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Shylock's Ghost

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This programme contains some strong language.

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You've got a Holocaust shelf here.

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-Doesn't every Jew have a Holocaust shelf?

-Not one quite like this.

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And Woody Allen above the Holocaust shelf.

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It's hard to decide whether to have Woody Allen

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above the Holocaust shelf or below the Holocaust shelf.

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Yeah, you're right.

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Do you take pride in - if I can call it that - your Jewish nose?

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My dad had a wonderful nose and I always admired his nose,

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and I was pleased that by the time I was a grown man, my nose could

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rival my dad's.

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I really did admire... I think a man should have a nose.

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One could overdo it, I suppose, but...

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The Man Booker Prize-winning novelist, Howard Jacobson, has spent

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much of his career writing poignant

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and funny novels about Jewishness and the trials of being an outsider.

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For his latest novel, Jacobson has agreed to retell

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the story of the most odious Jew that literature ever spawned.

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The cruel and merciless Shylock,

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from Shakespeare's most performed play, The Merchant Of Venice.

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How is it that a villainous moneylender, who doggedly pursues

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his pound of Venetian flesh, has come to represent

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everything that people have long despised about Jews?

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This is a quote from William Hazlitt in 1817.

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"A decrepit old man bent with age and ugly with mental deformity,

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"grinning with deadly malice.

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"Sullen, morose, gloomy, inflexible, brooding over one idea,

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"that of his revenge."

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You can see why they chose me!

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Shylock may have started out as a figure of fun for Elizabethans

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to mock and jeer at, but for modern audiences he poses a real problem.

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How can you redeem a monster who not only reflects anti-Jewish hatred

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but, in recent history, may have been guilty of stoking it?

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But let's remember, Shylock is Shakespeare's Jew.

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I am a Jew!

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Oh...!

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Hath not a Jew eyes?

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Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses,

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passions?

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What did people have to say when you said you were going to do this?

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There was stuff on the internet, as you would expect. This is quite fun.

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"Repulsive Jew author rewrites Shakespeare

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"and makes Shylock the hero.

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"This is like asking Shylock himself to rewrite Shakespeare."

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"A vile Jew has decided that Shakespeare was not quite

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"good enough and could do with being improved upon by his own

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"degenerate hand."

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So nothing has changed, has it, really?

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-Not a lot has changed, no.

-No.

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No.

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"Despicable Jew rewrites Merchant Of Venice in Yiddish."

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ALAN CHUCKLES

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So what was Shakespeare's business with the Jews?

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There weren't any in his day in England. At least, not officially.

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But Jews had been banished on pain of death some 300 years earlier.

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But something sparked his interest and compelled him to write about one.

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He looked for his Jew amongst the prosperous traders and,

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as Iago called them, the "super-subtle citizens of Venice".

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-You can feel there are unspoken things.

-Yes.

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The alleyways, the darknesses...

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I mean, novels have been written, films have been made,

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about how sinister things,

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frightening things, happen to you in Venice.

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You get lost in Venice. You might not find your way again in Venice.

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It's such a narrative town. Every part of this city is telling a tale.

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It was here in Venice

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that Shakespeare found the kernel of his story.

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In a fragment of prose tucked away in a 14th century Italian novella,

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a rare copy of which is preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale

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in a corner of St Mark's Square.

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So...

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This is our book.

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The author is an Italian author of the 14th century,

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Ser Giovanni Fiorentino.

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-And the title is Il Pecorone.

-Which means?

-Is "a big lamb".

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-A lamb?

-A sheep.

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And here, on page 41, we can find a dialogue

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between two merchants, a Jewish one and a Christian one.

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And the Christian merchant is Ser Giannetto.

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-Yeah.

-Ser Giannetto was the Christian merchant.

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And the Jewish merchant described as Il Judaeo. The Jew.

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-Just "The Jew".

-Just "The Jew".

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And the Jewish merchant was creditor from the Christian one.

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And here we can read...

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HE READS IN ITALIAN

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He didn't want money.

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HE READS IN ITALIAN

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-He just wanted a pound of his muscle, of his flesh.

-Flesh.

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How Shakespeare got hold of Fiorentino's story

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is still a mystery.

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It wasn't published in English until long after Shakespeare's death,

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and as far as we know he never came to Venice.

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But this cunning acquisition gave Shakespeare the fuel to ignite

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the engine of his play.

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"The Merchant Of Venice. The plot.

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"Bassanio turns to his old friend and mentor, Antonio, the merchant,

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"for a loan to help finance his pursuit of a beautiful heiress.

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"Nursing what appears to be an unrequited passion

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"for Bassanio, Antonio is only too eager to help,

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"but he is unable for the moment to raise the funds,

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"so it's off to the unscrupulous moneylender, Shylock.

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"The Jew."

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So on the one hand, it's a rather benign and beautiful setting.

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On the other hand, something is festering under

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the surface from the very beginning.

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You come to me and you say, "Shylock, we would have monies."

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You say so.

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You, that did void your rheum upon my beard

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and foot me as you spurn a stranger cur over your threshold.

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He spat. I mean, that's such an extraordinary thing, to be spat at.

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And he reminds Antonio of that and Antonio says,

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"Be careful or I'll spit at you again."

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Shylock strikes a bargain - yes, to the money, on condition

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that if Antonio fails to repay it within three months,

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Shylock will take a pound of his "fair flesh

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"from whatever part of your body it pleaseth me."

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Howard is not the only one grappling with Shakespeare's divisive play.

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Venice is currently engaged in an intense debate

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about Shakespeare's notorious leading man.

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OK, Shakespeare in The Merchant Of Venice is exploiting

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one of the few true mass phenomena not only in society,

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but for many, many centuries.

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Anti-Semitism or, more accurately, anti-Judaism, easy, familiar...

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Welcome to the Shylock Project.

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Amongst a glittering lineup of Shakespearean scholars,

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Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize winning author,

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Stephen Greenblatt, is one of the biggest draws.

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There are, as you know, many critics who see

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the play as a play which is in itself anti-Semitic

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and which in itself leads to and has led to anti-Semitism.

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This idea of the Jew's loathsome being.

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I don't want to say the play is not anti-Semitic.

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The play is anti-Semitic, or anti-Jewish, let's put it that way.

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It participates in it, it has contributed to it.

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I don't refuse this at all. Nonetheless...

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But "nonetheless" is everything one cares about in Shakespeare.

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Right from the beginning Shylock is represented as having

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a kind of inner life,

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something you don't expect of a little Jew puppet on a string.

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That's the weird Shakespearian twist in all of this.

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The generosity that wrote the lines, "Hath not a Jew eyes?"

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What need that in this play?

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No-one needs that.

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It comes from some strange place in Shakespeare, from the place

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that ruined his play, as it were, that ruined his simple comedy.

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And thank God it ruined it.

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Venice in Shakespeare's day did provide a home for Jews.

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This was an aspirational mercantile society that found itself

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increasingly dependent on Jewish moneylenders to fuel its economy.

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But there was a caveat.

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Jews were forced to live on a small polluted island

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on the edge of the city, il Ghetto Nuovo.

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Jews had been working and operating in Venice for a long time.

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In fact, long before the ghetto was established.

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But the Jews were not allowed to live here on a permanent basis

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and 1516 is when the republic decided that they would include

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the Jews to use their economic skills.

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At the same time, they were excluding them

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by locking them in this square.

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And the word "ghetto", where does it come from?

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Well, actually, it comes from this very place - Ghetto was

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the foundry where the republic of Venice made its canons.

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No Jewish connotation whatsoever.

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-Well, it has now, because "ghetto" is now...

-Yes, exactly.

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This became the paradigmatic ghetto,

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so the other ghettos took from this place because of its uniqueness.

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The reason the Jews were allowed here and why the ghetto was established

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-was clearly because Christians weren't allowed to lend money.

-Yeah.

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According to an interpretation of the Bible,

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you could not lend money for interest to your brothers.

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So, the idea was that, precisely because they were not brothers,

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-you could ask them to lend you money.

-Yes.

