“I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.” The 1980 BBC Merchant of Venice.

June 21, 2018

shylock

My bardolatry is not so all encompassing that I don’t prefer some Shakespeare plays to others. Merchant of Venice is one of the others. There’s something oddly shapeless about it. Do we really need three separate casket scenes? Moreover Act V, delicate and erotic as it is, seems to belong to a different play altogether, so utterly unlike the devastating Act IV that precedes it. Oh ,and Lancelot Gobbo may be the most annoying clown in the canon. Why is he so cruel to his poor old blind dad? What’s up with that?

This production is notable for the detail of its period costumes and the imprecision and abstraction of its sets. Belmont seems far more magical than Venice.

Enn Reitel is the garrulous Gobbo, chosen perhaps because of the wide variety of voices at his command (which he would soon apply to his extensive work on Spitting Image. Gemma Jones is a very austere Portia, who seems far more relaxed as a boyish judge than when wearing women’s clothing. Kenneth Cranham plays Gratiano, the dry Jacques-type wit, who is the most vicious of Shylock’s persecutors in many ways. John Nettles plays the improvident Bassanio with the right degree of fresh-faced carelessness. Perhaps the most unusual and troubling casting is of the titular merchant himself – John Franklyn-Robbins as Antonio. Franklyn-Robbins is twenty years older than Nettles and looks older still. I find it hard to shake off the suspicion that this generation gap represents either a half conscious or fully conscious decision to smudge the effect of the same sex love between Antonio and Bassanio. Of course, there’s nothing either wrong or unrepresentative about an age gap in a same sex relationship – but this production seems intent on overstating a fatherly dynamic.

But the casting of Warren Mitchell as Shylock is fascinating. Shylock is someone who foregoes massive material advantage in order to enforce a principle. In fact, Mitchell is at his best when he’s completely silent. After judgment is passed upon him and he’s pretty much ordered to become a Christian, there’s a lingering look of agony on his face that is chilling to behold. The hulking form of John Rhys-Davies looms over him to drape a crucifix over his head which he is forced to kiss. The camera spends a while letting us absorb this torture and could spend longer.

And let’s face it, Portia’s legal chicanery is a pretty shabby bit of reasoning. “A pound of flesh” has a pretty established meaning to it and if Portia’s definition were to be enforced, every butcher’s shop in Venice would have to close – and meat could only be sold in a completely desiccated form. (I think Ben Elton made this point in Upstart Crow). And if Portia’s micrometer scale version of “a pound” were ever to be generally enforced, then it would become all but impossible to sell a pound of anything. Venice’s wealth and power depends on its credit, and its international reputation for respecting commercial agreements – as Shylock well understands. If word of this judgement were to spread across the Mediterranean, then I can only imagine that Venice might experience an economic crisis. Antonio’s life has been spared but thousands may face ruin.

Warren Mitchell is most famous for playing a right wing racist in a sitcom written by a left wing anti-racist writer (Speight) and starring (Mitchell) a left wing anti-racist actor. As we all know, racists are (definitionally) not very bright, and Alf Garnett became a hero to many who just like hearing racist stuff (no matter how stupid) being spoken out loud on TV. Now we have no reason to imagine that Shakespeare was philosemitic or even anti-anti semitic. The best that can be said for Merchant of Venice is that it’s an anti-semitic comedy, in structure, whose structural intent becomes destabilised in performance because Shylock gets so many good lines. So, with Mitchell, we’re watching an anti-racist actor whose most famous creation was applauded by racists because he was given good lines playing an antisemitic stereotype who is applauded by jews and philosemites because he gets good lines. It makes for a fascinating paradox.

There’s an attempt at the very very end of this production to restore a darker tone. Jessica rereads her letter and for a moment seems cognizant of a degree of cultural and familial betrayal and loss. Meanwhile Antonio walks slowly up a flight of stairs looking rather glum. He is, after all, a lonely older person at a house party otherwise consisting of three young couples who are desperate to have sex with one another. What’s less enjoyable than that?

Oddly enough, we studied and performed this play together at school, Jews and Gentiles together. We debated it. We considered the implications of so much beauty and so much hatred living together cheek by jowl in the same text. We never thought of banning it.

I’ve some thoughts about some other plays in the 1978-1985 BBC Shakespeare series.

Merry Wives of Windsor: