Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199272051
- eISBN:
- 9780191699580
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272051.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Cues can be an integral constituent of characterization, and of no one is this truer than Shylock. This chapter explores not only how cue-effects contribute to the Shylock-part, but how cues can be ...
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Cues can be an integral constituent of characterization, and of no one is this truer than Shylock. This chapter explores not only how cue-effects contribute to the Shylock-part, but how cues can be the ‘plumbing’ of a play, at once visible and subterranean, directing the flow and determining the temperature. It shows that the repeated cue is used when the unstable genre of the play — tragedy, comedy, or something in between — is palpably up for grabs. Shylock and Mercutio embody this struggle; they alike scuff or straddle the supposed boundaries between comedy and tragedy.Less
Cues can be an integral constituent of characterization, and of no one is this truer than Shylock. This chapter explores not only how cue-effects contribute to the Shylock-part, but how cues can be the ‘plumbing’ of a play, at once visible and subterranean, directing the flow and determining the temperature. It shows that the repeated cue is used when the unstable genre of the play — tragedy, comedy, or something in between — is palpably up for grabs. Shylock and Mercutio embody this struggle; they alike scuff or straddle the supposed boundaries between comedy and tragedy.
Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199272051
- eISBN:
- 9780191699580
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272051.003.0021
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter looks at the ‘linear’ unfolding of some of the part-based techniques already identified, and sees how the character's story is progressively embodied in prosodic shifts and mutations. In ...
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This chapter looks at the ‘linear’ unfolding of some of the part-based techniques already identified, and sees how the character's story is progressively embodied in prosodic shifts and mutations. In particular, it considers the shifts into and out of rhyme, prose, and blank verse. These case studies are split into two sections. First, the chapter studies a series of romantic heroine parts, quite possibly written for and played by the same actor: Portia, Rosalind, Olivia, Helena (All's Well), and Isabella. Second, it examines three more or less ‘tragic’ male parts, in which both the character and the actor experience a growing loneliness, even alienation: Mercutio, Shylock, and Macbeth.Less
This chapter looks at the ‘linear’ unfolding of some of the part-based techniques already identified, and sees how the character's story is progressively embodied in prosodic shifts and mutations. In particular, it considers the shifts into and out of rhyme, prose, and blank verse. These case studies are split into two sections. First, the chapter studies a series of romantic heroine parts, quite possibly written for and played by the same actor: Portia, Rosalind, Olivia, Helena (All's Well), and Isabella. Second, it examines three more or less ‘tragic’ male parts, in which both the character and the actor experience a growing loneliness, even alienation: Mercutio, Shylock, and Macbeth.
Stewart Alan
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199549276
- eISBN:
- 9780191701504
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199549276.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter explores how an understanding of credit might be brought to bear on one of William Shakespeare's most misunderstood plays, The Merchant of Venice. The ‘pound of flesh’ bond story, has ...
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This chapter explores how an understanding of credit might be brought to bear on one of William Shakespeare's most misunderstood plays, The Merchant of Venice. The ‘pound of flesh’ bond story, has come, through its compelling portrayal of the Jew Shylock, to dominate the play. Shylock is the star part, and the play's treatment of Jews, anti-Jewish prejudice, and toleration is usually held up as its most significant feature, focusing critical attention on Shylock-related topics: usury and the law. Inspired by the onstage court scene, the play's longest, critics have interpreted Shylock's battle with Balthasar/Portia as relating to different legal systems, Shylock's contractual literalism versus Portia's merciful equity, a legal battle that is then mapped onto the play's pitting of (Jewish) usury versus (Christian) charity. In truth, the play presents a far more complex understanding of the interactions between finance and the law, and between various different monetary dealings of the early modern world.Less
This chapter explores how an understanding of credit might be brought to bear on one of William Shakespeare's most misunderstood plays, The Merchant of Venice. The ‘pound of flesh’ bond story, has come, through its compelling portrayal of the Jew Shylock, to dominate the play. Shylock is the star part, and the play's treatment of Jews, anti-Jewish prejudice, and toleration is usually held up as its most significant feature, focusing critical attention on Shylock-related topics: usury and the law. Inspired by the onstage court scene, the play's longest, critics have interpreted Shylock's battle with Balthasar/Portia as relating to different legal systems, Shylock's contractual literalism versus Portia's merciful equity, a legal battle that is then mapped onto the play's pitting of (Jewish) usury versus (Christian) charity. In truth, the play presents a far more complex understanding of the interactions between finance and the law, and between various different monetary dealings of the early modern world.
