Posted on 11/03/2017 12:30:42 AM PDT by Cronos
It’s the last scene of The Merchant of Venice and the Christians are celebrating. They have love, youth and wealth on their side. Best of all, they have outsmarted “the Jew”. Not only does Shylock not get his pound of flesh, but he is forced to convert – his kippah brutally ripped off his head – and sign away his fortune to his daughter Jessica, who has turned her back on her family to elope.
While the group cavorts around the Sydney Opera House stage with giddy, ecstatic abandon, Jessica goes quiet. She bursts into tears, sinks to the floor and asks: “What have I done?”
As she weeps the others look on helplessly, even guiltily. Her husband kneels before her and tenderly tears apart the deed promising them her father’s fortune. translucent light descends. Portia whispers: “It is almost morning.” A new dawn, this implies, is approaching, washing away blind intolerance with it.
It is a beautiful ending. There’s just one problem: it isn’t William Shakespeare’s.
.....
Allowing Shakespeare to stand as it is – warts and all – has a purpose: it exposes the nastier side of antisemitic society and a past that we, in the 21st century, need to know about to ensure we don’t repeat it. This was an era in Europe when the despised profession of moneylending was almost exclusively Jewish, when Jews were thought by some to use the blood of children for rituals, and when many, as in The Merchant of Venice, thought Jews were the “very devil incarnate”.
...
Is The Merchant of Venice a Jew-hating play? Or is it a play about Jew haters? The jury is still out and it always will be; that’s where the genius lies, whatever side of the fence you fall on.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
"I...am content." If it's a Jew-hating play, why are all the best lines Shylock's?
If you erase me from history, do I not leave a void? Or will you fill it with devils?
It is also a comedy...
Should we change the ending of “White Men Can’t Jump” too?
...and by the way, I think the “quality of mercy is not strained” soliloquy is simpering drivel. But then what can you expect out of a girl who was named after a car?
Merchant of Venice was one of the very few we were not assigned to read in 11th grade. I really should catch up and read it. I don’t know what I think right now about that question. I do know Shakespeare can be subtle. Ever hear people quote Polonius as if he were Shakespeare?
Of course I don’t think we should change anything. Next it will be the shrew taming her husband instead of vice versa.
That ending is NOT how Shakespeare wrote the play and instead of "genius" is snowflake PC crap!
You aren't funny, clever, nor insightful no matter what you appear to imagine.
Rewriting any play/book/poem, attempting to make it more PC, or whatever, is as wrong and rewriting history is! And not allowing it to be performed nor read, is also very bad!
The thing is, people don't change, only technology does and seeing this play, one must take into consideration when and where and by whom it was written and for what kind of audience as well.
Over here; your 2 cents are much needed! ;^)
They forget that the ones who rip away history or try to erase it, always get erased themselves.
If you can do it to someone or something, it can be done to you. And probably will be.
They don’t just erase history, they change it to satisfy their sick fetishes. Jesus was a socialist. George Washington was a racist. Nothing can be learned of truth is as changing as the political climate.
I am not a Shakespeare scholar, but let the ending remain.
What is next? Expurgating the books of Joshua and Ezra from ancient texts because they make some multicultural idolaters uncomfortable?
The (Manchester) Guardian is a complete leftwing rag that publishes lefty “what if” dreck like this author with a peculiar hyphenated euro-leftwing trash name. Shakespeare is Shakespeare. It’s part of the permanent historical/literary record. Get over it.
When they put on Julius Caesar this summer in Central Park, they didn’t change a single line.
Also, there is no right answer. If you say “yes”, then it’s just a short step to toppling statues, blowing up buddhas, and airbrushing Nikolai Yezhov out of the picture. If you say “no” well then you’re an anti-semite. See how that little game works?
How about FU
The same way about statues to Rhodes or slavers or whatever -- leave them, but put in a text about the deeds and let people come to their own conclusions. We should not whitewash history
Stalin was (in)famous for purging within the ranks
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