Shakespeare After All

by Marjorie Garber

What dies with John of Gaunt? Nothing less than a vision of the world. The vision of England as a garden, an unfallen earthly paradise. The vision of its king as a ruler by right and not by nature, by title and entitlement rather than by credit and merit.

The theory of “the king's two bodies,” the man and the state, raises for York, for Richard, and for the play key questions about the nature of kingship and the difference between essence and role. Bolingbroke places faith in persona, or role, in malleability and self-creation; Richard in essence or identity.

Broadly, this difference between essence and role is the difference in the play between an old, hieratic view of kingship and a new, early modern notion of monarchy. In terms of theater it is also the difference between a miracle, or morality, play and a play of dramatic realism and complexity,

Bolingbroke does not think in these theological terms. The kingship is for him a political, not a religious, office until he attains it, when his tune and tone will change. And the image of the king as the sun will itself chart the pattern of Richard's tragedy and fall, as it is transferred in the course of this play from Richard to Bolingbroke.

the design of this play, as of a number of others by Shakespeare, is what might be called “chiastic”—that is, X-shaped. One protagonist rises as another falls. The man who rises in this play is, of course, Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV—as York will acknowledge explicitly at the time of the deposition: Ascend his throne, descending now from him, And long live Henry, of that name the fourth! 4.1.102–103

We see in the pairing of Richard II and the man who will become Henry IV an intimation of what will become a familiar Shakespearean contrast, between a complex, even mythic, figure imbued with human flaws and human suffering

and a more pragmatic, practical-minded

minded figure of political and martial ...

Instead of charting the fall of Richard and the rise of Bolingbroke, we could say that both diagonals of the X trace the movement of Richard through the play. As he falls, he rises. As he descends in the political world, he rises in the world of drama, tragedy, poetry.

Richard, like the Bishop of Carlisle, who is among his supporters, has indeed prophesied a civil war that will tear England apart, a war that will become one of the central topics of the Henry IV plays.

It is almost as if, at the close of this tragedy of a medieval man caught in an early modern world, those stock figures from medieval drama, a good angel and a bad angel, an angel and a devil, had come to battle for him, and it is reminiscent of the similar splintering of persona into many people, as also seen in Richard's soliloquy the night before Bosworth.

It ends instead in history and in ongoing time, in repetition and reversal. The tragic death of Richard II, an unintended effect, becomes the cause, and

the curse, that hangs over the Henry IV plays and Henry V. The way up is the way down.

HAKESPEARE'S The Life and Death of King John is a play better known to scholars than to modern theater audiences.

Blanche, indeed, finds herself in a situation that will become familiar for brides-to-be in Shakespearean plays, torn between love and filial duty—between her husband, Louis of France, and her uncle, King John of England, as the false peace brokered by her wedding immediately escalates to war:

Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose, Assurèd loss before the match be played. 3.1.253–262

The larger design of the play pursues a pattern that would become familiar in later histories and tragedies. A king with a clouded title to the throne tries desperately to reinforce that title by repressing, appeasing, or extinguishing a popular rival.

Interested parties on all sides attempt to intervene, with results that are either futile or counterproductive. External war

is followed by civil strife, both between rival factions and within the divided mind and consciousness of the king. A heroic and entrepreneurial figure— here, the Bastard Falconbridge—emerges to combine the popular and the “noble,” and to offer a spirit of patriotic energy otherwise lacking from the tired court.

as the play moves onward, the Bastard is established as a lively, pro- fane, and rounded dramatic character, capable of judiciously bawdy jesting with Queen Eleanor, and adroit, as well, in personable asides to the audience, once the stage is cleared of other characters. His language is deliberately colloquial, full of regionalisms, contractions, and local color

Critics have also compared him to Shakespeare's Mercutio, Autolycus, Jaques, Touchstone, and even Falstaff. In any case, he is not only a brave soldier

but also a witty commentator, a refreshingly deflating cynic. It is worth noting that, unlike any others in this distinguished Shakespearean roster, he not only survives, as Edmund, Mercutio, and Falstaff do not, but also retains central power and influence.

That smooth-faced gentleman, tickling commodity;

Commodity, the bias of the world, The world who of itself is peisèd well, Made to run even upon even ground, Till this advantage, this vile-drawing bias, This sway of motion, this commodity Makes it take head from all indifferency From all direction, purpose, course, intent;

From a resolved and honourable war, To a most base and vile-concluded peace.

