At the Theatre: The Merchant of Venice 1936

A new production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is always an interesting prospect, as the play is so puzzling. It contains some of Shakespeare's most beautiful speeches, including probably the most famous discussion of mercy in the English language, but it tells the story of a man's desire to use the law to take revenge on another man, almost certainly killing him, and of the punishment that is meted out to that man for desiring to do such a thing. The fact that the man in question, Shylock, is Jewish only adds to the difficulties, as the play appears on the face of it to be anti-semitic, even though in Shylock's famous "If you prick us, do we not bleed" speech in Act 3, Shakespeare writes with what seems to be complete empathy for the plight of Jews subjected to anti-Semitism.

Perhaps because it is so difficult, the opportunities to see the play are fairly rare. But in 2023 an actress called Tracy Ann Oberman decided to create her own production, in which she would play Shylock, setting the action against the backdrop of the rise of Oswald Mosley and his followers. Having read too much PG Wodehouse as a child I have always equated Mosley with Sir Roderick Spode and consequently underestimated his dangerous influence. Oberman's grandmother was living in the East End of London at the time of Mosley's activities and took part in the Battle of Cable Street, something I knew nothing about before going to this performance. It was an event that seems to have demonstrated that Mosley was not the idiotic figure of fun I'd assumed, and learning of its existence has made me wonder about whether Wodehouse did everyone a disservice by creating Spode, using absurdity to minimise what was a real danger.  

Having been performed to great acclaim in London, the production is now touring Britain and so when it came to Bath while I was staying in Bristol I took the opportunity to go along (this is beginning to sound faintly like the opening to a visit to Julian and Sandy as spoken by Kenneth Horne). The performance I went to was a sell-out and in front of me were over 100 school children, almost overcome with excitement at being in a theatre.

The performance began in what I presume was Hebrew as some kind of Jewish ritual was presented, with Oberman at its centre. Once that was over we galloped into the play itself. A small cast doubled up playing a variety of parts and they were excellent in all of them. The whole thing is full of gusto and energy and Obermann as Shylock is superb. The fact that the character is played as a woman seemed to me to work very well - somehow a woman's suffering at the hands of bullies struck me as something one could feel more sympathy for than a man's, possibly because a man, possibly unfairly, is expected to fight rather than cry. Oberman's performance persuaded me that the arrogance and scorn Shylock is subjected to is more than enough to goad her into wishing to make the leader of her enemies suffer in his turn.

In what to me at first seemed a very clever twist but I later realised was an inevitable result of transforming Shylock into the play's hero, Portia, who I had always thought of as a heroine, is here presented as a really nasty creature, taking delight in grinding a Jew into the dust. While this was a revelation for me, given the over-reach of many in the modern legal profession, i didnt mind at all having a sense of hostility for a lawyer whipped up in my heart.

At the end, Oberman stepped forward and told of her grandmother's experiences in the Battle of Cable Street and then, together with the whole cast, exhorted the audience to show solidarity with their contemporary Jewish neighbours, while raising her fist over and over, in a gesture that, were Elon Musk to have made it, might have been mistaken for a Nazi salute. This seemed a faint sacrilege but I think Shakespeare survived it.

Overall, I enjoyed the performance. Despite many of the schoolchildren complaining as they left about how long the thing had gone on, the play has actually been admirably streamlined (although purists might argue that cutting out bits of Shakespeare can never be admirable). But there is one glaring flaw in the production - tragically, it is already out of date. The enemy faced by people of Jewish origin is no longer the Mosley mob they encountered in Cable Street. Oberman knows this all too well as since October 7, 2023 she has had to be guarded against attack from pro-Palestinians. 

It would have taken a lot of work but the truth is the production needs to be revamped. In place of Blackshirts, the characters opposing Shylock need to be dressed in those dreadful uniforms Hamas members love to parade in as they release hostages. It is not frustrated white men but Islamists who are bent on doing violence to Jews these days  - and we all need to show solidarity with each other as they will be coming for us next.

