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7.9.10
Dear Bernard:
For your information, here is a copy of the letter that appeared in the
Wall Street Journal the other morning about my favorite subject (7.8.10),
which had come as a huge surprise.
I sent the letter to WSJ as a response to a photo of a Merchant of Venice
production in Central Park, NY, that showed Shylock dressed as a
humble Chassid. I pointed out that this characterization is contradicted
by certain of Shakespeare's lines in the play, as explained in the letter,
and leads to confusion as to what the playwright was trying to
communicate.
I also noted the insights of actor-director Abraham Morevski who had
made telling comments on the play almost 100 years ago, which have been
shamefully ignored ever since although his views were available. (For those
interested in Morevski's insights, more can be read about his views on the
following web-site that will surely change minds on a lot of misconceptions
about this play:
With best wishes,
David
============================================
Wall Street Journal -
LETTERS - JULY 8, 2010
RECOGNIZING SHYLOCK ON THE STREET
The photo of the staging used in Terry Teachout's article commenting
on the Daniel Sullivan/Al Pacino production of "The Merchant of
Venice" calls into question the interpretation of the play ("Knocking
Shakespeare Out of the Park," Entertainment and Culture, July 2).
Shylock is shown wearing a yarmulka and tzitzis (fringes), thereby
given a Jewish stage persona, while a suspender-wearing Antonio is
shown seated. How then does Mr. Sullivan make sense of the line spoken
by the male-disguised Portia upon entering the courtroom? Brought
before the two litigants, neither of whom she had met before, she
asks: "Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?"
In other words, the two are indistinguishable and she needs to ask the
question. But if Al Pacino's Shylock showed up in the get-up used in
Mr. Sullivan's production, there would have been no need for the
question supplied by author Shakespeare.
This very line gives the lie to productions that cast Shylock as an
outlandish, stereotypical Jewish character. The point here is that
Shylock looks like everyone else. All male Elizabethans wore hats in
public and in private, and Shakespeare means to show by this that the
devilishness which others see in him is brought about by their biased
expectations of a Jew.
This was the insight brought out in Abraham Morevski's book, "Shylock
and Shakespeare," originally written in Yiddish about 100 years ago
and which revealed a profound understanding of the play, ignored ever
since, although the book was translated into English in 1937. Critics
have preferred a vile Shylock and an anti-Semitic Shakespeare, even at
the cost of making a mockery of Shakespeare and his play.
David Basch
Fairfield, Conn.
David Basch is an architect and city planner in New York as well as the Freeman Center's political philosopher. Basch is also an expert on Shakespeare and the author of the book, The Hidden Shakespeare, which proves through talmudic and other Jewish sources that Shakespeare was in fact Jewish.
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