Shylock on the Big Screen:
The Image of the Jew in Movie Adaptations of The Merchant of Venice
by J.C. Koens
10002548
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master Linguistics: Translation
at the
University of Amsterdam
Dr. Eric Metz 10th of June 2015
Table of Content
TABLE OF CONTENT... 2 INTRODUCTION... 3 1. IMAGOLOGY... 5 1.1.INTRODUCTION...5 1.2.HISTORY...5 1.3.IMAGOLOGY...71.4.JEWS AND IMAGOLOGY...9
1.5CONCLUSION... 10
2. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE IN CONTEXT...12
2.1INTRODUCTION... 12
2.2THE ORIGIN OF THE IMAGE... 12
2.3IMAGOLOGY IN THE MERCHANT OF VENICE:SHYLOCK AND THE IMAGE OF THE JEW... 14
2.4.SHYLOCK’S IMAGE THROUGHOUT HISTORY... 17
2.5CONCLUSION... 20
3. FROM STAGE TO SCREEN...21
3.1INTRODUCTION... 21
3.2STAGE TO SCREEN... 21
3.3SHAKESPEARE:FROM STAGE TO SCREEN... 23
3.4.CONCLUSION... 26
4. SHYLOCK: FROM STAGE TO SCREEN...27
4.1.INTRODUCTION... 27
4.2.THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (1980) DIRECTED BY JACK GOLD... 27
4.2.1. Adaptation and Dialogue...28
4.2.2. Cinematic Techniques...28
4.2.3. Personality and Setting...31
4.3.THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (2001) DIRECTED BY TREVOR NUNN... 32
4.3.1. Adaptation and Dialogue...33
4.3.2. Cinematic Techniques...33
4.3.3. Personality and Setting...35
4.4THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (2004) DIRECTED BY MICHAEL RADFORD... 36
4.4.1. Adaptation and Dialogue...36
4.4.2. Cinematic Techniques...38
4.4.3. Personality and Setting...39
4.5CONCLUSION... 41
5. CRITICAL RECEPTION AND PRAGMATIC-FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE IN IMAGOLOGY...43
5.1.INTRODUCTION... 43
5.2.JACK GOLD’S THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (1980)... 43
5.3.TREVOR NUNN’S THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (2001)... 45
5.4.MICHAEL RADFORD’S THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (2004)... 46
5.5.CONCLUSION... 48
CONCLUSION...50
Introduction
For many years Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice has been the target of a lot of controversy due to its anti-Semitic storyline in the form of Shylock. Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who lends out money to Antonio, a Christian merchant, so he can send his friend Bassanio to Belmont to ask Portia for her hand in marriage. They set up a bond, that if Antonio is not able to pay him back the money on time, Shylock will receive a pound of Antonio’s flesh. Antonio loses some of his wealth at sea and is indeed not able to pay Shylock back. The bond is taken to court where Portia, dressed as a judge, turns the bond against Shylock. Instead of him being allowed his pound of flesh, and killing Antonio, Shylock has to hand in all of his belongings and has to convert to Christianity as a punishment.
What this thesis will set out to do is answer how the image of the Jew has changed by looking at the way Shylock is portrayed in film adaptations of The Merchant of Venice.
This question will be answered by using imagology as a theoretical framework. After establishing how Shylock plays a role in this image, I will continue to use his character as the representation of the image of the Jew. Using adaptations of The Merchant of Venice by Gold, Nunn and Radford, I will discuss how they dealt with the complicated character of Shylock, both in the movie itself by cinematic techniques, and by finding out what the directors of these adaptations have said about the movie and how well the movie has been received by critics.
Research into the image of the Jew in The Merchant of Venice has been done before, but what this thesis will do is look specifically at how one can convey an image in different ways in movie that are impossible or not accepted in theatre.
The first chapter will deal with the study of imagology. It will discuss how the idea of the image that resulted in the image being an object to study. The methodological aspects of the study will also be discussed here. Finally, this chapter will deal with the image of the Jew.
The second chapter will deal with Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and in what way this character is the literary embodiment of the image of the Jew that has been discussed in the first chapter. For this I will look at the context in which The Merchant of Venice was written and performed. Here, it will be important to find out how and why this image managed to exist for such a long time.
The third chapter will take a slightly different direction. Instead of talking about imagology, it will deal with the adaptation of theatre pieces into movies. It will first discuss
the differences between film and theatre and how directors of film adaptations use these differences, before discussing the Shakespeare adaptations in particular.
Chapter four will be an analysis of Shylock in three different adaptations of The Merchant of Venice. The 1980 adaptation by Jack Gold, the 2001 adaptation by Trevor Nunn and the 2004 adaptation by Michael Radford will be discussed. This chapter will contain the uniquely cinematic ways in which Shylock is portrayed, but also the non-cinematic ways will be discussed.
The last chapter builds on a slightly different approach to the imagological study, namely that of the pragmatic functionalist approach that has become a more recent development in the study. Here the intended target audience and the critical response to Shylock will have a central position. Here I will discuss the way the audience and the critics see Shylock in light of possible changes in the image of the Jew.
1. Imagology
1.1. Introduction
When analyzing the different portrayal of Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice it can help to look at the theory of imagology. Imagology is the study of the “origin and function of characteristics of other countries and peoples” and how they are presented in different media (Beller 2007: 7). This chapter will introduce the theory of imagology using the by Beller and Leerssen’s 2007 research on the theory. It will first deal with the history of the theory and how it came to be, before moving on to the theoretical framework and finally it will deal with the imagology of the Jew.
1.2. History
The tendency of attributing other countries, cultures and peoples with specific
characterizations is not a recent development. It has been done ever since people started coming into contact with different countries, languages and customs. These encounters are always influenced by a selective perspective, which leads to curiosity and prompts the imagination, which in turn leads to fascinating images in people’s minds (Beller 2007: 6). Due to this stimulation of the imagination there is not only a tendency to attribute
characterizations to other countries, cultures and peoples, there is also a tendency for them be “Othered”, by representing them and their domestic patterns as “an oddity, an anomaly” or “a singularity” (Leerssen 2007: 17). The consciousness of other countries is rooted in the
developed consciousness “among various local and regional groups […] that they belonged to national collectives which could be defined in terms of territory, ethnicity, language, religion, history and tradition” (Beller 2007: 11). This means that to look at the reasons why people and cultures are stereotyped, one first need to look where the idea of the “Other” comes from. This will be done by looking at the growing nationalism of countries. Without an idea of belonging to a certain group that share a culture together, there is no idea of other countries and cultures. What is important to note here is that the perceptions people have of other people and cultures are all based on their perception of themselves and how other people are different than them.
During the Enlightenment people in several European countries became more nationalistic, but at the same time people also became more aware of the prejudices and
images they had about other people. According to Beller, questions were raised about whether these images, both of us and of others, are “of an essential or fictional nature” (Beller 2007: 11). An appeal was made to abolish these prejudices and images, but this was not something that seemed to be possible. Instead, Beller claimed, the prejudices and images had to be clarified and analysed, so people were to become aware of the prejudices (2007: 11-12). This was rooted in the birth of the theory of imagology.
