With the global sharing objective in mind, I did a search on Icerocket for anything new or interesting concerning my individual play, The Merchant of Venice. And I stumbled across something really interesting! There's a Boston cycling blog that did a piece less that two weeks ago about drivers' actions towards cyclists and sharing the road. It's called The Bard and the Bike: A Plea for Tolerance. In the post, the author takes Shylock's famous speech about tolerance and antisemitism and rewrites it about having tolerance for cyclists. It's actually pretty good. 

This is Shylock's speech, done by Al Pacino:

And here is the blog's speech:

I am a Cyclist. Don’t Cyclists have places to be? Don’t Cyclists have friends, families,
engagements, jobs, appointments, obligations; aren’t we entitled to
the same rights, injured by the same collisions, subject
to the same laws, ticketed by the same police,
enduring the same weather and road conditions
as Drivers? If you cut us off, do we not seethe?
If you yield to us, do we not wave? If you run us over,
do we not die? And if you do not respect us on the road, shall we respect you?
If we are alike in all these other ways, we are alike in this way too.
If a Cyclist takes the lane, how do Drivers react?
With anger and aggression. If a Driver cuts off a Cyclist, what is
the driving force behind the Cyclist’s response? Aggression.
I will emulate the irresponsibility and indifference you teach me,
and take it to a whole new level – regardless of the consequences for you.

The whole post is really interesting. You can read it at the link above.

And since I recently made the car to bike transition (not by choice, my car died right before I moved up to Provo this summer) I felt like I could give some insights in the driver/cyclist relationship. If you go to the blog and scroll all the way down you can read my comment. It was essentially aimed at explaining how this speech fit into the rest of the play, with Shylock, the intolerant man, asking for tolerance. I simply encouraged them not to make Shylock and Antonio's mistakes, and to be a little more tolerant yourself before asking for other people to make way. 

There hasn't been a response yet, but I'll post about it as soon as I hear anything. Hopefully it'll be productive, I felt like I tried pretty hard to be considerate in my comment. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I searched the vast expanse of knowledge and truth known as the internet and came up with some pretty interesting things people were saying about the two focuses I ended up taking with Merchant of Venice: is Shylock the villain or victim?, and animal imagery.  On the topic of Shylock, I stumbled across a "Yahoo!Answers" question which posed the same idea. Although the questioner there seems to come to the conclusion that he is the victim, the commenters all have good points. Specifically, one answer suggests that Shakespeare is a product of his time and we should not try to impose our moral views on him. I also found a discussion board where one user suggests that he is simply both. After making a case for both sides, he says:

"You can make a case either way. For me, I'd argue that he's both at once: though like the Wittgenstein duck/rabbit, at any one moment he seems one or the other."

For animal imagery, a blog post gave me a little better perspective of Shakespeare's using animals as every day images by comparing it to things we say today such as:

"Like a deer caught in headlights"-Surprised look.

"There is more than two ways to skin a catfish"-There is more than two ways to do something.

I also found reference to animal imagery in Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear. So it seems like I was correct in assuming that Shakespeare relies heavily on it in many of his works.

So what does any of this have to do with me? 

Well like I said before, I'm newly exploring the idea of working with wildlife for the rest of my life. So my mind has been on animals for a while now. The idea of how animals and humans relate to each other and animals can portray human emotions and actions is fascinating to me. And for Shylock.. at the beginning of the year I posted about needing to find my self, and looking for characters with unsure identities. Shylock seems to fit this better than any other Shakespeare character. It is unsure on what side of our emotions he should be, whether pitied or hated, and his identity as a Jew is taken away from him when Antonio says he must become Christian or lose everything he owns. I don't think anyone could feel more confused with their identity than that..

Until next time, Hakuna Mutata:)

While I was unsure before about whether or not Shylock is villain or victim in The Merchant of Venice, upon closer inspection, the BBC "Theatre in Video" production seemed to be leaning towards villain. Shylock's character is dressed in all black, and the actor chosen was shorter than any other. Whether intentional or not, the visual difference between Shylock and other men sets him apart from them, and the black clothing suggest evil or darkness. Maybe even a 'black heart'. In the climax of the play, the court scene, Shylock and Antonio are placed much more closely on stage than I would have pictured them. The producers seem to be saying, "look at this man, he can stand a foot away from a good man like Antonio and demand his life." Villain. The physical closeness of the characters, and Antonio's friends intense pleadings with Shylock, reveal a heartless and unforgiving man.

The themes of mercy and justice were also extremely emphasized in the film. Shylock refuses to have mercy on Antonio, saying he wants justice to be fulfilled. Portia(disguised as the lawyer Balthazar) tries to convice Shylock to take his money and leave. The actress helped me to better understand the theme in the way she softly, almost pleadingly, encouraged Shylock to show mercy. But when the tables were turned and Shylock was the one in need of mercy, the judge spared his life before Shylock could even ask. The judge said it was "the see the difference in our spirit." So once again Shylock is the villain, the one who showed no mercy and asked for justice. It was the judge, by Antonio's request, who portrayed the Christian concept of mercy when he could have dealt Shylock with justice.

So there you go, Shylock is the villain and he got what he deserved. Right?

Oh.. poor guy..

