William Shakespeare is peerless in literature, drama and poetry. His plays are often a difficult read, though, even for native English speakers. This has contributed, I feel, to an oversight and under-appreciation for the wisdom he has offered for centuries. So in ST! I endeavor to engage, entertain and educate a modern day audience.
But it's more than merely a few plays in the woods. SSC has straddled the chasm between town and gown in Santa Cruz better than any other organization ever has.
The point is that this company and that wonderful outdoor venue where they've created most of their magical moments has become, for locals anyway, a part of the fine-grained fabric of our lives.
The photos are production shots from the Shakespeare Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is on the western-central coast of California. The words are by Wallace Baine, the writer behind What we lose when we lose Shakespeare Santa Cruz. Baine takes a personal, reminiscent and endearing look at the closing of the SSC. I love reading his article, because his sentimental never slides into melodramatic.
Shakespeare drew on various texts as the springboard for his plays, and I may go so far as to argue that no artistic creation is ever purely original. It ought to be a compliment, and no surprise, then, that the playwright himself is a springboard for others' creativity.
Reworking Henry IV, Gus Van Sant’s road movie My Own Private Idaho stars River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves as gay drifters on a mythic quest in the American northwest. The modern relationship between Prince Hal, Henry IV and Falstaff merges Shakespeare’s text with scabrous demotic American.
None has been funnier, cleverer than this recreation of Shakespeare’s sex war comedy in Padua high school, Seattle, where the Stratford sisters are respectively a beautiful conformist and a football-playing feminist. A perfect fit.
Most effective perhaps is O, set in an exclusive boarding school in the deep south where the only African-American is basketball star Odin (Mekhi Phifer), who courts the dean’s daughter, Desi (Julia Stiles), and is targeted for destruction by rival Hugo (Josh Hartnett). Shelved for two years because of the Columbine high school massacre, it became a US box-office success.
Not a whit. We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is ’t to leave betimes? Let be.
Years ago I had Lady Macbeth standing under the same umbrella as Iago and Richard III: that being of the quintessential evil in Shakespeare. But over time I've come to appreciate the complexity of, and the despair in, her character, and consequently found myself gradually more sympathetic. That she emasculates Macbeth to pieces, while he is rightfully questioning their plan to kill King Duncan, is horrible. But that she is a painfully troubled woman, merely trying to come to grips with herself, engenders that sympathy.
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances 50
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'
It's handsome meets gorgeous in his Hollywood on Broadway staging of the eternal love story. Orlando Bloom (36) and Condola Rashad (26) are older casts for Romeo and Juliet, who were in their tempestuous teens. The two actors, I imagine, had fitness and beauty regimen to make sure they looked as youthful as possible.
Beside the curious age matter, there is the so-called 'race card.'
According to producers, "In this new production, the members of the Montague household will be white, and the blood relatives of the Capulet family will be black. While race defines the family lineages, the original cause of the ‘ancient quarrel’, passed down by successive generations to their young, has been lost to time. Shakespeare’s dramatization of the original poem sets the two young lovers in a context of prejudice, authoritarian parents, and a never ending cycle of ‘revenge.’ Against this background, the strength of their love changes the world."
In her big-screen adaptation of Shakespeare's mystical thriller "The Tempest," Academy Award-nominated Julie Taymor ("Across the Universe," "Frida," "Titus") brings an original dynamic to the story by changing the gender of the sorcerer Prospero into the sorceress Prospera, portrayed by Oscar winner Helen Mirren ("The Queen"). Prospera's journey spirals through vengeance to forgiveness as she reigns over a magical island, cares for her young daughter, Miranda, and unleashes her powers against shipwrecked enemies in this exciting, masterly mix of romance, tragicomedy and the supernatural.
As screenwriter, director and producer, Julie Taymor manages to assemble silver-screen heavy hitters (wow): Helen Mirren, Felicity Jones, Djimon Hounsou, Russell Brand, Alfred Molina, Ben Whishaw, Chris Cooper, Alan Cumming, David Strathairn and Reeve Carney.