Leerssen categorizes the history of imagology into two different types, namely that of the archaeological history and the pre-history. The archaeological history leads to the cultural criticism of early-modern Europe where an urge to classify the cultural differences and aligning them with ethnographic stereotypes rose (Leerssen 2007: 17). Culture and the differences between cultures were seen as anthropological categories, instead of
ethnographical categories. The differences came to be seen as “patterns of behaviour in which ‘nations’ articulated their own, mutually different, responses to their diverse living conditions and collective experiences, and which in turn defined each nation’s individual identity” (Leerssen 2007: 18).
The pre-history of imagology consists of a new idea of a national character that stood in the same relation to society as the relation between soul and body (Leerssen 2007: 18). Culture was national culture, held a priori to be different from other cultures and singled out by the nation’s underlying characteristic individuality. As Leerssen explains, the various stereotypes never used to form the topic of investigation, but were instead part of the interpretative tool-kit; “they are explanations rather than explicanda” (2007: 19).
In the first half of the twentieth century there was a rise in research that Leerssen calls “proto-imagological”-studies, in which researchers lay out the representation of a nation in literature (2007: 20). These were studies that became popular in European countries and in the United States. Regularly these studies were about listing a certain phenomena in different texts over different generations and in the case of these studies then chose the theme of a certain national type. According to Leerssen, using nationality as a literary theme usually implies two things: nationality actually exists and can be represented fairly or unfairly by the authors, but “these representations are a by-product or reflection of literature’s international traffic and contacts” (2007: 20-21).
However, the value of such studies may or may not be valuable for present day readers. As, for example with the German research from the 1930s, many of the conclusions they drew and the implied or overt ethic essentialist message can be disturbing and
unacceptable. Another complication was that they often showed how stereotypes varied extremely (Leerssen 2007: 21).
It was only after the Second World War that imagology as a critical study of national characterization emerged. This could only happen after people had abandoned a belief in the ‘realness’ of national characters as explanatory (Leerssen 2007: 21). The Second World War was important in this case because what was perceived as ‘Germany’ changed drastically after the war and it provoked an anti-essentialist, constructivist approach to national representation and national identity” (Leerssen 2007: 21). Due to this the study of imagology made an initiative towards a post-national imagology.
1.3. Imagology
Imagology tries to describe the origin, process and function of the national prejudices and stereotypes and brings them to the surface. They need to be analysed and people need to be made aware of them. However, according to Beller, it is impossible to completely remove our prejudices, as they a second nature us (2007: 11-12).
Leerssen explains that there are a number of methods when it comes to studying imagology. The first thing that has to be done is explaining why literature is important in the study of imagology.
The reason for the importance of literature in imagological studies is, as Leerssen explains, that the stereotypes are most clearly formulated in literature and other narrative media (2007: 26). He also mentions that literature shows that images work. It shows how stereotypes are mainly formed due to hearsay and how they are a commonplace instead of empirical observations (Leerssen, 2007: 26). The stereotypes are tropes and these tropes affect how we think of people from different cultures and not what we have observed when
encountering them.
Another importance of literary sources is, what Leerssen calls, their “long currency and topicality” (2007: 26). Depending on their canonicity, literary sources stay relevant and have a higher impact on people’s worldview than, for example, research articles or
government reports do.
The last reason that Leerssen mentions is that literature works on the “presuppositions of a suspension of disbelief” and has “appreciative credit among the audience” and therefore it is considered a privileged genre (2007: 26). He stresses however that this is an assumption.
In the course of history, there have been a couple of methodological assumptions when it comes to imagological study. Leerssen lists a few of these assumptions in his study:
First, Leerssen establishes that image studies has as its ultimate perspective that it is a theory of cultural or national stereotypes instead of cultural or national identity (2007: 27). Imagology is concerned with representation, not with identity. Therefore the frame of reference of imagology studies is both textual and intertextual.
The second assumption Leerssen discusses is the fact that imagology is a form of sociology, which he claims is not the case. According to Leerssen it is the aim of imagology to understand a discourse of representation rather than understand a society (2007: 27). It is important to note here that the cultural context in which an image is created is a discursive practice and not a public opinion.
Along with that, Leerssen believes it is important to note that the sources used to apply imagological analysis to are subjective and that this subjectivity should not be ignored (2007: 27). As Leerssen claims:
The nationality represented (the spected) is silhouetted in the perspectival context of the representing text or discourse (the spectant). For that reason, imagologists will have particular interest in the dynamics between those images which characterize the Other (hetero-images) and those which characterize one’s own, domestic identity (self-images or auto-images). (2007: 27)
Imagology deals with three elements: those representing, those represented and those interpreting that representation.
Finally, imagology addresses a specific set of characterizations and attributes: those outside the area of testable report sentences or statements of fact. When studying a piece of literature from an imagological perspective there mainly is a focus on the characterological explanation of cultural difference. (Leerssen, 2007: 27-28)
Leerssen also sets out a few methods to analyse a literary text from an imagological perspective.
The first step is to establish the intertext of a given national representation as a trope. Here one can, for example, look at traditions of the trope and whether they are an appreciation or depreciation and how these two historically relate to one another. Then you have to figure out how the text fits into its broader context. Here you can look at the genre of the text or what type of text it is. Another necessity in imagology is to look at historical context. One cannot interpret a text in “a timeless, aesthetic never-never-land” (Leerssen 2007: 28).
More recently, a push for a more pragmatic-functionalist perspective of imagology has been made (Leerssen 2007: 28). Here a literary critic could take the target audience and the reception of the text into account when studying imagology.
What imagology then does is to address “cross-national relations rather than national identities” (Leerssen 2007: 29).
These are just a few methods and perspectives to imagology, but they all help define the specificity of literary imagology. According to Leerssen it will enrich the wider field of human sciences and it may also help to get a clearer focus on the “multinational diversity of literature itself” in the final analysis (2007: 30).
1.4. Jews and Imagology
The Jewish community is not a group of people who belong to just one nation, but instead they are grouped together because of their religion. The ethno types concerning Jews are unusually complex, as their presence in documented history has been long-standing and they have been in contact with many different cultures and societies (Gans & Leerssen 2007: 202).
The stereotypes of Jewish people tend to be negative. However, this hate directed at Jewish people was first mainly anti-Judaism, with people being against the Jewish faith and not necessarily against the people who practiced this faith. During the Middle Ages, this hate turned into anti-Semitism, with the hate directed towards the people instead of just their religion. When this turn took place is impossible to tell, as many critics have many different opinions about it (Hoppenbrouwers 2007: 54). According to Gans and Leerssen, it is
impossible to proof that the anti-Semitism from the Middle Ages and the early-modern period was primarily targeted at the Jewish religion or at their ethnicity (2007: 203). The turn that has taken place around this time was not a sudden change, but was instead a gradual one that took several decades. However, critics have agreed that the turn has a strong connection between “the increasing exclusion of Jews […] and processes of state formation and of national integration” (Hoppenbrouwers 2007: 54).
