Shakespeare. When you do any production of a Shakespeare play you have a profound responsibility to try to understand the play and to try to express it as richly and as powerfully as you can. Having said that, I think every play is responsive not only to the time in which it was written, but also the time in which you perform it. And certain things that are acceptable to one generation are not acceptable when time moves on. Because of the extent of anti-Semitism in our society, and because of what Jewish people have had to suffer historically, coming to a terrible climax in the Holocaust, I think it is vital that you approach this play with enormous care and sensitivity.