Justice and Mercy

Throughout The Merchant of Venice there is tension between Jews (mostly Shylock) and Christians. The Christians abuse, spit upon, and despise the Jews, and Shylock and the other Jews (other than his daughter, who elopes with a Christian) hate the Christians. Nobody seems completely in the right.

The tense fourth act deals largely with deals the most clearly with the conflict between Shylock and Antonio, or on another level, the law and mercy. Shylock insists “My deeds upon my head! I crave the law/ The penalty and forfeit of my bond.”(Act IV, Scene I, 213-214) In other words, he did not believe that he needed mercy at the moment, and he wanted a pound of flesh from Antonio’s chest. But a little later, once Portia has proved that he could not be convinced to take any sum of money in compensation, nor would he ease Antonio’s pain in any way, nor would he show any mercy at all of any sort not mentioned in the bond… then Portia brought up the specifics in the bond and in the law which showed that it was actually Shylock who needed mercy, not Antonio. This shows a kind of Protestant philosophy, you can’t trust in the law, or it will betray you. “That in the course of justice none of us / should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;” (Act IV, Scene I 206-207) Only in the mercy of Jesus Christ are we saved. Portia’s passionate plea for mercy lets her stand as a representative of Protestant understanding even while Shylock represents an Old Testament understanding of law and judgment, or the Jewish Law of Moses, along with a refusal of Christ and his mercy.

Portia was described as being a sort of Christ-figure in my Honors Class when we discussed this, since in the beginning she is bound by some inheritance laws which she accepts, but once those laws no longer bind her she can act to bring mercy to her fellow Christians. She knows the laws very well, and she advocates mercy, but when Shylock insists on the law, and not mercy, once she reveals the legal difficulties he is in though, Portia does not urge any mercy in dealing with Shylock,.

It’s Antonio who seems the most merciful in actual practice. He asks for the fine of half of Shylock’s property that was to go to the state to be waved, and proposes that he keep the other half in trust for Shylock’s daughter's husband, as long as Shylock converts to Christianity and that he leave his own half also to his daughter when he dies. I believe that this was meant as mercy. Shylock needed money in order to live, and Antonio holding In trust the other half for Shylock’s daughter's husband is a kindness to the daughter and her husband, if not to Shylock who was still furious with her. The forced conversion was not something that would have been at all uncommon in the Renaissance days, and it had already been established that Jews were held in contempt… so it could be considered a mercy to try and pull Shylock’s soul into the path Antonio believed correct. But, it might not have been meant as a mercy, but as one of the most personal blows that he could possibly inflict on Shylock (and a similar sort of thing about requiring all the money to eventually go to Shylock’s daughter, as he’d recently said that, “Would that any of the stock of Barrabas / Had been her husband, rather than a Christian”). Shylock’s whole identity was bound up in being a Jew, to be forced to be a Christian like everyone he’d hated for so long, would be deeply difficult. But, I believe that Antonio meant mercifully, and this is after Shylock had insisted on cutting out a pound of Antonio’s chest flesh rather than ten times the amount of money loaned.

Another way to interpret this is to relate the Jews to Catholics. Shakespeare and most of his contemporaries in England would have had little to do with Jews, though they were still plenty prejudiced against them, as a rule. But they did have Catholics among them, and in England during the 16^th century and for a long time afterwards there was almost as much prejudice against Catholics as against Jews. Catholics also had a more doctrinal emphasis on the laws and works than Protestant ideas of grace and mercy.

Thoughts on Watching Hamlet

I was somewhat surprised by several things in the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet, which is the first and only production of Hamlet that I've seen (The Reduced Shakespeare Company doesn't count.)

Nobody looked quite how I pictured them.

When Hamlet was lamenting how much greater his father was to his uncle, and how much more attractive... I looked at the two, and I found Hamlet's dad even less attractive than his uncle. I guess Hamlet and his mother have a right to be biased, and there was a different society then.

For another thing, I always imagined Horatio looking like Horatio Hornblower (named after Hamlet's Horatio) from the English TV series based on the Horatio Hornblower books, though in a role more suited to Horatio's friend Archie Kennedy and with some personality traits of them both. (This reminds me of some fanfiction stories where Archie tries to get Horatio Hornblower to read and/or appreciate Archie's favourite play, Hamlet, or where he's quoting "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Act I scene V). In the TV series Archie is a fan of the theatre, and can quote famous lines, but the idea the Hamlet-related stuff is just fanfiction.) The actor did a good job, and I liked him well enough once he wasn't wide-eyed in terror over the ghost.

