Merchant is the most controversial of all of Shakespeare’s works because the villain, the moneylender Shylock, is Jewish. The play was used as propaganda by the Nazis and is frequently cited as an example of antisemitism.
In Elizabethan England, Jews were as scarce as tits on a turtle. They had been expelled from the country three hundred years before, so hardly anyone had any direct experience with them. In literature they were portrayed as the blackest villains, practitioners of witchcraft, and in league with Satan.
Shylock is a departure from how Jews were typically depicted, as has been recognized throughout the history of the play. He transcends the stock villain that a comedy of this nature calls for. In Shylock, Shakespeare created a multifaceted tragic figure, an outsider who loses his family, his wealth, and his identity because of his bitter hatred and his thirst for vengeance, which was cultivated by the dominant Venetian society, which stigmatized and oppressed Jews.
Shylock’s most famous speech, his plea for tolerance, not only humanizes him, but goes to the root of his villainy. What is its cause? The villainy that has been perpetrated against him. He is modeling what he has been taught.
He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison
us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.
The character in True Blood who most resembles Shylock as a sympathetic villain is Russell Edgington. Like Shylock the one love in his life, his child, was taken from him by his enemies.
Denis O’Hare explains how he perceives Russell–
Behind this characterization is a century worth of actors who owe their sympathetic portrayals of Shylock to a similar point of view. To them, Portia, Bassanio, and Antonio are the villains who have beset Shylock. They double cross him, lie to him, and use him.
If alchemy demonstrates how benevolence and sacrifice create an ascending and expanding spiral of enlightenment and love for all it touches, then Merchant depicts the opposite and shows how ignorance, prejudice, and hate leads to a spiral of violence and retribution. Shylock’s demand for a pound of Antonio’s flesh only comes after a lifetime of abuse. In Eric’s feud with Russell, we see the same escalation of violence depicted in Merchant. In Bill’s lies and murders we see what Shylock knows, abuse and neglect are the genesis of evil. Bill is what he is because of what he has endured at the hands of an uncaring world. While we can sympathize with his pain and understand how he became the killer that he is, it does not excuse him. He is still morally responsible for his actions.
The recurring image of his bleeding heart is a metaphor for Bill’s suffering.
Bill's heart bleeds when he's wounded in the war.
Bill's heart bleeds in the car with Gus and Coot.
Bill's heart bleeds when he is attacked by wolves.
Dried blood over Bill's heart shows where Lorena cut him.
Contrast Bill’s untended wounds with Alcide’s and Tommy’s.
Sookie tending Alcide's wound
Tommy's wound most likely tended by Sam
All suffer. The difference is some have people who care about them to share their pain and tend their wounds; others don’t. God help us because if we don’t care for those who are suffering, we will have to care for those they lash out at and wound. This is the message of Shylock, the victimizer, and Sookie, the victim.
Part II, ‘Portia’ *Screencaps courtesy of Shadow of Reflection
Not Just a Pretty Face
by anna tsogyal
When I first saw this image of Talbot I wasn’t sure who it reminded me of, and then I remembered this from Derek Jarman’s film, Carravagio. A younger version perhaps?
Caravaggio was a 16th century Italian painter, born in Milan, who spent some time in Rome where he painted A Boy with a Basket of Fruit, on which the still from Jarman’s picture is based. There has been some controversy about whether Caravaggio was gay or bisexual; however he did become something of a gay icon, which would have appealed to Jarman who was both a painter and film director.
The fruit in this painting is not perfect, some of the leaves are blemished or diseased which seems to be unusual as most painters of the time idealised whatever they painted. Caravaggio painted other naturalistic still lifes, and the table decorations in Russell Edgington’s mansion have centrepieces of flowers and fruit that look as if they were inspired by a still life painting.
Connections have been drawn between Russell as the Celtic god, Lugus, and Talbot as his companion, Rosmerta, so I’d like to add another tale to the mix. It seems that Julius Caesar was responsible for connecting Lugus to Hermes, and others have included Lugh and Llew Law Gyffes as counterparts as well. The Welsh Llew Law Gyffes doesn’t seem to have as many parallels but there is an interesting story about him in the Mabinogion. He was forbidden to take a human wife so a woman called Blodwyn was created for him out of flowers.
We’ve already learnt from Alan Ball and Daniel Minahan’s Frenzy commentary that they took some of their inspiration for Queen Sophie Anne’s palace from Pasolini’s controversial film Salò which is an examination of the abuse of power.
Since one of the themes this season is political extremism, it seemed to be worth looking at other Italian and European films which might have provided some kind of inspiration, conscious or unconscious.
Pasolini was closely linked with the neo-realist school of Italian cinema and one of the subjects of neo-realist films was Italian fascism. The neo-realist directors included Bernardo Bertolucci whose film, The Conformist, was a exploration of the mentality of those who became fascist and the possible causes of their involvement.
The Conformist tells the story of Marcello, a young man living in Italy at the time of Mussolini, who is desperate to create the illusion of normality by rejecting his past, which includes a homosexual incident with the family chauffeur and a murder. Marcello joins the Fascist Party and his attempt to conform to society’s expectations includes marriage and later, on the orders of the Party, the murder of an anti-fascist professor. His story is told mostly in flashbacks and on occasion even those flashbacks have flashbacks. After the fall of the fascist regime Marcello is prepared to accuse others of his own actions to save his own skin in another attempt to conform.
The illusion of normality sounds to me a bit like mainstreaming and the flashbacks and the unsavoury past of the young man in question also reminded me of how the writers are telling Bill’s story. Both characters use the veneer of civility to hide their inner selves. Marcello uses the conventions of bourgeois society, and Bill the manners of a Southern gentleman.
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