In the late Middle Ages, the emergence of anti-Semitic images and ideas emerged, that would later be used as propaganda. One of these ideas was that the Jewish community, but also other minorities, were “cancers” of the state and made it ill. A second image was that Jewish people polluted the Christian society and needed to be eliminated. A third image that was introduced was that there was a Jewish conspiracy against Christendom. The Christian society saw them as people who had “stubbornly refused to follow the teachings of Christ” (Gans & Leerssen 2007: 203). These conspiracy theories included conspiring with the devil, allying with the Muslims and eating Christian children. According to them, the Jewish people were the murderers of Christ which later turned into them believing the Jewish people wanted to murder all Christians.
These images of the Jewish people led to them being seen as the ones to blame whenever there was a popular discontent. Discrimination, dehumanization and exclusion and expulsion could be justified. In different societies there was a physical segregation of the Jewish people. They had to wear visible markers and were moved to ghettos.
A clear example of Jewish people being blamed for the bad things happening in the world was in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, when there were numerous rumours that the Jews had poisoned wells, leading to the plague epidemic to break out. This led to expulsion and persecutions of Jews all over Europe (Gans and Leerssen 2007: 204).
The Jews became wandering exiles and they could be broadly separated into two groups: the Sephardic in the Mediterranean and Ashkenaz in North-Central Europe. Because the rules of the Jewish religion did not forbid money lending, many Jewish people thrived in that business. The stereotypes of Jewish people came to be influenced by this, as they started to be portrayed in the media as dishonest businessmen. A stereotype of the Jewish man as a conspiring, plotting, infiltrating con became a very common image amongst the world of entertainment, media and arts, not only in the world of finance (Gans and Leerssen, 2007: 204).
However, from the Enlightenment period onwards, the image of the Jewish man changed slightly. A more positive image of Jewish people emerged when European Jews started to emancipate in society. Instead of being seen as evil, their image became one of “heroic endurance of persecution” (Gans and Leerssen, 2007: 205). This positive image did not replace the negative image, but instead they coincided alongside one another.
In the 1930s and 1940s the anti-Semitic ideas reached their all time high during the Second World War, during the Holocaust. The Holocaust also led to a more positive view of the Jewish communities all over the world. An example of this image is the support from America and Europe of the Israeli state.
It is clear from this brief overview of Jewish imagology that it is very complex. According to Gans and Leerssen the “category ‘Jewish’ triggers complex reactions, mixing Biblical resonances and the memories of the Holocaust with the enmities of contemporary Middle Eastern politics” (2007: 207).
1.5 Conclusion
The tendency to attribute other countries, cultures and peoples with specific characterizations is not something that emerged recently. It has been around ever since people started coming into contact with other cultures. Imagology deals with trying to describe the origin, process
and function of the national prejudices and stereotypes and bring them to the surface. Literature is of the utmost importance to the study of imagology, as its relevance does not expire over time and it shows that images work. An image that has often been researched is that of the Jew. Having been the outcast in many societies for over many centuries and not related to one country, but to a religion, this image is an interesting one to look at. The image has changed over time, but not as much as other images, as literature and theatre, like
Shakespeare’s character Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, has kept the image in place for centuries after.
2. The Merchant of Venice in Context
2.1 Introduction
Before looking at the different portrayals of Shylock in the different theatrical performances and the different movie adaptations of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, this chapter will look at the context of the play in which it has been written. It is important to note here that it is impossible to find out what Shakespeare’s intentions were when he wrote the
character of Shylock and this chapter does not set out to find his intentions. The interpretation of a play, and therefore also the interpretation of the characters, are formed by how the
director of the play will want them to be interpreted. The most important interpreters of a play, however, are the audience. This chapter will therefore mainly focus on how the audience would interpret the character while looking at the context in which the play has been
performed, instead of how the character was intended by the playwright.
First this chapter will deal with something that has been touched upon in the previous chapter: the events that led to the creation of the image of the Jew, but this chapter will focus specifically on England in the sixteenth century. What is also important is to look at the character of Shylock and what the role of this character is in forming the image and in what way he reflects the image that has been discussed in the previous chapter.
After discussing the image of Shakespeare during the time the play was first released, this chapter will deal with the image of the Jew in the portrayal of Shylock as it was in the centuries after the release of The Merchant of Venice. This chapter will discuss the three most well known actors of Shylock, Charles Macklin, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving, to get a clear picture on how the character of Shylock changed overtime.
2.2 The origin of the image
The Jewish communities did not begin to settle in England until the eleventh century.
Compared to the other European countries, this was late. The earliest record of Jewish people in England was in 1066, during the Norman Conquest, as they had fled from the crusaders in France. According to Julius the Jews had brought their capital with them and began lending it to the English Crown, ecclesiastical institutions, and landowners, as these were short of money (2010: 105). They received protection from the king, in return for providing a small part of the Crown’s wealth. The church did not allow money lending, but the Jewish faith did
not forbid it, so they were at first welcomed by the Crown (Glassman 1975: 14). As long as the Jewish people provided the king with money in the form of special taxes, loans and fines, they held a privileged place in society (Glassman 1975: 15). Their wealth and their special position in England lead to a growing annoyance from the rest of the population and the church. The church wanted to keep the Jews at a low place in society, as they believed that God had rejected the Jewish people and that the Christians were the true elect of God
(Glassman 1975: 15). To keep the influence of the Jewish people on the Christians as low as possible and to lower their social and economic status, the popes and councils issued various proclamations, which became harsher as time went on (Glassman 1975: 15). Due to the church’s policy of spreading fear and superstition to a large number of people, the Jewish people were alienated from Christian society. This led to a “diabolical image” of the Jew that would continue to exist for centuries. (Glassman 1975: 16). This image was partly formed by the accusations of ritual murder in the twelfth century. As Glassman claims, many
Englishmen were influenced by stories of the role of the Jewish people during the Crucifixion and did not need much convincing to believe the accusations of several crimes the Jewish people had allegedly committed (1975: 16). These accusations reflected the belief that Jewish people were out for Christian blood, which they believed was used for magical purposes and made it easy for them to believe the claims made by the church. The church fabricated these accusations of ritual murder so the church could play a bigger role in the lives of the Christian population.
In 1275, the Statute of Jewry made it unlawful to participate in the business of money lending. Even in other professions there was distrust in the Jews, as they were accused that their sales were just disguised financial transactions (Julius 2010: 127). In the end this led to the Jews being denied any “viable mode of existence” (Julius 2010: 127). Jewish people were only allowed in towns and cities that held chirograph chests, Christians were prohibited to live in Jew’s houses, Jewish people were obligated to pay an annual tax, they had to wear a yellow felt badge and Jewish people were not allowed to “contribute to any taxes payable by merchant communities in towns or cities” (Julius 2010: 127). The false accusations from the church already made it difficult for Jewish people to integrate into Christian society, but the statute made it practically impossible.