Ezra Mendelsohn
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195112030
- eISBN:
- 9780199854608
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195112030.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter discusses Philip Roth's addition to the growing chorus of “diasporists” in the academy and the arts. In his novel Operation Shylock: A Confession, Roth made a cultural statement that not ...
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This chapter discusses Philip Roth's addition to the growing chorus of “diasporists” in the academy and the arts. In his novel Operation Shylock: A Confession, Roth made a cultural statement that not only finds value in recuperating discarded or defunct models, like crinolines crumbling in an old attic trunk, it is part of a postmodern search for value in the interstices, in the outskirts and peripheries of sacred centers and in the imagination of alternative worlds. The book is a narrative fiction whose conventional mandate and popular appeal lie in its potential for entertainment or edification, its main achievement lies in enacting some of the more ludicrous or lurid dimensions of a larger cultural agenda.Less
This chapter discusses Philip Roth's addition to the growing chorus of “diasporists” in the academy and the arts. In his novel Operation Shylock: A Confession, Roth made a cultural statement that not only finds value in recuperating discarded or defunct models, like crinolines crumbling in an old attic trunk, it is part of a postmodern search for value in the interstices, in the outskirts and peripheries of sacred centers and in the imagination of alternative worlds. The book is a narrative fiction whose conventional mandate and popular appeal lie in its potential for entertainment or edification, its main achievement lies in enacting some of the more ludicrous or lurid dimensions of a larger cultural agenda.
Ezra Mendelsohn
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195112030
- eISBN:
- 9780199854608
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195112030.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter reviews three literary texts represented by a Jew. The first and the most famous representation of a Jew in literature was written by John Gross entitled Shylock. Gross maintained that ...
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This chapter reviews three literary texts represented by a Jew. The first and the most famous representation of a Jew in literature was written by John Gross entitled Shylock. Gross maintained that it would be an unusual and an unnatural Jew who could regard Shylock with complete detachment. The second literary work examined here is Israel at Vanity Fair written by S. S. Prawer, which deals exhaustively with the representation of Jews in Thackeray's writings. This includes all the writings, not only the author's many published books but also his manifold work as a journalist and his private letters. The third work examined is Constructions of “the Jew” written by Bryan Cheyette, a critic in a fashionable mold. This author discarded the terms “antisemitism” and “philosemitism” in favor of his own coinage, “semitic discourse,” in his writings.Less
This chapter reviews three literary texts represented by a Jew. The first and the most famous representation of a Jew in literature was written by John Gross entitled Shylock. Gross maintained that it would be an unusual and an unnatural Jew who could regard Shylock with complete detachment. The second literary work examined here is Israel at Vanity Fair written by S. S. Prawer, which deals exhaustively with the representation of Jews in Thackeray's writings. This includes all the writings, not only the author's many published books but also his manifold work as a journalist and his private letters. The third work examined is Constructions of “the Jew” written by Bryan Cheyette, a critic in a fashionable mold. This author discarded the terms “antisemitism” and “philosemitism” in favor of his own coinage, “semitic discourse,” in his writings.
Sara Coodin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474418386
- eISBN:
- 9781474434492
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474418386.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
What happens when we consider Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Veniceas a play with ‘real’ Jewish characters who are not mere ciphers for anti-Semitic Elizabethan stereotypes? Is Shylock Jewish studies ...