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HE SINGS IN ITALIAN

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Within this overcrowded ghetto, were Italian, Spanish, German

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and Portuguese communities of Jews,

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each building their own synagogue wherever space allowed,

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adding extra floors, converting attics and practising

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their rituals of Jewish life out of sight of Venice's Christians.

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While only a small number still live here,

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the ghetto remains a destination for Jews from all over the world.

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It's 400 years since Shakespeare's death and 500 years

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since the creation of the ghetto, which is why the city is taking the

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bold step of staging The Merchant Of Venice here for the very first time.

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Bringing The Merchant Of Venice to the ghetto is a sort

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of exorcism.

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You know, we're trying really to face the ghost of Shylock

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that has been haunting this place for a long time.

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So of course there are all sorts of implications.

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I thought I was being foolhardy attempting a novel that's got

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The Merchant Of Venice behind it.

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But for you to do a production of it here in the ghetto,

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do you not feel the weight of that?

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-I do and I like it.

-THEY LAUGH

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I like a good challenge.

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Workshops have started in the main square.

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For the role of the troublesome moneylender,

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the director is trying out a range of actors,

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testing the radical view that Shylock is everyman.

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Or woman.

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There is a portion of Shylock that we can all enter into,

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and I feel that Shylock as the stranger,

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the outsider, the marginalised one,

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is also someone that we all - a woman, a gay man, any...

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All of us have had moments every day where we feel like an outsider.

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"I'm not a part of that."

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Shall I bend low and in a bondsman's key with bated breath

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and whispering humbleness say this,

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fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last.

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You spurned me such a day. Another time you called me dog.

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And for these courtesies I lend you thus much monies?

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-Your younger Shylock, Sorab?

-Yeah.

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-I love him. Yeah. I love what he does.

-Yes.

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A young man full of juice and wit and saucy and elegant and handsome.

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And why not? Because the way it's so often done,

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even when people are offering to do a modern Shylock, you get

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-an old man, an old man rubbing his hands...

-Yes!

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-..coming in like this...

-A little pathetic, yes.

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There is no justification for that.

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Go with me to a notary, seal me there your single bond and...

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in a merry sport, if you repay me not on such a day,

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in such a place, such sum or sums as are expressed in the condition,

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let the forfeit be nominated for an equal pound of your fair flesh

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to be cut off and taken in what part of your body pleaseth me.

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The idea of him being able to engage Antonio in saucy banter...

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-Yes.

-Because it is saucy banter, isn't it?

-Yes.

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"I'm going to take a pound of flesh from whichever part of you

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-"I choose it." It's salacious!

-Salacious is exactly it.

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And then the pleasure and the kind of laugh, it's like,

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"Oh, well, that will never happen."

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HE CHUCKLES

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It's presumably the universal burden of any Jew in Venice that

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you'll be crapped on constantly.

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I mean, that's the price of admission to the ghetto

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and doing business in Venice. But Shylock, it's tormenting him.

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Why should he loan 3,000 ducats to a person who's been spitting on him?

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I mean, and railing on him

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and trying to interrupt his business, and hates Jews

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and has just been utterly nasty - why should he loan him anything?

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What's in it for Shylock? The piece of paper.

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He'll have a piece of paper, the bond he is obsessed with.

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The piece of paper in which Antonio has pledged a pound of his flesh.

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What's he going to do with it?

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I think he's going to put it on his wall,

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afterwards, in his house, when the 3,000 ducats are paid back,

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and he's going to laugh every time he sees it.

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So it is a merry bond. I mean, it's a very savagely merry bond.

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I think it's fun.

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-He's being sardonic about the very idea of merriment.

-Yeah.

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Howard is setting his version of the Shylock story in the present day.

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So what will he do with the Jew?

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What will it take to make the vengeful Shylock and his absurd

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proposal work as a credible and sympathetic character for our times?

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What are you scribbling?

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-My thoughts.

-Ah.

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When you begin a thing like this,

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the first thing you think is, I'll write an equivalent story.

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Shylock will be a banker and we'll set it in Little Venice.

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All these obvious ideas you have.

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And then you think, no, that ain't going to work.

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I come up with a hero called Simon Strulovitch, who is a modern man,

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who doesn't have a dead wife, as Shylock does,

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but has a very sick wife and is bringing up a daughter on his own.

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To that degree it's like Shylock's story.

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But I found I couldn't write that...

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That story wouldn't work for me adequately without Shylock there.

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And a sort of equivalent to Shylock was not good enough.

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I needed Shylock there.

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So it's almost a kind of, you know,

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you could call it magic realist, except I don't like that...

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-Shylock is there.

-Shylock is here. Shylock is just here.

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Ask no questions, Shylock is here.

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"A question then for Shylock, how merry was your bond?

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"When you set the forfeit at an equal pound of Antonio's fair flesh

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"to be cut off and taken from whatever part of his body it

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"pleased you, on what intended you in the matter of anatomy?

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"Did you mean salaciously, flirtatiously even,

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"to designate Antonia's penis as the part it pleased you to take?

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"Was that the pound of his fair flesh, weighing hyperbolically,

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"you originally had your sights set on?

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"Had his aim been Antonio's privy parts or Antonio's heart?

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"What makes you so sure, Shylock wondered,

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"that I knew what I intended?"

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The Merchant Of Venice is one of Shakespeare's most popular works,

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but it's also one of his problem plays.

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The drama is by design a comedy, a bawdy romp,

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partly set in the glitzy world of Portia's villa, Belmont.

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It concerns the idle rich and their silly love games,

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where fortunes and wives are won, if only you pick the right box.

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-O hell!

-LAUGHTER

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The problem, then, is Shylock.

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This is not a world in which he fits.

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While the rest of the play invites us

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to laugh along with the slapstick jokes and daft riddles,

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when Shylock appears, it's hard not to choke on that laughter.

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It's a pretty unlovely world that Shakespeare paints in Venice.

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I don't mean he's saying gentiles are unlovely.

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THESE gentiles are unlovely.

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They are ne'er-do-wells, they are playboys,

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they indulge one another, they think about money all the time.

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"I keep losing my money. I've fallen in love with this woman.

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"But if you can lend me some money, I'll get over there and get her money..."

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I mean, it's a shocking deal that's being done.

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And then that's the other thing, the attitude towards the Jew.

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He is just, to them, the Jew.

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The word "the Jew" is used infinitely more times than Shylock.

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It's quite rare they actually refer to him as Shylock.

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So, all in all, in relation to one another,

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they are indulgent and idle and grasping.

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It's a world that lacks seriousness.

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But then Shakespeare complicates things

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and makes it harder to deride Shylock as a mere comic villain.

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He gives Shylock a daughter.

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And shows him capable of real love.

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She will, of course, be his undoing.

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Shylock is a widower

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and so he's bringing up his daughter Jessica alone, which isn't easy,

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for she is drawn to the temptations of the Venetian night.

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Hear you me, Jessica.

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Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum

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clamber not you up to the casements

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to-to gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces.

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Shylock, the father, pulling Jessica back,

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making her come back into the house.

0:20:130:20:15

"Don't go out there, it's dangerous."

0:20:150:20:18

And he's right, it is dangerous.

0:20:180:20:21

Fulfilling her father's worst fears,

0:20:210:20:23

Jessica makes an assignation with Lorenzo,

0:20:230:20:27

yet another feckless Venetian playboy.

0:20:270:20:30

Mistress, look out at window, for all this,

0:20:310:20:36

there will come a Christian boy!

0:20:360:20:40

-A teenage daughter. You have a teenage daughter, don't you?

-I do.

0:20:400:20:43

What father wants danger for his daughter?

0:20:430:20:46

Well, whatever happens,

0:20:460:20:47

something went wrong between Shylock and Jessica.

0:20:470:20:50

That's all I can say.

0:20:500:20:51

-There's no mother.

-She's got no mother.

-She's got no mother.

0:20:510:20:54

Farewell,

0:20:540:20:56

and if my fortune be not crost

0:20:560:21:00

I have a father,

0:21:000:21:02

you, a daughter lost!

0:21:020:21:05

She runs off with Shylock's money

0:21:050:21:07

and with the ring which his wife, Leah, had given him.

0:21:070:21:11

Did she have to steal his money?