This eventually lead to the Edict of Expulsion issued by Edward I in 1290, expelling all Jews from English soil.
2.3 Imagology in The Merchant of Venice: Shylock and the Image of the Jew
The Merchant of Venice premiered in 1605 in England, but it is believed to have been written about ten years before, between 1596 and 1598. This is a very interesting period to look at, because of the Edict of Expulsion that was issued by King Edward I in there were practically no Jewish people in England during the time the play was written and first performed. Not only is it interesting to discuss how this character was interpreted by the audience when practically all of them had never come into contact with any Jewish people, but it is also interesting to establish how it was possible for such a character to even be written the way it is when there had been no Jewish people in the country for about 300 years before Shakespeare wrote the play.
One of the consequences of the expulsion was a decline in anti-Semitic actions, but the expulsion did not result in a decline of anti-Semitic thoughts and ideas. Shakespeare’s
character Shylock shows that the image of the Jews had been sustained even when
Shakespeare himself or his audience had never come into contact with any Jewish people. The image that Shylock represents in The Merchant of Venice is a typical Jewish image. During his first appearance in the play, Shylock speaks the following words to Bassanio, who has asked Shylock for a loan of three thousand ducats:
If you repay me not on such a day, In such a place, such sum or sums as are Expressed in the condition, let the forfeit Be nominated for an equal pound
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken
In what part of your body pleaseth me. (The Merchant of Venice, 1.3. 143-148) The image of Shylock that we get in this passage is that Shylock is a villainous Jew who is out for the blood of the Christian merchant Antonio. If Antonio is not able to pay him the three thousand ducats back in time, Shylock will want to receive a pound of Antonio’s flesh and will essentially kill him. Earlier in the play we have learned that Shylock does not trust Antonio and is not sure if Antonio is able to pay him back the money he lend him.
My meaning in saying he is a good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient. Yet his means are in supposition. […] But ships are but boards, sailors but men. There be land rats and water rats, water thieves and land thieves—I mean pirates—and then there is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks. (The Merchant of Venice: 1.3. 15-24)
There are so many things that could go wrong with Antonio’s business. Even though Antonio is wealthy, his ships could easily sink or be pirated. He knows that the chances of Antonio not paying back his loan are big, yet he agrees to loan him the money. In the, rather likely, event that Antonio cannot pay him back, Shylock wants a pound of Antonio’s flesh that will most likely kill him.
This image is even clearer when Shylock hears from another Jewish moneylender, Tubal, that Antonio has had ill luck and has had losses at sea. Shylock responds to this news with “I thank God, I thank God. Is it true, is it true?” (The Merchant of Venice: 3.1.96). When he gets confirmation of this news he seems to be very happy, thanking Tubal and saying “Good news, good news! Ha, ha!” (The Merchant of Venice: 3.1.99-100). He rejoices in the fact that Antonio is not able to pay him back his money in time and it is confirmed here that this was Shylock’s plan all along. His revenge on Antonio is much more important to him than having his money returned to him.
Shylock is portrayed as a villainous Jew who is out for Christian blood, which is, as we have seen in the explanation above about the origin of the image, a common belief about Jewish people that numerous of people in England held.
Shylock’s reaction to his daughter leaving him also puts him in a negative light, as he wishes harm upon her:
Why, there, there, there, there! A diamond gone cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfurt—the curse never fell upon our nation till now! I never felt it till now—Two thousand ducats in that, and other precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter were dead at my foot and the jewels in her ear! Would she were hearsed at my foot and the ducats in her coffin! (The Merchant of Venice: 3.1. 71-75)
Not only is Shylock portrayed as an evil villain out for Christian blood, his love for his family is also a stark contrast to the love of the Christian characters of the play. When his daughter leaves him and took a part of his wealth with her, Shylock wishes her to be dead. He cares more about the treasure she brought with her than the fact that she left him.
However, Shylock is not completely portrayed as an inhumane evil villain and his character is given some depth by speaking the following words:
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 villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. (The Merchant of Venice: 3.1.55-69) When looking at all the passages we have looked at in this chapter, this speech is rather confusing, as it makes Shylock’s image appear to shift to a more positive one. As there are no instructions on how this speech is spoken by Shylock, it is therefore difficult to establish in what way this affects the image of the Jew on the audience watching the play. Here it is therefore the choice of the director of the play to interpret this speech. However, there has been some debate amongst critics what the intention of this speech was. Gross claims that it is “wrong to suppose that ‘Hath not a Jew?’ somehow excuses everything else that he does” (1994: 67). He believes that the words are “wretched from Shylock; they have the stamp of anger and spontaneity” and this believe is strengthened by the fact that his words are in prose and that Shakespeare would have made Shylock resort to verse if he wanted Shylock to indulge in “some specious rhetoric” (Gross, 1994: 67). Another critic, Yaffa does not agree with Gross’ arguments. He claims that there has been enough evidence in the play that Shylock does not lack inner-faith and that the Christians are seen as much more admirable (1997: 14). In general, however, many critics have instead claimed that this speech was not a plea for charity, but instead a plea of revenge (Graham 1953: 147). For example, Palmer claims that this speech is not a plea for tolerance for the Jews, but instead it is a way from Shylock to justify of his “inhuman purpose” for Antonio’s found of flesh (1946: 79). Here Shylock is presented “as a natural product of Christian intolerance”, but this does not mean that he is any less of an evil, comical, character (Palmer, 1946: 80). This speech may make him seem more human, but it does not make him any less evil
For the above argument Shylock’s line of “And if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge?” is key (The Merchant of Venice: 3.1.62-63). The conclusion of his speech is that he is also allowed to seek revenge, just like the Christian people in the Venetian society. Just like many critics have argued, Shylock’s plea is not one for tolerance, but instead it is a plea for revenge.
The audience is encouraged to think badly of Shylock and the play shows us that Shylock is a bad Jew and the audience took Shylock to be a representative Jew (Julius, 2010: 183-184). This is not surprising, if one takes into consideration that the audience at that time had never come in contact with any Jewish people. There were no Jewish people to persecute or laws to be changed or added to disadvantage Jewish people. For these ideas and believes to
be sustained in society, they had to be reminded of them and this is where literature and drama, and thus also Shylock in The Merchant of Venice come into play. Therefore this period’s anti-Semitism is, as Julius calls it, “literary anti-Semitism” (Julius, 2010: 153). Instead of looking at Shylock as representing the image that society has of Jewish people, one could look at Shylock as being a cause of the image that society has. People were mainly exposed to the image of the Jew through literature and drama and this was kept in place during the period of expulsion.
