0:00:02 > 0:00:07This programme contains some strong language.
0:00:07 > 0:00:10You've got a Holocaust shelf here.
0:00:10 > 0:00:13- Doesn't every Jew have a Holocaust shelf?- Not one quite like this.
0:00:13 > 0:00:15And Woody Allen above the Holocaust shelf.
0:00:15 > 0:00:18It's hard to decide whether to have Woody Allen
0:00:18 > 0:00:20above the Holocaust shelf or below the Holocaust shelf.
0:00:20 > 0:00:22Yeah, you're right.
0:00:24 > 0:00:28Do you take pride in - if I can call it that - your Jewish nose?
0:00:28 > 0:00:31My dad had a wonderful nose and I always admired his nose,
0:00:31 > 0:00:34and I was pleased that by the time I was a grown man, my nose could
0:00:34 > 0:00:36rival my dad's.
0:00:36 > 0:00:40I really did admire... I think a man should have a nose.
0:00:41 > 0:00:43One could overdo it, I suppose, but...
0:00:46 > 0:00:49The Man Booker Prize-winning novelist, Howard Jacobson, has spent
0:00:49 > 0:00:52much of his career writing poignant
0:00:52 > 0:00:58and funny novels about Jewishness and the trials of being an outsider.
0:01:00 > 0:01:03For his latest novel, Jacobson has agreed to retell
0:01:03 > 0:01:08the story of the most odious Jew that literature ever spawned.
0:01:08 > 0:01:10The cruel and merciless Shylock,
0:01:10 > 0:01:14from Shakespeare's most performed play, The Merchant Of Venice.
0:01:14 > 0:01:18How is it that a villainous moneylender, who doggedly pursues
0:01:18 > 0:01:22his pound of Venetian flesh, has come to represent
0:01:22 > 0:01:26everything that people have long despised about Jews?
0:01:26 > 0:01:30This is a quote from William Hazlitt in 1817.
0:01:30 > 0:01:35"A decrepit old man bent with age and ugly with mental deformity,
0:01:35 > 0:01:38"grinning with deadly malice.
0:01:38 > 0:01:44"Sullen, morose, gloomy, inflexible, brooding over one idea,
0:01:44 > 0:01:47"that of his revenge."
0:01:47 > 0:01:49You can see why they chose me!
0:01:49 > 0:01:54Shylock may have started out as a figure of fun for Elizabethans
0:01:54 > 0:01:59to mock and jeer at, but for modern audiences he poses a real problem.
0:02:00 > 0:02:05How can you redeem a monster who not only reflects anti-Jewish hatred
0:02:05 > 0:02:08but, in recent history, may have been guilty of stoking it?
0:02:08 > 0:02:12But let's remember, Shylock is Shakespeare's Jew.
0:02:16 > 0:02:17I am a Jew!
0:02:17 > 0:02:19Oh...!
0:02:22 > 0:02:25Hath not a Jew eyes?
0:02:25 > 0:02:28Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
0:02:28 > 0:02:29passions?
0:02:31 > 0:02:34What did people have to say when you said you were going to do this?
0:02:34 > 0:02:39There was stuff on the internet, as you would expect. This is quite fun.
0:02:39 > 0:02:43"Repulsive Jew author rewrites Shakespeare
0:02:43 > 0:02:45"and makes Shylock the hero.
0:02:45 > 0:02:49"This is like asking Shylock himself to rewrite Shakespeare."
0:02:49 > 0:02:53"A vile Jew has decided that Shakespeare was not quite
0:02:53 > 0:02:56"good enough and could do with being improved upon by his own
0:02:56 > 0:02:58"degenerate hand."
0:02:58 > 0:03:00So nothing has changed, has it, really?
0:03:00 > 0:03:02- Not a lot has changed, no.- No.
0:03:02 > 0:03:03No.
0:03:06 > 0:03:10"Despicable Jew rewrites Merchant Of Venice in Yiddish."
0:03:10 > 0:03:12ALAN CHUCKLES
0:03:32 > 0:03:35So what was Shakespeare's business with the Jews?
0:03:35 > 0:03:39There weren't any in his day in England. At least, not officially.
0:03:39 > 0:03:44But Jews had been banished on pain of death some 300 years earlier.
0:03:44 > 0:03:49But something sparked his interest and compelled him to write about one.
0:03:49 > 0:03:53He looked for his Jew amongst the prosperous traders and,
0:03:53 > 0:03:57as Iago called them, the "super-subtle citizens of Venice".
0:03:57 > 0:04:01- You can feel there are unspoken things.- Yes.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04The alleyways, the darknesses...
0:04:04 > 0:04:07I mean, novels have been written, films have been made,
0:04:07 > 0:04:09about how sinister things,
0:04:09 > 0:04:11frightening things, happen to you in Venice.
0:04:11 > 0:04:14You get lost in Venice. You might not find your way again in Venice.
0:04:14 > 0:04:19It's such a narrative town. Every part of this city is telling a tale.
0:04:29 > 0:04:31It was here in Venice
0:04:31 > 0:04:34that Shakespeare found the kernel of his story.
0:04:34 > 0:04:39In a fragment of prose tucked away in a 14th century Italian novella,
0:04:39 > 0:04:43a rare copy of which is preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale
0:04:43 > 0:04:46in a corner of St Mark's Square.
0:04:46 > 0:04:47So...
0:04:47 > 0:04:50This is our book.
0:04:50 > 0:04:53The author is an Italian author of the 14th century,
0:04:53 > 0:04:56Ser Giovanni Fiorentino.
0:04:56 > 0:05:02- And the title is Il Pecorone. - Which means?- Is "a big lamb".
0:05:02 > 0:05:04- A lamb?- A sheep.
0:05:04 > 0:05:10And here, on page 41, we can find a dialogue
0:05:10 > 0:05:15between two merchants, a Jewish one and a Christian one.
0:05:15 > 0:05:19And the Christian merchant is Ser Giannetto.
0:05:19 > 0:05:22- Yeah.- Ser Giannetto was the Christian merchant.
0:05:22 > 0:05:28And the Jewish merchant described as Il Judaeo. The Jew.
0:05:28 > 0:05:31- Just "The Jew".- Just "The Jew".
0:05:31 > 0:05:38And the Jewish merchant was creditor from the Christian one.
0:05:38 > 0:05:42And here we can read...
0:05:42 > 0:05:46HE READS IN ITALIAN
0:05:46 > 0:05:48He didn't want money.
0:05:48 > 0:05:51HE READS IN ITALIAN
0:05:54 > 0:05:59- He just wanted a pound of his muscle, of his flesh.- Flesh.
0:06:03 > 0:06:07How Shakespeare got hold of Fiorentino's story
0:06:07 > 0:06:08is still a mystery.
0:06:08 > 0:06:12It wasn't published in English until long after Shakespeare's death,
0:06:12 > 0:06:15and as far as we know he never came to Venice.
0:06:15 > 0:06:20But this cunning acquisition gave Shakespeare the fuel to ignite
0:06:20 > 0:06:22the engine of his play.
0:06:23 > 0:06:26"The Merchant Of Venice. The plot.
0:06:26 > 0:06:32"Bassanio turns to his old friend and mentor, Antonio, the merchant,
0:06:32 > 0:06:38"for a loan to help finance his pursuit of a beautiful heiress.
0:06:38 > 0:06:41"Nursing what appears to be an unrequited passion
0:06:41 > 0:06:45"for Bassanio, Antonio is only too eager to help,
0:06:45 > 0:06:49"but he is unable for the moment to raise the funds,
0:06:49 > 0:06:54"so it's off to the unscrupulous moneylender, Shylock.
0:06:54 > 0:06:56"The Jew."
0:06:56 > 0:06:59So on the one hand, it's a rather benign and beautiful setting.
0:06:59 > 0:07:03On the other hand, something is festering under
0:07:03 > 0:07:05the surface from the very beginning.
0:07:05 > 0:07:09You come to me and you say, "Shylock, we would have monies."
0:07:09 > 0:07:10You say so.
0:07:10 > 0:07:15You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
0:07:15 > 0:07:20and foot me as you spurn a stranger cur over your threshold.
0:07:20 > 0:07:24He spat. I mean, that's such an extraordinary thing, to be spat at.
0:07:24 > 0:07:28And he reminds Antonio of that and Antonio says,
0:07:28 > 0:07:31"Be careful or I'll spit at you again."
0:07:31 > 0:07:36Shylock strikes a bargain - yes, to the money, on condition
0:07:36 > 0:07:40that if Antonio fails to repay it within three months,
0:07:40 > 0:07:44Shylock will take a pound of his "fair flesh
0:07:44 > 0:07:49"from whatever part of your body it pleaseth me."
0:07:52 > 0:07:57Howard is not the only one grappling with Shakespeare's divisive play.
0:07:57 > 0:07:59Venice is currently engaged in an intense debate
0:07:59 > 0:08:03about Shakespeare's notorious leading man.
0:08:03 > 0:08:06OK, Shakespeare in The Merchant Of Venice is exploiting
0:08:06 > 0:08:10one of the few true mass phenomena not only in society,
0:08:10 > 0:08:12but for many, many centuries.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16Anti-Semitism or, more accurately, anti-Judaism, easy, familiar...
0:08:16 > 0:08:18Welcome to the Shylock Project.
0:08:18 > 0:08:22Amongst a glittering lineup of Shakespearean scholars,
0:08:22 > 0:08:25Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize winning author,
0:08:25 > 0:08:28Stephen Greenblatt, is one of the biggest draws.
0:08:30 > 0:08:33There are, as you know, many critics who see
0:08:33 > 0:08:36the play as a play which is in itself anti-Semitic
0:08:36 > 0:08:40and which in itself leads to and has led to anti-Semitism.
0:08:40 > 0:08:43This idea of the Jew's loathsome being.
0:08:43 > 0:08:45I don't want to say the play is not anti-Semitic.
0:08:45 > 0:08:48The play is anti-Semitic, or anti-Jewish, let's put it that way.