Bill's Best Bits

With the dull earnestness of the dogged self-improver, I am plodding my way through the works of W Shakespeare. Actually, I'm not really plodding; in fact. I'm really enjoying it. 

And at last, The Taming of the Shrew makes sense to me. It isn't a horrible story of a woman being cowed by a man; it is a story of a member of a family who, after years of being routinely denied affection and overlooked, out of preference for her favoured sister, is full of anger, which is almost always in my experience a product of hurt:

  My tongue will tell the anger of my heart,

Or else my heart concealing it will break,
And rather than it shall I will be free
Even to the uttermost as I please in words

she declares, before being won over by someone who, loon though he may be, calls her "my honey love", a thing no-one has ever come near to doing before; someone who pays her attention that is not merely irritated but actually kind and admiring; someone who asks her:

What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty
As those two eyes become that heavenly face?

and calls her, "fair lovely maid", caring enough about her to offer her tender protection, which surely no-one has ever offered her up to this point, (and yes, I know I appear to be ignoring the "Thou knowst not gold's effect" line, but actually I'm just looking at the thing from Kate's point of view - that is, I am seeing Petruccio as he behaves towards Kate, regardless of whether his hidden motives are mercenary or not):

She is my house,
My household-stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything,
And here she stands, touch her whoever dare …
Fear not, sweet wench. They shall not touch thee, Kate

and someone who, to her initial amazement, offers her a lifelong devoted partnership and is prepared to be "one that cares for her", something no one else in her experience has done.

Thus the taming is not taming in the sense of mastering and bullying into shape but in the sense of teaching how to love and overcoming the object's belief in her own innate unlovability.

Since these revelations, I have moved on to Henry VI Part Two, (or, as my edition of the Complete Works, the 1988 Oxford University edition, prefers to call it, 'The First Part of the Contention'), which I have just finished reading.

The so-called history plays usually leave me confused, when I see them at the theatre. They involve comings and goings of large groups of fighting men and it is hard to follow the who and the why. However, reading this one has been marvellous. Whatever the who and the why, there are so many clumps of beautifully composed words in the text that it is a pleasure and delight to make one's way through it.

I like the image conjured up by the idea of someone being "Mailed up in shame", and I love the use of the word "tickle" in this pair of lines:

…the state of Normandy
Stands on a tickle point now

The words "naughty" and "blab" are both appealing, probably because they no longer resonate in quite the way they did in Shakespeare's time:

Beaufort’s red sparkling eyes blab his heart’s malice

—	Act 3, Scene 1,

A sort of naughty persons, lewdly bent

—	Act 2, Scene 1,

The brilliant choice of the one small word "spurs" in this phrase conjures up the image of the fury embodied, dashing through a stormy forest, wrapped in a cloak, on a racing steed:

…her fury needs no spurs

—	Act 2, Scene 1,

Better still, the play contains so many beautifully observed references to the natural world and glimpses of everyday life as it was at the time the playwright lived, each marvellously used to highlight some aspect of the play's action and its characters' psychology:

And as the butcher takes away the calf,
And binds the wretch, and beats it when it strains,
Bearing it to the bloody slaughterhouse,
Even so remorseless have they born him hence;
And as the dam runs lowing up and down,
Looking the way her harmless young one went,
And can do naught but wail her darling’s loss;
Even so myself bewails good Gloucester’s case

Now ‘tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;
Suffer them now, and they’ll o'ergrow the garden,
And choke the herbs for want of husbandry

—	Act 3, Scene 1

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep

—	Act 3, Scene 1

The fox barks not when he would steal the lamb.

—	Act 3, Scene 1

Thus are my blossoms blasted in the bud
And caterpillars eat my leaves away.