Some other things that I noticed about the production:

Antonio(right) saying goodbye to Bassanio(left) with
Portia(disguised as lawyer) listening in.

• It was set up like a stage production, but obviously for a movie viewing audience. The actors talked too softly for a play, moved around too much, and interacted with the camera.
• I like that all the [asides] that weren't to another character were directed at the camera. It formed a connection between me and the character, like they were confiding in me as a viewer.
• The setting was very minimalistic, but the costumes were extravagant. Called attention and focus to the actor.
• Camera angles usually focused on speaker, but sometimes captured powerful emotions in listeners
• Shylock's daughter, Jessica, didn't have a Hebrew accent. This is a foreshadow of her running away with a Christian and not identifying herself with the Jews.
• The women in the court scene were not very well disguised as men. It emphasized the gullibility and ignorance of the men for not recognizing them.

So as I was looking at the individual learning objectives for this week, I realized that one post fulfilling all the requirements would be quite a beastly post, and there's a good chance even my eyes would glaze over trying to read it. So here is the first of three, maybe four, posts on my individual play: The Merchant of Venice.

There's something similar in all these lines. Can you spot it?:

"I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips let no dog bark!"

"You call me misbeliever, cutthroat dog, and spit on my Jewish gaberdine... Should I not say, "Hath a dog money? is it possible a cut can lend three thousand ducats?"... you spurned me such a day; another time you called me dog-and for these courtesies I'll lend you thus much moneys."

"The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder, snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day more than the wildcat. Drones hive not with me."

"I have never heard a passion so confused, so strange, outrageous, and so variable as the dog Jew did utter in the streets"

"Thou called'st me dog before thou hadst cause, but since I am a dog beware my fangs."

"Oh, be though damned, inexecrable dog... Souls of animals infuse themselves into the trunks of men... for thy desires are wolvish, bloody, starved, and ravenous."

"For do but note a wild and wanton herd or race of youthful and unhandled colts fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud."

Yes! You got it. Shakespeare uses a lot of animal imagery. And in this particular play, lots of dogs. Maybe I'm hypersensitive to the subject because I'm still on the fence with my newest idea for a major (Wildlife and Wildlands Conservation), but as I was reading through the text I couldn't help but notice the motif. I almost focused only on the dogs, because there are a lot of them, and, for the most part, they  all focus on Shylock. But I though it was important to recognize that he uses animals generally for comparisons, as well as to make a repeated point about one character.

Shylock is compared to a dog over and over again. Sometimes by others, sometimes by himself. With today's attitude of dogs as man's best friend, this might not be much worse of a comparison than to say that Shylock was inferior, but loved. However, in Shakespeare's time the idea of keeping dogs as pets was frowned upon. They were used for hunting and gaurding, and not much more. One special troupe of dogs used was trained to preform, do tricks, and jig as part of Elizabethan entertainment. Another form of entertainment, dog fighting, dates back thousands of years. But their value as companions was not appreciated. 

So as Shylock is repeatedly being called a dog, there is a sort of dehumanization going on. They are saying he is inhuman and less than them. He claims they call him dog without cause, and then warns them to beware his fangs. I think images of violence are easier for people to imagine when they are linked to animals rather than people. We like to think of people as rational, and animals as driven by instinct. With Shylock acting as the animal, his anger with Antonio seems much more real and dangerous. And Shylock seems more inhuman and less capable of mercy. The other characters dehumanize Shylock by comparing him with a dog, and he retaliates by showing anger and intolerance characteristic of an animal. Still not sure if he's the villain of not...

Honestly, I am so excited to read this play. The plot summary was so confusing and twisted that I'm not even going to try and sum it up here, but this play had me laughing just reading the summary. What I got from it was a double wedding, debts payed in a pound of flesh, women dressed up as lawyers, and a Jew forced to convert to Christianity or give over half his property. I can't wait.

The only slightly disappointing thing about this comedy that I can see is it's romance. Like I talked about before, Shakespeare really only has two kinds of love. This one seems to fall right into the "love at first sight, meant to be together" category. Not once, but twice in this play do two people fall so easily in love it's like fiction. Oh wait....

I am, however, thrilled for the villain. His name is Shylock, and the Urban Dictionary definitions of his name are quite fantastic. Which is funny, because I didn't know Shakespeare was urban. But basically he is a ruthless, Jewish, money-lender. When the merchant Antonio takes out a loan for his friend, he promises Shylock a pound of his flesh if he does not pay the money back in full. When Antonio's ships are lost Shylock tries to cash in his debt. Can you think of any better villain than one who demands a pound of your flesh? I didn't think so.

As far as movie adaptations of the play, there have been at least 18 that I could find. (Well, that IMDb could find.) They all seem okay, but nothing really stuck out. There was a 2004 production that was looking pretty good, and it's the only one that's been really heavily advertised. I tried looking it up on the BYU library website to no avail, only to realize that it's rated R. Shucks... So I'll have to keep working on that. But I'm sure one of those other 17 movies are worth watching.

So what's my plan? Read the play straight through and be on the lookout for themes and motifs that interest me. Then watch a movie, noticing how the specific adaptation affects my views on the play. Hopefully this way I can completely focus on each media, rather than trying to read along to a movie and get distracted with edits and cuts.