The Merchant of Venice
I am a Jew. 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, 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 villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.
Not quite so well known as Shakespeare's tragedies, but to my mind, this is one of his better plays...well, in some sense.
Thoughts
I think Shylock is a pretty cool guy. Eh wants revenge on Antonio and doesn't afraid of anything.
Yeah, anyways. To modern eyes, Shylock looks a hell of a lot more sympathetic than Shakespeare probably intended him to be, especially given his motive rant (see the beginning of this page), and, well, my point being, this play is tricky to read because of the massive values dissonance. There are things such as
- Portia not wanting to marry a black dude
- the whole setup for marrying Portia, for that matter
- Antonio forcing Shylock to convert to Christianity
that would probably raise more than a few modern eyebrows. Despite this, some speculate that there is also remarkable progressiveness in the play - does anyone get homoerotic vibes between Antonio and Bassanio? Because I do (although mostly one-sided), and I'd gladly ship the pair simply because it seems most interesting.
Anyways. So, the play: it's obviously meant for a bit of entertainment more than anything, and I think it succeeds quite admirably in that regard, but, as mentioned, the sharp values dissonance makes it difficult to take it lightly at times, leading to something at once more interesting and more boring than what Shakespeare probably intended. For instance, the "puzzle" required to marry Portia seems laughably easy, doesn't it? You really have to wonder just how dumb these suitors of hers are...but, hey, maybe Portia's father meant for that as a very basic filter (i.e. get rid of ridiculously stupid/arrogant people). Still not a high standard by any means, but...oh, whatever, really.
tl;dr Good, interesting play. Probably not for the reasons Shakespeare intended.