The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0568 Friday, 16 June 2006
[1] From: John Crowley <
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Date: Thursday, 15 Jun 2006 16:24:35 -0400
Subj: Big Question
[2] From: William Godshalk <
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Date: Thursday, 15 Jun 2006 20:07:20 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0566 The Big Question
[3] From: Marcus Dahl <
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Date: Friday, 16 Jun 2006 02:22:56 -0700 (PDT)
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0566 The Big Question
[4] From: Donald Bloom <
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Date: Friday, 16 Jun 2006 11:45:43 -0500
Subj: RE: SHK 17.0566 The Big Question
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Crowley <
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Date: Thursday, 15 Jun 2006 16:24:35 -0400
Subject: Big Question
Don writes:
>PS. For example, why does my morality allow me to condemn Shylock and
>justify Hamlet? Is it because I like the latter and detest the former
>(and is thus logically invalid)? Or is it because there is a crucial
>difference in what they try to do?
I think in both instances some part of the difficulty arises from
Shakespeare's complexity of thought and speech brought to bear on older
romance material, creating ambiguities that we break our heads and
delight our ears over when we regard the works as consciously produced
artistic wholes. It's a little like similar fruitful ambiguities
arising in the Gospels, arising from the synthetic or accumulative
nature of the texts being viewed as perfect (even divinely guided)
wholes. Shylock is a comic villain/Jew, and a criminal, and a monster,
and deserves everything he gets, in the standard telling of a tale like
this; it's just that Shakespeare never leaves such things alone, but
creates as he goes, deepening and expanding. David Lodge has some
thoughts of interest on this in his book Consciousness and the Novel,
about how a work of fiction is created as it is made, rather than being
the executing of a scheme already in existence. Hamlet's an even better
example of ambiguities arising from a complex character created as
Shakespeare thinks (the first modern man, as Bloom says, overhearing
himself create himself) intermixed into a standard revenge tragedy in
which we would only be appalled by his acts even if within our society
we had to approve them. Don's moral queries remain, but they can't be
solved *in Shakespeare* because they are the insoluble products of a
mixed process, and their insolubility is their attraction.
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: William Godshalk <
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Date: Thursday, 15 Jun 2006 20:07:20 -0400
Subject: 17.0566 The Big Question
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0566 The Big Question
>"A broader view of the play strongly suggests that its real focus is
>insiders vs. outsiders, with the added insight that, for outsiders, the
>game is always rigged: the dominant culture will find a way to 'win.'"
Ed is totally on target here. The insiders are, generally, the Italians;
the outsiders, anyone else. In 1.2 Portia and Nerissa get the ball
rolling with a barrage of ethnic slurs, e.g. the Englishman is a dumb
show, the German a drunk. Later both Arragon (who has "the wisdom by
[his] wit to lose") and Morocco are dismissed: "Let all of his
complexion choose me so" (2.7.79). And in 4.1 Portia puts the most
visible outsider in his place.
Bill
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Marcus Dahl <
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Date: Friday, 16 Jun 2006 02:22:56 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 17.0566 The Big Question
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0566 The Big Question
Dear All,
Just a quick note on this one - (slightly lateral but I think relevant
to the point under discussion here):
On the question of 'mercy', 'justice', 'the law' and 'jewishness' in The
Merchant of Venice - Professor Gilles Monsarat has recently published
what I consider to be the most balanced well researched and incisive
article on the play I have read for a while - "Shylock and Mercy" in
'Cahiers Elisabethains, A Biannual Journal of English Renaissance
Studies', Spring 2005, Number 67.
His central thesis (I reduce alas) is that Shylock is a bad Jew who by
his unrelenting will to extract the pound of flesh (kill Antonio)
repudiates the Jewish and Christian exhortation to Mercy and thereby
brings about his own downfall.
The article and its contents are too long to repeat with sufficient
depth here but I quote from the concluding paragraph:
'If the reader realizes, or if the spectator can be made to realize,
that the Duke and Portia hope that Shylock will, in spite of his
refusal, finally show mercy because his own religion requires him to do
so, if Portia's "we do pray for mercy" is common to Jews and Christians
- it is clear that Shylock is above all an evil and merciless usurer and
that he behaves as he does not because he is a Jew, a true
representative of the "nation" he belongs to, but because he is void of
both religious and humane feelings....'
Another central point is that Shylock wishes Antonio "out of Venice"
because Antonio has relieved others from 'from [Shylock's] forfeitures'.
Shylock's first love is money.
All best,
Marcus
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Donald Bloom <
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Date: Friday, 16 Jun 2006 11:45:43 -0500
Subject: 17.0566 The Big Question
Comment: RE: SHK 17.0566 The Big Question
Okay, here we go.
Ed Taft: I had nothing at that moment to say about the game being rigged
against outsiders, nor whether a knowledge of this fact was available to
Shakespeare's audience. I was speaking only of the morality involved in
justifiable (or, rather, unjustifiable) homicide.
In the specific instance, I was trying to establish whether some readers
of MOV considered Shylock's grievances against Antonio sufficient to
justify his attempt to have Antonio killed, and if so, how their system
of morality operated to allow that.
If we are in agreement that what Shylock attempts to do is harmful and
unjustifiable, and therefore evil, then we can go on to other subjects.
If we aren't, then I need to know how the moral system operates that
disagrees that that judgment. If it is too radically different from my
own, then discussion is impossible and there's an end to it.
Joe Egert: I use "judicial murder" to refer to the use (or misuse) of
the law to cause the death of another person without any justification
on grounds of self-defense or other need.
I have and had no intention of slandering you "of justifying murder,"
which I presume you would never do. But if Shylock is not attempting to
murder Antonio, what is he doing? How do we define murder that excludes
this act from condemnation?
Syd Kasten: You write, "With all the interest over the years in
translating the Bible into the vernacular any intelligent native of
England up to Shakespeare's time must have asked where the Jews got to.
The banishment of the Jews in 1291 must have been common knowledge.
Donald, understand this if you can: for better or for worse, with
respect to Jews and the English "spitting" was a euphemism for what
happened in York at that time, just as "holocaust" is a sanitization of
what happened to the Jews of Europe between 1933 and 1945."
I'm having trouble keeping track of the relationships of Biblical
translation, what intelligent Elizabethan Englishmen wondered about, the
banishment of the Jews, spitting (are you referring roasting on a spit
as happens to Rebecca's poor father in "Ivanhoe" (if memory serves)?),
and the use of the word "holocaust" (which is, as far as I know, the
preferred term of most Jews) to each other. Nor, for that matter, to
Shakespeare.
I have no desire to make this discussion a personal matter.
As to the injustices, and occasional horrors, of anti-Semitism, I need
no enlightenment. That it appears in MOV, and is pretty disgusting, I
freely admit. That it justifies murder, I deny.
Cheers,
don
PS: Isn't the game always rigged against outsiders? Isn't that essential
to the definition of "outsider"?
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