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What happens when we consider Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Veniceas a play with ‘real’ Jewish characters who are not mere ciphers for anti-Semitic Elizabethan stereotypes? Is Shylock Jewish studies Shakespeare’s extensive use of stories from the Hebrew Bible in The Merchant of Venice, and argues that Shylock and his daughter Jessica draw on recognisably Jewish ways of engaging with those narratives throughout the play. By examining the legacy of Jewish exegesis and cultural lore surrounding these stories, this book traces the complexity and richness of Merchant’s Jewish aspect, spanning encounters with Jews and the Hebrew Bible in the early modern world as well as modern adaptations of Shakespeare’s play on the Yiddish stage.Less
What happens when we consider Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Veniceas a play with ‘real’ Jewish characters who are not mere ciphers for anti-Semitic Elizabethan stereotypes? Is Shylock Jewish studies Shakespeare’s extensive use of stories from the Hebrew Bible in The Merchant of Venice, and argues that Shylock and his daughter Jessica draw on recognisably Jewish ways of engaging with those narratives throughout the play. By examining the legacy of Jewish exegesis and cultural lore surrounding these stories, this book traces the complexity and richness of Merchant’s Jewish aspect, spanning encounters with Jews and the Hebrew Bible in the early modern world as well as modern adaptations of Shakespeare’s play on the Yiddish stage.
Kenneth Gross
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226309774
- eISBN:
- 9780226309927
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226309927.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice who famously demands a pound of flesh as security for a loan to his antisemitic tormentors, is one of Shakespeare's most complex and ...
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Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice who famously demands a pound of flesh as security for a loan to his antisemitic tormentors, is one of Shakespeare's most complex and idiosyncratic characters. With his unsettling eloquence and his varying voices of protest, play, rage, and refusal, Shylock remains a source of perennial fascination. What explains the strange and enduring force of this character, so unlike that of any other in Shakespeare's plays? This book posits that the figure of Shylock is so powerful because he is the voice of Shakespeare himself. It argues that Shylock is a breakthrough for Shakespeare the playwright, an early realization of the Bard's power to create dramatic voices that speak for hidden, unconscious, even inhuman impulses—characters larger than the plays that contain them and ready to escape the author's control. Shylock is also a mask for Shakespeare's own need, rage, vulnerability, and generosity, giving form to his ambition as an author and his uncertain bond with the audience. The vision of Shylock as Shakespeare's covert double as given in this book leads to a probing analysis of the character's peculiar isolation, ambivalence, opacity, and dark humor. Addressing the broader resonance of Shylock, both historical and artistic, the book examines the character's hold on later readers and writers, including Heinrich Heine and Philip Roth, suggesting that Shylock mirrors the ambiguous states of Jewishness in modernity.Less
Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice who famously demands a pound of flesh as security for a loan to his antisemitic tormentors, is one of Shakespeare's most complex and idiosyncratic characters. With his unsettling eloquence and his varying voices of protest, play, rage, and refusal, Shylock remains a source of perennial fascination. What explains the strange and enduring force of this character, so unlike that of any other in Shakespeare's plays? This book posits that the figure of Shylock is so powerful because he is the voice of Shakespeare himself. It argues that Shylock is a breakthrough for Shakespeare the playwright, an early realization of the Bard's power to create dramatic voices that speak for hidden, unconscious, even inhuman impulses—characters larger than the plays that contain them and ready to escape the author's control. Shylock is also a mask for Shakespeare's own need, rage, vulnerability, and generosity, giving form to his ambition as an author and his uncertain bond with the audience. The vision of Shylock as Shakespeare's covert double as given in this book leads to a probing analysis of the character's peculiar isolation, ambivalence, opacity, and dark humor. Addressing the broader resonance of Shylock, both historical and artistic, the book examines the character's hold on later readers and writers, including Heinrich Heine and Philip Roth, suggesting that Shylock mirrors the ambiguous states of Jewishness in modernity.
Kenneth Gross
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226309774
- eISBN:
- 9780226309927
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226309927.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter suggests that Shylock is Shakespeare and Shakespeare is Shylock. He is not only Antonio's double but Shakespeare's double, his brother and other, a piece of deep dissimulation joined ...
