Shakespeare's love trade

The English Department’s Winter semester production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is visually spectacular and ideologically fascinating. Specifically, it brings two problematic themes from the original text to the fore: heteronormative sexual politics and the application of economics to human relationships. Meanwhile, the production’s treatment of anti-Semitism, though true to Shakespeare’s original and unapologetic for it, only testifies to the problematic politics of the play’s historical context.

The plot follows the trajectory of Bassanio as he borrows money from his friend and lover Antonio in order to go woo the rich and powerful Portia. Antonio, in turn, raises the money for his partner by taking out a loan from a Jewish financier, Shylock. When Antonio defaults on the loan, the terms of the contract stipulate that he must forfeit a pound of his flesh to Shylock. This sets the stage for a thrilling courtroom scene in which Portia saves the day in disguise, ensuring the happiness and fidelity of her recently-wed Bassanio, and the demise of Shylock.

Added to the fray are subplots that address the activities of the many secondary characters. These involve, amongst others, the conversion of Shylock’s daughter Jessica into a Christian fit for the love of Lorenzo, the attempted courtship of Portia by two self-absorbed suitors, and the movements of the main characters’ posses – because in those days, everybody who was anybody in Venice rolled with a crew.

One of the play’s two central threads relentlessly works to undo the romantic relationship between Bassanio and Antonio, and replace it with the heterosexual union of the former with Portia. Professor Myrna Wyatt-Selkirk’s production plays up the romantic investment between Antonio and Bassanio, and its dissolution. In doing so, Wyatt-Selkirk makes Antonio’s sacrifice painfully clear, and the final image of the play has him standing near the front of the stage as Bassanio and Portia run off to bed. This is not to say that Bassanio has no moral difficulty in displacing his affection from Antonio onto Portia. In fact, until midway through the last scene it is clear that Bassanio’s main romantic interest is still Antonio. Whether or not this replacement of homosexual love with heterosexual desire had any particular historical topicality in Shakespeare’s time, it provides a potent allegory for contemporary sexual politics.

The Merchant of Venice’s other main plot is the personal and financial breaking down of Shylock, which raises another issue in the play: the conflation of the personal and the financial. Shylock’s main offense, therefore, is that he makes this analogy literal when he proposes to clear Antonio’s debt in exchange for a pound of his flesh. By punishing Shylock, the other characters seek to deny the intermingling of the flesh with finance. However, the punishment visited on Shylock collapses these two categories all over again: not only does the court demand the confiscation of all his money, but also his conversion to Christianity and his expulsion from Venice.

With its huge set of characters and plots, The Merchant of Venice’s cast is inevitably uneven. That said, the four main characters are all portrayed with engaging zeal. Dan Wood Clegg, in the role of Shylock, rides the line between stubborn jerk and pitiful underdog magnificently. Mackenzie Tan, playing Bassanio, creates a sense of youthful exuberance and innocence that almost makes one forget his disloyalty to Antonio. In the role of powerful Portia, Katherine Folk-Sullivan lends the cleverly manipulative upper-class socialite redeeming humanity and depth. As the imperiled Antonio, Stephen Nagy elicits pity from start to finish, while his convincing chemistry with Tan’s Bassanio makes the end of their relationship palpably sad.

The secondary characters, meanwhile, are portrayed by actors who ride the gamut from inspiring to appalling. Two performances are particularly noteworthy. Portraying Shylock’s manservant Lancelot Gobbo, who leaves to work for Bassanio, Phil Li-Wei Chen creates a brilliant caricature that combines clown-like banter, schizophrenic soliloquizing, and animalistic and sometimes hyper-sexual movements that recall the mannerisms of Smeagol in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Meanwhile, Adam Goldhamer’s portrayal of Antonio’s posse-member Gratiano is well-suited and stylized to this production’s conflation of Renaissance and contemporary modes. His constant raucous energy saves several scenes from getting bogged down in the sad solemnity of some of the other actors.

Though its acting is uneven – but on balance good – and its politics are problematic, the play’s visual aesthetic is remarkable and completely unique. The luscious costumes, jarring make-up and hairstyles, striking lighting, and unusual set design make The Merchant of Venice a relentless feast for the eyes. Intriguing for its visual stimulation and its confrontational politics, this production is satisfying both for those whose brains are numbed by essays, and the others who want to whet their intellectual appetites in preparation for exams.

Note: This article was published on 5 April 2007 in the McGill Daily and can be found on that paper's website here.