Shakespeare was masterful at speaking to gender identity and confusion, so I expect that he would have applauded Taymor's coup of Prospero, turned woman, and casting such a grand dame of acting in that role.
Aficionados often see in Prospero, the aging William Shakespeare, who is full of magical thinking and bittersweet fantasy. At this point in this life, he has lorded over more kingdoms than any king or duke can imagine, and if I were a live audience to all of these, "The Tempest" would have left me as much enthralled as mournful.
At this point, Shakespeare was nearing the end of his life.
Need a quick overview of the plot points in this slapstick comedy by William Shakespeare? Cast and crew from Folger Theatre's "The Comedy of Errors" give you the story of the play with all its mistaken identities and confusion.
Shakespeare's shortest play features shipwreck, separated twins, mistaken identities, and romantic confusion before ending happily for all!
Why makes a comedy so funny? Find examples of stock comedy characters and plot devices in Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors."
It's the comedy of errors, yo. It's the comedy of errors, yo.
Even though "The Comedy of Errors" has a complicated plot, rhyme makes the language (and story) easier to follow. Learn about the three kinds of rhyme found in the play in this special Insider's Guide.
Richard II was a weak, vain King, and actor Derek Jacobi portrays quite well the waxing and waning of his courage, calm and hope. Nonetheless, and as a university student I loved the melodrama of Richard II's poetry. The following was among the lengthiest passages I memorized, and recited, back then (from Act 3, scene ii):
No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?
Now, in prison, Richard II not just laments his lost kingdom, but must have also sensed his impending execution. Here is another passage I memorized and recited (Act 5, scene v):
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world: And for because the world is populous And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out. My brain I'll prove the female to my soul, My soul the father; and these two beget A generation of still-breeding thoughts, And these same thoughts people this little world, In humours like the people of this world, For no thought is contented. The better sort, As thoughts of things divine, are intermix'd With scruples and do set the word itself Against the word: As thus, 'Come, little ones,' and then again, 'It is as hard to come as for a camel To thread the postern of a small needle's eye.' Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot Unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails May tear a passage through the flinty ribs Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls, And, for they cannot, die in their own pride. Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves That they are not the first of fortune's slaves, Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame, That many have and others must sit there; And in this thought they find a kind of ease, Bearing their own misfortunes on the back Of such as have before endured the like. Thus play I in one person many people, And none contented: sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am: then crushing penury Persuades me I was better when a king; Then am I king'd again: and by and by Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke, And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be, Nor I nor any man that but man is With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased With being nothing. Music do I hear?
These videos are clips from the BBC film production of, if I recall correctly, each and every play of Shakespeare. I was enthralled to watch adaptations that were faithful to the text, and they coincided with my studies of Shakespeare at the university.
Here is the playlist of clips from the film - King Richard the Second, and here is a transcript of the play - The Life and Death of Richard the Second. Finally, Derek Jacobi was among my favorite actors, as he knew how to enunciate Shakespeare for my ears and offered the right intent and emotion behind the language. Besides this one, he was standout as Hamlet and in the titular role of "I, Claudius."
Nick Bottom, The Weaver, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" may be annoying to his fellow actors, but his character must be one of the most winsome personalities in Shakespeare. He is so enthused about performing at the royal court, that he wants to play every single part. In fact, he steps on Peter Quince's toes frequently, because he is keen as well to direct the show. Turned into an ass, he is even more a belly full of laughs. It is Shakespeare at his comedic best.
New research indicates he didn’t make up all those words - he just used them better.
One effect of digital research in the humanities, it seems, could be to reframe the debate over what makes writers such as Shakespeare so original. By dissolving the myth that his great contribution was to invent English words out of thin air, we are left with a clearer focus on qualities of his work that are less reducible to numbers: namely, the beauty of his writing and the richness of his cultural milieu.
