My students were discussing The Merchant of Venice today, and the symbolic or material value of the rings given by brides to husbands (or husbands to be) in the play. One group was very amused by the bawdy joke about rings at the end of the play, one student felt that for Shylock there was only monetary value to the ring Leah gave him, whilst other students (and I) disagreed.
But, all this talk of rings reminded me - I got my office keyring stuck on my left hand ring finger the other day.
Do you think someone somewhere is trying to tell me something?
3 comments:
Oh dear i think thats taking the 'married to your job' metaphor too far *gulp*
Get out there and socialise quick!!
R
The key ring was stuck on your ring finger? Anonymous made an all too clever remark about that.
I had to decide (while playing Jessica in a 1970 production of Merchant) that Shakespeare was writing for more than his antisemitic audience with this play. His Hath Not a Jew eyes speech and the plaintive distress of losing Leah's ring, being betrayed by his daughter, etc gave the viewer some way to sympathize with Shylock. Shakespeare may have vilified Shylock by giving him an obsession with a pound of flesh, but he shows the frailties of how the man could have been pushed to something like this. Why?... if you don't want to draw sympathy to this character. Our director set it in a concentration camp. I don't know who he got that idea from. It couldn't possibly have been his, could it? It definitely made Shylock the hero. The Quality of Mercy speech was, of course, hollow and twisted.
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It's possible it was your directors idea - I haven't heard of that one before. We didn't discuss the Quality of Mercy speech very much, but we did discuss how unsatisfactory most of the 'Christian' characters are.
Thank you for commenting. It's really interesting to hear about other people's interpretations / experiences of plays.
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