0:08:48 > 0:08:51It participates in it, it has contributed to it.
0:08:51 > 0:08:54I don't refuse this at all. Nonetheless...
0:08:54 > 0:08:57But "nonetheless" is everything one cares about in Shakespeare.
0:08:57 > 0:09:00Right from the beginning Shylock is represented as having
0:09:00 > 0:09:01a kind of inner life,
0:09:01 > 0:09:05something you don't expect of a little Jew puppet on a string.
0:09:05 > 0:09:08That's the weird Shakespearian twist in all of this.
0:09:08 > 0:09:12The generosity that wrote the lines, "Hath not a Jew eyes?"
0:09:12 > 0:09:15What need that in this play?
0:09:15 > 0:09:17No-one needs that.
0:09:17 > 0:09:20It comes from some strange place in Shakespeare, from the place
0:09:20 > 0:09:24that ruined his play, as it were, that ruined his simple comedy.
0:09:24 > 0:09:26And thank God it ruined it.
0:09:34 > 0:09:38Venice in Shakespeare's day did provide a home for Jews.
0:09:38 > 0:09:42This was an aspirational mercantile society that found itself
0:09:42 > 0:09:47increasingly dependent on Jewish moneylenders to fuel its economy.
0:09:47 > 0:09:49But there was a caveat.
0:09:49 > 0:09:52Jews were forced to live on a small polluted island
0:09:52 > 0:09:55on the edge of the city, il Ghetto Nuovo.
0:09:57 > 0:10:00Jews had been working and operating in Venice for a long time.
0:10:00 > 0:10:03In fact, long before the ghetto was established.
0:10:03 > 0:10:06But the Jews were not allowed to live here on a permanent basis
0:10:06 > 0:10:10and 1516 is when the republic decided that they would include
0:10:10 > 0:10:16the Jews to use their economic skills.
0:10:16 > 0:10:19At the same time, they were excluding them
0:10:19 > 0:10:21by locking them in this square.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24And the word "ghetto", where does it come from?
0:10:24 > 0:10:27Well, actually, it comes from this very place - Ghetto was
0:10:27 > 0:10:30the foundry where the republic of Venice made its canons.
0:10:30 > 0:10:33No Jewish connotation whatsoever.
0:10:33 > 0:10:35- Well, it has now, because "ghetto" is now...- Yes, exactly.
0:10:35 > 0:10:37This became the paradigmatic ghetto,
0:10:37 > 0:10:41so the other ghettos took from this place because of its uniqueness.
0:10:41 > 0:10:45The reason the Jews were allowed here and why the ghetto was established
0:10:45 > 0:10:49- was clearly because Christians weren't allowed to lend money.- Yeah.
0:10:49 > 0:10:52According to an interpretation of the Bible,
0:10:52 > 0:10:55you could not lend money for interest to your brothers.
0:10:55 > 0:10:58So, the idea was that, precisely because they were not brothers,
0:10:58 > 0:11:00- you could ask them to lend you money.- Yes.
0:11:04 > 0:11:08HE SINGS IN ITALIAN
0:11:08 > 0:11:13Within this overcrowded ghetto, were Italian, Spanish, German
0:11:13 > 0:11:15and Portuguese communities of Jews,
0:11:15 > 0:11:19each building their own synagogue wherever space allowed,
0:11:19 > 0:11:23adding extra floors, converting attics and practising
0:11:23 > 0:11:28their rituals of Jewish life out of sight of Venice's Christians.
0:11:28 > 0:11:31While only a small number still live here,
0:11:31 > 0:11:36the ghetto remains a destination for Jews from all over the world.
0:11:43 > 0:11:48It's 400 years since Shakespeare's death and 500 years
0:11:48 > 0:11:51since the creation of the ghetto, which is why the city is taking the
0:11:51 > 0:11:56bold step of staging The Merchant Of Venice here for the very first time.
0:11:58 > 0:12:01Bringing The Merchant Of Venice to the ghetto is a sort
0:12:01 > 0:12:04of exorcism.
0:12:04 > 0:12:07You know, we're trying really to face the ghost of Shylock
0:12:07 > 0:12:10that has been haunting this place for a long time.
0:12:10 > 0:12:14So of course there are all sorts of implications.
0:12:14 > 0:12:18I thought I was being foolhardy attempting a novel that's got
0:12:18 > 0:12:20The Merchant Of Venice behind it.
0:12:20 > 0:12:23But for you to do a production of it here in the ghetto,
0:12:23 > 0:12:26do you not feel the weight of that?
0:12:26 > 0:12:29- I do and I like it. - THEY LAUGH
0:12:30 > 0:12:32I like a good challenge.
0:12:34 > 0:12:36Workshops have started in the main square.
0:12:36 > 0:12:39For the role of the troublesome moneylender,
0:12:39 > 0:12:42the director is trying out a range of actors,
0:12:42 > 0:12:46testing the radical view that Shylock is everyman.
0:12:46 > 0:12:48Or woman.
0:12:48 > 0:12:51There is a portion of Shylock that we can all enter into,
0:12:51 > 0:12:54and I feel that Shylock as the stranger,
0:12:54 > 0:12:56the outsider, the marginalised one,
0:12:56 > 0:13:02is also someone that we all - a woman, a gay man, any...
0:13:02 > 0:13:07All of us have had moments every day where we feel like an outsider.
0:13:07 > 0:13:09"I'm not a part of that."
0:13:09 > 0:13:13Shall I bend low and in a bondsman's key with bated breath
0:13:13 > 0:13:15and whispering humbleness say this,
0:13:15 > 0:13:20fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last.
0:13:20 > 0:13:25You spurned me such a day. Another time you called me dog.
0:13:25 > 0:13:30And for these courtesies I lend you thus much monies?
0:13:30 > 0:13:33- Your younger Shylock, Sorab?- Yeah.
0:13:33 > 0:13:37- I love him. Yeah. I love what he does.- Yes.
0:13:37 > 0:13:42A young man full of juice and wit and saucy and elegant and handsome.
0:13:42 > 0:13:45And why not? Because the way it's so often done,
0:13:45 > 0:13:47even when people are offering to do a modern Shylock, you get
0:13:47 > 0:13:49- an old man, an old man rubbing his hands...- Yes!
0:13:49 > 0:13:52- ..coming in like this... - A little pathetic, yes.
0:13:52 > 0:13:53There is no justification for that.
0:13:53 > 0:13:58Go with me to a notary, seal me there your single bond and...
0:13:58 > 0:14:03in a merry sport, if you repay me not on such a day,
0:14:03 > 0:14:07in such a place, such sum or sums as are expressed in the condition,
0:14:07 > 0:14:13let the forfeit be nominated for an equal pound of your fair flesh
0:14:13 > 0:14:18to be cut off and taken in what part of your body pleaseth me.
0:14:18 > 0:14:23The idea of him being able to engage Antonio in saucy banter...
0:14:23 > 0:14:25- Yes.- Because it is saucy banter, isn't it?- Yes.
0:14:25 > 0:14:28"I'm going to take a pound of flesh from whichever part of you
0:14:28 > 0:14:32- "I choose it." It's salacious! - Salacious is exactly it.
0:14:32 > 0:14:35And then the pleasure and the kind of laugh, it's like,
0:14:35 > 0:14:37"Oh, well, that will never happen."
0:14:37 > 0:14:40HE CHUCKLES
0:14:44 > 0:14:46It's presumably the universal burden of any Jew in Venice that
0:14:46 > 0:14:49you'll be crapped on constantly.
0:14:49 > 0:14:52I mean, that's the price of admission to the ghetto
0:14:52 > 0:14:57and doing business in Venice. But Shylock, it's tormenting him.
0:14:57 > 0:15:01Why should he loan 3,000 ducats to a person who's been spitting on him?
0:15:01 > 0:15:02I mean, and railing on him
0:15:02 > 0:15:04and trying to interrupt his business, and hates Jews
0:15:04 > 0:15:08and has just been utterly nasty - why should he loan him anything?
0:15:08 > 0:15:11What's in it for Shylock? The piece of paper.
0:15:11 > 0:15:14He'll have a piece of paper, the bond he is obsessed with.
0:15:14 > 0:15:18The piece of paper in which Antonio has pledged a pound of his flesh.
0:15:18 > 0:15:19What's he going to do with it?
0:15:19 > 0:15:22I think he's going to put it on his wall,
0:15:22 > 0:15:24afterwards, in his house, when the 3,000 ducats are paid back,
0:15:24 > 0:15:26and he's going to laugh every time he sees it.
0:15:26 > 0:15:30So it is a merry bond. I mean, it's a very savagely merry bond.
0:15:30 > 0:15:31I think it's fun.
0:15:31 > 0:15:34- He's being sardonic about the very idea of merriment.- Yeah.
0:15:43 > 0:15:48Howard is setting his version of the Shylock story in the present day.
0:15:48 > 0:15:50So what will he do with the Jew?
0:15:50 > 0:15:54What will it take to make the vengeful Shylock and his absurd
0:15:54 > 0:15:59proposal work as a credible and sympathetic character for our times?
0:16:00 > 0:16:02What are you scribbling?
0:16:02 > 0:16:04- My thoughts.- Ah.
0:16:06 > 0:16:08When you begin a thing like this,
0:16:08 > 0:16:11the first thing you think is, I'll write an equivalent story.
0:16:11 > 0:16:14Shylock will be a banker and we'll set it in Little Venice.
0:16:14 > 0:16:16All these obvious ideas you have.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20And then you think, no, that ain't going to work.
0:16:20 > 0:16:24I come up with a hero called Simon Strulovitch, who is a modern man,
0:16:24 > 0:16:27who doesn't have a dead wife, as Shylock does,
0:16:27 > 0:16:30but has a very sick wife and is bringing up a daughter on his own.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33To that degree it's like Shylock's story.
0:16:33 > 0:16:35But I found I couldn't write that...