Thankfully, I was delighted by, but didn't concern myself much with, all these new English words Shakespeare was thought to have originated. I just marveled and reveled in his plays!
Shakespearean scholar Stanley Wells posed proudly with this portrait in March 2009, which after three years of research, some experts apparently deemed to be a genuine rendering of Shakespeare's likeness (i.e., a live portrait).
David Scott Kastan, a Yale Shakespeare expert, said by telephone that there were reasons to question the Cobbe portrait’s provenance - it was in fact once owned by the Earl of Southampton or commissioned by him, as the trust representatives believe - to doubt whether the richly dressed man in the portrait was Shakespeare.
“If I had to bet I would say it’s not Shakespeare,” Mr. Kastan said. But even if it was, he said, the traditions of Elizabethan portraiture meant that it would be unwise to conclude that Shakespeare actually looked like the figure depicted in the portrait. “It might be a portrait of Shakespeare, but not a likeness, because the conventions of portraiture at the time were often to idealize the subject,” he said.
Kastan makes a good point. Rembrandt, the Dutch master, painted in the decades soon after Shakespeare's death, and built his artistic reputation on painting the newly wealthy merchants of Amsterdam. For the sake of posterity, I imagine, he was expected to render, and no doubt did render, a flattering (i.e., idealized) portrait of his proud subjects. Indeed the Cobbe Shakespeare is princely handsome and young and suffused with the wealth that, according to Wells, came from the wider success Shakespeare garnered in his later years.
From what little was reported of the research of this portrait, the evidence established that the wood and paint were from Shakespeare's time (i.e., late 1500s and early 1600s). But I don't know if the evidence suggested that the man in the portrait was in fact Shakespeare.
You see, the Janssen portrait and the Droeshout engraving bear a much more striking resemblance to the Cobbe portrait, than does the the Droeshout engraving to the Chandos portrait. This may not mean much, if artists were working off of the same portrait. But one question is, How wealthy was Shakespeare at different stages in his life? Another one is, Even if he weren't actually wealthy at all, did any of his patrons, formal or informal, have a stake in portraying him as wealthy?
We hear from James Earl Jones on reclaiming Othello as a tragic hero, Julie Taymor on turning Prospero into Prospera, Camille Paglia on teaching the plays to actors, F. Murray Abraham on gaining an audience’s sympathy for Shylock, Sir Ben Kingsley on communicating Shakespeare’s ideas through performance, Germaine Greer on the playwright’s home life, Dame Harriet Walter on the complexity of his heroines, Brian Cox on social conflict in his time and ours, Jane Smiley on transposing "King Lear" to Iowa in "A Thousand Acres," and Sir Antony Sher on feeling at home in Shakespeare’s language. Together these essays provide a fresh appreciation of Shakespeare’s works as a living legacy to be read, seen, performed, adapted, revised, wrestled with, and embraced by creative professionals and lay enthusiasts alike.
Shakespeare understood human nature like no other. I studied psychology thoroughly for my undergraduate and graduate work, and my mates and I learned boatloads from the giants in the field - BF Skinner, Carl Rogers and Sigmund Freud, among many. But Shakespeare predated them all by centuries with his knowledge and wisdom.
We learn about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in "Macbeth," and the radically different impact it had on the murderous Scottish King and her unsex-me-now Lady Macbeth.
We learn about grief in its breathtaking, tragic complexity in "Hamlet," from the ghostly visitations, to the Oedipal Complex, to the nihilistic denouement.
We learn about the fantasy-riddled world of an aging mind, in the Romance Plays such as "The Tempest," no less about Prospero than about Shakespeare himself in the twilight of his life.
This, in the end, is what Shakespeare Talks! is all about: drawing modern day lessons for all of us.