0:21:110:21:13

Did she have to steal the ring?

0:21:130:21:15

I'd say, did she have to run away with Lorenzo,

0:21:150:21:17

with one of those bums?

0:21:170:21:19

OK, you run away with those you know, but you don't have to steal.

0:21:190:21:23

So what should we make of Shylock's daughter?

0:21:260:21:29

Howard is pretty disapproving of the conniving Jessica.

0:21:290:21:32

He abhors Jessica, Howard.

0:21:330:21:37

He thinks she's absolutely appalling.

0:21:370:21:39

This sense also of betrayal,

0:21:390:21:41

yet there are people around, if you were the daughter -

0:21:410:21:45

let's put aside the Jews for a second -

0:21:450:21:46

imagine you had a Muslim father who was very, very orthodox,

0:21:460:21:51

very angry about stuff and you wanted to be part of the world,

0:21:510:21:55

why wouldn't you think,

0:21:550:21:57

"I want to get a life, I want to get out of here,

0:21:570:21:59

"I'm living in this other country - why can't I just be like them?"

0:21:590:22:02

Fine, do it, but there are rules.

0:22:020:22:05

If there's any daughter here thinking of leaving their fathers

0:22:050:22:08

or their family, there are rules. Don't steal.

0:22:080:22:11

Don't steal your mother's ring.

0:22:110:22:13

She breaks all human rules, not just Jewish rules.

0:22:130:22:16

She breaks all humane rules, Jessica.

0:22:160:22:19

My Jessica is much nicer.

0:22:190:22:20

Let me ask you, how many in this room

0:22:200:22:23

feels as strongly about Jessica as Howard does?

0:22:230:22:28

Who really, really dislikes Jessica?

0:22:280:22:31

Oh, just a couple.

0:22:320:22:34

And who can sympathise and understand Jessica's position?

0:22:340:22:38

-Bunch of sentimentalists!

-LAUGHTER

0:22:410:22:43

"So if we don't do Jewish things and we don't have Jewish friends

0:22:510:22:55

"and we don't eat Jewish foods

0:22:550:22:56

"and we don't celebrate Jewish festivals,

0:22:560:22:58

"why must I go out with Jewish boys?"

0:22:580:23:01

she asked him later.

0:23:010:23:02

"For the sake of continuity," he told her.

0:23:030:23:07

"What do you want me to continue?"

0:23:070:23:09

"The thing you were born to be."

0:23:090:23:11

"Jewish?"

0:23:120:23:13

HE RECITES IN HEBREW

0:23:170:23:21

How's that? 60 years.

0:23:250:23:28

-Ah, right.

-Or thereabouts.

0:23:280:23:29

-Some things you never forget.

-Yeah! THEY CHUCKLE

0:23:290:23:32

Real Jewish Venice was kind of in the background,

0:23:330:23:37

but the plot is entirely fictional.

0:23:370:23:39

Suddenly, because of Shakespeare,

0:23:390:23:41

everybody thinks of money lending here,

0:23:410:23:43

they don't think about the printing of the Talmud,

0:23:430:23:46

the literary salon that was here in the ghetto,

0:23:460:23:48

run by a woman, Sara Copia Sullam.

0:23:480:23:50

When Henry VIII had to divorce his wife,

0:23:500:23:52

he asked for advice from Venetian rabbis,

0:23:520:23:54

so there's a way in which the ghetto was closed,

0:23:540:23:56

but also disseminating Jewish culture all over the world.

0:23:560:23:59

-Where we can help, we help!

-Exactly!

0:23:590:24:02

And to understand how Shylock came about,

0:24:190:24:22

you'd go back at least to the year 1290,

0:24:220:24:25

when, as many of you know,

0:24:250:24:27

there was a general expulsion of the Jews from England under Edward I.

0:24:270:24:31

So there were no Jews, officially, at least, in Shakespeare's England,

0:24:310:24:35

but how then to explain the peculiar presence of Jews

0:24:350:24:38

and Jewish subjects in the public stage?

0:24:380:24:41

So did Shakespeare ever meet a Jew?

0:24:410:24:43

It seems unlikely,

0:24:430:24:45

although it's believed there may have been 200 or so Jews in England,

0:24:450:24:49

practising their religion in secret.

0:24:490:24:51

But the stock image of a red-haired, hook-nosed Jew

0:24:510:24:54

from the medieval mystery plays

0:24:540:24:56

was the one that Elizabethan theatres indulged.

0:24:560:25:00

Jews got blamed for poisoning Europe with the Black Plague, seducing nuns

0:25:000:25:04

and eating children, hoarding their blood to make their matzos.

0:25:040:25:08

If Shakespeare had never met a Jew,

0:25:090:25:12

how come he was so keen to write about one?

0:25:120:25:14

1594, the Queen's physician, Roderigo Lopez by name,

0:25:140:25:19

was accused of having taken a fantastic, an unreal sum,

0:25:190:25:26

50,000 ducats from the Spanish to poison the Queen.

0:25:260:25:31

Roderigo Lopez was a good Protestant, but he had -

0:25:310:25:36

how shall we say? - a dirty little secret.

0:25:360:25:39

His parents were Jewish.

0:25:390:25:41

Lopez, in his last words before he was about to be executed,

0:25:410:25:44

said that he loved the Queen, in fact,

0:25:440:25:47

as much as he hoped to see Jesus Christ

0:25:470:25:50

within this quarter of an hour.

0:25:500:25:52

-Whoa!

-And the crowd erupted in laughter.

0:25:520:25:56

Why does the crowd at this moment erupt in laughter?

0:25:560:26:00

Well, your guess is as good as mine,

0:26:000:26:02

but the overwhelming likelihood is that the crowd thought

0:26:020:26:05

it was watching a play by Christopher Marlowe,

0:26:050:26:08

namely The Jew Of Malta.

0:26:080:26:09

Marlowe wanted to have a deeply cynical play.

0:26:090:26:13

He came up with the fantastic idea

0:26:130:26:16

of having a kind of Jewish antihero -

0:26:160:26:18

ugly, wicked, poisons his own daughter,

0:26:180:26:21

kills as many people as he can, poisons wells,

0:26:210:26:24

constantly saying things like, "I have a burning love for you,"

0:26:240:26:27

then says as an aside, "I'm going to burn your house down."

0:26:270:26:31

So when he says, "I love the Queen

0:26:310:26:33

"as much as I hope to see Jesus Christ within a quarter of an hour,"

0:26:330:26:36

they heard some kind of Marlovian joke.

0:26:360:26:38

How interesting that The Jew Of Malta was so popular

0:26:380:26:44

that it could have entered the public imagination to this degree.

0:26:440:26:47

Probably not the only factor in what is going on in the crowd's response,

0:26:470:26:52

but I think the crowd is hearing this secret Jewish joke.

0:26:520:26:58

-Could be the first Jewish joke.

-Yeah!

0:26:580:27:01

You've discovered the first Jewish joke.

0:27:010:27:04

Poor Lopez probably wasn't thinking this at all, poor bastard.

0:27:040:27:07

Tell me about the execution. Was Shakespeare there?

0:27:070:27:11

I think there's a very strong presumption that Shakespeare

0:27:110:27:14

was an aficionado of executions and he's an expert in how to arouse,

0:27:140:27:21

manipulate, use crowd excitement and crowd laughter.

0:27:210:27:25

So why wouldn't he want to see these exercises in mass entertainment,

0:27:250:27:31

anxiety, hysteria, laughter, whatever we call it?

0:27:310:27:33

This is what he needs to work with.

0:27:330:27:35

He's in the business of understanding

0:27:350:27:37

how to tap into crowd phenomena of this kind.

0:27:370:27:40

And you may not be surprised to hear that one of the play's biggest fans

0:27:510:27:57

was this man.

0:27:570:27:59

Between 1933 and '39,

0:27:590:28:01

over 50 major productions of The Merchant Of Venice

0:28:010:28:05

were staged in Nazi Germany.

0:28:050:28:06

-ACTOR:

-Ihr scheltet mich abtrunnig,

0:28:080:28:11

einen Bluthund...