0:16:35 > 0:16:38That story wouldn't work for me adequately without Shylock there.
0:16:38 > 0:16:42And a sort of equivalent to Shylock was not good enough.
0:16:42 > 0:16:43I needed Shylock there.
0:16:43 > 0:16:45So it's almost a kind of, you know,
0:16:45 > 0:16:48you could call it magic realist, except I don't like that...
0:16:48 > 0:16:51- Shylock is there.- Shylock is here. Shylock is just here.
0:16:51 > 0:16:53Ask no questions, Shylock is here.
0:16:56 > 0:17:01"A question then for Shylock, how merry was your bond?
0:17:01 > 0:17:05"When you set the forfeit at an equal pound of Antonio's fair flesh
0:17:05 > 0:17:09"to be cut off and taken from whatever part of his body it
0:17:09 > 0:17:14"pleased you, on what intended you in the matter of anatomy?
0:17:14 > 0:17:18"Did you mean salaciously, flirtatiously even,
0:17:18 > 0:17:23"to designate Antonia's penis as the part it pleased you to take?
0:17:23 > 0:17:27"Was that the pound of his fair flesh, weighing hyperbolically,
0:17:27 > 0:17:30"you originally had your sights set on?
0:17:30 > 0:17:36"Had his aim been Antonio's privy parts or Antonio's heart?
0:17:36 > 0:17:39"What makes you so sure, Shylock wondered,
0:17:39 > 0:17:42"that I knew what I intended?"
0:17:50 > 0:17:54The Merchant Of Venice is one of Shakespeare's most popular works,
0:17:54 > 0:17:57but it's also one of his problem plays.
0:17:57 > 0:18:01The drama is by design a comedy, a bawdy romp,
0:18:01 > 0:18:05partly set in the glitzy world of Portia's villa, Belmont.
0:18:05 > 0:18:09It concerns the idle rich and their silly love games,
0:18:09 > 0:18:14where fortunes and wives are won, if only you pick the right box.
0:18:14 > 0:18:16- O hell! - LAUGHTER
0:18:16 > 0:18:19The problem, then, is Shylock.
0:18:19 > 0:18:21This is not a world in which he fits.
0:18:21 > 0:18:23While the rest of the play invites us
0:18:23 > 0:18:27to laugh along with the slapstick jokes and daft riddles,
0:18:27 > 0:18:32when Shylock appears, it's hard not to choke on that laughter.
0:18:32 > 0:18:37It's a pretty unlovely world that Shakespeare paints in Venice.
0:18:37 > 0:18:40I don't mean he's saying gentiles are unlovely.
0:18:40 > 0:18:43THESE gentiles are unlovely.
0:18:43 > 0:18:46They are ne'er-do-wells, they are playboys,
0:18:46 > 0:18:49they indulge one another, they think about money all the time.
0:18:49 > 0:18:52"I keep losing my money. I've fallen in love with this woman.
0:18:52 > 0:18:55"But if you can lend me some money, I'll get over there and get her money..."
0:18:55 > 0:18:58I mean, it's a shocking deal that's being done.
0:18:58 > 0:19:02And then that's the other thing, the attitude towards the Jew.
0:19:02 > 0:19:05He is just, to them, the Jew.
0:19:05 > 0:19:09The word "the Jew" is used infinitely more times than Shylock.
0:19:09 > 0:19:12It's quite rare they actually refer to him as Shylock.
0:19:12 > 0:19:15So, all in all, in relation to one another,
0:19:15 > 0:19:18they are indulgent and idle and grasping.
0:19:18 > 0:19:20It's a world that lacks seriousness.
0:19:26 > 0:19:29But then Shakespeare complicates things
0:19:29 > 0:19:33and makes it harder to deride Shylock as a mere comic villain.
0:19:33 > 0:19:36He gives Shylock a daughter.
0:19:36 > 0:19:39And shows him capable of real love.
0:19:39 > 0:19:43She will, of course, be his undoing.
0:19:45 > 0:19:47Shylock is a widower
0:19:47 > 0:19:51and so he's bringing up his daughter Jessica alone, which isn't easy,
0:19:51 > 0:19:56for she is drawn to the temptations of the Venetian night.
0:19:56 > 0:19:57Hear you me, Jessica.
0:19:57 > 0:20:01Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum
0:20:01 > 0:20:04clamber not you up to the casements
0:20:04 > 0:20:10to-to gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces.
0:20:10 > 0:20:13Shylock, the father, pulling Jessica back,
0:20:13 > 0:20:15making her come back into the house.
0:20:15 > 0:20:18"Don't go out there, it's dangerous."
0:20:18 > 0:20:21And he's right, it is dangerous.
0:20:21 > 0:20:23Fulfilling her father's worst fears,
0:20:23 > 0:20:27Jessica makes an assignation with Lorenzo,
0:20:27 > 0:20:30yet another feckless Venetian playboy.
0:20:31 > 0:20:36Mistress, look out at window, for all this,
0:20:36 > 0:20:40there will come a Christian boy!
0:20:40 > 0:20:43- A teenage daughter. You have a teenage daughter, don't you?- I do.
0:20:43 > 0:20:46What father wants danger for his daughter?
0:20:46 > 0:20:47Well, whatever happens,
0:20:47 > 0:20:50something went wrong between Shylock and Jessica.
0:20:50 > 0:20:51That's all I can say.
0:20:51 > 0:20:54- There's no mother.- She's got no mother.- She's got no mother.
0:20:54 > 0:20:56Farewell,
0:20:56 > 0:21:00and if my fortune be not crost
0:21:00 > 0:21:02I have a father,
0:21:02 > 0:21:05you, a daughter lost!
0:21:05 > 0:21:07She runs off with Shylock's money
0:21:07 > 0:21:11and with the ring which his wife, Leah, had given him.
0:21:11 > 0:21:13Did she have to steal his money?
0:21:13 > 0:21:15Did she have to steal the ring?
0:21:15 > 0:21:17I'd say, did she have to run away with Lorenzo,
0:21:17 > 0:21:19with one of those bums?
0:21:19 > 0:21:23OK, you run away with those you know, but you don't have to steal.
0:21:26 > 0:21:29So what should we make of Shylock's daughter?
0:21:29 > 0:21:32Howard is pretty disapproving of the conniving Jessica.
0:21:33 > 0:21:37He abhors Jessica, Howard.
0:21:37 > 0:21:39He thinks she's absolutely appalling.
0:21:39 > 0:21:41This sense also of betrayal,
0:21:41 > 0:21:45yet there are people around, if you were the daughter -
0:21:45 > 0:21:46let's put aside the Jews for a second -
0:21:46 > 0:21:51imagine you had a Muslim father who was very, very orthodox,
0:21:51 > 0:21:55very angry about stuff and you wanted to be part of the world,
0:21:55 > 0:21:57why wouldn't you think,
0:21:57 > 0:21:59"I want to get a life, I want to get out of here,
0:21:59 > 0:22:02"I'm living in this other country - why can't I just be like them?"
0:22:02 > 0:22:05Fine, do it, but there are rules.
0:22:05 > 0:22:08If there's any daughter here thinking of leaving their fathers
0:22:08 > 0:22:11or their family, there are rules. Don't steal.
0:22:11 > 0:22:13Don't steal your mother's ring.
0:22:13 > 0:22:16She breaks all human rules, not just Jewish rules.
0:22:16 > 0:22:19She breaks all humane rules, Jessica.
0:22:19 > 0:22:20My Jessica is much nicer.
0:22:20 > 0:22:23Let me ask you, how many in this room
0:22:23 > 0:22:28feels as strongly about Jessica as Howard does?
0:22:28 > 0:22:31Who really, really dislikes Jessica?
0:22:32 > 0:22:34Oh, just a couple.
0:22:34 > 0:22:38And who can sympathise and understand Jessica's position?
0:22:41 > 0:22:43- Bunch of sentimentalists! - LAUGHTER
0:22:51 > 0:22:55"So if we don't do Jewish things and we don't have Jewish friends
0:22:55 > 0:22:56"and we don't eat Jewish foods
0:22:56 > 0:22:58"and we don't celebrate Jewish festivals,
0:22:58 > 0:23:01"why must I go out with Jewish boys?"
0:23:01 > 0:23:02she asked him later.
0:23:03 > 0:23:07"For the sake of continuity," he told her.
0:23:07 > 0:23:09"What do you want me to continue?"
0:23:09 > 0:23:11"The thing you were born to be."
0:23:12 > 0:23:13"Jewish?"
0:23:17 > 0:23:21HE RECITES IN HEBREW
0:23:25 > 0:23:28How's that? 60 years.
0:23:28 > 0:23:29- Ah, right.- Or thereabouts.
0:23:29 > 0:23:32- Some things you never forget.- Yeah! THEY CHUCKLE
0:23:33 > 0:23:37Real Jewish Venice was kind of in the background,
0:23:37 > 0:23:39but the plot is entirely fictional.
0:23:39 > 0:23:41Suddenly, because of Shakespeare,
0:23:41 > 0:23:43everybody thinks of money lending here,
0:23:43 > 0:23:46they don't think about the printing of the Talmud,
0:23:46 > 0:23:48the literary salon that was here in the ghetto,
0:23:48 > 0:23:50run by a woman, Sara Copia Sullam.
0:23:50 > 0:23:52When Henry VIII had to divorce his wife,
0:23:52 > 0:23:54he asked for advice from Venetian rabbis,
0:23:54 > 0:23:56so there's a way in which the ghetto was closed,
0:23:56 > 0:23:59but also disseminating Jewish culture all over the world.
0:23:59 > 0:24:02- Where we can help, we help!- Exactly!
0:24:19 > 0:24:22And to understand how Shylock came about,
0:24:22 > 0:24:25you'd go back at least to the year 1290,
0:24:25 > 0:24:27when, as many of you know,
0:24:27 > 0:24:31there was a general expulsion of the Jews from England under Edward I.
