Patrick Stewart
on
Shylock
Royal Shakespeare Company
Opened at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon on 19 May 2011
Directed by Rupert Goold
Designed by Tom Scutt
With Howard Charles as Gratiano, Susannah Fielding as Portia, Scott Handy as Antonio, Caroline Martin as Jessica, Emily Plumtree as Nerissa, and Richard Riddell as Bassanio
The Merchant of Venice was written between 1596 and 1598. It’s a curious anomaly that although frequently performed and among the Bard’s most popular plays, The Merchant is not a favourite of many actors. Patrick Stewart’s ongoing fascination with Shylock makes him a notable exception. In the 1623 First Folio the play is listed among Shakespeare’s comedies. Nowadays, however, it seems very much more a ‘problem play’. This has a lot to do with Shylock. No other character in Shakespeare’s canon has undergone such radical changes in the four hundred years since its creation.
Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 by King Edward I and were not allowed back until 1656 under the rule of Oliver Cromwell. They were seldom seen on the Elizabethan stage, and when they were, tended to be portrayed as avaricious usurers, by turn comical and villainous. Traditionally, Shylock was played with a hooked nose and a bright-red wig, echoing the red hats worn by Venetian Jews outside the ghetto. It was in 1741 that Charles Macklin turned the tide with a more complete portrayal, bitter and malevolent, but touched by pathos. Edmund Kean’s performance in 1814 was another milestone. He endowed the part with sympathy, humanity and dignity. It was revolutionary. A spectator was heard to exclaim ‘By Jove! Shylock in a black wig!’ Kean is described as rousing the audience to ‘almost uncontrollable enthusiasm’. Henry Irving had great success in the late nineteenth century with his superior, dignified Shylock. In 1938, following Kristallnacht, The Merchant of Venice, with an exaggerated emphasis on the usuriousness of Shylock, was broadcast on Nazi German radio as propaganda. But since the Second World War and the Holocaust, audiences have found the play’s anti-Semitic elements troubling. Likewise, it’s no longer easy to accept the final act as the romantic idyll that Shakespeare seems to have intended. As for Shylock being portrayed as a hook-nosed clown with a red wig, it would nowadays be inconceivable.
As ever, Shakespeare keeps his cards close to his chest. Does he side with Gratiano who, as Shylock sharpens his knife in preparation to carve a pound of flesh from Antonio’s breast, calls him a ‘damn’d, inexecrable dog’ whose ‘currish spirit / Govern’d a wolf’? Or does he find the young gentiles no better than a shallow, sponging, abusive crew of petty idlers? Does he endorse the Duke of Venice’s description of Shylock as ‘A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch, / Uncapable of pity, void and empty / From any dram of mercy’ [4.1]? Does Shakespeare believe the Jew’s enforced conversion to Christianity would constitute a happy ending, as it may have done for contemporary audiences, thereby saving his soul and allowing him to enter heaven? In any case, it’s extremely hard not to sympathise with an aged Jew who has been kicked and spat upon, whose daughter elopes with a Christian, steals much of his wealth and exchanges his most precious ring for a monkey.
Part of Shakespeare’s genius is his ability to flip the audience’s sympathy on its head, as he does at moments with Macbeth, Richard III, even with Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus. Thus, at the conclusion of the trial scene, having been narrowly thwarted in an act of barbaric cruelty, Shylock becomes utterly pitiable: he exits bankrupt, humiliated and alone. For centuries, scholars, actors and audiences have argued as to whether the play is, or is not, anti-Semitic.
Patrick Stewart has returned to the role of Shylock repeatedly since he was twelve years old. ‘What keeps you coming back,’ he says, ‘is that he has some of the most interesting, colourful and idiosyncratic language in Shakespeare. Nobody else speaks like Shylock. It sets him apart. And this was the brilliance of Shakespeare: he was the first writer to create character out of language.’ I met Patrick to record this chapter in London in August 2016, while he and Ian McKellen were rehearsing for a revival of Pinter’s No Man’s Land.
I’ve been in The Merchant twice. My first professional job was as an extra at the Old Vic. In the trial scene, six of us were dolled up as ‘Magnificoes’. We made a dignified upstage entrance, to be greeted by grovelling townsfolk. Late in the run, with boredom setting in, one of the latter (facing upstage) opened his cloak to reveal bollock nakedness. That night the Magnificoes of Venice struggled to stop themselves from giggling helplessly. Decades later I played Antonio at Stratford. The director, Gregory Doran, insisted that I should be in love with Bassanio. It was an older man’s troubled, caring love for a younger man, with little hope of reciprocation – let alone sex. Rupert Goold’s production starring Patrick Stewart went a lot further. Bassanio abandoned Portia at the end of the play and went off with Antonio.
Julian Curry: I believe you’ve been in The Merchant of Venice five times, including a one-man show you wrote about Shylock. Is that correct?
