I pit Portia and Bassanio (Merchant of Venice pitting)

Cafe Society
1

(Mods - can we pit fictional characters? If not, please move to Cafe Society, with my apologies).

So, I’ve just seen the film version of “The Merchant of Venice” - the modern one, with Al Pacino as Shylock. Good film, and I recommend it. But one of the strengths of the film, and its actors, is that it makes it very clear that Bassanio and Portia are horrible, horrible people. Just staggeringly bad.

Bassanio, after all, exploits Antonio’s infatuation with him for what is clearly a whole lot of cash, and puts Antonio in mortal peril by so doing. Ebert notes that Antonio is essentially financing his own romantic disappointment - and Bassanio is not nearly stupid enough to miss that.

And Portia … good Ford, what can I say about Portia? She’s lovely as hell, but my personal theory is that the whole marriage-lottery wasn’t designed to protect Portia from the world - but her father, knowing precisely what sort of cruel monster he’d raised, was trying to protect the world from her as well as he could. Were I dragged, kicking and screaming to Belmont, I’d pick the silver casket every time, and thank my lucky stars that Portia’s father had seen fit to give me an out.

For one thing, Portia is unabashedly, unashamedly bigoted - even in her guide as judge, she almost never addresses Shylock by name. He is merely “Jew”. There’s also a line from the play that didn’t make it into the movie, in which she hopes that no others with the “complexion” of her Moroccan suitor enjoy better luck than that fellow did. But beyond the racism, she’s just plain cruel - she does everything she can to strip Shylock of every bit of pride he has left, more or less because she can. And her “oh no, you lost the ring” game is just plain psychotic.

Antonio’s a bastard as well, of course - one can easily imagine him with a swastika armband, cheerfully watching as the SA burns Jewish shops. But one can at least understand his extra twist of the knife, when he makes Shylock convert and leave his property to his daughter’s (christian) husband - if someone came that close to gutting me, I’d probably want a bit of revenge too. And Shylock is monstrous in his own right - but he’s been made one, after spending a lifetime surrounded by cheerful Christian thugs.

Bassanio and Portia. Horrible, horrible people. Why couldn’t they just chug poison and stab each other, like those twits of Verona?

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Mr Excellent, a worthy observation overall. Perhaps a bit harsh on Bassanio who is less compromised than the others.

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First of all, may I just say how happy I am to see a Shakespeare thread in the Pit? I think he’s be happy, too – I mean, if your characters are still making people angry four hundred years later, you’re doing something right :slight_smile:

And yeah, pretty much all of the characters in this play, with the possible exception of Nerissa, are complete jerks. (Which is kind of why I like this play so much.)

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Moved from The BBQ Pit to Cafe Society.

Gfactor
Pit Moderator

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Oh, Nerissa’s a jerk too - she does the same psychotic little ring-game as Portia. But that’s more or less the only jerk thing she does - which, in this play, comes damn close to sainthood.

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I applaud the o.p. for a cogent analysis of the play, and recommend Troilus and Cressida for his next effort.

Stranger

7

At the risk of appealing to the lowest common denominator, how is it that I’ve never heard of Lynn Collins (Portia)? She’s…stunning.

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Agreed they were bad people, but believe it or not Pacino plays Shylock far less villainously than in most productions. In spite of his great “hath not a Jew eyes” soliloquy he was generally displayed as so despicable and vindictive that the audience thought it funny when he was forcibly converted and then died. (The scene where he’s seen wailing and on his knees mourning his eloped daughter isn’t in the play- just that "the old Jew went screaming ‘my daughter, my ducats, my daughter, my ducats’- it was a joke.)

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Thank you, but I would prefer that my head not explode from sheer apoplectic disgust. :slight_smile:

And a fine actress, to judge by Merchant.

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Wait - Shylock dies in most productions? That’s a little surprising - but then, this is the first time I’ve seen any production (well, film) of The Merchant of Venice.

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My bad- I remembered his death being referred to in one of those Shakespearean “Guess who just dropped dead offstage?” moments and his estate being split twixt Jessica and Antonio. Apparently I’m not. He is only ordered to leave his estate to Jessica and Antonio upon his death, hence the talk of his (future) death in the final scene.

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Yeah, heaven help us all, that Portia wasn’t several hundred years ahead of her time. I mean, don’t like her if you don’t want to, but don’t ascribe modern attitudes to her, and then use them to beat her up.

But thanks for the reminder. I do want to watch this movie.

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Portia is one of my favorite characters in literature, and I never read her as ‘horrible’. She reminds me of Veronica Mars, actuallii.

ding dong bell

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And you should - it’s a great movie. :slight_smile:

About Portia, though - I’ll concede that it may not be entirely fair to condemn for merely being a bigot. Our Lady P, though, is remarkably vicious besides - even after she’s gotten Antonio off the hook, she proceeds to place Shylock in mortal peril, and impoverish him, just for shits and giggles.