0:28:110:28:14

In the words of one critic

0:28:140:28:15

reviewing Werner Krauss's much-acclaimed performance,

0:28:150:28:19

"With a crash and a weird train of shadows,

0:28:190:28:21

"something revoltingly alien

0:28:210:28:23

"and startlingly repulsive crawled across the stage."

0:28:230:28:27

If they thought the message wasn't clear enough,

0:28:280:28:30

theatres would plant hecklers in the audience

0:28:300:28:33

to boo and curse Shylock when he appeared.

0:28:330:28:35

There were 2,000 Jews living in Venice when the Nazis arrived.

0:28:380:28:42

"The city of Venice remembers the Venetian Jews

0:28:470:28:50

"who were deported to the Nazi concentration camps

0:28:500:28:54

-"on December 5th 1943..."

-Yes.

-"..and August 17th 1944."

0:28:540:28:59

They took 200 Jews to Auschwitz

0:28:590:29:03

-and only eight came back to Venice.

-Yeah.

0:29:030:29:06

You worry sometimes that there's a proliferation of these things

0:29:060:29:10

and that then we become inured to it

0:29:100:29:13

and memory loses its power and we're just used to them,

0:29:130:29:15

but here, where it happened,

0:29:150:29:17

it's very effective.

0:29:170:29:18

I'm glad it's here, Alan.

0:29:260:29:28

Yeah.

0:29:280:29:30

I may have had my fill, we may both have had our fill

0:29:300:29:32

of looking at things like this,

0:29:320:29:34

but I'm glad this is here, this needs to be here.

0:29:340:29:36

Shakespeare created his Jew 400 years ago,

0:29:490:29:53

but Shylock turned out to be a lightning rod for anti-Jewish hatred

0:29:530:29:57

for any age who wanted him.

0:29:570:30:00

So how much blame should we lay at the door

0:30:000:30:02

of the long-dead writer for this?

0:30:020:30:03

Merchant Of Venice is a cold, disturbing, loveless play

0:30:050:30:11

and if it were by any other author than William Shakespeare,

0:30:110:30:14

it would not now be staged.

0:30:140:30:17

It's been a play that has done immense damage.

0:30:170:30:20

We pay a very high price for its good qualities.

0:30:200:30:23

How do we know it's done immense damage?

0:30:230:30:25

Well, it's been a common thing that Shylock has been held up

0:30:250:30:28

as an anti-Semitic archetype by unquestionable anti-Semites.

0:30:280:30:33

When Disraeli was Prime Minister,

0:30:330:30:34

his opponents used to shout, "Shylock!" at him

0:30:340:30:36

in the House of Commons, it was their favourite heckle,

0:30:360:30:39

and "Shylock" in that one word meant "greedy, pitiless and alien."

0:30:390:30:44

The reason that Shylock is such a powerful archetype

0:30:440:30:49

is not that the English are more anti-Semitic,

0:30:490:30:51

it's just that Shakespeare is a better writer than anybody else.

0:30:510:30:54

But that's so strange, isn't it?

0:30:540:30:55

To say the better the writer, the more dangerous the play.

0:30:550:31:00

Well, because a monster is made.

0:31:000:31:03

A monster isn't born.

0:31:030:31:04

Because we've seen him spat upon and insulted

0:31:040:31:08

and mistreated by the people who need his help...

0:31:080:31:12

..we can just understand

0:31:130:31:15

his malevolence,

0:31:150:31:17

which nonetheless is unjustifiable.

0:31:170:31:19

There's no way, taking Shylock in the round,

0:31:190:31:22

that he's other than a terrible, nasty man.

0:31:220:31:27

I think that sets off a fear in people

0:31:270:31:29

of somebody that they've wronged.

0:31:290:31:31

"How could we do this to a people and now not fear them?"

0:31:310:31:35

That's what makes it a powerful stereotype.

0:31:350:31:37

Couldn't we invert your argument and imagine Shakespeare saying,

0:31:370:31:39

"OK, we have no Jews here.

0:31:390:31:41

"You have an imaginary Jew. Let me give you a real Jew.

0:31:410:31:45

"Let me flesh out your imaginings

0:31:450:31:47

"and look how different it might be from what you imagine,

0:31:470:31:50

"because look how like you in so many ways the Jew is,"

0:31:500:31:54

could that not be what Shakespeare is up to?

0:31:540:31:58

Each aspect of Shylock's humanity,

0:31:580:32:00

each sympathetic quality he has is then tarnished in some way.

0:32:000:32:04

Yes, he has trouble bringing up his daughter,

0:32:040:32:07

yes, he cares about her

0:32:070:32:08

and he cares more about his ducats than about his daughter.

0:32:080:32:11

-We don't know that.

-Well...

-That's reported.

0:32:110:32:13

-Oh, urgh!

-That's what...

0:32:130:32:15

Shylock doesn't come on the stage

0:32:150:32:17

and say, "My ducats, oh, and by the way, my daughter."

0:32:170:32:19

That's reported and that's reported by people

0:32:190:32:22

-who we don't trust about anything.

-Fair point.

0:32:220:32:24

No, fair point and yet another example

0:32:240:32:26

of the endless ambiguity of these things,

0:32:260:32:28

but I think you would find it tough

0:32:280:32:31

to make a claim that Shylock is a sympathetic character,

0:32:310:32:36

even though almost every Shylock that I've ever seen

0:32:360:32:39

on stage or on screen has been played more sympathetically

0:32:390:32:43

than a bare reading of the text demands.

0:32:430:32:45

You can contextualise him,

0:32:450:32:48

you can humanise him. What you can't do is to make him a goodie.

0:32:480:32:52

Rolling!

0:32:560:32:57

Shylock.

0:32:570:32:59

'Hath not a Jew eyes?'

0:33:050:33:07

Hath not a Jew hands?

0:33:080:33:10

Organs?

0:33:120:33:14

Dimensions, senses, affections?

0:33:140:33:16

Passions?

0:33:180:33:19

'If you prick us, do we not bleed?'

0:33:230:33:26

If you tickle us, do we not laugh?

0:33:270:33:29

If you poison us, do we not die?

0:33:290:33:32

And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

0:33:320:33:36

If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that!

0:33:360:33:40

If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?

0:33:440:33:48

Revenge.

0:33:480:33:49

If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be

0:33:490:33:53

by Christian example?

0:33:530:33:55

Why, revenge.

0:33:560:33:57

In recent years, many leading actors have taken the role of Shylock

0:34:000:34:04

and have tended to play him sympathetically.

0:34:040:34:07

Nothing less than a modern audience demands.

0:34:070:34:10

But there is one who went against the grain.

0:34:100:34:12

Good to see you. This is so nice of you to do this,

0:34:120:34:14

cos I know you're on tonight.

0:34:140:34:17

That's very kind.

0:34:170:34:18

Antony Sher played Shylock

0:34:180:34:20

as a provocative portrait of a nasty, Middle Eastern, unassimilated Jew.

0:34:200:34:25

I'm excited by Shylock and I root for him.

0:34:260:34:30

-Yeah.

-I don't know whether...

0:34:300:34:32

I didn't have the privilege of seeing yours,

0:34:320:34:35

but I wonder if I would have rooted for yours.

0:34:350:34:38

-Do you really root for him when he wants the pound of flesh?

-Yeah.

0:34:380:34:43

Let me tell you...

0:34:430:34:45

How now, Shylock? What news among the merchants?

0:34:470:34:49

-IN HEAVY ACCENT:

-You knew - none so well, none so well as you -

0:34:490:34:53

of my daughter's flight!

0:34:530:34:55

There was much consternation from some critics,

0:34:550:34:58

because they feel you made your Shylock too much of a monster.

0:34:580:35:01

I say my daughter is my flesh and my blood.

0:35:010:35:05

The sense I get - you played him as a kind of oily, hand-wringing Jew

0:35:050:35:10

of the sort that people who don't like Jews think Jews are.

0:35:100:35:15

I don't remember ringing my hands, but I certainly do remember

0:35:150:35:19

playing at subservience in that first scene

0:35:190:35:23

which maybe would have offended people,

0:35:230:35:28

but it seemed to me what the story is about.