0:24:31 > 0:24:35So there were no Jews, officially, at least, in Shakespeare's England,
0:24:35 > 0:24:38but how then to explain the peculiar presence of Jews
0:24:38 > 0:24:41and Jewish subjects in the public stage?
0:24:41 > 0:24:43So did Shakespeare ever meet a Jew?
0:24:43 > 0:24:45It seems unlikely,
0:24:45 > 0:24:49although it's believed there may have been 200 or so Jews in England,
0:24:49 > 0:24:51practising their religion in secret.
0:24:51 > 0:24:54But the stock image of a red-haired, hook-nosed Jew
0:24:54 > 0:24:56from the medieval mystery plays
0:24:56 > 0:25:00was the one that Elizabethan theatres indulged.
0:25:00 > 0:25:04Jews got blamed for poisoning Europe with the Black Plague, seducing nuns
0:25:04 > 0:25:08and eating children, hoarding their blood to make their matzos.
0:25:09 > 0:25:12If Shakespeare had never met a Jew,
0:25:12 > 0:25:14how come he was so keen to write about one?
0:25:14 > 0:25:191594, the Queen's physician, Roderigo Lopez by name,
0:25:19 > 0:25:26was accused of having taken a fantastic, an unreal sum,
0:25:26 > 0:25:3150,000 ducats from the Spanish to poison the Queen.
0:25:31 > 0:25:36Roderigo Lopez was a good Protestant, but he had -
0:25:36 > 0:25:39how shall we say? - a dirty little secret.
0:25:39 > 0:25:41His parents were Jewish.
0:25:41 > 0:25:44Lopez, in his last words before he was about to be executed,
0:25:44 > 0:25:47said that he loved the Queen, in fact,
0:25:47 > 0:25:50as much as he hoped to see Jesus Christ
0:25:50 > 0:25:52within this quarter of an hour.
0:25:52 > 0:25:56- Whoa! - And the crowd erupted in laughter.
0:25:56 > 0:26:00Why does the crowd at this moment erupt in laughter?
0:26:00 > 0:26:02Well, your guess is as good as mine,
0:26:02 > 0:26:05but the overwhelming likelihood is that the crowd thought
0:26:05 > 0:26:08it was watching a play by Christopher Marlowe,
0:26:08 > 0:26:09namely The Jew Of Malta.
0:26:09 > 0:26:13Marlowe wanted to have a deeply cynical play.
0:26:13 > 0:26:16He came up with the fantastic idea
0:26:16 > 0:26:18of having a kind of Jewish antihero -
0:26:18 > 0:26:21ugly, wicked, poisons his own daughter,
0:26:21 > 0:26:24kills as many people as he can, poisons wells,
0:26:24 > 0:26:27constantly saying things like, "I have a burning love for you,"
0:26:27 > 0:26:31then says as an aside, "I'm going to burn your house down."
0:26:31 > 0:26:33So when he says, "I love the Queen
0:26:33 > 0:26:36"as much as I hope to see Jesus Christ within a quarter of an hour,"
0:26:36 > 0:26:38they heard some kind of Marlovian joke.
0:26:38 > 0:26:44How interesting that The Jew Of Malta was so popular
0:26:44 > 0:26:47that it could have entered the public imagination to this degree.
0:26:47 > 0:26:52Probably not the only factor in what is going on in the crowd's response,
0:26:52 > 0:26:58but I think the crowd is hearing this secret Jewish joke.
0:26:58 > 0:27:01- Could be the first Jewish joke. - Yeah!
0:27:01 > 0:27:04You've discovered the first Jewish joke.
0:27:04 > 0:27:07Poor Lopez probably wasn't thinking this at all, poor bastard.
0:27:07 > 0:27:11Tell me about the execution. Was Shakespeare there?
0:27:11 > 0:27:14I think there's a very strong presumption that Shakespeare
0:27:14 > 0:27:21was an aficionado of executions and he's an expert in how to arouse,
0:27:21 > 0:27:25manipulate, use crowd excitement and crowd laughter.
0:27:25 > 0:27:31So why wouldn't he want to see these exercises in mass entertainment,
0:27:31 > 0:27:33anxiety, hysteria, laughter, whatever we call it?
0:27:33 > 0:27:35This is what he needs to work with.
0:27:35 > 0:27:37He's in the business of understanding
0:27:37 > 0:27:40how to tap into crowd phenomena of this kind.
0:27:51 > 0:27:57And you may not be surprised to hear that one of the play's biggest fans
0:27:57 > 0:27:59was this man.
0:27:59 > 0:28:01Between 1933 and '39,
0:28:01 > 0:28:05over 50 major productions of The Merchant Of Venice
0:28:05 > 0:28:06were staged in Nazi Germany.
0:28:08 > 0:28:11- ACTOR:- Ihr scheltet mich abtrunnig,
0:28:11 > 0:28:14einen Bluthund...
0:28:14 > 0:28:15In the words of one critic
0:28:15 > 0:28:19reviewing Werner Krauss's much-acclaimed performance,
0:28:19 > 0:28:21"With a crash and a weird train of shadows,
0:28:21 > 0:28:23"something revoltingly alien
0:28:23 > 0:28:27"and startlingly repulsive crawled across the stage."
0:28:28 > 0:28:30If they thought the message wasn't clear enough,
0:28:30 > 0:28:33theatres would plant hecklers in the audience
0:28:33 > 0:28:35to boo and curse Shylock when he appeared.
0:28:38 > 0:28:42There were 2,000 Jews living in Venice when the Nazis arrived.
0:28:47 > 0:28:50"The city of Venice remembers the Venetian Jews
0:28:50 > 0:28:54"who were deported to the Nazi concentration camps
0:28:54 > 0:28:59- "on December 5th 1943..." - Yes.- "..and August 17th 1944."
0:28:59 > 0:29:03They took 200 Jews to Auschwitz
0:29:03 > 0:29:06- and only eight came back to Venice. - Yeah.
0:29:06 > 0:29:10You worry sometimes that there's a proliferation of these things
0:29:10 > 0:29:13and that then we become inured to it
0:29:13 > 0:29:15and memory loses its power and we're just used to them,
0:29:15 > 0:29:17but here, where it happened,
0:29:17 > 0:29:18it's very effective.
0:29:26 > 0:29:28I'm glad it's here, Alan.
0:29:28 > 0:29:30Yeah.
0:29:30 > 0:29:32I may have had my fill, we may both have had our fill
0:29:32 > 0:29:34of looking at things like this,
0:29:34 > 0:29:36but I'm glad this is here, this needs to be here.
0:29:49 > 0:29:53Shakespeare created his Jew 400 years ago,
0:29:53 > 0:29:57but Shylock turned out to be a lightning rod for anti-Jewish hatred
0:29:57 > 0:30:00for any age who wanted him.
0:30:00 > 0:30:02So how much blame should we lay at the door
0:30:02 > 0:30:03of the long-dead writer for this?
0:30:05 > 0:30:11Merchant Of Venice is a cold, disturbing, loveless play
0:30:11 > 0:30:14and if it were by any other author than William Shakespeare,
0:30:14 > 0:30:17it would not now be staged.
0:30:17 > 0:30:20It's been a play that has done immense damage.
0:30:20 > 0:30:23We pay a very high price for its good qualities.
0:30:23 > 0:30:25How do we know it's done immense damage?
0:30:25 > 0:30:28Well, it's been a common thing that Shylock has been held up
0:30:28 > 0:30:33as an anti-Semitic archetype by unquestionable anti-Semites.
0:30:33 > 0:30:34When Disraeli was Prime Minister,
0:30:34 > 0:30:36his opponents used to shout, "Shylock!" at him
0:30:36 > 0:30:39in the House of Commons, it was their favourite heckle,
0:30:39 > 0:30:44and "Shylock" in that one word meant "greedy, pitiless and alien."
0:30:44 > 0:30:49The reason that Shylock is such a powerful archetype
0:30:49 > 0:30:51is not that the English are more anti-Semitic,
0:30:51 > 0:30:54it's just that Shakespeare is a better writer than anybody else.
0:30:54 > 0:30:55But that's so strange, isn't it?
0:30:55 > 0:31:00To say the better the writer, the more dangerous the play.
0:31:00 > 0:31:03Well, because a monster is made.
0:31:03 > 0:31:04A monster isn't born.
0:31:04 > 0:31:08Because we've seen him spat upon and insulted
0:31:08 > 0:31:12and mistreated by the people who need his help...
0:31:13 > 0:31:15..we can just understand
0:31:15 > 0:31:17his malevolence,
0:31:17 > 0:31:19which nonetheless is unjustifiable.
0:31:19 > 0:31:22There's no way, taking Shylock in the round,
0:31:22 > 0:31:27that he's other than a terrible, nasty man.
0:31:27 > 0:31:29I think that sets off a fear in people
0:31:29 > 0:31:31of somebody that they've wronged.
0:31:31 > 0:31:35"How could we do this to a people and now not fear them?"
0:31:35 > 0:31:37That's what makes it a powerful stereotype.
0:31:37 > 0:31:39Couldn't we invert your argument and imagine Shakespeare saying,
0:31:39 > 0:31:41"OK, we have no Jews here.
0:31:41 > 0:31:45"You have an imaginary Jew. Let me give you a real Jew.
0:31:45 > 0:31:47"Let me flesh out your imaginings
0:31:47 > 0:31:50"and look how different it might be from what you imagine,
0:31:50 > 0:31:54"because look how like you in so many ways the Jew is,"
0:31:54 > 0:31:58could that not be what Shakespeare is up to?
0:31:58 > 0:32:00Each aspect of Shylock's humanity,
0:32:00 > 0:32:04each sympathetic quality he has is then tarnished in some way.
0:32:04 > 0:32:07Yes, he has trouble bringing up his daughter,
0:32:07 > 0:32:08yes, he cares about her
0:32:08 > 0:32:11and he cares more about his ducats than about his daughter.
0:32:11 > 0:32:13- We don't know that. - Well...- That's reported.
0:32:13 > 0:32:15- Oh, urgh!- That's what...
