Salanio’s imitation of Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice makes any modern theatergoer cringe: “I never heard a passion so confused, / So strange, outrageous, and so variable, / As the dog Jew did utter in the streets: / “˜My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! / Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!”
To the passive Shakespeare fan, what is The Merchant of Venice other than an embarrassing but excusable relic of Elizabethan England? To the Jew, what is it other than the rehashing of a hateful past and an opportunity for its return? To the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Ashland Jewish community, however, it is a chance for much-needed discussion.
The Merchant of Venice was featured at the first Oregon Shakespeare Festival 75 years ago and has been performed 13 times over the festival’s history. When artistic director Bill Rauch considered putting it on this anniversary year, seasoned actor and Jewish community member Anthony Heald was vocally opposed. But in an ironic turn of events, when Rauch announced his decision to produce the play, Heald himself volunteered for the role of Shylock.
“You have a more positive response from the Jewish community when Shylock is played by a Jew,” said Heald, the first Jewish Shylock in the festival’s 75-year history. “There is a Jewish sensibility that forms the character of Shylock.”
Shakespeare’s comic foil, drawn from medieval European stereotypes, earned legendary status as the archetypical wicked Jew. Though Shylock the character is complex and tormented, a victim of his society and of himself, Shylock the stereotype is, at worst, a greedy, flesh-eating Christ killer. Over the centuries Shylock’s name has been conjured to foment Jewish stereotypes. In 1920, Democracy or Shylocracy? warned readers of Jewish financial power and corruption, and in 1933 The Merchant of Venice was performed at least 20 times in Germany. When the Festival produced the play in 1991, the Ashland Jewish community reacted with anger.
“This time, Bill was very receptive to setting up what I thought would be a good series of programs for the Jewish community,” said Rabbi Marc Sirinsky of Ashland’s Temple Emek Shalom. Sirinsky has built a strong relationship with the festival since he joined the congregation 16 years ago.
Emek Shalom held discussions with Rauch and Heald to work through the challenges of putting on the play. Due to the presence of the festival in Ashland, the community is highly literate in Shakespeare’s works.
“We opened it to the community with a lot of publicity. The synagogue was packed,” said Sirinsky. “The questions they asked were really quite lovely to behold.”
While dissenters exist, the majority of the Jewish community in Ashland supports the production and Heald’s performance as Shylock.
“I have automatic credibility that, frankly, a non-Jew would not have,” Heald said. “There is a wide variety of viewpoints in the sanctuary,…but the comments I got were so supportive.”
“Would I prefer it not to be done? I would, in some ways,” confessed Sirinsky. “But in some ways it opens up the discussion that would not be held if there was not the impetus to have that discussion.”
This impetus for discussion has been a driving force behind the support for the production.
“I’ve had numerous discussions about anti-Semitism as a result of The Merchant of Venice being done here,” said Sirinsky. “I don’t think those conversations would have been had or had been relevant if this play wasn’t being done.”
Among the conversations taking place is one about religious freedom.
“It struck me that it’s not a play about Judaism,” said Heald. “It’s a play about being an outsider…and what it does to a person.”
Sirinsky sees Shylock’s victimization as not confined to anti-Semitism, but extending to all cases of social inequality and repression. Shylock’s struggle relates to global struggles for religious freedom. He relates it to the current controversy surrounding plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero.
“It’s a very related issue,” Sirinsky said. “I feel that we live in a country that is committed to freedom of expression. The proposed Muslim Community Center is two blocks away from Ground Zero on private property. Is it okay for Muslims to build a mosque in a community center that will serve people of all religions? Yes, in the same way Jews need the right to build synagogues and JCCs.”
Sirinsky adds that the issues plaguing Elizabethan England “are not gone. People still stereotype one another. They still don’t trust each other. If neighbors can’t trust each other, neighbors can’t respect each other, then how do we expect people to do it in places in the world that have much more difficulties than we do?”
Expanding Shylock’s experience from the individual Jewish level to the universal level helps steer conversations about The Merchant of Venice away from the usual aesthetic traps. Heald, Sirinsky, and Ashland-based Shakespeare scholar Liz Eckhart avoid focusing on the play’s inherent anti-Semitism, authorship, or its function as an art form with an excusable offense. Each stresses the importance of interpretation and moving forward.
“Judaism teaches that nothing is inherently good or bad,” said Sirinsky. “It’s what you do with it that makes it good or bad. The play is just written words. It’s what we do with them.”
“When we struggle with Shylock from our modern position, when we read in sympathy with him and argue with the terms of the play, we’re trying to take apart the structure of prejudice and oppression that we still struggle with today,” Eckhart said in an e-mail statement. “I don’t read the play despite its anti-Semitism: I read it because it’s anti-Semitic, because anti-Semitism must be confronted and taken apart, and this is best done by the people with the most to lose.”
“After all,” said Sirinsky, “this is a play. If we can’t wrestle with the ideas of a play, how can we wrestle with real differences? I believe that plays are done to provoke, to make people think.”
Heald uses his acting skills to bring out the necessary comic antagonism in Shylock, as well as to elicit sympathy in his struggle.
“As we see him driving headlong over a cliff, we want to reach out,” he explained.
The blocking reflects Heald’s interpretation of Shylock’s experience. For instance, when Shylock falls apart at the end, Heald chose to exit stage left with his back to the audience. The effect is like “a huge balloon that the air is slowly going out of.”
Sirinsky is content with the quality of discussion educed by the performance. He thinks people who have wanted to grow from the experience have probably grown, and those who have wanted to be angry have probably remained angry. As the Torah says to seek out blessing, Sirinsky believes that “the people that looked for the blessing in the production of this play have found blessings.”
A much-needed discussion