0:35:280:35:32

He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million,

0:35:320:35:36

laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation!

0:35:360:35:41

'It needed to be from a position of'

0:35:410:35:45

a non-person talking to a person.

0:35:450:35:47

As you played him, as you read the play, he never becomes a person

0:35:470:35:51

from that non-person, he just becomes monstrous.

0:35:510:35:54

He becomes monstrous, but on the way,

0:35:550:35:57

you see into him in the way that only Shakespeare can.

0:35:570:36:03

"Hath not a Jew eyes?" That is an incredible speech.

0:36:030:36:08

"If you tickle us, do we not laugh?"

0:36:080:36:11

Isn't that amazing?

0:36:110:36:13

I mean, "tickle" - one doesn't imagine people in Shakespeare's time

0:36:130:36:18

going round tickling one another,

0:36:180:36:20

but, of course, it's human, it makes it so human.

0:36:200:36:22

I absolutely agree with you, but there are critics of the play who,

0:36:220:36:27

particularly those who think it's an anti-Semitic play,

0:36:270:36:31

that's that,

0:36:310:36:32

who particularly hate that speech

0:36:320:36:34

and within that speech, particularly hate that line...

0:36:340:36:37

-Oh, my...

-..because they feel that it could be a dog

0:36:370:36:40

that we're talking about. That is very much a speech

0:36:400:36:43

that is read wildly differently between people.

0:36:430:36:47

-But you are firmly on the side of that speech.

-Yes.

0:36:470:36:50

I think it is someone who hasn't been able to be a proper person

0:36:500:36:56

in this society saying, "I am a human being.

0:36:560:37:00

"Like you."

0:37:000:37:02

-It's there, isn't it? "To bait fish withal."

-Yeah.

0:37:020:37:05

So it starts off with, "Hath not a Jew eyes?

0:37:070:37:10

"Hath not a Jew hands, organs..."

0:37:100:37:12

So it is simply these things that make us human beings,

0:37:120:37:17

and then it's the detail,

0:37:170:37:19

"Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons.

0:37:190:37:23

"If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?"

0:37:230:37:28

There is a terrific rhythm, just of, again and again, me and you,

0:37:280:37:33

"And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

0:37:330:37:37

"If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

0:37:380:37:41

"If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge.

0:37:410:37:46

"If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be

0:37:460:37:50

"by Christian example? Why, revenge.

0:37:500:37:54

"The villainy you teach me,

0:37:540:37:57

"I will execute and it shall go hard,

0:37:570:38:01

"but I will better the instruction."

0:38:010:38:04

Brilliant!

0:38:040:38:05

Even "It shall go hard."

0:38:050:38:07

"It will be difficult for me to be as monstrous

0:38:070:38:11

-"as you have taught me."

-Oh, you read it like that?

0:38:110:38:14

I thought it was, "Shall go hard for you."

0:38:140:38:17

Oh, no, I think it's,

0:38:170:38:18

"And it's not going to be easy, but I will become this monster."

0:38:180:38:24

MUSIC: Train Song, by Vashti Bunyan

0:38:240:38:26

# Travelling north Travelling north to find you

0:38:330:38:38

# Train wheels beating The wind in my eyes

0:38:380:38:42

# Don't even know what I'll say when I find you

0:38:420:38:47

# Call out your name, love, don't be surprised... #

0:38:470:38:51

Biscuits?

0:38:510:38:52

For his own novel, Howard has removed the action from Venice

0:38:540:38:58

and taken it home to where he grew up in suburban Manchester.

0:38:580:39:02

Milk?

0:39:020:39:04

No, thank you.

0:39:040:39:06

Alderley Edge, that was the sort of nirvana, wasn't it, basically?

0:39:060:39:11

Yeah, that's south Manchester.

0:39:110:39:13

If you were a lawyer or a doctor,

0:39:130:39:15

you aspired to live in south Manchester.

0:39:150:39:17

And if you met a girl out in town who lived in south Manchester,

0:39:170:39:20

you got very excited, cos she was classy.

0:39:200:39:23

Jewish girls?

0:39:230:39:25

The ones I told my parents about were, yes.

0:39:270:39:30

Younger than me, younger than me, younger than me,

0:39:380:39:42

the same age as me,

0:39:420:39:44

younger than me, younger than me.

0:39:440:39:47

-Older than me. Alan!

-That's good!

0:39:470:39:50

"There are two men in this cemetery occupied in duties of the heart.

0:39:530:39:58

"They don't look up.

0:39:580:39:59

"He is Simon Strulovitch,

0:39:590:40:01

"a rich, furious, but easily hurt philanthropist

0:40:010:40:04

"with a passion for Shakespeare

0:40:040:40:06

"and a daughter going off the rails."

0:40:060:40:09

"The second person here, long before Strulovitch arrived,

0:40:090:40:13

"tenderly addressing the occupant of a grave

0:40:130:40:16

"whose headstone is worn to nothing

0:40:160:40:19

"is Shylock."

0:40:190:40:20

"Of course Shylock is here among the dead. When hasn't he been?"

0:40:220:40:26

It's bleak, isn't it?

0:40:300:40:32

Yeah.

0:40:320:40:33

There's always a feeling with Jewish cemeteries

0:40:340:40:37

that they are not relieved by beauty.

0:40:370:40:40

Almost as though there's a built-in austerity

0:40:400:40:43

around the Jewish idea of death.

0:40:430:40:46

But this is where you've chosen to open your novel,

0:40:460:40:49

in this cemetery.

0:40:490:40:50

There's a moment in The Merchant Of Venice,

0:40:500:40:53

it's just the briefest moment, when Shylock mentions that he had a wife.

0:40:530:40:58

And I thought, to see him, for him to be seen in a cemetery,

0:40:580:41:01

mourning his wife, grieving over his wife,

0:41:010:41:03

as though he's been grieving over her for ever

0:41:030:41:06

and will grieve for her for ever,

0:41:060:41:08

it seemed a perfect place to conceive of Shylock

0:41:080:41:11

as a figure of then and as a figure of now.

0:41:110:41:15

I always feel about Shylock that there's a lot he's not saying.

0:41:150:41:18

I can imagine that he's talking to someone, talking to Leah, why not?

0:41:180:41:22

It's surprisingly easy to imagine him having this conversation,

0:41:220:41:26

because there is so much not said in the play,

0:41:260:41:29

but you feel he must somewhere be saying,

0:41:290:41:32

cos he is so intelligent, he is so quick,

0:41:320:41:35

that the minute I started writing that,

0:41:350:41:37

-it just came.

-It fills in those gaps you may not know about.

0:41:370:41:42

I like that way of putting it - the gaps.

0:41:420:41:44

A wronged man, loving father, grieving widower -

0:42:090:42:13

Shylock may well have been all these things,

0:42:130:42:15

but the world remembers him as the enraged Jew,

0:42:150:42:19

swearing an unreasonable revenge in the Venetian court,

0:42:190:42:22

unswayed by Portia's notorious speech, "The quality of mercy."

0:42:220:42:27

The court scene, this famous, pivotal scene in the courtroom

0:42:270:42:32

where Shylock is there holding his knife, enjoying it.

0:42:320:42:36

And this is the toughest scene, because our feelings

0:42:360:42:39

from that moment shift about.

0:42:390:42:42

We have to deal with the fact

0:42:420:42:43

that Shylock has never been more intransigent

0:42:430:42:46

than he is here and the more people say, "Show mercy,"

0:42:460:42:50

the more he reminds them that they haven't ever shown mercy to him,

0:42:500:42:53

why should he show mercy to them?

0:42:530:42:55

His pound of flesh was part of the deal, it's a contract.

0:42:550:42:59

And he's right.

0:42:590:43:00

Shylock is deranged by Jessica's disappearance.

0:43:030:43:06

All Venice is laughing at him.

0:43:060:43:09

He's determined to meet Antonio in court.

0:43:090:43:12

He will have his bond.

0:43:120:43:15

The pound of flesh which I demand of him is dearly bought.

0:43:150:43:18

'tis mine

0:43:180:43:20

and I will have it!