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This chapter suggests that Shylock is Shakespeare and Shakespeare is Shylock. He is not only Antonio's double but Shakespeare's double, his brother and other, a piece of deep dissimulation joined with a startling kind of exposure. The idea edges toward the asymptote of impossibility. Shakespeare always reminds us that hearts are the most shadowy of things.Less
This chapter suggests that Shylock is Shakespeare and Shakespeare is Shylock. He is not only Antonio's double but Shakespeare's double, his brother and other, a piece of deep dissimulation joined with a startling kind of exposure. The idea edges toward the asymptote of impossibility. Shakespeare always reminds us that hearts are the most shadowy of things.
Allen Douglas
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520228764
- eISBN:
- 9780520926943
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520228764.003.0014
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter examines the criticism and foreigner bashing found on the pages of the Canard. This was mostly the result of the international connection of postwar economic difficulties, such as the ...
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This chapter examines the criticism and foreigner bashing found on the pages of the Canard. This was mostly the result of the international connection of postwar economic difficulties, such as the decline of the franc and the problem of debts owed to the United States and Britain. The chapter shows that the Anglo-Saxons were more prone to the Canard's attacks. The first section studies the use of English tourists in caricature, while the second section presents a letter from a regular reader of the Canard, Jean Armand, who talked about stereotypes and the debts of France. This is followed by a discussion of “Uncle Shylock”.Less
This chapter examines the criticism and foreigner bashing found on the pages of the Canard. This was mostly the result of the international connection of postwar economic difficulties, such as the decline of the franc and the problem of debts owed to the United States and Britain. The chapter shows that the Anglo-Saxons were more prone to the Canard's attacks. The first section studies the use of English tourists in caricature, while the second section presents a letter from a regular reader of the Canard, Jean Armand, who talked about stereotypes and the debts of France. This is followed by a discussion of “Uncle Shylock”.
Mushirul Hasan
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198063117
- eISBN:
- 9780199080199
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198063117.003.0059
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
The author becomes munshi to the Bheel agent and is transferred to Lieutenant C.F. Hart. He describes his expedition to Nagar Parkar, comments on a Marátha horseman's impudence, the decision of the ...
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The author becomes munshi to the Bheel agent and is transferred to Lieutenant C.F. Hart. He describes his expedition to Nagar Parkar, comments on a Marátha horseman's impudence, the decision of the native magistrate, and the Egyptian version of the story of Shylock.Less
The author becomes munshi to the Bheel agent and is transferred to Lieutenant C.F. Hart. He describes his expedition to Nagar Parkar, comments on a Marátha horseman's impudence, the decision of the native magistrate, and the Egyptian version of the story of Shylock.
Nina Levine and David Lee Miller
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230303
- eISBN:
- 9780823241071
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823230303.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In Harold Bloom's chapter in The Merchant of Venice in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, he claims that “the ontological weight of Shylock, from his first appearance through his last, places ...
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In Harold Bloom's chapter in The Merchant of Venice in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, he claims that “the ontological weight of Shylock, from his first appearance through his last, places him as a representation of reality far distaining every other character in the play.” Although Shylock's affect also shifts from scene to scene, it does so in a narrower compass and more expressly motivated manner. Multivalency is imposed on Shylock in Radford's interpolated scenes, each of which supplies Shylock's single-mindedness with a context that both seeks to explain and forgive it. The film's mining of different genre conventions is even more apparent on the level of tone than it is on that of fashion or cosmetics, most notably in scenes that neither Jeremy Irons's Antonio nor Al Pacino's Shylock weigh down with their old-world gravitas.Less
In Harold Bloom's chapter in The Merchant of Venice in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, he claims that “the ontological weight of Shylock, from his first appearance through his last, places him as a representation of reality far distaining every other character in the play.” Although Shylock's affect also shifts from scene to scene, it does so in a narrower compass and more expressly motivated manner. Multivalency is imposed on Shylock in Radford's interpolated scenes, each of which supplies Shylock's single-mindedness with a context that both seeks to explain and forgive it. The film's mining of different genre conventions is even more apparent on the level of tone than it is on that of fashion or cosmetics, most notably in scenes that neither Jeremy Irons's Antonio nor Al Pacino's Shylock weigh down with their old-world gravitas.
