Shakespearean Controversy

[Screenwriter guru] Robert McKee says, “Curiosity is the intellectual need to answer questions and close open patterns. Story plays to this universal desire by doing the opposite, posing questions and opening situations.
--quoted in Made to Stick, p. 83.

We went to the Guthrie last evening for their first Shakespearean production in their new facility. It was arguably Shakespeare’s most controversial play, The Merchant of Venice. The quote on story above which I then read this morning hit like a brick. It may be one of the reasons why Shakespeare is still so popular and so widely produced all these years after he first wrote. The Merchant of Venice may be one of the best examples of the posing of questions and opening of situations.

Was old Wil an anti-Semite? Or is Shylock meant to challenge anti-Semitism and the whole English culture built around it? When one remembers that this is a comedy, does that mean we shouldn’t take Shylock as a serious character? Yet he has such great lines:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? (Act III, Scene 1)

Yet it is Portia as a doctor of law that speaks eloquently of mercy raining down, mercy overcoming the law through use of the law.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. (Act IV, Scene 1)

Is it basically a Christian-Jewish morality play of its era?

Well, what else can we expect of Wil? He was a man of his time, yet he managed in so many ways to also transcend into all time. Did the audience at the Globe hiss and boo at Shylock? Probably. Did these great words that come from his mouth bring derision? Most likely. Yet, there is the amazing ability of Shakespeare to put together a great play that stops us in our tracks for its over-the-top portrayal and so clearly prejudiced a view and entrances us hundreds of years later. Maybe the only way he could conceive of challenging these views is through a comedy that pulls you from one extreme to another with a simple scene change.

Maybe Shakespeare was willing to put his own prejudices out there to be seen in the harsh light of day. In doing so he raises questions and open situations as very few playwrights have been able to do so eloquently and with such challenge.

Yes, mercy (grace) is greater and can use even the law for its own benefits of mercy. But then the legalist is also a human who can bleed. A seed is planted, situations left open, and more questions given than answered.