Well, whiles I am a beggar I will rail, And say there is no sin but to be rich, And being rich, my virtue then shall be To say there is no vice but beggary. Since kings break faith upon commodity, Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee. 2.1.574–599

N THE LATE twentieth century and into the twenty-first, The Merchant of Venice has become, for reasons historical and political as well as literary and dramatic, the site of very great anxiety—anxiety about religion and religious prejudice, about the play's depiction of Jews and of Christians, and also about the place of sexuality and gender.

A play that began its stage career with a comic Shylock in a false nose has become transmuted, over the centuries and especially after the Holocaust, into a drama of pathos, loss, and mutual incomprehension, with Shylock often—though not always— emerging as a tragic figure incongruously caught in the midst of a romantic comedy.

As I will try to explain, the ambivalence and ambiguity that emerge from a reading or staging of the play are not a sign of its failure, but rather of its signal success. The play produces upon the audience the effect that it also instates and describes in its characters.

The Merchant of Venice is above all Shakespeare's great play about difference. Shakespeare presents a series of what seem to be clear-cut opposites, but each of those opposites begins, as the play goes on, to seem oddly like, rather than unlike, the other.

this is a play that manages its discomfiting topics by creating dramatic situations that are deliberately and relentlessly discomfiting and uncomfortable.

Antonio, not Shylock, who is the titular character, the “merchant of Venice.” Jews were moneylenders in part because they could not—by law—be merchants, could not sell or exchange real commodities or goods.

In a play as aggressively “Christian” as this one,

the principal excluded character in Merchant, the character who makes this play, for a modern audience, something other than a comedy, is of course Shylock. And the figure of Shylock rouses deep emotions, not only because his plight seems in some ways to mirror that of Jews in Europe from Shakespeare's time to the present, but also because of the desire on the part of many readers, editors, and actors to protect Shakespeare against the accusation of anti-Semitism.

Did Shakespeare scorn and dislike Jews, as do many characters in his play? Was it his intention—whatever he achieved—to caricature a despised race and the religion its members practiced?

Writers do not control the interpretations of their works—indeed, as we will see, one major theme of this play is the plenitude and “lewdness” of interpretation—and

It is possible that Shakespeare had never seen or known a Jew. Jews had been banned from England since the time of Edward I, who expelled them in 1290, after borrowing heavily from Jewish lenders in previous years to support his wars.

There were some Jews in the London of Shakespeare's time, but these were likely to be Spanish or Portuguese Jews who presented themselves in public as Christian converts, attending church services, and practicing their own religion only in secret.

But we do both playwright and play a disservice if we see Shylock as a two-dimensional stereotyped figure who represents an archaic and unpardonable prejudice.

Shylock's character is, deliberately, more complex.

Actors have played the part of Shylock, a much coveted part, in every spirit from comic butt to fiendish devil to persecuted scapegoat.

Of all Shakespeare's plays, none perhaps has stirred as much controversy in modern times as The Merchant of Venice.

It is worth remembering that Shylock was played as a broadly comic figure until 1741, when Charles Macklin turned him into a villain

In 1879, during the Victorian period, Henry Irving played the part of Shylock as high tragedy, and from that time to this the play has been Shylock's play. This is probably not what Shakespeare “intended”—the play has in this case overborne the author and his times.

what should we make of the Christians in this problematic play? How Christian are they? Is The Merchant of Venice perhaps an ironic glimpse at Christian hypocrisy, rather than an endorsement of Christian behavior?

Ambivalence is everywhere, at least to a modern audience.

From first to last this play is quintessentially about interpretation, about the act of decipherment: the casket choice with its three metals and three mottoes, Shylock's reading of the bond, Portia's recourse to an even more literal interpretation of the contract concerning the pound of flesh.

We have noted, too, that puns and wordplay are a crucial element in this multiplication and dissemination of meanings:

the most astonishing line in the play: Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew? 4.1.169

Bear in mind that “Jews” on the Elizabethan stage normally wore bright red wigs and large noses, and that Shylock has already alluded memorably to his customary costume, his “Jewish gaberdine,” the long, coarse garment, like a cloak, worn by Jews from the medieval period through the early modern.