Andy Mousley
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623181
- eISBN:
- 9780748652211
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623181.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter investigates two representative examples of approaches to The Merchant of Venice that foreground in different ways the issue of irony. It first provides a broad sense of what reading ...
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This chapter investigates two representative examples of approaches to The Merchant of Venice that foreground in different ways the issue of irony. It first provides a broad sense of what reading with or without irony involves and how these approaches bear upon the issue of scepticism, on the one hand, and the ‘how to live’ question of literary humanism, on the other. Shylock is Shakespeare's prescient sign of the pervasiveness of market values, prescient because capitalism is of course now a global phenomenon whose effects on all aspects of human life are seemingly irresistible. It is concluded that the multiple ironies in the play mean that the human as a source of identification in the play keeps shifting about: from Belmont to Venice, from Christian to Jew back to Christian, from capitalism via the affectively charged culture of debt and credit to the play's anti-capitalist critique.Less
This chapter investigates two representative examples of approaches to The Merchant of Venice that foreground in different ways the issue of irony. It first provides a broad sense of what reading with or without irony involves and how these approaches bear upon the issue of scepticism, on the one hand, and the ‘how to live’ question of literary humanism, on the other. Shylock is Shakespeare's prescient sign of the pervasiveness of market values, prescient because capitalism is of course now a global phenomenon whose effects on all aspects of human life are seemingly irresistible. It is concluded that the multiple ironies in the play mean that the human as a source of identification in the play keeps shifting about: from Belmont to Venice, from Christian to Jew back to Christian, from capitalism via the affectively charged culture of debt and credit to the play's anti-capitalist critique.
David Brauner
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719074240
- eISBN:
- 9781781700938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719074240.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Philip Roth has been both lauded and criticised for what John McDaniel (in the first monograph on Roth, published in 1974) calls his ‘commitment to social realism’. According to McDaniel, Roth's ...
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Philip Roth has been both lauded and criticised for what John McDaniel (in the first monograph on Roth, published in 1974) calls his ‘commitment to social realism’. According to McDaniel, Roth's realism is part of a moral vision that indicates ‘an abiding respect for life’. This chapter considers some of the ways in which Roth's generic experimentation, which can be traced from his early novel My Life as a Man (1974), through The Counterlife (1986), The Facts (1988), Deception (1990) and Operation Shylock (1993), appropriates, complicates and finally parodies aspects of both realism and postmodernism, making connections between these texts and works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Pynchon, Tim O'Brien and Bret Easton Ellis.Less
Philip Roth has been both lauded and criticised for what John McDaniel (in the first monograph on Roth, published in 1974) calls his ‘commitment to social realism’. According to McDaniel, Roth's realism is part of a moral vision that indicates ‘an abiding respect for life’. This chapter considers some of the ways in which Roth's generic experimentation, which can be traced from his early novel My Life as a Man (1974), through The Counterlife (1986), The Facts (1988), Deception (1990) and Operation Shylock (1993), appropriates, complicates and finally parodies aspects of both realism and postmodernism, making connections between these texts and works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Pynchon, Tim O'Brien and Bret Easton Ellis.
Heather Hirschfeld
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452741
- eISBN:
- 9780801470639
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452741.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter analyzes the migration of “Enough,” from the 1570 play Enough Is as Good as a Feast, from its place in Elizabethan drama to its lodging in the figure of Shylock (Shakespeare's stage). ...
