The Merchant of Venice (25 page)

HG:
Actually in performance it flows out from the action organically, but yes, it is a burden. To avoid self-consciousness I needed to find the context out of which he is driven. We’ve a man who has worked on the Rialto for many years and when he’s outside he smiles, he’s genial. Then he goes home to this sour, dark temple, where he can spit about the society outside. There’s this dichotomy, this schism emotionally within him. At home, as I did in my performance, he smacks his daughter round the face, he is violent, he’s aggressive and ugly. He is not a nice man. He cannot express love. Yes, we know why and we can understand why he’s not a nice man, but he’s not a well-balanced, pleasant man. It is not right to avoid that in trying to portray him honestly. The actor should avoid at all costs mollifying him or making him a villain for politically correct motives. What the play is really saying, I think, is that society buys its own outcomes. The notion of value and what we buy in life is central to the play.

Off the script, but intuited from it, consider this: the sense of grievance, and I believe grief, at the death of his wife Leah is the soil out of which this articulate human challenge comes. “Why me? Please, not more grief and pain and insult and disgrace and loss. Please explain to me … it’s just not fair” is a paraphrase I would use to shape that inner sense of being wronged beyond endurance.

Shylock is in the habit of expecting Antonio to treat him in a certain way, to spit on him and insult him, but when the tables are turned and Antonio needs the loan it is fascinating. Antonio is a bold public figure who confidently entertains his friends by his derision
toward the Jews. He has a very strong sense of religious commitment, and I think this is very important. Antonio is a very committed Christian, he’s a good Christian, and to be a good Christian is to stop Jews being Jews. The pope has at this time condoned, by law, burning them, let’s recall! That all religion is dangerous is something the play reveals and explores. Shylock in a certain sense has an equally indomitable commitment to religion. This is the New Testament versus the Old. So when Antonio needs to borrow the money it brings out in Shylock a sense of opportunism, a savagery. For years he has demonstrated a patient acceptance of how you deal with life, of
years
of habitually being spat on, and he makes it quite clear he’s dealt with it patiently. It really is remarkable, and I think that is a secret about Shylock: he has learned a carapace of survival in this society, of smiling, laughing. On the surface a certain sense of bonhomie, but inside a deep sense of self-denigration, shame, guilt about that very carapace. Then the leading Merchant of Venice, Antonio, who is the champion of all of these anti-alien, anti-Jewish behaviors, who encourages the young bloods in this mercantile city, suddenly HE needs money! It is like the Lockerbie bomber needing a loan from the parents of those he killed. The irony unleashes something unique emotionally, an opportunity to rebalance the books. On the surface you can say that’s just revenge and hatred, but I think it’s also a certain sort of justice. I think all of that context is swimming underneath: the loss of his money, his diamonds, his daughter, his wife, and then the ring, which he was given as a bachelor by his wife-to-be, Leah, who means a great deal to him and whose death has devastated Shylock. And the only memory of this human being is the ring. I think before Shylock speaks those powerful words he’s reached a stage of primal, lucid, almost existential thinking. I don’t think he’s ever been in this state before. He’s asking
himself
the question; it’s not just rage at these two racists that spit on him and laugh at him and taunt him. The emotional impact of his daughter becoming a Christian, running away with the enemy and taking the ring, puts him in a state when he says those lines which is absolutely new for him. It’s not just an old habit coming out, it’s something absolutely new. The thoughts are newly discovered because of a traumatized state, and that’s why they’re great. That’s what shapes the rhetorical bite of his
thought. Newness of discovery is why any Shakespeare speech becomes great: people reach a point of understanding about themselves that shapes their thoughts and language. I think that’s the way to understand that speech; he’s been pushed to a point where he’s almost for a moment gone beyond just anger. Yes, there’s huge emotional heft in the scene, but there’s also a sense of unavoidable truthfulness, lucidity.

Shylock’s implacability in the trial scene is pretty unremitting: how do you as an actor empathize with the man who insists on his pound of flesh?