0:43:200:43:21

Enter Portia, dressed as a male lawyer.

0:43:230:43:27

Do you confess the bond?

0:43:270:43:29

-I do.

-Then must the Jew be merciful?

0:43:290:43:33

Ha! Upon what compulsion must I? Tell me that!

0:43:330:43:36

The quality of mercy is not strained.

0:43:370:43:40

The quality of mercy is not strained, but Portia strains it.

0:43:400:43:45

She out-legals Shylock,

0:43:450:43:48

proving to the court that his designs on Antonio's heart

0:43:480:43:52

are tantamount to conspiracy to murder.

0:43:520:43:56

ANTONIO ROARS IN FEAR

0:43:560:43:58

Tarry a little!

0:44:010:44:02

There is something else.

0:44:020:44:04

This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood.

0:44:040:44:08

The words expressly are "a pound of flesh."

0:44:080:44:13

Take then thy bond.

0:44:130:44:15

Take though thy pound of flesh.

0:44:150:44:17

But in the cutting it if thou dost shed one drop

0:44:170:44:20

of Christian blood,

0:44:200:44:22

thy lands and goods are by the laws of Venice

0:44:220:44:25

-confiscate unto the state of Venice.

-Oh, upright judge!

0:44:250:44:31

He cannot have his pound of flesh without forfeiting his own life,

0:44:310:44:36

he must lose his fortune

0:44:360:44:38

and worst of all, he is to be converted -

0:44:380:44:42

the Jew become a Christian.

0:44:420:44:45

No!

0:44:450:44:47

No! No, please! No!

0:44:470:44:50

What was Shylock thinking?

0:44:570:44:59

Did he really believe he could take on the Venetian establishment

0:44:590:45:03

and win?

0:45:030:45:04

And my brother saw it, because my brother knows me,

0:45:080:45:10

I guess, as well as anybody.

0:45:100:45:11

I said, "What did you think, Ron?

0:45:110:45:13

"Did you think I was going to kill him?"

0:45:130:45:16

He said an interesting thing -

0:45:160:45:17

he said, "I don't know, I felt like you wanted...

0:45:170:45:20

"I felt like you wanted to cut him.

0:45:200:45:23

"I think you wanted some blood."

0:45:230:45:25

The trial of the modern Jew,

0:45:270:45:29

"The trial which never ends," wrote Philip Roth,

0:45:290:45:32

begins with the trial of Shylock.

0:45:320:45:35

In 2010, the lawyer Anthony Julius wrote a definitive history

0:45:350:45:39

of anti-Semitism in England, in which he looked at how much damage

0:45:390:45:43

Shakespeare caused with his indefensibly sadistic character.

0:45:430:45:47

If you look at the tradition

0:45:480:45:50

of what is called in another context the agelast,

0:45:500:45:54

the person who actually exists

0:45:540:45:56

in order to destroy joy in other people,

0:45:560:46:00

the person whose very presence

0:46:000:46:02

introduces a kind of chill in the room,

0:46:020:46:05

who wipes the smiles off other people's faces,

0:46:050:46:09

that's the kind of person that Shylock is.

0:46:090:46:11

He stands in that literary tradition.

0:46:110:46:14

He brings everyone down.

0:46:140:46:16

There is some truth about the joylessness of it,

0:46:160:46:19

but not the absence of wit

0:46:190:46:21

and mischief, which from the very beginning is there

0:46:210:46:24

in the "pound of flesh" proposition, isn't it?

0:46:240:46:27

"A pound of flesh from whichever part of your person

0:46:270:46:29

"it should please me to take."

0:46:290:46:30

Yes, you can't say that doesn't bring a smile to your face.

0:46:300:46:33

It's a lethal act.

0:46:330:46:36

It carries the certainty, or near certainty, of a protracted torture

0:46:360:46:42

-which ends in the death of the victim.

-Yes.

0:46:420:46:45

It's a kind of crucifixion.

0:46:450:46:47

We don't think he should do it.

0:46:470:46:49

No, not that we don't think he should do it,

0:46:490:46:52

we recognise what it resonates with

0:46:520:46:55

-as an ambition.

-But also, we never see him do it

0:46:550:46:58

and we will never properly know whether Shakespeare himself

0:46:580:47:01

holds back on that one, not just because of the legalistics.

0:47:010:47:06

Is there any possibility that he would have not done it?

0:47:060:47:10

Would he definitely have carried it out?

0:47:100:47:12

I think there's nothing in the logic of the play

0:47:120:47:14

that suggests that the threat was anything other than real.

0:47:140:47:19

The Shylock in my novel says, "I just don't know, I can't tell you.

0:47:190:47:22

-"The urge was on me to do it."

-I think it's a sentimentality.

0:47:220:47:27

I think that's where you depart from...

0:47:270:47:30

-Yours is a sentimentality on the other side.

-No, I don't think so.

0:47:300:47:33

I think I'm reading it in the grain of the play to recognise

0:47:330:47:38

-Shylock's murderousness.

-How murderous was Shylock?

0:47:380:47:41

If Shylock was so murderous, how come it was not referred to before?

0:47:410:47:44

If Shylock was so murderous, how come people didn't know,

0:47:440:47:48

"Don't go near him,"

0:47:480:47:49

and when he says, "I'll have a pound of your flesh,"

0:47:490:47:52

what history of murderousness in Shylock is there?

0:47:520:47:54

Yours is the speech to the jury -

0:47:540:47:56

"Members of the jury, look at this angelic man.

0:47:560:47:59

-"Is it possible..."

-You know I never said he was an angelic man.

0:47:590:48:02

"Could you imagine such a person lifting his hand...?"

0:48:020:48:05

Not for one moment would I call him an angelic man.

0:48:050:48:08

When Antonio accepts the deal,

0:48:080:48:11

does he think, "Oh, fine, I'm going to be fine,

0:48:110:48:14

-"I'm not going to be bust..."?

-I think he thinks three things.

0:48:140:48:18

First of all, I think he thinks, "In my homoerotic clinch,

0:48:180:48:23

"I can demonstrate my love for the very person whom otherwise

0:48:230:48:28

"I cannot express my love for,"

0:48:280:48:30

by saying, in effect, "I would die for you."

0:48:300:48:33

Secondly, he thinks, "I am in a position of such great power

0:48:330:48:37

"that no Jew can really threaten me,"

0:48:370:48:39

and thirdly, he thinks, "The likelihood of this happening

0:48:390:48:43

"is so remote because I am the kind of merchant that I am,"

0:48:430:48:47

that it's a safe bet.

0:48:470:48:50

But I don't think that he thinks...

0:48:500:48:53

.."I can rely on Shylock not to enforce in extremis."

0:48:550:48:59

Well, he doesn't have to go as far as that,

0:48:590:49:01

but you would think it might have been raised by him

0:49:010:49:04

-or his many friends...

-His lawyers?

0:49:040:49:06

Just leave lawyers out of it for a minute.

0:49:060:49:08

Are you sure anyone agrees with this kind of trade?

0:49:080:49:11

-Just pause and look at that phrase.

-In a world without lawyers...

0:49:110:49:14

How would you have represented him?

0:49:140:49:16

I would have told him not to do the deal.

0:49:160:49:19

Wouldn't have been a very good play, then, would it?

0:49:190:49:22

THEY CHUCKLE

0:49:220:49:24

Once the lawyers have finished with him,

0:49:290:49:31

Shylock is left broken, stripped of his dignity, his fortune.

0:49:310:49:36

There's no character in Shakespeare who comes in for such a debasement,

0:49:360:49:41

his humanity shredded.

0:49:410:49:42

It's a magnificent part. I think the play is the problem.

0:49:440:49:48

What is that problem?

0:49:480:49:49

Well, there are two main halves of the play,

0:49:490:49:53

the Portia half and the Shylock half.

0:49:530:49:57

Now, when Shakespeare wrote it, it was probably possible

0:49:570:50:02

for them to exist side by side.

0:50:020:50:07

After the Holocaust, it's not possible to do that,

0:50:070:50:10

because anti-Semitism, in Shakespeare's time,

0:50:100:50:15

it was perhaps just one of the nasty traits

0:50:150:50:19

in humanity.