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This chapter analyzes the migration of “Enough,” from the 1570 play Enough Is as Good as a Feast, from its place in Elizabethan drama to its lodging in the figure of Shylock (Shakespeare's stage). Shylock is a Jewish money lender whose profession and religion were among the period's preeminent symbols of excess, the ever-increasing “overplus” associated with illicit commerce and the general acceleration of early modern England's domestic and international economies. This acceleration, and the kinds of financial instruments and ideologies it involved, is inextricable from the complicated intersection of economic practices and Reformation religious beliefs. The chapter identifies a certain moment in the history of satisfaction, a moment when the ethical and affective values assigned to satis by the strong voices of economic morality stood in striking contrast to the values associated with penitential enough.Less
This chapter analyzes the migration of “Enough,” from the 1570 play Enough Is as Good as a Feast, from its place in Elizabethan drama to its lodging in the figure of Shylock (Shakespeare's stage). Shylock is a Jewish money lender whose profession and religion were among the period's preeminent symbols of excess, the ever-increasing “overplus” associated with illicit commerce and the general acceleration of early modern England's domestic and international economies. This acceleration, and the kinds of financial instruments and ideologies it involved, is inextricable from the complicated intersection of economic practices and Reformation religious beliefs. The chapter identifies a certain moment in the history of satisfaction, a moment when the ethical and affective values assigned to satis by the strong voices of economic morality stood in striking contrast to the values associated with penitential enough.
Kenneth Gross
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226309774
- eISBN:
- 9780226309927
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226309927.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Defeated by Portia's law tricks and subject to the judgment of the Venetian court, Shylock is told that he must on pain of death become a Christian. This chapter argues the demand for conversion has ...
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Defeated by Portia's law tricks and subject to the judgment of the Venetian court, Shylock is told that he must on pain of death become a Christian. This chapter argues the demand for conversion has in it the inventiveness of a cynical malice. It is the last twist of the knife in the staged humiliation of this Jew, one that tries to outmatch the Jew's humiliation of the merchant. By just so obviously not having any inward force, the idea of conversion reminds us of the more intractable spaces of mind and imagination the play has opened up in Shylock, even as it seems like an attempt to shut them down, or simply make them irrelevant.Less
Defeated by Portia's law tricks and subject to the judgment of the Venetian court, Shylock is told that he must on pain of death become a Christian. This chapter argues the demand for conversion has in it the inventiveness of a cynical malice. It is the last twist of the knife in the staged humiliation of this Jew, one that tries to outmatch the Jew's humiliation of the merchant. By just so obviously not having any inward force, the idea of conversion reminds us of the more intractable spaces of mind and imagination the play has opened up in Shylock, even as it seems like an attempt to shut them down, or simply make them irrelevant.
Kenneth Gross
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226309774
- eISBN:
- 9780226309927
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226309927.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter examines two more fully developed fictions of Shylock's afterlife to help clarify what is at stake when we reimagine such a creature. One of the most elaborate attempts to lend Shylock a ...
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This chapter examines two more fully developed fictions of Shylock's afterlife to help clarify what is at stake when we reimagine such a creature. One of the most elaborate attempts to lend Shylock a life that continues beyond the confines of the play is the 1931 novel The Last Days of Shylock, written by Ludwig Lewisohn—a prolific but now mostly forgotten American novelist, scholar, and man of letters. Heinrich Heine also finds a later history and voice for Shylock that is the more sharply true for keeping him closer to home. The exiled poet gives us a Shylock who has never left Venice, surviving there to the writer's own time in a ghostly fashion.Less
This chapter examines two more fully developed fictions of Shylock's afterlife to help clarify what is at stake when we reimagine such a creature. One of the most elaborate attempts to lend Shylock a life that continues beyond the confines of the play is the 1931 novel The Last Days of Shylock, written by Ludwig Lewisohn—a prolific but now mostly forgotten American novelist, scholar, and man of letters. Heinrich Heine also finds a later history and voice for Shylock that is the more sharply true for keeping him closer to home. The exiled poet gives us a Shylock who has never left Venice, surviving there to the writer's own time in a ghostly fashion.
Lara Bovilsky
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823270286
- eISBN:
- 9780823270323
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823270286.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Both recent and older criticism has focused on The Merchant of Venice’s Antonio as a typical representative of various forms of early modern sexuality, friendship, economic culture, and subjectivity. ...
