The most accessible of the Shakespeare I've read. ( )

This play was hilarious. I enjoyed it. ( )

Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice är tyvärr en mycket obehaglig pjäs; obehaglig på grund av den antisemitism som genomsyrar den – köpmannen Antonio som pjäsens namn syftar på, liksom alla andra gestalter, bleknar ju invid den samtidigt hämndlystne och patetiske Shylock, som lånat pengar till Antonio mot säkerhet i form av ett pund av hans kött, och sedan i rätten tror han triumferar innan en dubbel logisk kullerbytta av Lokemått ställer allt på huvudet. Shylock porträtterats med flera – idag – försonande drag (egentligen avsedda som komiska inslag): Han får ständigt utstå spott och spe, han känner sorg när dottern rymmer och tar med sig även sådana värdesaker som Shylock satte stort personligt värde på, han håller ett magnifikt tal om att även judar är människor:

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, so we not laugh? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

För faktum kvarstår: Shylock är en ond person, som hellre ser Antonio död än tar emot de pengar han erbjuds som återbetalning, och när pjäsen är slut lämnas han som en bruten man, med halva förmögenheten borta, tvångskristnad och utan försoning med dottern i sikte. Förvisso finns alltså det rum för medkänsla, men den nazistiska förtjusningen i pjäsen som ledde att den sattes upp flera gånger i Tyskland under 30- och 40-talet låter sig inte bortförklaras som stammandes från ideologisk blindhet (även om Jessicas giftermål med en kristen knappast sågs med blida ögon).

Nå, om vi istället övergår till resten av pjäsen så är anledningen till lånet att Antonios vän Bassanio vill söka den rika Portias hand, vilket kräver att han i ett märkligt spel skall välja mellan en kista av guld, en av silver, och en av bly. Eftersom ingen friare tydligen lyckas tänka igenom det hela två gånger och utifrån alla andras misslyckande kunnat dra slutsatser så lyckas det bara för att Portia fattat tycke för honom och ger honom ledtrådar, och han kan återvända för att försöka rädda sin vän, som haft otur med de skepp som skulle inbringat de pengar som krävdes för att betala lånet. Av någon anledning beslutar sig även Portia för att hjälpa till, och utklädd till jurist går hon in i rätten och styr upp det hela. Shylocks synbara triumf, där han visar sig helt utan någ, förbyts snabbt i dess motsats, och han får känna på det grymma kristna medlidandet. Efter höjdpunkten med rättegången följer också en påhängd liten poetisk bagatell, möjligen där för att betona karaktären av komedi men tack och lov lätt att utelämna.

Som pjäs betraktat är det knappast Shakespeares främsta; det finns lite för mycket av konstruktion och även om rättegångsscenen har stark inre dramatik så är det mesta av kringarbetet ganska ointressant. Det betyder inte att den är på något sätt dålig, och Shylocks frustrerade hämndlystnad bär mycket långt, men det är knappast samma höga nivå som man kan hitta i andra delar av produktionen. ( )

This was the play that always prompted the biggest reaction from me when, as a pint-sized, wannabe Shakespearean, I used to thumb through Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. “What, he wants a pound of Antonio’s flesh?” I would think.—“Yuck!” Aside from the shock value, I couldn’t see why the play was considered one of Shakespeare’s best; Shylock seemed a rather drab villain, and I thought Portia an ugly name for a woman. But having read my old favorite Much Ado About Nothing this past Valentine’s Day (a very sappy thing to do, I know), I was determined to survey some of the Bard’s other plays. Two different friends whose tastes I trust named it as their favorite comedy and (in one case) favorite play, and this led me to pick it up, having never seen it performed on stage or screen.

Baaaaaaaaaaad idea.

I love Shakespeare, and I do think there are benefits to be derived from reading his plays and not only from seeing them performed, but doing the former without having first done the latter can make for difficult reading. I read the first act of Merchant in a single evening, but when I finished I realized that I had struggled through it, something that had not happened with Much Ado. However, I was determined not to give up, so I came up with and enacted a new, hard-hitting strategy. The Charles and Mary Lamb volume came back out—the paperback from all those years before—and when I resumed the play I began to mouth the words as I read them, getting a feel for the sound and rhythm. By these means I was able to get through it, and even greatly enjoy it.

The merchant of the title is one Antonio, a prosperous but perhaps overgenerous businessman who lives amid the hustle and bustle of Venetian life. A young spendthrift friend, named Bassanio, asks for a loan of money so that he may go and woo the “richly left” Portia of Belmont (I.1.161*) in style. All of Antonio’s fortune is at sea, but he goes to the Jewish moneylender Shylock and asks him to take his bond—a loan of three thousand ducats for three months. For his usury the Jew demands no money, but simply a pound of Antonio’s flesh. He and Bassanio take this merely as a jest, thinking anyway that Antonio’s ships will have arrived before then, and Bassanio sets of for Belmont, while Shylock’s hate for Antonio is growing in his heart, and his plans for the merchant’s undoing becoming more and more a reality. Thus Shakespeare begins his interweaving of two basic plot lines—a “love” plot featuring Portia and Bassanio, and a “hate” plot featuring Shylock and Antonio. To give away much more would be to spoil it for those truly new to the play.

Of course, it is a comedy, and so the reader expects a happy ending for at least some of the characters, and as far as that goes the play fits the genre. Otherwise it not what one typically thinks of as a comedy; very little of it is laugh-out-loud funny, and most of the humor found within these pages comes in the guise of wit or irony.

But in its dramatic qualities the play is top drawer. Shylock truly is one of literature’s most fascinating characters. Like many Shakespearean baddies, he is self-admittedly a villain (III.1.66), but he commands our sympathy nevertheless. And I do not think this is simply because of our modern sensibilities, despite reports that the fall of a Jew might be a source of humor for an Elizabethan audience. He has been poorly treated by his fellow men, and learnt his villainy from this treatment, and so we must pity him, even as we feel horror at his response. The most likable character by far is Portia. “You will love Portia,” one of my youth directors predicted when she heard that I was reading this play, “because she is AWESOME!” And, indeed, she is—a fierce, independent woman who is nevertheless in love with Bassanio and will do anything to save the life of his friend. Her speech on mercy in the trial scene (IV.1) is truly the stuff of legend. The other characters are fairly dull, and Shylock’s daughter Jessica needs a good slap or two, but together Shylock and Portia sweep all before them, representing not only hate and love, but legalism and mercy. It is they who made me love this play, and it is they that will cause me to remember it and come back to it.

* All line references come from The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. ( )

The Merchant of Venice is a young man, Antonio, who endebts himself to a slimy moneylender in order to help his friend, Bassanio, woo Portia, a lady of Belmont. When Antonio's ships don't come in to port, the ones he was counting on to repay the loan shark, he is required by contract to give "a pound of flesh" lying closest to the heart. Bassanio feels responsible; but a scheme is hatched by Portia that will hopefully save the day.

What can I say? Shakespeare is Shakespeare. I will always think his plays are something to marvel at. I will warn my readers that the wicked men are all Jews and referred to in the worst of lights, with the exception of Jessica, who converts to Christianity in order to run away with her true love. It didn't bother me as I looked at it through its cultural context but I've heard some feel uncomfortable with the stereotype so I mention it. ( )