It seems so easy: take a play with engaging characters whose motivations and contradictions are quickly comprehensible. Add a gifted composer and an incredibly talented director who also writes delicious dialogue. Add to this a group of performers, mostly quite young, who are so versatile and likable that we audience members instantly love them and want them to do well. Then add production values that are solid and professional but do not scream “Concept!” Blend well, rehearse for a few weeks, and then—presto!—you have a magical night of musical theater.
Such was the case with Love’s Labour’s Lost, the early Shakespeare play that has been transformed into a musical enchantment presented by the Public Theater as part of its annual summer season at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The show only runs through Sunday [which is tomorrow] but merits another life in an indoor space. It won’t have quite the sense of idyll that a beautiful night in the park provides, but that will be compensated for by the intimacy that a theater can offer.
So writes Fred Plotkin in Shakespeare, Musical Muse. I enjoyed his writing thoroughly, not only for the unapologetic passion he experienced from this musical staging of "Love's Labour's Lost," but also for the context and background he offered on Shakespeare-cum-opera.
Shakespeare’s plays, with their gorgeous language, are not always congenial for musical adaptation. The music of the words sometimes overwhelms the music itself. The text also asks the performers to not only sing well but recite the words in meaningful ways. The words also pose challenges for composers whose melodies are forced to conform to (or go against) the meter of the original Shakespearean text.
Below was a sneak peek of the performers singing pieces from the musical. They were very much still in rehearsal, back in May, but I love their public display of it. The age of social media makes it such a curiosity and delight to have this behind-the-scenes look. Clearly the performers enjoyed what they did and even how the audience teased them.
Finally, it's been such a long time since I read "Love's Labour's Lost." It wasn't part of the curriculum for any of my Shakespeare classes at Northwestern University. I read it on the side, so it didn't have the kind of thorough study I had with "Hamlet" or "The Tempest." I therefore appreciate this audiobook of the entire play, plus the synopsis, on YouTube.
The play opens with the King of Navarre and three noble companions, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, taking an oath to devote themselves to three years of study, promising not to give in to the company of women -- Berowne somewhat more hesitantly than the others. Berowne reminds the king that the princess and her three ladies are coming to the kingdom and it would be suicidal for the King to agree to this law. The King denies what Berowne says, insisting that the ladies make their camp in the field outside of his court. The King and his men meet the princess and her ladies. Instantly, they all fall comically in love.
The main story is assisted by many other humorous sub-plots. A rather heavily-accented Spanish swordsman, Don Adriano de Armado, tries and fails to woo a country wench, Jaquenetta, helped by Moth, his page, and rivalled by Costard, a country idiot. We are also introduced to two scholars, Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel, and we see them converse with each other in schoolboy Latin. In the final act, the comic characters perform a play to entertain the nobles, an idea conceived by Holofernes, where they represent the Nine Worthies. The four Lords -- as well as the Ladies' courtier Boyet -- mock the play, and Armado and Costard almost come to blows.
At the end of this 'play' within the play, there is a bitter twist in the story. News arrives that the Princess's father has died and she must leave to take the throne. The king and his nobles swear to remain faithful to their ladies, but the ladies, unconvinced that their love is that strong, claim that the men must wait a whole year and a day to prove what they say is true. This is an unusual ending for Shakespeare and Elizabethan comedy. A play mentioned by Francis Meres, Love's Labour's Won, is believed by some to be a sequel to this play.
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, And for that name which is no part of thee Take all myself.
In general, I don't follow questions about authorship of Shakespearean and other works. But after I read this article from the New York Times - Much Ado About Who: Is It Really Shakespeare? - two thoughts struck me: (a) Shakespeare's oeuvre may be greater than we know, and (b) what we do know may have been a collaboration with other playwrights or poets.
Pippa Nixon does fine work as Rosalind, and this role is simply not as easy as it may seem. To get close to Orlando, ably played by Alex Waldmann, whom she loves, she pretends to be the young man Ganymede. There is a delightful veneer of buddy-buddy between Rosalind and Orlando in this scene, and as the actress inside the actress Nixon makes this happen. We can see the increasing joy on Rosalind's face, as her pretense is clearly working. Orlando takes the bait, that is, and in a bit of playacting agrees to woo Ganymede as if "he" were Rosalind. Which of course she is Rosalind.