0:32:15 > 0:32:17Shylock doesn't come on the stage
0:32:17 > 0:32:19and say, "My ducats, oh, and by the way, my daughter."
0:32:19 > 0:32:22That's reported and that's reported by people
0:32:22 > 0:32:24- who we don't trust about anything. - Fair point.
0:32:24 > 0:32:26No, fair point and yet another example
0:32:26 > 0:32:28of the endless ambiguity of these things,
0:32:28 > 0:32:31but I think you would find it tough
0:32:31 > 0:32:36to make a claim that Shylock is a sympathetic character,
0:32:36 > 0:32:39even though almost every Shylock that I've ever seen
0:32:39 > 0:32:43on stage or on screen has been played more sympathetically
0:32:43 > 0:32:45than a bare reading of the text demands.
0:32:45 > 0:32:48You can contextualise him,
0:32:48 > 0:32:52you can humanise him. What you can't do is to make him a goodie.
0:32:56 > 0:32:57Rolling!
0:32:57 > 0:32:59Shylock.
0:33:05 > 0:33:07'Hath not a Jew eyes?'
0:33:08 > 0:33:10Hath not a Jew hands?
0:33:12 > 0:33:14Organs?
0:33:14 > 0:33:16Dimensions, senses, affections?
0:33:18 > 0:33:19Passions?
0:33:23 > 0:33:26'If you prick us, do we not bleed?'
0:33:27 > 0:33:29If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
0:33:29 > 0:33:32If you poison us, do we not die?
0:33:32 > 0:33:36And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
0:33:36 > 0:33:40If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that!
0:33:44 > 0:33:48If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?
0:33:48 > 0:33:49Revenge.
0:33:49 > 0:33:53If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be
0:33:53 > 0:33:55by Christian example?
0:33:56 > 0:33:57Why, revenge.
0:34:00 > 0:34:04In recent years, many leading actors have taken the role of Shylock
0:34:04 > 0:34:07and have tended to play him sympathetically.
0:34:07 > 0:34:10Nothing less than a modern audience demands.
0:34:10 > 0:34:12But there is one who went against the grain.
0:34:12 > 0:34:14Good to see you. This is so nice of you to do this,
0:34:14 > 0:34:17cos I know you're on tonight.
0:34:17 > 0:34:18That's very kind.
0:34:18 > 0:34:20Antony Sher played Shylock
0:34:20 > 0:34:25as a provocative portrait of a nasty, Middle Eastern, unassimilated Jew.
0:34:26 > 0:34:30I'm excited by Shylock and I root for him.
0:34:30 > 0:34:32- Yeah.- I don't know whether...
0:34:32 > 0:34:35I didn't have the privilege of seeing yours,
0:34:35 > 0:34:38but I wonder if I would have rooted for yours.
0:34:38 > 0:34:43- Do you really root for him when he wants the pound of flesh?- Yeah.
0:34:43 > 0:34:45Let me tell you...
0:34:47 > 0:34:49How now, Shylock? What news among the merchants?
0:34:49 > 0:34:53- IN HEAVY ACCENT:- You knew - none so well, none so well as you -
0:34:53 > 0:34:55of my daughter's flight!
0:34:55 > 0:34:58There was much consternation from some critics,
0:34:58 > 0:35:01because they feel you made your Shylock too much of a monster.
0:35:01 > 0:35:05I say my daughter is my flesh and my blood.
0:35:05 > 0:35:10The sense I get - you played him as a kind of oily, hand-wringing Jew
0:35:10 > 0:35:15of the sort that people who don't like Jews think Jews are.
0:35:15 > 0:35:19I don't remember ringing my hands, but I certainly do remember
0:35:19 > 0:35:23playing at subservience in that first scene
0:35:23 > 0:35:28which maybe would have offended people,
0:35:28 > 0:35:32but it seemed to me what the story is about.
0:35:32 > 0:35:36He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million,
0:35:36 > 0:35:41laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation!
0:35:41 > 0:35:45'It needed to be from a position of'
0:35:45 > 0:35:47a non-person talking to a person.
0:35:47 > 0:35:51As you played him, as you read the play, he never becomes a person
0:35:51 > 0:35:54from that non-person, he just becomes monstrous.
0:35:55 > 0:35:57He becomes monstrous, but on the way,
0:35:57 > 0:36:03you see into him in the way that only Shakespeare can.
0:36:03 > 0:36:08"Hath not a Jew eyes?" That is an incredible speech.
0:36:08 > 0:36:11"If you tickle us, do we not laugh?"
0:36:11 > 0:36:13Isn't that amazing?
0:36:13 > 0:36:18I mean, "tickle" - one doesn't imagine people in Shakespeare's time
0:36:18 > 0:36:20going round tickling one another,
0:36:20 > 0:36:22but, of course, it's human, it makes it so human.
0:36:22 > 0:36:27I absolutely agree with you, but there are critics of the play who,
0:36:27 > 0:36:31particularly those who think it's an anti-Semitic play,
0:36:31 > 0:36:32that's that,
0:36:32 > 0:36:34who particularly hate that speech
0:36:34 > 0:36:37and within that speech, particularly hate that line...
0:36:37 > 0:36:40- Oh, my...- ..because they feel that it could be a dog
0:36:40 > 0:36:43that we're talking about. That is very much a speech
0:36:43 > 0:36:47that is read wildly differently between people.
0:36:47 > 0:36:50- But you are firmly on the side of that speech.- Yes.
0:36:50 > 0:36:56I think it is someone who hasn't been able to be a proper person
0:36:56 > 0:37:00in this society saying, "I am a human being.
0:37:00 > 0:37:02"Like you."
0:37:02 > 0:37:05- It's there, isn't it? "To bait fish withal."- Yeah.
0:37:07 > 0:37:10So it starts off with, "Hath not a Jew eyes?
0:37:10 > 0:37:12"Hath not a Jew hands, organs..."
0:37:12 > 0:37:17So it is simply these things that make us human beings,
0:37:17 > 0:37:19and then it's the detail,
0:37:19 > 0:37:23"Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons.
0:37:23 > 0:37:28"If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?"
0:37:28 > 0:37:33There is a terrific rhythm, just of, again and again, me and you,
0:37:33 > 0:37:37"And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
0:37:38 > 0:37:41"If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
0:37:41 > 0:37:46"If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge.
0:37:46 > 0:37:50"If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be
0:37:50 > 0:37:54"by Christian example? Why, revenge.
0:37:54 > 0:37:57"The villainy you teach me,
0:37:57 > 0:38:01"I will execute and it shall go hard,
0:38:01 > 0:38:04"but I will better the instruction."
0:38:04 > 0:38:05Brilliant!
0:38:05 > 0:38:07Even "It shall go hard."
0:38:07 > 0:38:11"It will be difficult for me to be as monstrous
0:38:11 > 0:38:14- "as you have taught me." - Oh, you read it like that?
0:38:14 > 0:38:17I thought it was, "Shall go hard for you."
0:38:17 > 0:38:18Oh, no, I think it's,
0:38:18 > 0:38:24"And it's not going to be easy, but I will become this monster."
0:38:24 > 0:38:26MUSIC: Train Song, by Vashti Bunyan
0:38:33 > 0:38:38# Travelling north Travelling north to find you
0:38:38 > 0:38:42# Train wheels beating The wind in my eyes
0:38:42 > 0:38:47# Don't even know what I'll say when I find you
0:38:47 > 0:38:51# Call out your name, love, don't be surprised... #
0:38:51 > 0:38:52Biscuits?
0:38:54 > 0:38:58For his own novel, Howard has removed the action from Venice
0:38:58 > 0:39:02and taken it home to where he grew up in suburban Manchester.
0:39:02 > 0:39:04Milk?
0:39:04 > 0:39:06No, thank you.
0:39:06 > 0:39:11Alderley Edge, that was the sort of nirvana, wasn't it, basically?
0:39:11 > 0:39:13Yeah, that's south Manchester.
0:39:13 > 0:39:15If you were a lawyer or a doctor,
0:39:15 > 0:39:17you aspired to live in south Manchester.
0:39:17 > 0:39:20And if you met a girl out in town who lived in south Manchester,
0:39:20 > 0:39:23you got very excited, cos she was classy.
0:39:23 > 0:39:25Jewish girls?
0:39:27 > 0:39:30The ones I told my parents about were, yes.
0:39:38 > 0:39:42Younger than me, younger than me, younger than me,
0:39:42 > 0:39:44the same age as me,
0:39:44 > 0:39:47younger than me, younger than me.
0:39:47 > 0:39:50- Older than me. Alan!- That's good!
0:39:53 > 0:39:58"There are two men in this cemetery occupied in duties of the heart.
0:39:58 > 0:39:59"They don't look up.
0:39:59 > 0:40:01"He is Simon Strulovitch,
0:40:01 > 0:40:04"a rich, furious, but easily hurt philanthropist
0:40:04 > 0:40:06"with a passion for Shakespeare
0:40:06 > 0:40:09"and a daughter going off the rails."
0:40:09 > 0:40:13"The second person here, long before Strulovitch arrived,
0:40:13 > 0:40:16"tenderly addressing the occupant of a grave
0:40:16 > 0:40:19"whose headstone is worn to nothing
0:40:19 > 0:40:20"is Shylock."
0:40:22 > 0:40:26"Of course Shylock is here among the dead. When hasn't he been?"
0:40:30 > 0:40:32It's bleak, isn't it?
0:40:32 > 0:40:33Yeah.
0:40:34 > 0:40:37There's always a feeling with Jewish cemeteries
0:40:37 > 0:40:40that they are not relieved by beauty.
0:40:40 > 0:40:43Almost as though there's a built-in austerity
0:40:43 > 0:40:46around the Jewish idea of death.
0:40:46 > 0:40:49But this is where you've chosen to open your novel,
0:40:49 > 0:40:50in this cemetery.