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Both recent and older criticism has focused on The Merchant of Venice’s Antonio as a typical representative of various forms of early modern sexuality, friendship, economic culture, and subjectivity. This essay explores the inverse premise: that Antonio’s sexual, affective, and economic depiction as atypical and distinctive stages important fantasies of indifference and aggression toward central early modern institutions, from mercantilism and proto-capitalism to conventional understandings of both friendship and enmity. Analysis of Antonio’s masochistic and self-interested behavior enlarges our sense of the possibilities for agency and teleology within male friendship and for queer subjectivity. Shakespeare’s play does not punitively link male same-sex bonds with sadness, as it has been read as doing; rather, it invests Antonio’s efforts to secure his own disappointment and even destruction at the hands of Shylock and Bassanio with a nearly Marlovian regard for agents who delineate the very cultural institutions they work to exploit and subvert.Less
Both recent and older criticism has focused on The Merchant of Venice’s Antonio as a typical representative of various forms of early modern sexuality, friendship, economic culture, and subjectivity. This essay explores the inverse premise: that Antonio’s sexual, affective, and economic depiction as atypical and distinctive stages important fantasies of indifference and aggression toward central early modern institutions, from mercantilism and proto-capitalism to conventional understandings of both friendship and enmity. Analysis of Antonio’s masochistic and self-interested behavior enlarges our sense of the possibilities for agency and teleology within male friendship and for queer subjectivity. Shakespeare’s play does not punitively link male same-sex bonds with sadness, as it has been read as doing; rather, it invests Antonio’s efforts to secure his own disappointment and even destruction at the hands of Shylock and Bassanio with a nearly Marlovian regard for agents who delineate the very cultural institutions they work to exploit and subvert.
Steven Mullaney
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226547633
- eISBN:
- 9780226117096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226117096.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter introduces a new way of thinking about the anti-mimetic role that affective point-of-view played in early modern English theatrical performance. Works of drama written in this period ...
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This chapter introduces a new way of thinking about the anti-mimetic role that affective point-of-view played in early modern English theatrical performance. Works of drama written in this period cannot be fully understood outside of the context of their performance (I return to this claim in chapter three). The affective embodiments of characters that were enacted on stage were both transactional and intersubjective in their relation to the audience; this kind of theater was able, as a result, to serve as a kind of laboratory where the faultlines of affect that ran through the audience could be tested, explored, and felt. Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy employed the affective architectonics of the new amphitheater playhouses to cast a shadow of dramatic irony over that audience. Marlowe and Shakespeare built upon Kyd’s theatrical practices in their own plays, specifically in Edward II, Titus Andronicus, and The Merchant of Venice. Such plays develop a transactional relation to their audiences that relies on a kind of “affective irony,” in which the audience’s emotional reactions and ideological points-of-view are catalyzed only insofar as they are alienated from—rather than represented by—the emotions expressed onstage.Less
This chapter introduces a new way of thinking about the anti-mimetic role that affective point-of-view played in early modern English theatrical performance. Works of drama written in this period cannot be fully understood outside of the context of their performance (I return to this claim in chapter three). The affective embodiments of characters that were enacted on stage were both transactional and intersubjective in their relation to the audience; this kind of theater was able, as a result, to serve as a kind of laboratory where the faultlines of affect that ran through the audience could be tested, explored, and felt. Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy employed the affective architectonics of the new amphitheater playhouses to cast a shadow of dramatic irony over that audience. Marlowe and Shakespeare built upon Kyd’s theatrical practices in their own plays, specifically in Edward II, Titus Andronicus, and The Merchant of Venice. Such plays develop a transactional relation to their audiences that relies on a kind of “affective irony,” in which the audience’s emotional reactions and ideological points-of-view are catalyzed only insofar as they are alienated from—rather than represented by—the emotions expressed onstage.
Stanley Cavell
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226924939
- eISBN:
- 9780226924946
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226924946.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter explores Shylock's incoherent grief in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, where Shylock's defeat seems to have been insufficiently expressed. His penultimate words, “I am content” ...