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You could say a number of things that are incorrect or unfair. Let’s examine them. :wink:

She’s nothing compared to Antonio’s friends. Gratiano in particular is awful, but so are the others.

She does call him by name three times. She calls him “Jew,” or refers to him as “the Jew” when speaking to others, seven or eight times. I’m going off the text of the play here. I saw the movie but I can’t search it right now.

Yeah, that scene does not play well no matter what you do with it. It’s a nightmare.

This is my biggest objection to what you’re saying, because at best, you’re taking her actions out of context. For a start, Shylock wants to kill Antonio and she saves his life. She does humiliate Shylock, but she only does that after giving him every possibly opportunity to resolve the debt without hurting Antonio, starting with “the quality of mercy” speech. He refuses every offer, which establishes that his intent is to kill Antonio just because he can. It’s harsh, and yes, it’s humiliating, but it’s a penalty for attempted murder.

Agreed. I still can’t believe that’s supposed to pass for comedy.

And that’s sort of the central dilemma of doing the play today. Shylock’s a bastard, but so are the people around him. Performers and directors are always wrestling with the question of how the play is intended to be performed and how they should do it. Is Shylock just a comic villain and a Jewish stereotype? If so, how do you explain “Hath not a Jew eyes?”

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All fair points - but just for grins, I’ll quibble with them anyway. :slight_smile:

For one thing, I’d suggest that it isn’t particularly meaningful to point out that Portia isn’t as racist as Gratiano or Antonio’s other friends. Gratiano in particular is clearly meant to be comic relief - the play makes it very obvious on its own terms that Gratiano is not exactly a trustworthy guy. There’s a great comic beat where, right after Bassanio proposes marriage to Portia, Gratiano proposes to Nerissa. Portia leans over the Nerissa and says something like “Oh, I’m so happy for you.” Bassanio leans over and asks Gratiano “are you sure you’re serious about this?”

Portia is a good person by the play’s lights - Gratiano isn’t.

As for the cruelty of Portia’s conduct at the trial - well, I concede I may be over-stating the case a bit. I think my impression is colored by the fact that I know beter than Portia how hard Antonio’s worked to earn Shylock’s enmity. Further, Portia’s cruelty sets up Shylock to become a victim of Antonio’s singularly cruel “mercy”. But I have to admit - from what relatively little Portia knows of this situation, she’s not acting entirely without cause. (Of course, Portia’s willingness to thrust herself into crucial role in a situation she doesn’t understand is pretty horrifying in itself - but that’s a standard Shakespearean character flaw, and I can’t hold it against her.)

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I think Shylock- apart from his Jewishness- is meant to be a lesson against obsession and bitterness and resentment. He is rightly wronged- he has every reason to be pissed and Antonio and friends are completely hypocrites for voiding their rheum at him one day and begging him for help another- BUT his hatred, completely justified perhaps, but hatred nonetheless has so consumed him that it is his sole raison d’atre.

He’s just said that if he were offered 12 times the amount of his loan he’d still kill Antonio. It’s personal- contrary to stereotype he doesn’t value gold above all things, he wants revenge.

It could perhaps be argued that by forcibly converting him Shakespeare (whoever that was*) was arguing that forgiveness was the highest virtue taught by Christianity, and making Shylock a Jew was a plot device to bring up this Christian concept and remind people of the value of forgiveness/the destruction of bitterness in a very bloody time (Protestants v. Catholics v. Anglicans, English v. Irish, etc.), and also a lesson in how the person who holds the knife can flip-flop.

*Oxfordians point to Merchant of Venice as one piece of evidence, citing that Devere had spent time in Venice and came back convinced the Jews there were in cahoots with the Jews in Turkey than to their own city during the wars twixt Venetians and Ottomans and consequently gave state secrets to them. Non-Oxfordians point out that this was fairly well known anti-Semtic court gossip.

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It’d be a pretty short thread otherwise. :wink:

I think it’s worth considering her in her cultural context. She’s no lover of Jews or black people, but she tries to reason with Shylock. Most of the other characters just call him names. You’re correct about Gratiano being comic relief, but it’s not just him. Antonio and Bassanio are both pretty liberal with their slurs on Jews, and so are Salanio, Salarino, and Salerio.

That’s true. She’s making a major effort to help a friend of her new husband, which is also not a cruel thing to do. But she doesn’t know the background of the dispute, or if she does, she’s probably heard only Bassanio’s version.

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Dang, it’s moved now, but it was high-concept.

It’s a parallel of the post-modern dealy that stuff don’t need no stinkin’ resolved endings–the tragedies don’t need no stinkin’ heroes.

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Because the only things he mentions in that are animal features: body parts, reflexes, and so forth. He mentions no human characteristics that put Jews in common with Christians. He’s not saying, “I’m as worthy a human being as you, and it’s just as wrong to injure me, so I’m entitled to revenge”; he’s saying, “It’s stimulus-response. I have the same animal passions as you.”

When you look at it, it’s really not as ringing a statement of equality as it seems to us at first glance.