Shylock

Shylock

This excellent National Film Board of Canada documentary, directed by Pierre Lasry and produced by Kenneth Hirsh, looks at the history of Shakespeare's Shylock from The Merchant of Venice, the Jewish moneylender who seeks a pound of flesh as payment on a loan, within the context of the longer history of hatred against Jews. Hatred of Jews has been embedded in theology, malicious folklore, and literature for 2000 years, culminating in the Holocaust. (Some 50 productions of Merchant were produced by the Nazis in Austria in 1939.)

Since The Merchant of Venice's first production c.1597, Shylock the Jewish moneylender, who only appears in five scenes, has represented European attitudes toward Jews. The film examines this history and the great Shakespearean actors who have played the role of Shylock through the ages, including performances by Laurence Olivier, Dustin Hoffman, and Orson Welles. It also includes modern attempts to adapt The Merchant of Venice and confront its historical association with anti-Semitism. Tibor Egarvari is filmed talking about his problems directing The Merchant of Venice, and his decision to write Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice in Auschwitz.

Shylock also shows how The Merchant of Venice was used by the Nazis to promote anti-Semitism, specifically in Austria before the war, but Shakespeare's general usefulness for the purpose of propoganda was recognized early and valued by the Third Reich. In his article "Shakespeare and the Nazis: The Role of Shakespeare's Plays in Nazi Germany," Gerwin Strobl discusses the Nazi appropriation of Shakespeare:

"Ideology aside, Shakespeare's peculiar importance for the German theatre was itself a factor [in the decision not to ban him]: ever since the eighteenth century and Schlegel and Tieck's brilliant translation he had been considered an `honorary German', and the young men who, in 1939, set out to fight for the fatherland were as likely to carry Hamlet as Faust in their knapsacks. (When, early in the war, members of a Berlin FLAK regiment took time off from guarding the skies over Hitler's capital, they promptly put on A Midsummer Night's Dream.) There were less sentimental reasons too. It did not escape Nazi notice that conspicuous cultivation of Shakespeare might be a useful weapon in the propaganda war at home and abroad -- whereas a ban, however tempting at times, would only backfire." (qtd. from http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1373/n5_v47/19383871/p1/article.jhtml) [indent]

This sobering history illustrates how Shakespeare has been mobilized to promote racist, fascist, and ultra-nationalist ideologies.

Video Clip: "Shylock's Speech." (3.1.45-61)

This clip sets the context for and then presents Shylock's famous speech as performed by a number of famous actors, including Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles from his unfinished Merchant of Venice.

Shylock: To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else, it will

feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half

a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned

my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated

mine enemies, and what's his reason?--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? If we are like you in the rest,

we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what

is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew , what

should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.

The villany you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard

but I will better the instruction.

Video Clip: "Tibor Egervari."

In this clip Tibor Egervari explains the rationale behind the creation of his Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice in Auschwitz.

Shylock. Dir. Pierre Lasry. The National Film Board of Canada, 1999.

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National Film Board of Canada/Office National du Film du Canada