0:50:190:50:21

We now know it can lead to Auschwitz,

0:50:210:50:25

so suddenly that side of the play has a weight to it

0:50:250:50:30

that completely overbalances the other side.

0:50:300:50:33

My whole experience of doing that play over two years

0:50:330:50:39

was sort of coming to the conclusion that it don't work any more.

0:50:390:50:44

What deepens this historical shadow

0:50:510:50:54

is the fact that the otherwise eloquent Shylock

0:50:540:50:57

not only loses the argument -

0:50:570:50:59

he's virtually struck dumb.

0:50:590:51:01

Halfway through the trial, Portia takes over

0:51:020:51:04

and Shakespeare doesn't give me anything to say

0:51:040:51:07

and that's the toughest part.

0:51:070:51:09

I always feel that if Shakespeare were still alive,

0:51:090:51:11

I'd be looking out in the orchestra seats during rehearsal saying,

0:51:110:51:15

"Come on, Willy, give me some lines."

0:51:150:51:18

What dost thou say?

0:51:180:51:20

I am content.

0:51:230:51:24

Shylock excuses himself from the court,

0:51:280:51:30

feeling unwell.

0:51:300:51:32

And that will be the last we ever see of him.

0:51:320:51:35

Shylock leaves at Act IV and is gone and the play has then got

0:51:370:51:40

nowhere to go and nothing to do for another act.

0:51:400:51:43

Shakespeare's stuck. It's one of the most spectacular problems -

0:51:430:51:47

he has to figure out how to write Act V

0:51:470:51:48

and he does it in unbelievably uncomfortable scenes

0:51:480:51:54

about castration, about jealousy and adultery,

0:51:540:51:58

about the relationship between men and women,

0:51:580:52:00

about what you do with a gay lover,

0:52:000:52:02

about how to control him and contain him.

0:52:020:52:05

You can see Shakespeare working fantastically hard

0:52:050:52:08

to try to solve a lot of problems, but as a piece of comedy...

0:52:080:52:12

I've seen the play innumerable times,

0:52:120:52:14

-I've never seen an Act V that works.

-I now leave.

0:52:140:52:18

Could Howard be right?

0:52:250:52:26

What's to stay for once Shylock has gone?

0:52:270:52:30

MAN SPEAKS LATIN

0:52:300:52:32

Credo.

0:52:340:52:36

PRIEST SPEAKS LATIN

0:52:360:52:38

The Globe production with Jonathan Pryce as Shylock

0:52:400:52:43

bravely added a scene at the end, enacting Shylock's conversion.

0:52:430:52:49

Shakespeare didn't write this scene.

0:52:490:52:51

It realises what he merely implied.

0:52:510:52:54

HE GASPS AND WHIMPERS

0:52:540:52:56

Seeing the Jew turn Christian is shocking.

0:52:590:53:02

Of course, Howard missed it.

0:53:040:53:05

PRIEST SPEAKS LATIN

0:53:070:53:09

-PRIEST:

-Amen.

0:53:110:53:14

Amen!

0:53:140:53:15

The punishment is not death, because after all,

0:53:190:53:22

it's a capital crime to threaten the life of a citizen of Venice.

0:53:220:53:26

He is shown the mercy that he himself denies.

0:53:260:53:29

He's forced to convert and work for his daughter...

0:53:290:53:31

That's not merciful, it's not merciful, it's a vile mercy.

0:53:310:53:35

But he chooses it.

0:53:350:53:37

-He chooses it.

-He chooses it instead of having his head cut off.

0:53:370:53:40

Why should a man want his head cut off?

0:53:400:53:42

Because that's what Shakespeare, again in the logic of the play,

0:53:420:53:46

respects, that's what we respect.

0:53:460:53:49

After all, if you look at the narratives

0:53:490:53:51

of Jewish martyrdom in the First, Second Crusades,

0:53:510:53:55

that is exactly how the Jews understood

0:53:550:53:57

the choice that was confronting them.

0:53:570:54:00

Yes, better to be, says Proverbs, a live dog than a dead lion,

0:54:000:54:04

except when you're required to convert

0:54:040:54:07

and then it is a sanctification of God's name to accept death

0:54:070:54:13

and even in the Jewish tradition,

0:54:130:54:15

which is a more complicated, nuanced tradition

0:54:150:54:18

than the Christian one, on this point of martyrdom,

0:54:180:54:21

there the two traditions agree and that's what's denied to Shylock.

0:54:210:54:25

Shylock has been thwarted, humiliated

0:54:310:54:34

and some would even say destroyed.

0:54:340:54:36

He is finished.

0:54:370:54:39

Our hearts hurt after what we've just seen

0:54:400:54:44

and there's nothing left now but rancid feelings.

0:54:440:54:48

For a writer bringing Shylock's story up to date,

0:55:090:55:12

it would be tempting to rethink the knottiest of the play's conundrums -

0:55:120:55:17

how to give the old Jew his revenge,

0:55:170:55:20

and his pound of a Christian's flesh -

0:55:200:55:23

but NOT with a deal that makes him guilty of conspiracy to murder.

0:55:230:55:27

Howard has come up with a neat solution.

0:55:290:55:31

It would not be murderous to cut off a pound of flesh,

0:55:310:55:35

if said flesh was your wayward daughter's

0:55:350:55:37

footballer boyfriend's foreskin.

0:55:370:55:41

When I was thinking of how I could do this,

0:55:440:55:46

I had what I thought was a blinding moment of inspiration.

0:55:460:55:50

I suddenly saw what it all meant.

0:55:500:55:52

That the pound of flesh is a play upon circumcision.

0:55:520:55:55

The cut in the heart means something else.

0:55:550:55:57

And Shakespeare understood how explosive on so many levels

0:55:570:56:01

that cut was.

0:56:010:56:03

That there is proper justification for this.

0:56:030:56:06

If there's one thing that I can speak with some authority,

0:56:060:56:09

that Elizabethans would've known watching this play,

0:56:090:56:11

it's St Paul's... Writing about circumcision,

0:56:110:56:15

for Paul, no struggle was greater than the struggle

0:56:150:56:18

about his former Jewish nature -

0:56:180:56:21

he had been Saul, now he's Paul.

0:56:210:56:24

So, as Saul he'd been circumcised.

0:56:240:56:25

And as Paul he still was!

0:56:250:56:28

He's looking down and he knows...

0:56:280:56:30

He's Paul and that's Saul!

0:56:300:56:33

So how do you...reconcile that?

0:56:330:56:37

You have to come up with a Christian way

0:56:370:56:40

that is an equivalent that supersedes this.

0:56:400:56:43

And Paul, being the brilliant man and Jew that he was, thought,

0:56:430:56:47

"OK, Jews can be circumcised in the flesh," as he puts it,

0:56:470:56:51

"but Christians are circumcised symbolically, in the heart."

0:56:510:56:57

Did Shakespeare really think of circumcision

0:56:570:57:00

as the circumcision of the flesh and heart as those two places?

0:57:000:57:04

Absolutely. Would everybody in the audience have thought of that?

0:57:040:57:07

-Absolutely.

-Absolutely?

-Absolutely.

0:57:070:57:09

So, by the time you get to Act IV,

0:57:090:57:11

where he's going to cut from the heart,

0:57:110:57:14

it's this wonderful moment

0:57:140:57:16

where Shylock's going to circumcise Antonio

0:57:160:57:20

in the place where Christians are symbolically circumcised.

0:57:200:57:24

"This is where you're symbolically circumcised?

0:57:240:57:26

"Let me do it for you."

0:57:260:57:27

"Happy to do it for you. It's gonna hurt a little bit."

0:57:270:57:30

HOWARD LAUGHS

0:57:300:57:31

You say, I think, that the ritual of the circumcision

0:57:330:57:36

and the fear of what seems to have grown out of

0:57:360:57:39

Gentile misunderstanding of circumcision,

0:57:390:57:41

which is that it's akin to castration -

0:57:410:57:44

in that the blood libel contains that idea, doesn't it?

0:57:440:57:47

When the Gentile's child was killed,

0:57:470:57:49

-ritualistically, castration may have happened.