This image was kept in place for many decades due this Jewish image being
performed on stage. As Glassman claims, even before the expulsion, the role of Jewish people in drama has always been to emphasize the adversary between Christian people and of
Christianity itself (1975: 21). The church still felt it was necessary to accentuate the superiority of Christianity compared to Judaism (Glassman, 1975: 21). Therefore many Protestant religious drama emphasized on this theme during the Passions. This image changed when Jewish characters started to appear in drama that was not affiliated with the church. In these secular dramas, the stage Jew became a “three-dimensional figure who was a living, breathing character” (Glassman, 1975: 51). This way people started to see them as figures actually existing in the world and it was easier for them to form an image for themselves as it was presented in front of them on the stage. Plays with Jewish characters, like The Three Ladies by Robert Wilson and later The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe were important plays that shaped anti-Semitic images of Jewish people in England in the sixteenth century (Glassman, 1997: 65). However, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice became one of the most important plays of the Elizabethan era and therefore had a large impact on shaping anti-Semitic images.
2.4. Shylock’s Image Throughout History
Not much is known from the first couple of performances of The Merchant of Venice. In 1605, just a few years after the first performance of The Merchant of Venice, the theatres closed for about forty years. The theatre ban from 1605 to 1642 did not mean that there were no theatre performances during that period, but it did result in there not being any details of the play being performed and neither did any comments survive about the play from the entirety of the sixteenth century.
An interesting shift in the image of Shylock is one that correlates with the shift in the play from being a comedy to becoming a tragedy.
In 1701 Granville released The Jew of Venice, based on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The title of this play was rather misleading, as the main character of the play is not Shylock, but Bassanio. In this play Shylock is “primarily a figure of fun, and his antics, divorced from any serious purpose on the author’s part, belong in the never-never world of pantomime” (Gross, 1994: 109). Shylock in this play was not likely to induce much of a feeling of fear for the audience, as Shylock might have done in The Merchant of Venice. Shylock in Shakespeare’s play is also considered to be a comedic character but, as mentioned above, he was also seen as evil and a villain. Granville’s interpretation of Shylock was just purely comedic. For about forty years since the release of The Jew of Venice, this was the only version of The Merchant of Venice performed in London theatres.
The first details from a stage performance of the actual play come from 1741, when the actor Charles Macklin pushed for a production of the play, where he himself played Shylock. Even though in both productions of the play Shylock was seen as a villain, in Macklin’s version there was nothing comedic about Shylock. According to Halio, Macklin’s performance of Shylock was nothing short of “terrifying” (2008: 63). It is not known how much Macklin changed from Shakespeare’s original text, as no promptbook of the play survived.
Macklin’s way of playing an evil and terrifying Shylock became the norm for the next decennia, only changing in 1814 when Edmund Kean took the role of Shylock upon himself. Here we see a shift from Shylock being a terrifying character to a more tragic character. In Edmund Kean’s biography, Cornwall described that it was not Kean’s intention to play Shylock as a “decrepit old man, bent with passion, warped with prejudice, and grinning deadly malice” (qt. in Cornwall, 1969: 148) He instead gave a new twist to the character. He did not play Shylock as just a villainous Jew, but he played him as a tragic figure. Kean had a lot influence on his portrayal of Shylock, having argued with the management of Drury Lane to attempt the role (Halio, 2008: 65). For example, Kean introduced some changes in the appearance of Shylock. Kean decided to wear a black wig and beard instead of the traditional red wig and beard like Shylock usually had which resulted in Shylock no longer being
“automatically identified as a kinsman of Judas” (Gross, 1994: 128). Edmund’s Shylock was “more sinned against than sinning” (qt. in Hazlitt, 1817: 248). Slowly but surely, the image that Shylock portrayed changed from being a villain to being someone who was the way he was because of the circumstances he lived in.
The public would long after praise Edmund Kean’s performance. Thirty years later, journalist W.J. Fox was so impressed by Kean that he could still remember the performance
he witnessed. When Kean, in the role of Shylock, exclaimed that he wished his “daughter were dead at [his] foot, and the jewels in her ear” he started back “as with revulsion of paternal feeling from the horrible image his avarice had conjured up” and he claimed that Kean played Shylock with an “alternation of the two passions of anguished avarice and hopeful revenge” (Fox, 1846 327)
His character was still a villain, but Kean gave the character some depth and made him more human. He was startled by his harsh exclamation after his daughter abandoned him. His character was slightly softened, instead of being purely evil like Macklin’s Shylock was.
No actor is more associated with Shylock than Henry Irving, who was an active actor from 1879 up to his death in 1905. As both director of the play and the actor of Shylock, Irving was in full control of how he was going to portray this character on stage. Just like Edmund Kean, Irving gave Shylock more human tendencies. However, Irving’s Shylock was not portrayed purely as a villain. Instead he was portrayed as a victim (Gross, 1994:146). Irving himself said that “the tendency of the play […] is undoubtedly to show that ‘the worst passions of human nature are nurtured be undeserved persecution and obloquy’” (qtd. in Gross, 1994: 147). Five years later he said more on the matter, saying that he saw “Shylock as the type of a persecuted race; almost the only gentleman in the play, and the most ill-used” (qtd. in Gross, 1994: 147). His character was painted by a long history of persecution. This view of Jewish people was pretty common at that time, but in theatres Shylock was still rarely performed as a victim, so Irving’s performance was very unique at that time. His performance of Shylock was well received by the audience (Gross, 1994: 147). People agreed that the Shylock that he played was the right one and that Shylock was hateful but not contemptible. Shylock stayed respectful and a gentleman, so when he did burst out into an angry frenzy, this contrast was emphasized and this outburst was even more frightening, but the way he
subsided into pathos was what really impressed the audience (Gross, 1994: 147-148).
An example of Irving’s performance was remembered by Terry, who writes about the performance of Shylock’s opening lines of “Three thousand ducats – well!”, with a “reflective air of a man to whom money means very little” (Terry, 1908: 187). Irving’s Shylock did not give the impression that he had a plan to trick Bassanio and Antonio right away (Hughes, 1972: 254). Instead of establishing Shylock as a villain at the start, Irving made the decision to portray him more as a courteous gentleman. He was respectful and not portrayed as just an evil villain, but as someone who did the evil things he did because of the way he is treated by society. Irving portrayed him as a victim, and not just as a villain.
2.5 Conclusion
England was one of the last countries in Europe to become home to Jewish people, but they were also the first country to expel them. The church wanted to keep the Jewish influence on Christians as low as possible and took measures to keep them from being part of Christian society and they started spreading the belief that Jewish people were out for Christian blood to perform magical rituals. Much later, this belief was reflected in the Jewish character Shylock, who was out for the blood of the Christian merchant Antonio. What is interesting here is that the Jewish people had been expulsed from the country for almost three hundred years before the play was first performed and before it even was written by Shakespeare around the end of the sixteenth century, but this image was apparently still so strong that it sustained in English society for a few hundred years even though no one came into contact with any Jewish people. Instead of an expected decline in anti-Semitic ideas, we see that they are kept in place by drama and literature. The church wanted people to stay convinced of Christianity’s superiority over any other religion, so they made sure to paint a negative image of Jewish people during Passions and other religious Protestant drama. As Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice was such a hugely successful play, Shylock became the typical Jew; someone people would reflect their image of Jewish people on. The anti-Semitism in England of this period was one of literary anti-Semitism and in the case of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Shylock, he is not a reflection of the image of the Jew that the audience had, but he instead is one of the causes of this image. Therefore the image of the Jew is connected to Shylock’s portrayal in different productions of The Merchant of Venice. Shylock’s portrayal went from being a comedic villain changed to become a more tragic figure instead.
