The Merchant of Venice

[Big brotheR]

here are the most important issues related 'The merchant of Venice' to be discussed in class.





Issues to be tackled
1- Anti-Semitism? A Jewish reading of ‘The Merchant of Venice’
2- Shylock, characrterisation and the image of the ‘other’
3- Shylock and Fagin
4- Feminism
5- The metaphor of the stage ‘ A stage where every man must play a part,/ And mine a sad one’
6- Love vs. Money ‘In Belmont is a lady richly left,/And she is fair’
7- A tragedy? A comedy?
8- ‘The Merchant of Venice’ vs.’ The Jew of Malta’
9- City in Literature (Venice and Belmont)
10-

[cute angel]

Thank you so much Sir for these information.

God bless you

[Mo7amed]

Thank u Mr BB, I watched it last Friday on mbc2 channel
In fact I sympathized with Shylock at the end of the play ...

[Big brotheR]

Feminist reading
-The exchange of goods, women included, in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ between men characterizes the play’s action. In Patriarchal society men have rights over women that are not reciprocated. In the world of the play, Portia’s father has the right to choose her husband; the women, however, cannot propose to the men. Portia’s rhetoric makes it clear that she is making a gift of herself to Bassanio—one she can withdraw. When Bassanio chooses the right casket and claims her as his wife, she talks impersonally, in the passive voice (III 2 166-7), acknowledging herself as a property which at a particular moment is ‘converted’ to another’s legal possession. :
Portia : Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit
Commits itself to yours to be directed,
As from her lord, her governeor, her king.
Myself, and what is mine, to you and yours
Is now converted.
This material transaction is not represted as ‘naturally’ binding, however: it may be undone again. Its material and arbitrary nature is symbolized by a token, her ring, the significance of which can change. You own me now, she says; but lose my ring and you lose me.

-Rich and beautiful
-Portia’s dad’s command
-Despised as a man.
-Portia triumphs in the male profession of lawyer—a profession founded on the very qualities of reason and skill at public speaking that women were supposed to lack

[Big brotheR]

1-The aside: in an aside the character turns away from other characters and addresses the audience directly. The speech is usually brief, and the convention is that no one on stage hears it.
The effect of an aside is to establish a bond between the audience and the character. We feel privileged.
Sometimes an aside can make our estimation of a character very teasing. For instance, audiences find Shylock in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ a very difficult character. He is the object of hostile prejudice yet he schemes against Antonio with sadistic glee. In his very first scene there is an aside, the effect of which is difficult to assess. Bassanio has been inquiring whether, if Antonio will guarantee the sum, Shylock is prepared to lend the money. Bassanio is courteous to the extreme of inviting Shylock to dine. Shylock’s reply comes in the form of an ‘aside’:

Shylock: Yes, to smell pork; to eat of the habitation
which your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil into.

And soon after that another aside follows:

SHYLOCK: [Aside] How like a fawning publican he
looks!
I hate him for he is a Christian,
But more for that in low simplicity

What might we feel? Should we say that it was insensitive of Bassanio not to realize the dietary differences between Christians and Jews, or is it that Shylock is imagining an unintended insult?

[Big brotheR]

The Trial Scene
·The Demands made on the actors, when acting Shylock, are numerous and diverse:
In ‘The Merchant of Venice’ Shakespeare seems to recoginse the emotional struggle of the trial scene, so he seems to speak to those who play Portia and Shylock. He tells the former to persuade the audience that mercy is the highest of virtues. And tells the actor playing Shylock to persuade the audience that he is a man who suffered prejudice and the loss of his daughter, and that though his revenge might be terrible it is, humanly speaking, entirely understandable. Shakespeare hands over the scripts, leaving the players to use their resources of stage presence and delivery to convince the audience.
The result might be that the struggle between Portia and Shylock also becomes a struggle in performance. If members of the audience submit themselves to this struggle, there is the constant tension of wondering how their thoughts and feelings are going to be engaged, and whether they will be forced to realign their sympathies. If drama does work in this way, we are reminded that it is a dangerous art.