0:40:50 > 0:40:53There's a moment in The Merchant Of Venice,
0:40:53 > 0:40:58it's just the briefest moment, when Shylock mentions that he had a wife.
0:40:58 > 0:41:01And I thought, to see him, for him to be seen in a cemetery,
0:41:01 > 0:41:03mourning his wife, grieving over his wife,
0:41:03 > 0:41:06as though he's been grieving over her for ever
0:41:06 > 0:41:08and will grieve for her for ever,
0:41:08 > 0:41:11it seemed a perfect place to conceive of Shylock
0:41:11 > 0:41:15as a figure of then and as a figure of now.
0:41:15 > 0:41:18I always feel about Shylock that there's a lot he's not saying.
0:41:18 > 0:41:22I can imagine that he's talking to someone, talking to Leah, why not?
0:41:22 > 0:41:26It's surprisingly easy to imagine him having this conversation,
0:41:26 > 0:41:29because there is so much not said in the play,
0:41:29 > 0:41:32but you feel he must somewhere be saying,
0:41:32 > 0:41:35cos he is so intelligent, he is so quick,
0:41:35 > 0:41:37that the minute I started writing that,
0:41:37 > 0:41:42- it just came.- It fills in those gaps you may not know about.
0:41:42 > 0:41:44I like that way of putting it - the gaps.
0:42:09 > 0:42:13A wronged man, loving father, grieving widower -
0:42:13 > 0:42:15Shylock may well have been all these things,
0:42:15 > 0:42:19but the world remembers him as the enraged Jew,
0:42:19 > 0:42:22swearing an unreasonable revenge in the Venetian court,
0:42:22 > 0:42:27unswayed by Portia's notorious speech, "The quality of mercy."
0:42:27 > 0:42:32The court scene, this famous, pivotal scene in the courtroom
0:42:32 > 0:42:36where Shylock is there holding his knife, enjoying it.
0:42:36 > 0:42:39And this is the toughest scene, because our feelings
0:42:39 > 0:42:42from that moment shift about.
0:42:42 > 0:42:43We have to deal with the fact
0:42:43 > 0:42:46that Shylock has never been more intransigent
0:42:46 > 0:42:50than he is here and the more people say, "Show mercy,"
0:42:50 > 0:42:53the more he reminds them that they haven't ever shown mercy to him,
0:42:53 > 0:42:55why should he show mercy to them?
0:42:55 > 0:42:59His pound of flesh was part of the deal, it's a contract.
0:42:59 > 0:43:00And he's right.
0:43:03 > 0:43:06Shylock is deranged by Jessica's disappearance.
0:43:06 > 0:43:09All Venice is laughing at him.
0:43:09 > 0:43:12He's determined to meet Antonio in court.
0:43:12 > 0:43:15He will have his bond.
0:43:15 > 0:43:18The pound of flesh which I demand of him is dearly bought.
0:43:18 > 0:43:20'tis mine
0:43:20 > 0:43:21and I will have it!
0:43:23 > 0:43:27Enter Portia, dressed as a male lawyer.
0:43:27 > 0:43:29Do you confess the bond?
0:43:29 > 0:43:33- I do.- Then must the Jew be merciful?
0:43:33 > 0:43:36Ha! Upon what compulsion must I? Tell me that!
0:43:37 > 0:43:40The quality of mercy is not strained.
0:43:40 > 0:43:45The quality of mercy is not strained, but Portia strains it.
0:43:45 > 0:43:48She out-legals Shylock,
0:43:48 > 0:43:52proving to the court that his designs on Antonio's heart
0:43:52 > 0:43:56are tantamount to conspiracy to murder.
0:43:56 > 0:43:58ANTONIO ROARS IN FEAR
0:44:01 > 0:44:02Tarry a little!
0:44:02 > 0:44:04There is something else.
0:44:04 > 0:44:08This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood.
0:44:08 > 0:44:13The words expressly are "a pound of flesh."
0:44:13 > 0:44:15Take then thy bond.
0:44:15 > 0:44:17Take though thy pound of flesh.
0:44:17 > 0:44:20But in the cutting it if thou dost shed one drop
0:44:20 > 0:44:22of Christian blood,
0:44:22 > 0:44:25thy lands and goods are by the laws of Venice
0:44:25 > 0:44:31- confiscate unto the state of Venice. - Oh, upright judge!
0:44:31 > 0:44:36He cannot have his pound of flesh without forfeiting his own life,
0:44:36 > 0:44:38he must lose his fortune
0:44:38 > 0:44:42and worst of all, he is to be converted -
0:44:42 > 0:44:45the Jew become a Christian.
0:44:45 > 0:44:47No!
0:44:47 > 0:44:50No! No, please! No!
0:44:57 > 0:44:59What was Shylock thinking?
0:44:59 > 0:45:03Did he really believe he could take on the Venetian establishment
0:45:03 > 0:45:04and win?
0:45:08 > 0:45:10And my brother saw it, because my brother knows me,
0:45:10 > 0:45:11I guess, as well as anybody.
0:45:11 > 0:45:13I said, "What did you think, Ron?
0:45:13 > 0:45:16"Did you think I was going to kill him?"
0:45:16 > 0:45:17He said an interesting thing -
0:45:17 > 0:45:20he said, "I don't know, I felt like you wanted...
0:45:20 > 0:45:23"I felt like you wanted to cut him.
0:45:23 > 0:45:25"I think you wanted some blood."
0:45:27 > 0:45:29The trial of the modern Jew,
0:45:29 > 0:45:32"The trial which never ends," wrote Philip Roth,
0:45:32 > 0:45:35begins with the trial of Shylock.
0:45:35 > 0:45:39In 2010, the lawyer Anthony Julius wrote a definitive history
0:45:39 > 0:45:43of anti-Semitism in England, in which he looked at how much damage
0:45:43 > 0:45:47Shakespeare caused with his indefensibly sadistic character.
0:45:48 > 0:45:50If you look at the tradition
0:45:50 > 0:45:54of what is called in another context the agelast,
0:45:54 > 0:45:56the person who actually exists
0:45:56 > 0:46:00in order to destroy joy in other people,
0:46:00 > 0:46:02the person whose very presence
0:46:02 > 0:46:05introduces a kind of chill in the room,
0:46:05 > 0:46:09who wipes the smiles off other people's faces,
0:46:09 > 0:46:11that's the kind of person that Shylock is.
0:46:11 > 0:46:14He stands in that literary tradition.
0:46:14 > 0:46:16He brings everyone down.
0:46:16 > 0:46:19There is some truth about the joylessness of it,
0:46:19 > 0:46:21but not the absence of wit
0:46:21 > 0:46:24and mischief, which from the very beginning is there
0:46:24 > 0:46:27in the "pound of flesh" proposition, isn't it?
0:46:27 > 0:46:29"A pound of flesh from whichever part of your person
0:46:29 > 0:46:30"it should please me to take."
0:46:30 > 0:46:33Yes, you can't say that doesn't bring a smile to your face.
0:46:33 > 0:46:36It's a lethal act.
0:46:36 > 0:46:42It carries the certainty, or near certainty, of a protracted torture
0:46:42 > 0:46:45- which ends in the death of the victim.- Yes.
0:46:45 > 0:46:47It's a kind of crucifixion.
0:46:47 > 0:46:49We don't think he should do it.
0:46:49 > 0:46:52No, not that we don't think he should do it,
0:46:52 > 0:46:55we recognise what it resonates with
0:46:55 > 0:46:58- as an ambition. - But also, we never see him do it
0:46:58 > 0:47:01and we will never properly know whether Shakespeare himself
0:47:01 > 0:47:06holds back on that one, not just because of the legalistics.
0:47:06 > 0:47:10Is there any possibility that he would have not done it?
0:47:10 > 0:47:12Would he definitely have carried it out?
0:47:12 > 0:47:14I think there's nothing in the logic of the play
0:47:14 > 0:47:19that suggests that the threat was anything other than real.
0:47:19 > 0:47:22The Shylock in my novel says, "I just don't know, I can't tell you.
0:47:22 > 0:47:27- "The urge was on me to do it." - I think it's a sentimentality.
0:47:27 > 0:47:30I think that's where you depart from...
0:47:30 > 0:47:33- Yours is a sentimentality on the other side.- No, I don't think so.
0:47:33 > 0:47:38I think I'm reading it in the grain of the play to recognise
0:47:38 > 0:47:41- Shylock's murderousness. - How murderous was Shylock?
0:47:41 > 0:47:44If Shylock was so murderous, how come it was not referred to before?
0:47:44 > 0:47:48If Shylock was so murderous, how come people didn't know,
0:47:48 > 0:47:49"Don't go near him,"
0:47:49 > 0:47:52and when he says, "I'll have a pound of your flesh,"
0:47:52 > 0:47:54what history of murderousness in Shylock is there?
0:47:54 > 0:47:56Yours is the speech to the jury -
0:47:56 > 0:47:59"Members of the jury, look at this angelic man.
0:47:59 > 0:48:02- "Is it possible..."- You know I never said he was an angelic man.
0:48:02 > 0:48:05"Could you imagine such a person lifting his hand...?"
0:48:05 > 0:48:08Not for one moment would I call him an angelic man.
0:48:08 > 0:48:11When Antonio accepts the deal,
0:48:11 > 0:48:14does he think, "Oh, fine, I'm going to be fine,
0:48:14 > 0:48:18- "I'm not going to be bust..."? - I think he thinks three things.
0:48:18 > 0:48:23First of all, I think he thinks, "In my homoerotic clinch,
0:48:23 > 0:48:28"I can demonstrate my love for the very person whom otherwise
0:48:28 > 0:48:30"I cannot express my love for,"
0:48:30 > 0:48:33by saying, in effect, "I would die for you."
0:48:33 > 0:48:37Secondly, he thinks, "I am in a position of such great power
0:48:37 > 0:48:39"that no Jew can really threaten me,"
0:48:39 > 0:48:43and thirdly, he thinks, "The likelihood of this happening
0:48:43 > 0:48:47"is so remote because I am the kind of merchant that I am,"
0:48:47 > 0:48:50that it's a safe bet.