3. From Stage to Screen
3.1 Introduction
When thinking of movie adaptations, people will usually think of books being adapted into movies and not of other modes of entertainment, like theatre-to-movie adaptations. When it comes to any Shakespeare play, however, movie adaptations are very common. Even when someone has never read any of the Shakespeare plays, or has never been to see one at a theatre, chances are that they have seen a movie adaptation at some point in their lives. Since the rise of Hollywood productions, Shakespeare’s stories have been able to reach a much larger audience. Even more importantly is that the audience is able to become more
international, with the international character of Hollywood movies. His plays have been, and still are, immensely popular, so they have often been adapted to the big screen.
3.2 Stage to Screen
Before looking specifically at Shakespearean plays being adapted to the big screen, it is important to first establish what a stage to screen adaptation is and what the difficulties are for adapting a play to a movie.
Even though theatre and film are similar in some ways, there are also many
differences between the two types of entertainment, both in the way they are experienced, but also in the way they are carried out by the directors.
Hatchuel claims that the difference between theatre and film is often considered to be respectively a difference between telling and showing (2004: 33). However, Hatchuel also claims that this is just one view of the difference between staged drama and drama on screen and he claims that in more recent film studies, the conclusion has been drawn that cinema actually combines the acts of showing and telling (2004: 33). Sir Kenneth Branagh, director of several stage plays and theatre into movie adaptation, has the following to say about this difference between directing a movie and directing a play:
When you work in the theatre, you must have a very clear obligation to tell a story because you can’t tell the audience ‘I want you to look there’. In movies, you can cut from that, to that, to that and you can’t look anywhere else. Whereas in the theatre, you have the whole space. You have to be aware of how to tell a story (qtd. in Hatchuel, 2004: 34)
In film it is much easier for a director to make the audience focus on one single thing or person to emphasize something in the story. A director can use certain technological means, like a close-up of one person, or maybe something smaller like one body part, to get the audience to focus on. In theatre there are also ways to try and shift the focus to one certain part of the stage, for example by closing off part of the stage with curtains or walls, or in more modern theatre by using spotlights. However, the truth remains that it is impossible for a director of a play to make the audience focus on something small and, more importantly on something detailed, as the audience is usually too far away from the stage to see such details.
The point of view of the camera in film studies is often called the gaze. This way of filming and editing can also be used as a point of view. Instead of making the audience focus on one thing, it can instead be used as a tool to see what the character is seeing, so the
audience is able to get an insight into what the character sees and focuses on.
Edmonds claims that the difference between theatre and cinema is that “in theatre [...] we are interested in what is happening on the stage [...]. In film what we are interested in is the performers’ reactions to what is happening in the drama” (Edmonds, 1992: 13). The focus of the audience when watching a movie is different from the focus the audience has when watching a play on stage. While writing the play the playwright always keeps in mind that the focus of the audience is on what is happening on stage. Therefore, when a director is adapting a play into a movie, they will have to deal with this change of focus and adapt the narrative accordingly.
Montage and editing in film is what creates the narration of the story, and therefore it is what creates meaning. It puts together separately filmed scenes in a chronological order, thus creating a coherent narrative. The spectator will immediately associate the different images and scenes to be a stream of meaning and they will interpret it that way too.
According to Eisenstein, two images even create more meaning than seeing the two images separately, and he therefore emphasizes the importance of montage in film (Andrew, 1976: 52). Editing and montage therefore creates a vision of reality to the audience and manipulates them (Hatchuel, 2004: 38). Through editing one shot becomes a sequel to the previous story, creating a narration.
Not only does editing allow for a story to be told chronologically; it also allows for dilation of time by using flashbacks. By doing this, directors are allowed to explore the past. Even though it is possible to insert flashbacks into theatrical plays, it is very rare and the directors of plays tend to “uphold the integrity of the plot’s forward progressing” (Hatchuel, 2004: 42). Cinema, unlike theatre, is considered to be some kind of time machine, being able
to tell a coherent story, even without telling it in a chronological order. When adapting a play, a director can make the decision to change the chronological order, to give the audience more information.
Using film editing can direct the focus of the audience to the intended interpretation. This does not mean that everyone will share that interpretation or that no other interpretations are possible, but it helps to make more people interpret it the way the director intended.
In more modern staging of plays, we see some aspects that were first unique to movies are also being used in staged plays. Here one could keep in mind things such as light, music, voice-overs and the set of the stage. With more recent technological innovations in theatre it is possible for the director to steer the focus of the audience towards a certain part of the stage by using a spotlight, close off parts of the set or use music to change the mood in the theatre.
Even though montage is, as mentioned above, mainly seen as something that only applies to film and television, one can also claim that theatre has some kind of montage, with the way it is divided in different scenes and acts that are put together in a coherent way for the audience, creating a narrative. However, this type of montage is not as diverse as a montage in a movie, making it more inherent to movies.
3.3 Shakespeare: From Stage to Screen
As Shakespeare plays have been so widely popular and are still read and performed over 400 years later, they have often been adapted to the big screen. However, adapting Shakespeare plays into movies takes much thought, as there has been a lot of discussion on how to best adapt a Shakespeare play.
Even though Shakespeare plays are now often read by people instead of seeing the plays at a theatre, the plays have been intended to be performed on a Renaissance stage. Because Shakespeare plays usually do not contain any specific stage directions or settings, the director has to look for the environmental hints in the dialogue. In literature the author usually describes these settings and environment, but in Shakespeare plays the intended environment needs to come from the dialogue from one of the characters, or in a prologue. An example of this is in Henry V where the Chorus introduces the story, but also the settings of the play for the audience:
But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraisèd spirits that hath dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O pardon, since a crookèd figure may Attest in little place a million,
And let us, ciphers to this great account,
On your imaginary forces work. (1.Prologue.8-18)
What we see here is that the Chorus tells the audience to imaging the “vastly fields of France” and the helmets that looked terrifying in Agincourt (Henry V: 1.Prologue.12-14). As
technology at the time of writing was not yet as advanced as it is now, a production of a play was not yet able to have an elaborate set. Therefore the audience had to be introduced to the settings in this way. During the rise of the film industry, these technological innovations became more widely available, so a director adapting a Shakespeare play has the choice to use these intended settings in their movie adaptation.