I didn't picture Ophelia as Kate Winslet. I didn't imagine her as a girl whose fiery nature was being suppressed by her brother and father. I didn't believe that she and Hamlet had done anything... But, it was an interesting take on her character. She says all the same lines, the only thing clearly added was the flashback scenes of them being intimate while people were yelling at her, but she does manage to make the character I pictured as rather meek and docile fiery. I also was surprised at just how frighteningly crazy she seemed when Ophelia went mad. I guess I always had a more light-hearted imagining of crazy Ophelia than the true tragedy that Kate Winslet was able to convey.

The move also put in some other unnecessary sexuality with a whore in Polonius's room, and Hamlet thinking (and you see) King Claudius and the Queen drunkenly falling into bed. This surprised and bothered me.

The players didn't bore me nearly as much as they did when I've read them. I guess Charlton Heston helped.

Even though people spoke really fast (especially Hamlet) there were times during the long speeches that I just wanted whoever it was (Claudius, Polonius, Hamlet, even Laertes once or twice) to just shut up already. I understood that they were being brilliant, but my modern sensibilities were offended by such long monologues. I did enjoy a good number of Hamlet's speeches, even the longer ones, it was just some of them that I got tired of.

I find it interesting that the three young people who die were all portrayed, in the beginning, as very contained people, whether it was self-containment or from pressures from family and society, they were contained. By the end two of them are blatantly acting or are mad, and Laertes doesn't seem all there either. Ophelia seemed truly crazy, but she seemed once more free and more confined and trapped than she had at the beginning. She was free to say what she wanted, and she ran around and did things that people thought were strange, but she still ended up getting physically locked up places and trapped in her own mind. Her death was kind of like a release from all the constraints of various sorts she'd dealt with. Hamlet acts crazy at times, but not very, mostly he seems like he's just done with trying to contain his anger and frustration with people, and as he is not able to take his revenge safely and completely, he takes his anger out on Ophelia, his friends who are spying on him, his mother, and Polonius (at the end it wasn't entirely intentional that way, it still ended up that way). Laertes is just a little crazed with grief and releases it in socially acceptable forms of seeking revenge and mourning melodramatically at Ophelia's grave.

Just a few thoughts.

A Rambling History of Reading Richard III

I'm reading Richard III as my required history play. I chose it because I could kind of remember watching part of a High School production years and years ago, and I vaguely remembered there being some interesting history around it. But I didn't get very far before I was confused. My main questions were:

A. Who are these people?

B. Why on Earth is Lady Anne even slightly tempted by this Sleemo?



Evidently Jennifer shared my second question, and it's been discussed on her blog and was brought up in class yesterday.

To answer my first question I turned to Wikipedia. I spent the next several hours examining the succession of kings, genealogies, and personal histories of the people who appear in the play. The women and the princes interested me the most. Evidently Elizabeth, Edward IV’s wife, was not born into a noble family and they had a secret marriage, despite his betrothal to a French princess. Sounds like the plot of a Romance Novel, but it’s history which makes it all the more fascinating as you don’t have to suspend disbelief, and even if you do have disbelief you can banish or suppress it permanently without being thought crazy. Then there are all the people who rose in society because they were related to her, two of whom show up in Richard III and get beheaded, including John of Norfolk who got his title, lands, and money by marrying a rich noble widow more than three times his age, and this is also interesting. I got very excited reading about so many stories, including the references to Historical Fiction based on them. It was like reading the descriptions of a dozen or more different interesting sounding fanfictions of life and history; and so I was reminded that I do actually like History, and that that is one of the main reasons I like reading Lord of the Rings, its appendices, and the Silmarillion and why I read the extended Universe Star Wars books… I like History, and the depth and breadth of the countless stories and versions of countless people and incidents throughout time.

Anyways, it was nice to feel a bit more familiar with who the people were and how they are remembered by history with all their interactions with eachother before I got into the play's account of the intrigues, relationships, deaths, and so forth. History, now, isn’t so sure that Richard III was nearly as guilty as his successors claimed (Lianna went into this with her recent blog post on him), and so it may be, for example, that his romance with the Lady Anne (whom he probably knew as a child) is not so very dreadful. Also, Clarence is portrayed as near saint-like in the play, but Wikipedia shows him more as someone looking to see which king he gains more advantage by following, more wishy-washy and ambitious seeming than noble. I wondered when Margaret started cursing people that she complimented Buckingham, as he had seemed in the article I read on him to be as likely to be a contriving villain as any of them, but then he did show that more villainous side by helping Richard out later in the play, so I guess Margaret just didn't know or didn't care about his machinations.