0:48:50 > 0:48:53But I don't think that he thinks...
0:48:55 > 0:48:59.."I can rely on Shylock not to enforce in extremis."
0:48:59 > 0:49:01Well, he doesn't have to go as far as that,
0:49:01 > 0:49:04but you would think it might have been raised by him
0:49:04 > 0:49:06- or his many friends...- His lawyers?
0:49:06 > 0:49:08Just leave lawyers out of it for a minute.
0:49:08 > 0:49:11Are you sure anyone agrees with this kind of trade?
0:49:11 > 0:49:14- Just pause and look at that phrase. - In a world without lawyers...
0:49:14 > 0:49:16How would you have represented him?
0:49:16 > 0:49:19I would have told him not to do the deal.
0:49:19 > 0:49:22Wouldn't have been a very good play, then, would it?
0:49:22 > 0:49:24THEY CHUCKLE
0:49:29 > 0:49:31Once the lawyers have finished with him,
0:49:31 > 0:49:36Shylock is left broken, stripped of his dignity, his fortune.
0:49:36 > 0:49:41There's no character in Shakespeare who comes in for such a debasement,
0:49:41 > 0:49:42his humanity shredded.
0:49:44 > 0:49:48It's a magnificent part. I think the play is the problem.
0:49:48 > 0:49:49What is that problem?
0:49:49 > 0:49:53Well, there are two main halves of the play,
0:49:53 > 0:49:57the Portia half and the Shylock half.
0:49:57 > 0:50:02Now, when Shakespeare wrote it, it was probably possible
0:50:02 > 0:50:07for them to exist side by side.
0:50:07 > 0:50:10After the Holocaust, it's not possible to do that,
0:50:10 > 0:50:15because anti-Semitism, in Shakespeare's time,
0:50:15 > 0:50:19it was perhaps just one of the nasty traits
0:50:19 > 0:50:21in humanity.
0:50:21 > 0:50:25We now know it can lead to Auschwitz,
0:50:25 > 0:50:30so suddenly that side of the play has a weight to it
0:50:30 > 0:50:33that completely overbalances the other side.
0:50:33 > 0:50:39My whole experience of doing that play over two years
0:50:39 > 0:50:44was sort of coming to the conclusion that it don't work any more.
0:50:51 > 0:50:54What deepens this historical shadow
0:50:54 > 0:50:57is the fact that the otherwise eloquent Shylock
0:50:57 > 0:50:59not only loses the argument -
0:50:59 > 0:51:01he's virtually struck dumb.
0:51:02 > 0:51:04Halfway through the trial, Portia takes over
0:51:04 > 0:51:07and Shakespeare doesn't give me anything to say
0:51:07 > 0:51:09and that's the toughest part.
0:51:09 > 0:51:11I always feel that if Shakespeare were still alive,
0:51:11 > 0:51:15I'd be looking out in the orchestra seats during rehearsal saying,
0:51:15 > 0:51:18"Come on, Willy, give me some lines."
0:51:18 > 0:51:20What dost thou say?
0:51:23 > 0:51:24I am content.
0:51:28 > 0:51:30Shylock excuses himself from the court,
0:51:30 > 0:51:32feeling unwell.
0:51:32 > 0:51:35And that will be the last we ever see of him.
0:51:37 > 0:51:40Shylock leaves at Act IV and is gone and the play has then got
0:51:40 > 0:51:43nowhere to go and nothing to do for another act.
0:51:43 > 0:51:47Shakespeare's stuck. It's one of the most spectacular problems -
0:51:47 > 0:51:48he has to figure out how to write Act V
0:51:48 > 0:51:54and he does it in unbelievably uncomfortable scenes
0:51:54 > 0:51:58about castration, about jealousy and adultery,
0:51:58 > 0:52:00about the relationship between men and women,
0:52:00 > 0:52:02about what you do with a gay lover,
0:52:02 > 0:52:05about how to control him and contain him.
0:52:05 > 0:52:08You can see Shakespeare working fantastically hard
0:52:08 > 0:52:12to try to solve a lot of problems, but as a piece of comedy...
0:52:12 > 0:52:14I've seen the play innumerable times,
0:52:14 > 0:52:18- I've never seen an Act V that works. - I now leave.
0:52:25 > 0:52:26Could Howard be right?
0:52:27 > 0:52:30What's to stay for once Shylock has gone?
0:52:30 > 0:52:32MAN SPEAKS LATIN
0:52:34 > 0:52:36Credo.
0:52:36 > 0:52:38PRIEST SPEAKS LATIN
0:52:40 > 0:52:43The Globe production with Jonathan Pryce as Shylock
0:52:43 > 0:52:49bravely added a scene at the end, enacting Shylock's conversion.
0:52:49 > 0:52:51Shakespeare didn't write this scene.
0:52:51 > 0:52:54It realises what he merely implied.
0:52:54 > 0:52:56HE GASPS AND WHIMPERS
0:52:59 > 0:53:02Seeing the Jew turn Christian is shocking.
0:53:04 > 0:53:05Of course, Howard missed it.
0:53:07 > 0:53:09PRIEST SPEAKS LATIN
0:53:11 > 0:53:14- PRIEST:- Amen.
0:53:14 > 0:53:15Amen!
0:53:19 > 0:53:22The punishment is not death, because after all,
0:53:22 > 0:53:26it's a capital crime to threaten the life of a citizen of Venice.
0:53:26 > 0:53:29He is shown the mercy that he himself denies.
0:53:29 > 0:53:31He's forced to convert and work for his daughter...
0:53:31 > 0:53:35That's not merciful, it's not merciful, it's a vile mercy.
0:53:35 > 0:53:37But he chooses it.
0:53:37 > 0:53:40- He chooses it.- He chooses it instead of having his head cut off.
0:53:40 > 0:53:42Why should a man want his head cut off?
0:53:42 > 0:53:46Because that's what Shakespeare, again in the logic of the play,
0:53:46 > 0:53:49respects, that's what we respect.
0:53:49 > 0:53:51After all, if you look at the narratives
0:53:51 > 0:53:55of Jewish martyrdom in the First, Second Crusades,
0:53:55 > 0:53:57that is exactly how the Jews understood
0:53:57 > 0:54:00the choice that was confronting them.
0:54:00 > 0:54:04Yes, better to be, says Proverbs, a live dog than a dead lion,
0:54:04 > 0:54:07except when you're required to convert
0:54:07 > 0:54:13and then it is a sanctification of God's name to accept death
0:54:13 > 0:54:15and even in the Jewish tradition,
0:54:15 > 0:54:18which is a more complicated, nuanced tradition
0:54:18 > 0:54:21than the Christian one, on this point of martyrdom,
0:54:21 > 0:54:25there the two traditions agree and that's what's denied to Shylock.
0:54:31 > 0:54:34Shylock has been thwarted, humiliated
0:54:34 > 0:54:36and some would even say destroyed.
0:54:37 > 0:54:39He is finished.
0:54:40 > 0:54:44Our hearts hurt after what we've just seen
0:54:44 > 0:54:48and there's nothing left now but rancid feelings.
0:55:09 > 0:55:12For a writer bringing Shylock's story up to date,
0:55:12 > 0:55:17it would be tempting to rethink the knottiest of the play's conundrums -
0:55:17 > 0:55:20how to give the old Jew his revenge,
0:55:20 > 0:55:23and his pound of a Christian's flesh -
0:55:23 > 0:55:27but NOT with a deal that makes him guilty of conspiracy to murder.
0:55:29 > 0:55:31Howard has come up with a neat solution.
0:55:31 > 0:55:35It would not be murderous to cut off a pound of flesh,
0:55:35 > 0:55:37if said flesh was your wayward daughter's
0:55:37 > 0:55:41footballer boyfriend's foreskin.
0:55:44 > 0:55:46When I was thinking of how I could do this,
0:55:46 > 0:55:50I had what I thought was a blinding moment of inspiration.
0:55:50 > 0:55:52I suddenly saw what it all meant.
0:55:52 > 0:55:55That the pound of flesh is a play upon circumcision.
0:55:55 > 0:55:57The cut in the heart means something else.
0:55:57 > 0:56:01And Shakespeare understood how explosive on so many levels
0:56:01 > 0:56:03that cut was.
0:56:03 > 0:56:06That there is proper justification for this.
0:56:06 > 0:56:09If there's one thing that I can speak with some authority,
0:56:09 > 0:56:11that Elizabethans would've known watching this play,
0:56:11 > 0:56:15it's St Paul's... Writing about circumcision,
0:56:15 > 0:56:18for Paul, no struggle was greater than the struggle
0:56:18 > 0:56:21about his former Jewish nature -
0:56:21 > 0:56:24he had been Saul, now he's Paul.
0:56:24 > 0:56:25So, as Saul he'd been circumcised.
0:56:25 > 0:56:28And as Paul he still was!
0:56:28 > 0:56:30He's looking down and he knows...
0:56:30 > 0:56:33He's Paul and that's Saul!
0:56:33 > 0:56:37So how do you...reconcile that?
0:56:37 > 0:56:40You have to come up with a Christian way
0:56:40 > 0:56:43that is an equivalent that supersedes this.
0:56:43 > 0:56:47And Paul, being the brilliant man and Jew that he was, thought,
0:56:47 > 0:56:51"OK, Jews can be circumcised in the flesh," as he puts it,
0:56:51 > 0:56:57"but Christians are circumcised symbolically, in the heart."
0:56:57 > 0:57:00Did Shakespeare really think of circumcision
0:57:00 > 0:57:04as the circumcision of the flesh and heart as those two places?
0:57:04 > 0:57:07Absolutely. Would everybody in the audience have thought of that?
0:57:07 > 0:57:09- Absolutely.- Absolutely?- Absolutely.