AS:
I had no difficulty at all empathizing with him in the trial scene—he’s been badly damaged by his treatment, and now he’s insane with rage. We intensified his mental state by having him perform a (totally invented) Jewish ritual while he prepared to cut the pound of flesh from Antonio, chanting away in Hebrew, as though this was some ancient sacrificial rite. But I have to confess that my commitment to the frenzied attack was shaken one night when a lady in the front row said of John Carlisle, playing Antonio, and the slimmest of actors, “Oh, you’ll never get a pound of flesh off him!”

HG:
I think what’s important is that before he goes into the trial scene we learn from the scene on the street that the jailer has been breaking the rules and allowing Antonio to come begging for mercy. Antonio is so powerful in this town that people are fighting on his behalf; even the duke has clearly spoken to Shylock on Antonio’s behalf. So before he gets in the courtroom, people are on the streets calling out “You vicious Jew, how can you try and bring down one of our leading men of Venice?” The whole city has turned against him. He goes home to an empty house; everywhere he looks, hatred looks back at him. I’m very conscious before he gets into that public space of the private nightmare of his life. However bad it was before, it is now a million times worse. And, crucially, he now has legitimate opportunity and inner need for justice (some say revenge). Think of it: sitting at home, on his own, without his daughter or wife, even Tubal his sole Jewish friend has started to think “You’re going too far.” He’s lonely, he’s isolated, and in his isolation he becomes very
dangerous. I also think it’s important that Shylock is a very clever, canny man. He’s read the Old Testament in all of its rich, proverbial allegories and stories. He’s a market trader at the highest level—that sense of playing the long game, almost mental chess, working out numbers, planning when ships come in, how much a piece of cloth will be; he plays hedge funds in his head. He thrives when challenged with complex situations. Emotionally, he rubs his soul with joy when people take him on. He’s held his sense of injustice back and spat about it inside the ghetto, but now he can actually look at it, deal with it. That’s what I was interested in exploring. He enjoys taking them on in a way that he never did before. Then there is the very key issue of his innate temperament, his “humour” in the contemporary Elizabethan medical sense. Early in the play, well before bile is aroused, he can’t stop himself from saying, “Signior Antonio, many a time and oft / In the Rialto you have rated me / About my moneys and my usances … What should I say to you?,” etc. He can’t stop himself from being ironical, and prodding, because he knows he’s got these guys in a corner intellectually, and they’re hypocrites. Now put that into a political, social, emotional, life-and-death situation, a man who thinks and says, “I fight for my tribe.” He even says in the trial, which a lot of people forget, “I follow thus / A losing suit against him.” I am fighting a losing situation—he uses those words. “A pound of flesh. What good is that to me? But now I will have him.” And that’s why all this insight comes under pressure: “You bought your slaves. If I said to you, why don’t you let them sleep in your beds and marry your daughters, would you do it? No, you wouldn’t, because you
bought
them. You
own
them. Well I
bought
the right to hate this man. My hatred is ‘dearly bought.’” It’s a remarkable statement. He knows what he’s saying. He
loves
the legal precedents, that’s why the notion of Daniel, the great thinker, the great judge in the great biblical tradition, is so important to him—and also Jacob, the father of the nation—because these were thinkers. Daniel was a wise, powerful, clever man. So all of that is in that room. It’s the chance to bite back. And in the moment of playing, you’re not aware at all of playing the big speeches, or big problems, you’ve just got the heft of all of these events and history behind you, just speaking out from an unavoidable inner insight and pressure. The phrase “affection /
Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood / Of what it like or loathes”: my paraphrase would be “I am—we are all—at the mercy of this effect (as Freud called it!), this drive. I can’t stop myself as Shylock—like people who pee whenever they hear the bagpipes!”

8.
Antony Sher as Shylock in the trial scene, intoning his (invented) Hebrew sacrificial prayer.

Were physical characteristics an important part of your creation of the character?