What makes "As You Like It" even more of an intriguing study of gender and identity is that in Shakespeare's time, female roles were played by teenage boys. The complexity of the role becomes even more delicious, you see: We have a young man, playing a woman, who is pretending to be a young man, who playacts as a woman, counseling another man on how to court a woman!
Well-done, by Jonathan Slinger. On stage, soliloquies look very much as they are: soliloquies. But on film, especially this one, they can look more like a conversation with us as the audience. It lends an immediacy and intimacy to this particular soliloquy. It crystallizes for me how radically different media that film and stage are.
Also, I really appreciated Slinger's enunciation and pacing of Shakespeare's poetry. Even a native English-speaking audience will struggle to understand Shakespeare, in part because actors often seem to rush the text and forget that they're performing for a 21st century audience (not 16th or 17th century). What's even more difficult about this soliloquy is that it's 'broken' poetry. Hamlet is stunned by his mother's hasty mourning and remarriage, and speaks emotionally in starts and stops.
One of my abiding notions for Shakespeare Talks! is that of showing his relevance, enjoyment and meaning for audiences of different of cultures. For example, while in Dubai, I spoke to two Iranian friends about interest in Shakespeare in their community, and apparently there is quite a bit. In fact, they showed me books they had of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Othello" in Farsi, their native tongue.
In the diverse milieu of Dubai, Shakespeare Talks! can certainly find its place in the Arabic and Indian communities as well. I would engage select friends to help me stage interactive plays, that is, ones that engage audiences actively.
It is in this context that I loved reading this article in tabloid! - Bollywood Loves Shakespeare. Writer David Tusing lists five such films, and I was happy to find them in full-length on YouTube. I include his text, after each film.
Before he became one of the most influential lyricists in the industry, Gulzar made a few acclaimed films, one of his most memorable being this comedy based on Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. The film about identical twins separated at birth who meet again as adults, is still considered as one of the best comedies to come out of Bollywood.
A certified classic, this story about two teenagers who fall in love, unaware that their families are bitter enemies (no prizes for guessing which Shakespearean play it was inspired by), had all the makings of a perfect Bollywood blockbuster. And it was. Besides the songs which are still well-loved even today, the film also gave us Aamir Khan, one of the biggest actors in India today.
Bollywood’s version of Macbeth was set in (where else?), Mumbai’s underworld. This film, though not a box office scorcher, brought acclaim not only for music composer-turned-director Vishal Bhardwaj, but also its lead actor Irrfan Khan, who became an A-lister overnight. He’s now India’s biggest Hollywood export.
Having tasted success with Macbeth, director Vishal Bhardwaj went back to another Shakespeare classic, Othello, and assembled an impressive cast including Ajay Devgn in the title role and supported by Saif Ali Khan and Vivek Oberoi. Set against the backdrop of Indian state politics, this one was a hit for Bhardwaj, who is now one of the industry’s busiest directors.
Art house film favourite Rituparno Ghosh, the late Bengali director who died of a heart attack in May this year, gave Indian acting legend Amitabh Bachchan one of his career’s best in this film, inspired by the works of Shakespeare. Based on the life of an aging theatre actor who’s lived his life playing characters in Shakespearean plays and who condemns modern cinema, this critically-acclaimed work was praised for its thought-provoking look at theatre versus cinema and old world charm as it comes crashing against the new world.
I studied Shakespeare, poetry and drama, each, for a year at Northwestern University, and I am thankful for being well-schooled in structure and rhythm, context and philosophy. The iambic pentameter makes up, for example, the building blocks of poetry in English. It is the characteristic meter in Shakespeare, and to grasp it well is to understand better the meaning of his plays and sonnets. Plus, I believe it helps actors memorize their lines.