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This chapter explores Shylock's incoherent grief in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, where Shylock's defeat seems to have been insufficiently expressed. His penultimate words, “I am content” (4.1.391), are perceived to be spiritually disabled, without recognizable emotion or comprehension, not even angry or contemptuous. How might this moment be accurately and plausibly played? How does one quickly move from an endlessly expressed murderousness to a virtually immediate acceptance of an interpretation of the law? Thus, the chapter speaks of the right to speak, noting the instances the word say occurs in the play as well as questioning the reasons why Shakespeare's trial-like exchanges are often conversations between Christians and Jews. It takes up the question of whether the play is anti-Semitic or whether it is about the experience of one's being anti-Semitic.Less
This chapter explores Shylock's incoherent grief in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, where Shylock's defeat seems to have been insufficiently expressed. His penultimate words, “I am content” (4.1.391), are perceived to be spiritually disabled, without recognizable emotion or comprehension, not even angry or contemptuous. How might this moment be accurately and plausibly played? How does one quickly move from an endlessly expressed murderousness to a virtually immediate acceptance of an interpretation of the law? Thus, the chapter speaks of the right to speak, noting the instances the word say occurs in the play as well as questioning the reasons why Shakespeare's trial-like exchanges are often conversations between Christians and Jews. It takes up the question of whether the play is anti-Semitic or whether it is about the experience of one's being anti-Semitic.
Sara Coodin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474418386
- eISBN:
- 9781474434492
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474418386.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
The introductory chapter of the book begins by acknowledging the long, painful historical legacy associated with Shakespeare’s Shylock, and his character’s deep imbrication with persistent and ...
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The introductory chapter of the book begins by acknowledging the long, painful historical legacy associated with Shakespeare’s Shylock, and his character’s deep imbrication with persistent and invidious anti-Semitic stereotypes. Rather than attempting to bypass that legacy, the introduction outlines how the book will delve even deeper into the primary designation the play assigns to Shylock and Jessica -- “Jew,” asking whether Shakespeare endows his Jewish characters with a source of ethical deliberation and moral agency that is more than a mere amalgam of historical anti-Semitisms. If Shylock and Jessica are Jewish in a way that transcends invidious stereotypes, what is it that makes them recognizably so? The introductory chapter outlines the central argument of the book: Merchant’s Jewish characters are constituted via distinctively Jewish ways of reading and interpreting foundational stories, epitomized in the play through Shylock’s citation of the parable of the parti-coloured lambs as he explicates his lending practices to Antonio. The Merchant of Venice deploys Judeo-Christian biblical inter-texts in ways that deliberately call attention to their divergent interpretive traditions, producing a nuanced and challenging point of entry for audiences, who must decide whether and to what degree they are willing to interpret Shylock’s utterances through the lens of his distinctive way of seeing and evaluating the world rather than evaluating him through the eyes of his persecutors.Less
The introductory chapter of the book begins by acknowledging the long, painful historical legacy associated with Shakespeare’s Shylock, and his character’s deep imbrication with persistent and invidious anti-Semitic stereotypes. Rather than attempting to bypass that legacy, the introduction outlines how the book will delve even deeper into the primary designation the play assigns to Shylock and Jessica -- “Jew,” asking whether Shakespeare endows his Jewish characters with a source of ethical deliberation and moral agency that is more than a mere amalgam of historical anti-Semitisms. If Shylock and Jessica are Jewish in a way that transcends invidious stereotypes, what is it that makes them recognizably so? The introductory chapter outlines the central argument of the book: Merchant’s Jewish characters are constituted via distinctively Jewish ways of reading and interpreting foundational stories, epitomized in the play through Shylock’s citation of the parable of the parti-coloured lambs as he explicates his lending practices to Antonio. The Merchant of Venice deploys Judeo-Christian biblical inter-texts in ways that deliberately call attention to their divergent interpretive traditions, producing a nuanced and challenging point of entry for audiences, who must decide whether and to what degree they are willing to interpret Shylock’s utterances through the lens of his distinctive way of seeing and evaluating the world rather than evaluating him through the eyes of his persecutors.
