Robert Tanitch reviews The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare’s Globe, London
Shylock was initially a comic character. I doubt very much if anybody would dare play him for comedy today. Jew-baiting was the norm in Shakespeare’s day. The Christians come out of The Merchant of Venice extremely badly.
Charles Macklin in 1741 was the first actor to take Shylock seriously. Edmund Kean in 1814 was the first to treat him with compassion. Henry Irving in 1878 was the first to make him tragic. Jonathan Pryce is the latest in a long line of distinguished actors and more sympathetic and low-key than most.
Shylock exacts a terrible revenge when Antonio is bankrupt and cannot pay the 3,000 ducats he owes. But if Shylock is obdurate, malicious and cruel, it is because the Christians, blatantly anti-Semitic, have taught him, over many years of humiliation, to be so. He merely reciprocates the villainy they have shown him.
The most shocking moment in the play comes right at the end of the great trial when Shylock has lost not only his lawsuit, but also all his money, his home and his property. It is at this point that Antonio insists Shylock should instantly become a convert to Christianity or die.
I saw a production at the Globe in 1998 when Shylock was played by Norbert Kentrup, the distinguished German Jewish actor, and the insensitive audience actually roared with laughter on this line.
Shakespeare ends the play on a light comedy note to send the audience away happy. In this production Jonathan Mumby’s trump card is to add a coda after the play has finished. He forces us to witness Shylock’s degradation when he has to endure a very public baptism.
The broad comic performances of Stefan Adegbola as the loud-mouthed clown, Launcelot Gobbo, and of Scott Karim as that blinking French idiot, The Prince of Aragon, are rightly pitched at the groundlings – I.e. the 700 who stand in the area immediately in front of the Globe’s stage. The cost to stand is a bargain £5.
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