Anyways, my mind had lots of fun following up on different storylines and ideas, speculating on Historical fiction being like the fanfiction of History, which is itself a slightly distorted mirror of past times, and wondering things like just how beautiful was Elizabeth, Edward IV's wife, did Lady Anne want to marry Richard, who did kill the Princes in the Tower, and who really was the worst plotter, schemer, and murderer of the age.

Feeling Hamlet-like? Just a little.

Hamlet and Winter Semester go together like darkness and gloominess. Still there are the moments of laughter, melodramatics, and a plethora of good advice to go along with the depression and frustration.

Most days in the winter I don't feel like getting up, or going to class, and I certainly don't feel like doing my homework. I've been thinking about doing my homework, knowing that I should, but since I lacked the desire, determination, and clear idea of how to go about it, I've been putting it off.

The other day, I was venting my frustration with myself by talking to my roommates when suddenly the mood struck me and with the announcement that I felt melodramatic I dropped to one knee, put one hand on my forehead, and held the other in front of me in a fist as I confessed in a gasping, despairing, melodramatic way that I had done nothing but read fanfiction for four days and I had not done my homework.

One of my roommates laughed and asked in a skeptical voice, "And you don't want to read Hamlet?"

Plan

So, my plan is very simple. For

1. Shakespeare Literacy
        a. Breadth- I intend to read 7 plays, because I like the number 7. I'll read Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Merchant of Venice, Richard III, maybe Winter's Tale, and maybe Henry V.
        b. Depth- watch 3 different versions of a play, and do some analysis too. I'm thinking about maybe focusing on Much Ado About Nothing (as it's one of my favourites, and my blog's named after it) or Richard III (since looking at things like historical context would be so fun to look into for this one).
        c. Performance- I plan on seeing at least a summary clip of all the plays I read, and to watch long versions of more than one, and of various sorts of performances.
        d. Legacy- I'll keep my eye out for references to Shakespeare, and occasionally search them out.

2. Analyze Shakespeare Critically
        a. Textual Analysis- I'll try and point out some textual analysis of each play I read.
        b. Contextual analysis- I expect to go into this mostly with Richard III, but I'll make sure to make more than two posts going into context.
        c. Application of literary theories- I know there are a lot of these, and though I'm not particularly fond of them, I'll be sure to look up how others have applied these theories and I'll report on my reactions.
        d. Analysis of digital mediations- I guess this means that I need to look into youtube movies of the plays. Really, I think I'll just comment on what my classmates find. So far there's been a lot of interesting adaptations showing up on the other blogs which I've enjoyed.

3. Engage Shakespeare Creatively
        a. Performance- I'll deal with this one later, though I think that this would be preferable in a group.
        b. Literary Imitation- I'd like to borrow some of Shakespeare's characters for my Creative Writing class somehow. I might also try and write a sonnet. (Though sonnets are really hard, I have a hard time with iambic pentameter.)
       
4. Share Shakespeare Meaningfully
        a. Formal Writing- Some of my posts will, I suppose, be more formal, researched, and developed.
        b. Informal Writing- The more common blog posts.
        c. Connecting- I'll be commenting on the other blogs, and making random comments to my roommates...

I Recognize This, and I Like That

For our first assignment, we read some of Shakespeare's sonnets, some directly assigned, and some we chose to look at. I was surprised to stumble upon one that I recognized...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WOFLpmDbIs

But after I had recovered from my shock, I remembered that one of the things Marianne and Willoughby had in common was a love for Shakespeare's sonnets.

Shakespeare. He's everywhere, but that's okay. If he adds a little more potency to the romance's in Austen's work, I don't mind one bit. If his presence there confirms the well-known fact that Shakespeare has been well-known for a long time (Austen wrote it a good while ago, but the movie isn't that old, and Shakespeare speaks with power in both the book and movie)... then that's still just fine with me.

To Begin With

Shakespeare is everywhere, or close enough. When you take a Shakespeare class, you run into him a bit more often then you do otherwise though. So, for these next few months I will be thinking about Shakespeare, reading about Shakespeare, writing about Shakespeare, and broadcasting what I find to anyone who cares to pay attention to what an Undergraduate has to say on one of the most discussed topics known to all those who study English, Literature, or both.

By the by, I, the author and creator of this blog, am named Rebecca. My parents named three of their four daughters after characters in books and plays. One of them was even named after a Shakespeare character. That wasn't me.