Well, hi there. It’s been a while.
First things first: despite a loooong hiatus (oh, adulting…), I will still attempt to meet my goal of reading (or watching or listening to) all of Shakespeare’s plays by the end of the year. This will require a few modifications to my original plans. I will be posting about two Shakespeare plays per week from now until the end of the year (fingers crossed!). I won’t be doing any bonus posts until after the new year – just the posts about each play as I read them – and format of the posts will look slightly different (to help speed things up for me). Other than that, I’m back and ready to take on the Bard!
Today’s topic: The Merchant of Venice.
Sadly, this was not the best play to dive back into this project, which was very disappointing. I decided to watch this one and found a version I was quite excited to see. I had sort of read this before and sort of watched it before, but as I was watching it for real this time around, I realized why it had only ever been “sort of.” It was really hard for me to get through.
Here’s the thing. I love Shakespeare. I adore Shakespeare. I mean, this entire blog is devoted to Shakespeare (obviously). But the story of Merchant does not work for me. I’m certain that people with more knowledge and probably better taste would be appalled and defend the greatness of this play. And that’s fair. But it just doesn’t make sense to me. I think the characters are among Shakespeare’s worst crafted. The anti-Semitism in the play feels intrinsic and internal rather than thematic or constructive. (I contrast it with Taming of the Shrew, for example, which manages to comment on stereotypes without truly relying on them.) The plot in some ways feels oddly scattered. It bothers me that this is supposed to be a “comedy.” There’s really nothing funny about it (and any humor you can find in it is quite mean-spirited in one way or another).
I just don’t like it.
It’s the first one so far that I just simply don’t like (although I did admit to feeling a little conflicted and slightly disappointed with King John).
To be fair to this play (which is a very famous one) and to my beloved Bard, I am not entirely sure how much of my dislike is because of the play itself and how much is due to the terrible film version that I watched. I don’t want to bash two much-loved artistic icons in the same post, so I will refrain from saying that *coughitwastheversionstarringLaurenceOliviercough*. Excuse my cough… 😉 (For the record, I really enjoy pretty much all of Olivier’s other Shakespeare films.) It’s only a two-hour film, but it was so bad that I kept looking at the time stamp, every 15 minutes, legitimately thinking it had to have been at least an hour since I had last checked. Guys. It was that bad. But I don’t think it’s entirely the movie’s fault that I don’t like the play, because I saw a close retelling of The Merchant of Venice called District Merchant on stage early in the summer and, while there were some things I liked, I didn’t particularly enjoy it.
So. There we are.
Please, please tell me why I am wrong about this play! I want to like it. There are some beautiful lines, and you know…other great qualities I’m sure. But please: if you like this play, let me know, and tell me why! Who knows?
I could very well end up eating my words.
I had the opportunity to be in this play when I was a teen. I was one of the ladies in waiting to Portia. Merchant of Venice is only a comedy in that Shakespeare’s plays are divided into tragedy, comedy, and history. My youth theater director had us spend a lot of time discussing the play and its themes. We immediately abandoned any effort to make it funny. Once that is done, I think the play is an amazing character-study. Every character is flawed and full of bias. While anti-semitism is certainly a prominant “ism” in the play, we also see ageism, sexism, racism, and classism. Since we gave up trying to be seen as good guys, we were able to deliver cutting lines at a pace, rather than struggle with the overtly racist jokes. Portia is an especially interesting woman, both in the first half of the play with her different suitors, and the second half of the play when she disguises herself as a lawyer to help save her fiance’s friend. I hope you find a version of the play that gives up on being funny and instead lets the gritty, dark story shine for what it is.
I hope so, too! I’ll definitely give it a rest for a while, but I may come back to it at another time in my life when it feels appropriate. 🙂
Ugh…reblogged onto the wrong blog – sorry! Moving over to the right one…
