The Merchant of Venice

Broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought regarding Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. One holds that its portrayal and treatment of Shylock, the Jewish antagonist, marks it as an anti-Semitic play. The other posits that since Shakespeare most likely never met a real Jew on whom to even unconsciously base Shylock (Jews had been expelled from England centuries before), and since the Jew as buffoon was a stock character in contemporary Elizabethan theater, the first theory is bunk. A subset of the latter view even contends that Shylock is actually a sympathetic character.

Personally, I find that all compelling scholarship points to the conclusion that The Merchant of Venice is not anti-Semitic. Nevertheless, I am always interested to see others' take on the play, so it was with great interest that I sat down to watch the 2004 movie version last week. Directed by Michael Radford, it stars Al Pacino as Shylock and Jeremy Irons as the titular Antonio. Al Pacino, though he achieved fame for roles like Michael Corleone and Tony Montana, is actually a perceptive Shakespearean actor. His 1996 documentary Looking For Richard, an adaptation of Richard III, remains perhaps my favorite film version of a Shakespeare play.

To oversimplify things, there are two key scenes for figuring out where actors and directors stand on The Merchant of Venice and its alleged anti-Semitism. The first is Shylock's "Hath not a Jew eyes" speech in Act III, and the second is the trial scene at the end of the play. Pacino's Shylock is a beaten, bitter moneylender who doesn't speak his lines so much as hurl them, and his seminal Act III speech is dripping with virulence and vindictiveness. This carries through unabated to the end of the play. Shylock gleefully rebuffs all offers of alternative, increased compensation as he prepares to extract from the Christian Antonio his long-awaited pound of flesh. He makes ready to sink his knife into Antonio's chest when Balthazar (really Portia in disguise) points out that he is entitled only to the flesh and not to any blood, effectively torpedoing Shylock's revenge.

Throughout the movie, Shylock is nearly buried under the derision and scorn that are heaped upon him. This and his response--bloodthirsty vengefulness--demonstrate that the film considers its source text anti-Semitic. Though I think this is ultimately an error--this play is no more anti-Semitic than The Winter's Tale endorses domestic violence--I am nevertheless curious to see what Radford and Pacino do when they team up for King Lear, which IMDB reports is in pre-production.