—	Act 3, Scene 1

Faster than springtime showers comes thought on thought

—	Act 3, Scene 2

My brain, more busy than the labouring spider,
Weaves tedious snares to trap mine enemies

—	Act 3, Scene 1

…Gloucester’s show

Beguiles him as the mournful crocodile
With sorrow snares relenting passengers,
Or as the snake rolled in a flow'ring bank
With shining chequered slough doth sting a child
That for the beauty thinks it excellent.

—	Act 3, Scene 1

And thinks he that the chirping of a wren,

By crying comfort from a hollow breast
Can chase away the first-conceived sound?
Hide not they poison with such sugared words

—	Act 3 Scene 2

The splitting rocks cow'red in the sinking sands

And would not dash me with their ragged sides

—	Act 3, Scene 2

The commons, like an angry hive of bees
That want their leader, scatter up and down

—	Act 3, Scene 2

Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh,

And sees fast by a butcher with an axe,
But will suspect ‘twas he that made the slaughter?
Who finds the partridge in the puttock’s nest
But may imagine how the bird was dead
Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?
Even so suspicious is this tragedy.

—	Act 3, Scene 2

Thy mother took into her blameful bed
Some stern untutored churl, and noble stock
Was graffed with crabtree slip, whose fruit thou art,
And never of the Nevilles’ noble race.

—	Act 3, Scene 2

…these dread curses, like the sun ‘gainst glass,
Or like an overcharged gun, recoil
And turn the force of them upon thyself.

—	Act 3, Scene 2

Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud;

   And after summer evermore succeeds
Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold
So cares and joys abound as seasons fleet.

…pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs

—	Act 3, Scene 2

Naturally, there are many superb turns of phrase:

Small curs are not regarded when they grin

—	Act 3, Scene 1

For it is known we were but hollow friends

—	Act 3, Scene 2

Who among us does not have the odd "hollow friend" - or isn't one?

There are also passages that are horribly pertinent to our own age:

…these days are dangerous.
Virtue is choked with foul ambition,
And charity chased hence by rancour’s hand

—	Act 3, Scene 1,

and there is a great deal of passion, violence and several fairly good Shakespearian insults:

Upon thy eyeballs murderous tyranny

Sits in grim majesty to fright the world.
Look not upon me, for thine eyes are wounding

—	Act 3, Scene 2

Fain would I go to chafe his paly lips

With twenty thousand kisses, and to drain
Upon his face an ocean of salt tears,
To tell my love unto his dumb, deaf trunk,
And with my fingers feel his hand unfeeling.
But all in vain are these mean obsequies

—	Act 3, Scene 2

See how the blood is settled in his face.
Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost
Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless,
Being all descended to the labouring heart;
Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,
Attracts the same for aidance ‘gainst the enemy;
Which, with the heart, there cools, and ne'er returneth
To blush and beautify the cheek again.
But see, his face is black and full of blood;
His eyeballs further out than when he lived,
Staring full ghastly like a strangled man;
His hair upreared; his nostrils stretched with struggling;
His hands abroad displayed, as one that grasped
And tugged for life and was by strength subdued.
Look on the sheets. His hair, you see, is sticking;
His well-proportioned beard made rough and rugged
Like to the summer’s corn by tempest lodged.
It cannot be but he was murdered here.
The least of all these signs were probable.

—	Act 3, Scene 2

(I would be surprised if these observations are not medically accurate)

...here’s a vengeful sword, rusted with ease
That shall be scoured in his rancorous heart
That slanders me with murder’s crimson badge.

—	Act 3, Scene 2,

…send thy soul to hell,
Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men!

—	Act 3, Scene 2,

…lean-faced envy in her loathsome cave.

—	Act 3, Scene 2,

Poison be their drink!
Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste!
Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees!
Their chiefest prospect murd'ring basilisks!
Their softest touch as smart as lizards’ stings!
Their music frightful as the serpent’s hiss,
And boding screch-owls make the consort full!
All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell -

—	Act 3, Scene 2

Furthermore, the play has the intriguing character of Margaret, wife of Henry VI. She is a very nasty woman, and it was therefore exciting to come upon a painting of her in the Louvre, where I went for the day on Sunday, since it was the first carfree day Paris has tried. It wasn't a terribly well-enforced carfree experience, (the Belgians do it better), but still it was a great deal nicer to walk about the streets than it is in Paris on any normal day. 