-Yes.

0:57:490:57:52

Some people wrote at the time that Jewish men menstruated,

0:57:520:57:55

which is why they had to replace lost blood, and kill Christian kids.

0:57:550:57:59

Samuel Purkis, Shakespeare's contemporary,

0:57:590:58:01

called it "the Jewish crime",

0:58:010:58:03

where every year secretly the Jews would get together,

0:58:030:58:06

take a Christian child, and first circumcise him and then crucify him.

0:58:060:58:10

Now, why circumcise him first?

0:58:100:58:12

Why make him into a Jew if you are going to crucify him?

0:58:120:58:15

I've never gotten that part of it, but it is part of that fantasy.

0:58:150:58:19

So that the Jews take their castrating knife to Christians,

0:58:190:58:23

and it's part of the Jewish threat.

0:58:230:58:25

So I think the things that Shakespeare is reaching down into

0:58:250:58:28

in The Merchant Of Venice,

0:58:280:58:29

connects the dots of ritual murder,

0:58:290:58:33

of castration, of what Jews threatened to do to Christians,

0:58:330:58:37

of what distinguishes Christians from Jews.

0:58:370:58:41

Is there any legitimacy at all in talking about it

0:58:420:58:45

as an anti-Semitic play?

0:58:450:58:47

HE SIGHS

0:58:470:58:48

I think the play...

0:58:480:58:50

as staged 50 times in Nazi Germany, WAS a deeply anti-Semitic play.

0:58:500:58:56

I think, in different times, and in different places

0:58:560:58:58

it's Philo-Semitic.

0:58:580:59:00

I don't think the play in and of itself bears hatred,

0:59:000:59:04

but it becomes a vehicle.

0:59:040:59:06

For Jews who come to me and say, "This play should be banned,"

0:59:060:59:09

I always say, "Think of it as the canary in the coalmine.

0:59:090:59:12

"You'd be much worse off, even if it's an anti-Semitic production,

0:59:120:59:15

"because how do you know what they're really thinking about you

0:59:150:59:18

"until you watch how they stage this play?"

0:59:180:59:21

And that then is your answer to those who say,

0:59:210:59:23

"We would've been... The Jews would've been better off

0:59:230:59:25

"had this play never been written"?

0:59:250:59:27

-The Jews would NOT have been better off.

-The Jews are never better off!

0:59:270:59:30

The Jews are never better off - and you know what? -

0:59:300:59:32

this way you see it coming.

0:59:320:59:34

When Howard brings the 400-year-old Shylock back to life,

0:59:390:59:43

it would be fair to assume that his telling

0:59:430:59:46

will not be an anti-Semitic one.

0:59:460:59:49

Shylock will land right in the centre

0:59:490:59:51

of Portia's glittering playground,

0:59:510:59:54

Belmont, and this is where Shylock will go toe-to-toe

0:59:540:59:57

with those who have wronged him.

0:59:570:59:59

So, this is Belmont, then?

1:00:021:00:04

It's Cheshire, actually, but is...

1:00:041:00:06

We're in Cheshire. Yeah, I thought it would be fun

1:00:061:00:08

to come to Cheshire, to this area

1:00:081:00:10

known as roughly the Golden Triangle,

1:00:101:00:12

as a version of the world that

1:00:121:00:14

Portia lives in The Merchant Of Venice.

1:00:141:00:16

It's expensive, it is the place now

1:00:161:00:19

where Manchester United and Manchester City footballers

1:00:191:00:22

live with their wives. I thought it was a good equivalent.

1:00:221:00:25

In Shakespeare's play, Portia is Shylock's nemesis.

1:00:261:00:30

She seals his fate.

1:00:301:00:32

But at the end of Howard's tale, there is a twist.

1:00:321:00:36

Portia, alias Plurabelle,

1:00:361:00:39

meets her match.

1:00:391:00:41

You know, we all know that at the end of Act IV, Shylock goes.

1:00:411:00:44

But you were never happy about what happened next.

1:00:441:00:47

Shylock, as he appears in my novel,

1:00:471:00:49

complains as he would have reason to complain

1:00:491:00:52

that he has no Act V.

1:00:521:00:54

So I am going to give Shylock his Act V.

1:00:541:00:56

But the idea that Portia might have

1:00:561:00:58

a less than calm, less than temperate interest in him,

1:00:581:01:02

is something I play with.

1:01:021:01:03

"She had eyes only for Shylock.

1:01:071:01:09

"'God, I love this man,' she thought. 'I fucking love him.'

1:01:091:01:14

"'You are not what I thought you were,' she persisted.

1:01:151:01:18

"'And what did you think I was?'

1:01:181:01:21

"'I don't know, but I would never have imagined...'

1:01:211:01:23

"Whatever it was she would never have imagined,

1:01:231:01:25

"she couldn't for the moment find the words for it.

1:01:251:01:28

"Shylock helped her out - 'That a Jew could be so Christian?'

1:01:281:01:32

"She felt that he almost spat the words at her.

1:01:321:01:36

"'You saw a Jew and expected nothing of him but cruelty.'

1:01:361:01:40

"'I didn't SEE a Jew. I don't go around SEEING Jews.'

1:01:401:01:45

"'All right, you saw cruelty, and you gave it a Jewish face.'"

1:01:451:01:49

Shylock gets to right the wrongs at the end of your book.

1:01:501:01:53

He gets to, sort of, somehow, get the last word.

1:01:531:01:57

I don't think I am trying to score any victories.

1:01:571:02:00

I am certainly not trying to score any cheap victories.

1:02:001:02:03

If the Shylock in my novel is able to say some strong things,

1:02:031:02:06

they are no more than the things he has been saying already in the play.

1:02:061:02:10

I don't think I depart from the play at all, actually.

1:02:101:02:14

"Charity is a Jewish concept.

1:02:151:02:18

"So is mercy.

1:02:181:02:19

"You took them from us, that is all. You appropriated them.

1:02:191:02:23

"They were given freely, but still you had to steal them.

1:02:231:02:27

"It is a breathtaking insolence,

1:02:271:02:29

"an immemorial act of theft

1:02:291:02:32

"from which nothing but sorrow has ever flowed.

1:02:321:02:35

"There is blood on your insolence.

1:02:351:02:37

"She put a hand on her chest.

1:02:371:02:40

"'I feel you have laid a curse on me,' she said.

1:02:401:02:43

"'Well, now you know the sensation from the other end,' Shylock said.

1:02:431:02:47

"And this time Plurabelle could have sworn

1:02:481:02:51

"he did spit on her."

1:02:511:02:54

You've been travelling to Venice,

1:03:001:03:02

you've met all the great Shakespearean experts,

1:03:021:03:04

all the experts on the Merchant,

1:03:041:03:07

people who've explored this thing for years.

1:03:071:03:10

Has it changed your view, at all?

1:03:101:03:12

Yes. Yes.

1:03:121:03:13

What I've discovered is that I can't finish.

1:03:131:03:16

It has made me go back and rewrite some scenes.

1:03:171:03:20

It's not so much caused me to write some scenes out,

1:03:201:03:23

it's caused me to write some scenes in.

1:03:231:03:25

Shylock, he gets bigger

1:03:251:03:27

as I discover more and more different perceptions of him.

1:03:271:03:31

The sense of him and his potential gets bigger.

1:03:311:03:34

And also, that sense that he is a character for all time.

1:03:341:03:38

# Ebben, n'andro lontana... #

1:03:401:03:44

It made me realise I can't stop,

1:03:441:03:46

and it's almost arbitrary that I have stopped.

1:03:461:03:48

If there was any way in which one could write an open-ended novel -

1:03:481:03:52

that, you know, every week I add a little bit to -

1:03:521:03:55

I would do it.

1:03:551:03:56

ARIA CONTINUES

1:03:561:03:58

# La fra la neve bianca

1:03:581:04:07

# La fra le nubi d'or

1:04:071:04:14

# La dove la speranza

1:04:151:04:22

# La speranza

1:04:221:04:28

# Il rimpianto

1:04:281:04:34

# Il rimpianto, e il dolor! #

1:04:341:04:42

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