I’ve been a fan of Shakespeare since my senior year in High School. That year I had to take two English electives, and over my father’s objections (“Shakespeare. Nothing but 18th Century Porn, that’s all that is.”), I chose to take Shakespeare.
Our field trip that semester was to Chautauqua to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen, and I wanted more.
Our senior play that year was MacBeth. I not only played Lady MacBeth; I understudied the scenes I wasn’t in. I memorized most of that play. Definitely my fondest memory of my senior year.
One of the courses I had to take last semester was Sociology. I struggled with it, and discussed this course with my brother at length. One of the topics we discussed was the prison system, which led to a conversation about revenge, which led to a conversation about Shakespeare. He suggested that if I wanted to see a movie that was directly relevant to my studies, I should watch The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. [Movie Photos]
I rented it. I don’t think I moved during the entire course of the movie, except to grab a box of Kleenex. Al Pacino was phenomenal as Shylock, the Rich Jew. I forgot it was a movie and became completely engrossed in the story. (It's spoken entirely in Old English, but I found that wasn't a problem. After about a minute and a half, your brain sorts it all out, and you don't even hear the dialect.)
Jeremy Irons played the merchant, Antonio, who had nothing but contempt for Shylock and would even spit on him in the street. When Antonio needed to borrow a sum and sought it from Shylock, Shylock saw an opportunity for revenge. He gave Antonio the loan interest-free, but should Antonio default on the loan, Antonio had to repay with his flesh.
Shylock’s need for revenge so completely unbalanced him, as the story progressed I felt bottomless pity for him. For example, when rumor had it that Antonio lost a ship at sea, Shylock often said, “Let him look to his bond.” Salarino asked him, why would Shylock take Antonio’s flesh? What good would it be?
Shylock said, “To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and ... what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, ... If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”
I wept through that entire speech. Wept. He was so angry, so hurt, and so hell-bent on vengeance that he was mentally ill. And in the end, before the Court, he lost everything. In the end, his unbalanced, unreasoning need for revenge cost him everything he had.
There are many more layers to this story. I was surprised to discover that The Merchant is one of Shakespeare’s comedies. I have no idea why; I didn’t find it funny. It made me think.
It’s best to let things go, isn’t it? Vengeance gets us nothing, and grudges are weights that only hurt our own backs.
If you haven’t seen it, grab a box of Kleenex and watch. It is immortal.
Michael said...
There is an idea in our family that Shakespeare was merely pornography for the seventeenth century. For example, “Hamlet” is usually cited as a story of incest, but nothing could be further from the truth. The Danish Prince was on the verge of murder while in his mother’s chambers, and in fact commits one.
The classics are known as “The Classics” for a reason – they contain the archetypes and mythos of our culture. You can read “The Merchant of Venice” today, learn from it, and then read it in ten years and learn a new set of lessons. The story doesn’t change, but we do, and so the lessons we extract are changed through the lens of individual perception. I think this is one of the things that makes life worth living.
One of the first things I did after I left home was to begin reading the classics. Shakespeare, Coleridge, Hemmingway, Steinbeck… It is a process of absorption, adaptation and growth that will never end.