So here she is: Margaret d'Anjou, painted in around 1470 by someone in the Pays Bas du Sud, and now hanging in the Louvre:

Not a person to mess with as I think the next play I am about to embark on will prove - although I believe she will get her comeuppance there as well, leaving that thoughtful faced head severed horridly from that well-decorated neck. That is how things were once done.

Book Talk

In a review from the LRB archive of a book about Shakespeare by Lisa Jardine, I came across this about a paper that Jardine gave at a conference & that was included in the book in question:

"...the exchange of views which ensued after the opening piece on Othello, for example, was so lively that a bootleg cassette is still in circulation ten years later."

Why don't I move in circles where people excitedly seek out bootleg recordings of literary arguments, rather than in circles where the choice for an evening's conversation is EU trade regulations, gloomy NATO head shaking or blow by blow explanations of cultural gems such as Ted 2 ( not, I learn, related to Ted talks) & Australian Bachelorette?

Music Master

I'm a bit on the cloth-eared end of the spectrum, but there are many people who, unlike me, respond better to music than to words. For them, I imagine, a musical guru would be more suitable than Shakespeare. One such told his rather wonderful story during a segment of Cultural Exchanges, the terrific new feature included regularly on BBC Radio Four's Front Row:

My Guru

When I was young, a lot of my friends were drawn to Eastern religions. Some took to wearing orange, which would have been a step too far for me, (my dear, I look utter death in orange), even if the whole movement had been less patently a scam. Others went off to India - and still do from time to time - to visit 'ashrams' and be blessed by 'spiritual masters'.

One such pilgrim told me what is actually quite a good story, (which I'd love to believe - and almost do), about visiting a blind healer, who sat behind a desk and as each person shuffled past him, (there was always an enormous queue to see him), grasped their outstretched wrist and took their pulse, handing out advice based on what he'd divined from their heart beat.

My friend visited him one afternoon and then, just for the hell of it, went back again a few days later. The healer was sitting just where he'd been on her last visit, his eyes closed, never looking directly at his clients, (he was supposed to be blind, but, in the face of my doubting questioning, my friend insisted that, even if he hadn't been, he certainly never glanced at the passing crowd or even opened his eyes). When my friend offered her pulse for a second reading, the healer took it and said, without an instant's hesitation, 'You were here last week. I've already told you what to do.'

Anyway, leaving that story aside, I don't believe in exotic answers to Western problems. I think we have perfectly good sages of our very own. One of them, possibly the greatest of the lot really, was William Shakespeare, as I was reminded today when I went to see a film of the Globe's production of Henry V (which was superb - Jamie Parker, who I saw years ago playing the young Hal, has grown into the role as the more sensible adult Henry, and the whole production, directed by Dominic Dromgoole, was outstanding. [You can catch it again tomorrow; I highly recommend it.])

Shakespeare, somehow, knew everything, and each time I see one of his plays, some new facet of his omniscience is revealed. What I noticed this afternoon in Henry V, during a discussion about who bears responsibility for injury suffered during the carrying out of someone else's orders, (most particularly, in the context of the play, whether a King must bear on his conscious the deaths of all those he sends into battle who do not return), was a speech, from a minor character called Williams. It conjures up the human cost of war and yet is almost a throwaway in the midst of the play rather than, as it would be for most other writers, its central core, its one major perception:

"But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs, and arms, and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all, We died at such a place, some swearing, some crying for a surgeon; some upon their wives, left poore behind them; some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left: I am afear'd, there are few die well, that die in a battle: for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument?"


"When all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day." What an image. And made entirely out of ordinary little words. Marvellous. Shakespeare, I worship you.