It is therefore possible to claim that using a chorus or introduction like this in a movie is not necessary, as a movie would already allow the audience to see the settings without using their “imaginary forces” (Henry V: 1.Prologue.18). Taking a look at Branagh’s 1989 adaptation of Henry V, however, we see that the Chorus is included in the movie. Derek Jacobi, who plays the Chorus, narrates the prologue, while walking around on the movie set. The director made the choice here not to leave out the introduction and to keep the movie as close to the original text.
Over the years there has been some debate about how a Shakespeare play should be adapted and whether some filmic tropes, like montage, should even be used for these
adaptations. Director of a number of Shakespeare adaptations, Michael Birkett, for example, believes that montage in movies interrupts the flow and rhythm of Shakespeare’s dialogue.
Peter Hall and I found in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that there were several
passages where, looking at the picture on the movieola, without any sound, the cutting pattern seemed to be perfect. Hearing the sound track on its own, the rhythms of the speech also seemed to be fine. When the two were run together, however, the result seemed unsatisfactory. (qtd. in Hatchuel, 2004: 57)
Shakespeare is often praised for his prose and the rhythm of his poems his plays and as Michael Birkett claims, this rhythm can be disrupted by montage and editing.
Firstly there are adaptations that use the original English text and uses as little cuts and montage as possible and the directors have stayed true to the order of the scenes (Hatchuel, 2004: 16). This category includes the adaptations that stay as close to theatre as possible, but also adaptations that are very filmic and often use montage, but have stayed almost
completely true to the original dialogue and monologue.
The second category according to Hatchuel is the movie adaptations that use a
translation of a Shakespeare play (Hatchuel, 2004: 16). Belonging to this category is anything that is adapted from a non-English Shakespeare text, but also where the dialogue and
situations are quite distant from the original play.
A third category contains the adaptations that are based on plots of Shakespeare plays (Hatchuel, 2004: 17). In these movies the original dialogue is usually not used and if it is, it is only a small part of a very well known dialogue. Examples of these types of adaptations are Gnomeo and Juliet by Kelly Asbury and Shakespeare in Love directed by John Madden. The first one is a story about garden gnomes of which the plot is inspired by Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare in Love, released in 1998 is more loosely based on a Shakespeare play. It tells the story of William Shakespeare himself during the time he was writing Romeo and Juliet and the plot is loosely based on Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night.
The fourth type of adaptation that Hatchuel mentions contains the adaptations in which characters play Shakespeare, or direct or teach a Shakespeare play (2004: 17). In these
adaptations the adaptations do not follow the plot of a Shakespeare play, but they contain, for example a small dialogue or soliloquy from a Shakespeare play or the characters are working to perform a production of a play. An example of such a movie is Branagh’s 1995 production of In The Bleak Midwinter in which the characters are set to perform a production of Hamlet. Another example is The Last Action Hero directed by John McTieman, released in 1993, in which a character delivers the ‘To be, or not to be’ soliloquy from Hamlet.
Other than these categories, Hatchuel names two strategies to associate the visual with the verbal in a Shakespeare adaptation: literal illustration and/or metaphorical association (2004: 19). Literal illustration means showing pictorially what is expressed textually. “Images can either replace the words or work in association with them” (Hatchuel, 2004: 19).
Metaphorical associations consist of the succession of images that carry visual analogies, creating a meaning that transcends literal significance (Hatchuel, 2004: 19).
Hatchuel is not the only person who has tried to categorize Shakespeare adaptations. Jorgens, for example, divides the Shakespeare adaptations into three different categories:
The first category Jorgens mentions is that of presentation (1977: 12). This category relates to Hatchuel’s first category, where the director tries to stay as close as possible to the original dialogue by Shakespeare.
Secondly, Jorgens mentions the category of interpretation (1977: 12-13). Movies that respect the original text but also add their own artistic integrity fall under this category. Hatchuel does not have a separate category for this and instead lumps these adaptations together in the first category.
The third, and last, category is that of adaptation, in which the film is based on the plot of a Shakespeare play (Jorgens, 1977:14). The plot is only loosely based on a Shakespeare play and the original text is not respected. This category is resembles Hatchuel’s third category, with Gnomeo and Juliet and Shakespeare in Love as examples of such adaptations
What these categories show, is that there are numerous of ways a Shakespeare play can be adapted into a movie and that there are numerous of different types of adaptations out there and that different critics have categorized differently. There might be more options out there than have been discussed here and there will continue to be adaptations made in the future that do not fit in any of these above categories. As Hatchuel’s categories deal with more types of adaptation than Jorgen’s, this study will use Hatchuel’s categories for the analysis of the movie adaptations of The Merchant of Venice in the next chapter.
3.4. Conclusion
Even though when talking about adaption, most people nowadays will connect it to literature to movie adaptation, theatre to movie adaptation is also common. Theatre and cinema are two different types of media, but both are media in which a story is told. A director adapting a play into a movie has to take all these differences into account. These differences range from different interests from the audience about what goes on on stage or what goes on in a movie, to the possibilities of cinema versus theatre.
Because Shakespeare plays have been so vastly popular, they have often been adapted into movies. Shakespeare adaptations cannot just be merged together as one genre or type, as many of them are very different. There are adaptations that respect the original text,
adaptations that use a translation of Shakespeare texts, adaptations that are loosely based on the plot of a Shakespeare play, and many more. Researchers like Hatchuel and Jorgens have tried to categorize the Shakespeare adaptations, but it is impossible to say whether their categories will be sufficient in the future when even more different types of adaptations are made.
4. Shylock: from stage to screen
4.1. Introduction
The Merchant of Venice has often been considered a controversial play due to Shakespeare’s attitude towards Jews (Halio, 2008: I). The play still remained popular and has been adapted into film numerous times. This chapter will discuss three adaptations of The Merchant of Venice. First it will focus on the 1980 adaptation directed by Jack Gold, with Warren Mitchell as Shylock. This will be followed by an analysis of the 2001 adaptation from the Masterpiece Classic TV-Series, directed by Trevor Nunn, with Henry Goodman as Shylock. The last movie that will be discussed is the most well known adaptation of the three, namely the 2004 Hollywood produced adaption directed by Michael Radford with Al Pacino playing Shylock.
For each movie the analysis will be separated into three different categories. The first thing that will be discussed is what type of adaptation it is according Hatchuel’s categories and how the movie compares to the text by Shakespeare. Secondly, the cinematic techniques that were used in the movie to help portray Shylock in a certain way will be discussed. The last thing that will be discussed is the way the setting of the movie and Shylock’s personality affects the image of the Jew in each movie.
4.2. The Merchant of Venice (1980) directed by Jack Gold
The 1980 adaptation of The Merchant of Venice is part of a large television production by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in association with Time-Life Television, which was released together with 37 other Shakespeare adaptations. It was produced by Jonathan Miller and directed by Jack Gold.