0:57:09 > 0:57:11So, by the time you get to Act IV,
0:57:11 > 0:57:14where he's going to cut from the heart,
0:57:14 > 0:57:16it's this wonderful moment
0:57:16 > 0:57:20where Shylock's going to circumcise Antonio
0:57:20 > 0:57:24in the place where Christians are symbolically circumcised.
0:57:24 > 0:57:26"This is where you're symbolically circumcised?
0:57:26 > 0:57:27"Let me do it for you."
0:57:27 > 0:57:30"Happy to do it for you. It's gonna hurt a little bit."
0:57:30 > 0:57:31HOWARD LAUGHS
0:57:33 > 0:57:36You say, I think, that the ritual of the circumcision
0:57:36 > 0:57:39and the fear of what seems to have grown out of
0:57:39 > 0:57:41Gentile misunderstanding of circumcision,
0:57:41 > 0:57:44which is that it's akin to castration -
0:57:44 > 0:57:47in that the blood libel contains that idea, doesn't it?
0:57:47 > 0:57:49When the Gentile's child was killed,
0:57:49 > 0:57:52- ritualistically, castration may have happened.- Yes.
0:57:52 > 0:57:55Some people wrote at the time that Jewish men menstruated,
0:57:55 > 0:57:59which is why they had to replace lost blood, and kill Christian kids.
0:57:59 > 0:58:01Samuel Purkis, Shakespeare's contemporary,
0:58:01 > 0:58:03called it "the Jewish crime",
0:58:03 > 0:58:06where every year secretly the Jews would get together,
0:58:06 > 0:58:10take a Christian child, and first circumcise him and then crucify him.
0:58:10 > 0:58:12Now, why circumcise him first?
0:58:12 > 0:58:15Why make him into a Jew if you are going to crucify him?
0:58:15 > 0:58:19I've never gotten that part of it, but it is part of that fantasy.
0:58:19 > 0:58:23So that the Jews take their castrating knife to Christians,
0:58:23 > 0:58:25and it's part of the Jewish threat.
0:58:25 > 0:58:28So I think the things that Shakespeare is reaching down into
0:58:28 > 0:58:29in The Merchant Of Venice,
0:58:29 > 0:58:33connects the dots of ritual murder,
0:58:33 > 0:58:37of castration, of what Jews threatened to do to Christians,
0:58:37 > 0:58:41of what distinguishes Christians from Jews.
0:58:42 > 0:58:45Is there any legitimacy at all in talking about it
0:58:45 > 0:58:47as an anti-Semitic play?
0:58:47 > 0:58:48HE SIGHS
0:58:48 > 0:58:50I think the play...
0:58:50 > 0:58:56as staged 50 times in Nazi Germany, WAS a deeply anti-Semitic play.
0:58:56 > 0:58:58I think, in different times, and in different places
0:58:58 > 0:59:00it's Philo-Semitic.
0:59:00 > 0:59:04I don't think the play in and of itself bears hatred,
0:59:04 > 0:59:06but it becomes a vehicle.
0:59:06 > 0:59:09For Jews who come to me and say, "This play should be banned,"
0:59:09 > 0:59:12I always say, "Think of it as the canary in the coalmine.
0:59:12 > 0:59:15"You'd be much worse off, even if it's an anti-Semitic production,
0:59:15 > 0:59:18"because how do you know what they're really thinking about you
0:59:18 > 0:59:21"until you watch how they stage this play?"
0:59:21 > 0:59:23And that then is your answer to those who say,
0:59:23 > 0:59:25"We would've been... The Jews would've been better off
0:59:25 > 0:59:27"had this play never been written"?
0:59:27 > 0:59:30- The Jews would NOT have been better off.- The Jews are never better off!
0:59:30 > 0:59:32The Jews are never better off - and you know what? -
0:59:32 > 0:59:34this way you see it coming.
0:59:39 > 0:59:43When Howard brings the 400-year-old Shylock back to life,
0:59:43 > 0:59:46it would be fair to assume that his telling
0:59:46 > 0:59:49will not be an anti-Semitic one.
0:59:49 > 0:59:51Shylock will land right in the centre
0:59:51 > 0:59:54of Portia's glittering playground,
0:59:54 > 0:59:57Belmont, and this is where Shylock will go toe-to-toe
0:59:57 > 0:59:59with those who have wronged him.
1:00:02 > 1:00:04So, this is Belmont, then?
1:00:04 > 1:00:06It's Cheshire, actually, but is...
1:00:06 > 1:00:08We're in Cheshire. Yeah, I thought it would be fun
1:00:08 > 1:00:10to come to Cheshire, to this area
1:00:10 > 1:00:12known as roughly the Golden Triangle,
1:00:12 > 1:00:14as a version of the world that
1:00:14 > 1:00:16Portia lives in The Merchant Of Venice.
1:00:16 > 1:00:19It's expensive, it is the place now
1:00:19 > 1:00:22where Manchester United and Manchester City footballers
1:00:22 > 1:00:25live with their wives. I thought it was a good equivalent.
1:00:26 > 1:00:30In Shakespeare's play, Portia is Shylock's nemesis.
1:00:30 > 1:00:32She seals his fate.
1:00:32 > 1:00:36But at the end of Howard's tale, there is a twist.
1:00:36 > 1:00:39Portia, alias Plurabelle,
1:00:39 > 1:00:41meets her match.
1:00:41 > 1:00:44You know, we all know that at the end of Act IV, Shylock goes.
1:00:44 > 1:00:47But you were never happy about what happened next.
1:00:47 > 1:00:49Shylock, as he appears in my novel,
1:00:49 > 1:00:52complains as he would have reason to complain
1:00:52 > 1:00:54that he has no Act V.
1:00:54 > 1:00:56So I am going to give Shylock his Act V.
1:00:56 > 1:00:58But the idea that Portia might have
1:00:58 > 1:01:02a less than calm, less than temperate interest in him,
1:01:02 > 1:01:03is something I play with.
1:01:07 > 1:01:09"She had eyes only for Shylock.
1:01:09 > 1:01:14"'God, I love this man,' she thought. 'I fucking love him.'
1:01:15 > 1:01:18"'You are not what I thought you were,' she persisted.
1:01:18 > 1:01:21"'And what did you think I was?'
1:01:21 > 1:01:23"'I don't know, but I would never have imagined...'
1:01:23 > 1:01:25"Whatever it was she would never have imagined,
1:01:25 > 1:01:28"she couldn't for the moment find the words for it.
1:01:28 > 1:01:32"Shylock helped her out - 'That a Jew could be so Christian?'
1:01:32 > 1:01:36"She felt that he almost spat the words at her.
1:01:36 > 1:01:40"'You saw a Jew and expected nothing of him but cruelty.'
1:01:40 > 1:01:45"'I didn't SEE a Jew. I don't go around SEEING Jews.'
1:01:45 > 1:01:49"'All right, you saw cruelty, and you gave it a Jewish face.'"
1:01:50 > 1:01:53Shylock gets to right the wrongs at the end of your book.
1:01:53 > 1:01:57He gets to, sort of, somehow, get the last word.
1:01:57 > 1:02:00I don't think I am trying to score any victories.
1:02:00 > 1:02:03I am certainly not trying to score any cheap victories.
1:02:03 > 1:02:06If the Shylock in my novel is able to say some strong things,
1:02:06 > 1:02:10they are no more than the things he has been saying already in the play.
1:02:10 > 1:02:14I don't think I depart from the play at all, actually.
1:02:15 > 1:02:18"Charity is a Jewish concept.
1:02:18 > 1:02:19"So is mercy.
1:02:19 > 1:02:23"You took them from us, that is all. You appropriated them.
1:02:23 > 1:02:27"They were given freely, but still you had to steal them.
1:02:27 > 1:02:29"It is a breathtaking insolence,
1:02:29 > 1:02:32"an immemorial act of theft
1:02:32 > 1:02:35"from which nothing but sorrow has ever flowed.
1:02:35 > 1:02:37"There is blood on your insolence.
1:02:37 > 1:02:40"She put a hand on her chest.
1:02:40 > 1:02:43"'I feel you have laid a curse on me,' she said.
1:02:43 > 1:02:47"'Well, now you know the sensation from the other end,' Shylock said.
1:02:48 > 1:02:51"And this time Plurabelle could have sworn
1:02:51 > 1:02:54"he did spit on her."
1:03:00 > 1:03:02You've been travelling to Venice,
1:03:02 > 1:03:04you've met all the great Shakespearean experts,
1:03:04 > 1:03:07all the experts on the Merchant,
1:03:07 > 1:03:10people who've explored this thing for years.
1:03:10 > 1:03:12Has it changed your view, at all?
1:03:12 > 1:03:13Yes. Yes.
1:03:13 > 1:03:16What I've discovered is that I can't finish.
1:03:17 > 1:03:20It has made me go back and rewrite some scenes.
1:03:20 > 1:03:23It's not so much caused me to write some scenes out,
1:03:23 > 1:03:25it's caused me to write some scenes in.
1:03:25 > 1:03:27Shylock, he gets bigger
1:03:27 > 1:03:31as I discover more and more different perceptions of him.
1:03:31 > 1:03:34The sense of him and his potential gets bigger.
1:03:34 > 1:03:38And also, that sense that he is a character for all time.
1:03:40 > 1:03:44# Ebben, n'andro lontana... #
1:03:44 > 1:03:46It made me realise I can't stop,
1:03:46 > 1:03:48and it's almost arbitrary that I have stopped.
1:03:48 > 1:03:52If there was any way in which one could write an open-ended novel -
1:03:52 > 1:03:55that, you know, every week I add a little bit to -
1:03:55 > 1:03:56I would do it.
1:03:56 > 1:03:58ARIA CONTINUES
1:03:58 > 1:04:07# La fra la neve bianca
1:04:07 > 1:04:14# La fra le nubi d'or
1:04:15 > 1:04:22# La dove la speranza
1:04:22 > 1:04:28# La speranza
1:04:28 > 1:04:34# Il rimpianto
1:04:34 > 1:04:42# Il rimpianto, e il dolor! #