AS:
In researching the Jewish ghetto in Venice (Jan Morris’ book on that city was particularly useful), I was interested to learn that a significant part of its population was Turkish. Bill Alexander and I became drawn to the idea that it wasn’t just Shylock’s religion that made him very foreign, very alien, to the Christians. Since they were being played in RP British accents, Shylock developed a very Turkish sound, and look—with long hair and beard, and a large purple djellaba—and a heavy, almost brutal walk. I thought of him as a simple, relatively uneducated man, a peasant turned businessman, used to receiving blows, and now ready to return them.

HG:
I feel very strongly that in the writing there’s a different rhythm in the way he speaks. There were not a lot of Jews in London when Shakespeare wrote the play, so they were a little bit alien, but there were a great many foreigners with foreign accents. London in that sense was like Venice: it benefited from them, even though there was a huge, fearful mentality and a terror of being at war. I think one of the things that hit me were the sounds of the writing and the rhythm of the writing; there’s a rhythmic shape and pattern. In our production, the sensibility was to put it pre-Holocaust, otherwise it becomes unwatchable and in bad taste. Trevor found a way to put it in Europe, in Vienna or in Budapest; it wasn’t explicit, probably in the late 1920s, early 1930s, before things had really got out of hand. And one of the lovely ideas that Trevor had which affected the social, political milieu was that Shylock, when he went off for dinner, went off to meet Antonio to seal the deal, met them at the cabaret, which is really louche and sexy and naughty, and which for Shylock is utterly abhorrent and uncomfortable. And there was Gobbo, whom he has just sacked, on the microphone saying “My master’s an old
Jew …” Once again, there it is: all the hatred, from his own servant, who’s now dressed a little better, working for Bassanio, whom Shylock has just lent a load of money to. It’s a wonderful irony and a great idea of Trevor’s.

Did historical research into the status of Jews in Shakespeare’s time play a part in your preparation of the role?

AS:
No, though I knew of course that Jews were officially banned from England at the time Shakespeare wrote the play. So his fully rounded and compassionate view of Shylock came either from encounters with Jews elsewhere, or, more likely, his fully rounded and compassionate view of humanity in general.

HG:
The key thing is to look at what’s in the text before you start to interpret, but I was overwhelmingly struck when doing research for the play by the events surrounding Roderigo Lopez. Lopez was hung, drawn and quartered, and let’s remind ourselves that that is hanging somebody until they’re not quite dead and then viscerally ripping them to bits and cutting out their belly, all in front of a shrieking, laughing crowd at Tyburn in Marble Arch. The Elizabethan love of watching these live events, even though there might be horror and distaste, was also there in the thrill of bear-baiting and cock-fighting, and, as we know only too well, is not that far from our own society. There’s both the visceral impact of that and also the social and political events in London, in a country at war with Spain, having recently dealt with the Armada. It brought something out. And it’s much too simplistic to say that it’s just prejudice or hatred. Lopez was a man who wasn’t a leader, but who was very close to the queen, who had permission to touch the royal fruitless private parts, he was one of only twenty-odd people given the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, he was at the highest level of court. He was a man whom the queen became very close to, but who was hated by the Earl of Essex and all these people; he was what they called a
marrano
, which means “pig,”
converso
, somebody they thought was a secret Jew, although I suspect that he had given up his religion. All of these things bespeak in the court, and in society, a fear of the foreigner,
especially in an island that was at war with Spain and frightened of the large numbers of exiled Portuguese (Spain had conquered it and the Portuguese king had fled to London)—Lopez being Portuguese and Jewish: a double alien! It is true, from research I found, that Lopez was trying to do deals and was acting as a fixer (not the same thing as a spy) for his patients, the queen and Lord Burleigh. There was fierce rivalry between Essex and Burleigh (Essex pro-war with Spain; Burleigh a peace-seeker). Essex basically tortured this seventy-year-old man [Lopez] until he got what he wanted out of him. Essex took him to his own private home to get outside of the city walls because Elizabeth didn’t want him to be tortured, she believed in him. I think that all of that going on at court, where Shakespeare was already by then performing in various companies, inspired me as much as the detailed current events and specific textual events in the play. I personally find all that background really helpful and useful.