Enter: Folger Shakespeare Library and Living Iambic Pentameter.
There is a natural rhythm to our conversations, and if we listen to it we may hear more iambs than we expect. I like the reference to heartbeat, and its ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum rhythm.
William Shakespeare is widely acknowledged as the greatest writer in the English language. So the only fitting way to truly honour his legacy is a truly English endeavour: a good old quiz.
How well do you know your William? Are you brainy about the Bard?
At some point in the late 19th century, theatre quietened down and stopped being for everyone. The communal exhilaration that had been going for 2,500 years... was finally and comprehensively shushed. No one knows how, really. Perhaps it was the culmination of an aristocratic plot to rid the fun-houses of proles... Whatever the reason, theatre is stupidly quiet now.
I responded with a comment that ended up rather lengthy for a post:
As an audience member, I, too, prefer quiet ... at least in general. I simply wouldn't want to be part of an audience that's loud, rowdy or interrupting ... again at least not in general. Still, a few years ago, friends invited me to an abridged staging of all of Shakespeare's plays, performed in about two hours. It was in Dubai, and this sort of production was perfect for an audience that probably wanted Shakespeare as a brisk, funny medley. I remember us laughing, reacting and applauding frequently throughout the performance. The troupe did a fine job of actively engaging us, and we responded noisily!
As far as the Parker-Rees' article is concerned, I found it to be very informative and interesting, too. Yet, I couldn't really take it very seriously, either, as I wondered if it was actually meant to be a sardonic one. I feel rather relaxed and unself-conscious in the theater - stage or film - even in my relative quiet and even in that proper decorum that Parker-Rees seems to lament. There is plenty of noise, interruption, hullabaloo in different segments of modern-day life (e.g., rush-hour traffic, bustling cities, construction sites) that I long for the quiet absorption and vicarious release of theater-going.
Sporting events is probably where we have more of the audience of old, which Parker-Rees seems to pine for. Whether at the stadium itself or at home watching on TV, my friends and I yell, jump and curse freely, depending on how our home team is playing. So I'd argue against his notion that somehow we've become more of an aristocratic, cowed audience. Yes, we may have evolved with the times, but as an audience we have a wider range of entertainment options at our disposal and therefore greater freedom to be whatever: We are quiet when we want to be, and we are noisy when we want to be.
The roaring crowd at the Stanley Cup rally for the Chicago Blackhawks (image credit: ESPN)
North Plainfield High School teacher Kristyn Rosen shares her reasons for wanting to move away from teaching Shakespeare's "safe" plays and towards plays that ask difficult questions, like 'The Merchant of Venice' and 'Othello.'
Baltimore teacher Amber Phelps describes how she would use Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice' in an American Literature unit.
You can argue that these are just video clips by the Shakespeare Folger Library, and we ought not be surprised that these two teachers say very little about why they'd like to teach the more difficult plays. But perhaps ironically, they end up saying a lot about entrenched issues that still plague American culture. That in its Zeitgeist of hypersensitivity (i.e., political correctness [PC]) this culture inhibits even our teachers from raising those issues openly and giving them the latitude to teach our children what they need to learn, in order to help resolve these very issues.
Phelps speaks pedantically of "people of non-normative genders, races and classes," showing that we're good at sidling into robotic phrases as a way to safeguard ourselves from the PC police.
'The Merchant of Venice' is about the titular merchant Shylock, who as a Jew is the subject of some derision in the play. Maybe what Phelps and Rosen mean is, they'd like at least to raise the issue of anti-semitism in the classroom, plus weigh a host of legal and moral slants that define the character of Shylock. For example, he has his chance to exact revenge on others concerning these extraordinarily tough issues, after a business transaction went awry:
To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. 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.
Years ago I watched 'The Merchant of Venice' at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, in which the director, in contrast to the clips above, boldly laid the issues out, shook the table, and demand we make sense of it all. For one, Shylock was played by an African-American actor. For another, Portia was played by an Asian-American actress.
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