The Merchant of Venice is the first Shakespeare adaptation directed by Gold, who had previously mainly focused on making documentary films. Directing a dramatic piece like The Merchant of Venice was therefore quite a change from Gold’s previous work. Miller, Mitchell and Jack Gold are all Jewish, which could have influenced their choice to work on this
particular movie, but none of them have said anything about their reasoning behind making this movie. BBC producer Cedric Messina was the person who came up with the idea to record the complete canon of Shakespeare (qtd. in Willis, 1991: 3). Even though The Merchant of Venice could be considered a problematic play due to its anti-Semitism, they chose to make the adaptation to complete the collection.
4.2.1. Adaptation and Dialogue
Gold’s adaptation uses the original text by Shakespeare and respects the original dialogue for the most part. There are some small changes in the dialogue, but these changes are so minor that they do not have to be taken into consideration when categorizing the play. As the play mostly respects the original text, it will be considered to fit into Hatchuel’s first category.
Even though Gold kept Shylock’s dialogue practically unchanged, it still needs to be addressed. If based solely on Shylock’s dialogue, one could make the conclusion that not much has changed in the interpretation and portrayal of Shylock. This would be a wrong conclusion. As mentioned in the previous chapter, a film can convey information differently than is possible in theatre. Theatre’s mode of explaining the plot is by telling what is
happening, whereas film has the ability to show the audience what is happening. Because this adaptation kept a large amount of the original dialogue intact, the plot is heavily influenced by telling. However, this movie also has the added bonus of being able to bring focus to certain parts of the scene things to explain the plot in a different way. It is therefore that the
interpretation of Shylock will be more likely derived from the things shown or the way the dialogue is told in the adaptation.
The plot of the original movie is kept in place, with no added scenes or flashbacks. The play is in chronological order and starts with Bassanio telling Antonio that he needs money so he could go to Belmont to try and marry Portia. They lend the money from the Jewish moneylender Shylock on the condition that they will set up a bond that Shylock will get a pound of Antonio’s flesh. Antonio is indeed not able to pay him back, but Shylock’s plan backfires later in court and he has to give up all his belongings and even give up his religion. This adaptation keeps true to this order.
4.2.2. Cinematic Techniques
As mentioned above, one of the ways in which the image that Shylock portrays is by showing, for example by focusing on certain aspects or characters in the movie, or by using other cinematic techniques.
When Shylock first appears in the movie together with Bassanio, the audience only sees their silhouette. A silhouette is created by using backlight, a cinematic technique in which the subject is placed between the camera and the main source of light. In film, the main source of light is usually positioned behind the camera, but by using backlight and creating a silhouette, a certain form of drama is created. It gives the impression that one or both of the people in the scene they are about to see are up to no good.
Often the director uses the position of the characters as a tool to bring focus to one specific character, or to bring focus to the other characters’ reactions to what is happening in the movie. For example, when in the original text Shylock is meant to speak to himself instead of to the other characters in the scene, the director has Mitchell look into the camera as he speaks Shylock’s lines about him hating Antonio and why. Here he breaks the fourth wall by speaking directly to the audience and all the focus is on him, while Antonio and Bassanio are talking together behind Shylock. Here the director has relied on Shylock telling the audience his dislike for Antonio instead of just showing it, but he has done it in a way that brings more focus on Shylock and his words, while also keeping Bassanio and Antonio in frame to show the audience that they cannot hear him, making Shylock appear sneaky.
The same technique is used later in the movie, when Shylock is getting ready to meet with Antonio and Bassanio to go over their bond, but he is not sure whether he should go and he shares his worries with his daughter Jessica. During the conversation he steps aside and the other characters disappear from the frame while Shylock looks right into the camera as he speaks:
There are my keys. But wherefore should I go? I am not bid for love. They flatter me.
But yet I’ll go in hate, to feed upon
The prodigal Christian. (The Merchant of Venice: 2.5.12-15)
By having Shylock speak these words to the audience instead to the other characters in the scene again shows him as a cunning man, up to no good. He is pretending to be nice to the other characters, but he actually has evil plans. The same happens in the original play, where this part of Shylock’s speech is indicated to be spoken aside and directly to the audience by adding “(aside)” to the text. This is a dramatic device used in theatre and is a way to convey the true thoughts of a character. It is a device that is later also adopted by film It is not a common device in film, as it breaks the fourth wall by acknowledging the audience. Film has other ways to show the character’s true thoughts, for example by flashbacks, so an Aside is not necessary in film. Gold, however, did decide to use this dramatic device in his adaptation.
Another cinematic technique that Gold uses is framing the scene in such a way that the audience can see the reaction of the other characters while another character is speaking. As mentioned in the previous chapter, in theatre the audience is focused on what is happening on stage, but in film the audience is generally more interested in the reactions of the characters to the drama.
The first instance where this happens is during the first on-screen meeting between Shylock and Bassanio and Antonio, when Shylock talks about his proposal to get a pound of flesh off Antonio’s body if he is not able to pay him back. The audience is able to see both Shylock speaking the words and Antonio and Bassanio responding to his words. By also focusing the camera on Antonio and Bassanio the audience can see they are shocked by Shylock’s words, making the audience more likely to mirror their response. It will make Shylock appear more evil.
A second time this technique is used is during Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew” speech. Shylock and Antonio’s friends, Salarino and Solanio, are in the frame when Shylock starts his speech. What is interesting here is that there is no indication that the audience has to pity Shylock; instead what we see is that Salarino and Solanio are laughing at Shylocks’ words. Miller and Gold did not interpret this speech as a serious plea for equality, but instead he makes the people who are listening to the speech laugh at his words, making the speech a joke. However, when Shylock utters the words “And if you wrong us shall we not revenge”, the other two characters fall silence, drawing attention to this part of the speech. This makes it look like the entire speech was just leading up to Shylock’s true intention: to get revenge.
The part where Shylock starts to speak about revenge during his “Hath not a Jew” speech demonstrates another cinematic technique that has been used to portray Shylock in a certain way, namely that of the close-up. During Shylock’s speech, the camera starts to zoom in on Shylock, as he starts angrily looking up at Salarino and Solanio, until they are out of the frame. By closing in on Shylock’s face while he continues his speech, the audience is focused more on what he is saying instead of to the response of the other two characters. The
emphasis is therefore put on the part of the speech where Shylock is calling out for revenge on Antonio. This enforces the image of Shylock as an evil person who only cares about getting his revenge.
During the court scene, the cinematic technique of a close-up is used to put focus on Shylock’s evil personality. Even though the court has reached no verdict, Shylock is ready to cut off part of Antonio’s flesh and is ready to weigh it with the scales he brought with him, as if he cannot wait. The camera closes in on Shylock as he is sharpening the knife on the sole of his shoe. By emphasizing this action, Shylock is seen as a bloodthirsty person.
The second time during the court scene when the director uses a close-up on Shylock, the consequences to his interpretation are completely different. When Shylock hears his punishment of having to give up all of his belongings and, most importantly, has to become a Christian, the camera zooms in on just his face. His face is full of emotion and he starts