Patrick Stewart: I think it’s five times, yes. I read Shylock in school when I was twelve. That was the first time I’d ever had a copy of Shakespeare in my hands. The English teacher passed them around and said ‘Stewart, you’re Shylock. Act 4, Scene 1’ – which is the trial scene. Then he cast the other roles and said ‘Alright, start reading.’ So we all began silently reading. We thought that’s what he meant. And he said ‘Idiots! No, no. Out loud. Not like that. Out loud. This is drama, this is life!’ So for the first time I spoke Shakespeare out loud.
Excellent initiation!
I talked to him on the phone ten days ago. Cecil Dormand is his name.
Your old schoolmaster.
My old English teacher, yes, who’s ninety-one now. I don’t want to seem overly romantic, but if I hadn’t had him at my secondary modern school, none of this would have come about.
Do you mean you wouldn’t have wanted to be an actor?
Exactly. Then he put me in a play with adults. There was a drama group, basically the staff of the school. The headmaster was the leading man, and the headmaster’s wife directed the productions, and Cec Dormand was in them too. I’d never been in a play before. I loved it, I was immediately at home. I left school at fifteen, and he said ‘Stewart, have you ever thought of becoming an actor?’ I said ‘What do you mean?’ He said ‘Taking it up professionally.’ And I said ‘No, no.’ That’s not what people did in my group. Then he said ‘Well, you know, think about it some time, because I believe you’ve got talent.’ And that’s what led… Oh, he also paid for me when I was twelve years old to go on an eight-day residential course, underwritten by the West Riding County Council and run by their drama adviser, Gerald Tyler. We lived in such wonderful times then. So I went to Mytholmroyd High School in the Pennines and found I was surrounded by dozens of people just like me. The minimum age was fourteen, but I looked older and Cec Dormand lied about my age. It was many years later when I worked out, of course, that he paid for it too. Not my parents.
He did it without telling anyone?
He did. He did. I’ve many times talked to him about it. When I became Chancellor of Huddersfield University, in the first year one can suggest someone to get an honorary doctorate, so I chose him. I had the pleasure of delivering an oration and putting the hood around his neck, which was fantastic.
And your second Shylock?
My first as a professional was at the Bristol Old Vic when I was twenty-four, maybe only twenty-three – still ludicrously too young to play the role. But I went for the melodrama and played every possible cliché. I should have been arrested for overacting! If there was rage, I raged like a tempest; if Shylock was mean, I was pure evil. I put on a Jewish accent, which is offensive, and I played it for all its worth. I was angry and embittered from the very beginning, an unattractive and angry man. In the later versions, I’m happy to say, I abandoned all that caricatured stuff.
It’s a very popular play, and it’s done a lot, but a number of actors can’t stand it. I’ve heard it called a tedious and unlovable play. You’re looking puzzled. Why do you like it so well?
I’ve never come across that before. I’ve heard it said about other plays.
What’s drawn you to do it five times?
Well, this is with hindsight. I grew up as a bit of an outsider, and given that I’ve only ever played Shylock and never any other part in the play, my identification was very much with him and that character, and a sense that he gets badly treated and that the play is misunderstood. I have taught in colleges and universities where it is banned, because they believe it’s anti-Semitic. I was going to direct it at the Santa Clara Shakespeare Festival, but the chairman of the board put up a very vocal set of objections to doing it. So I spoke with the congregation in the synagogue, they told me what all their complaints were, and I think I countered them pretty effectively.
Were they persuaded?
No. They still wouldn’t allow it to be done, so I never directed it. It irritates me so much because the play is no more anti-Semitic than Othello is racist. And even though there are characters who express their anti-Semitism very strongly, very cruelly and savagely, it’s no more cruel and savage than a lot of what Iago says about Othello.
I’d like to focus on the most recent production you’ve been in, the one set in Las Vegas.
Yes, Rupert Goold’s production for the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was the concept of the wonderful playwright and screenwriter John Logan, who wrote the play Red about Rothko the painter. Oh, a great play. And other wonderful movie scripts, including the final Star Trek movie that I did. But having said that I’ve never encountered anyone who didn’t like the play… one Friday evening he was there on the set and we were talking. I mentioned The Merchant of Venice and he said ‘Oh Lord, that’s a play I never want to see again, I never want to read it again. I think it’s a loathsome play.’ I asked him why, and he told me. Then I spoke about it. We finished filming, and went off for the weekend. Monday morning he came in and said ‘You fucked up my weekend. All I’ve done is read The Merchant of Venice. How would you feel if I were to write a screen adaptation of it? On spec, no charge, for you to play Shylock, because I’m now hooked by this play and I’ve got an idea.’ So he was a true convert. I said that would be wonderful. And about three weeks later – only three weeks – he brought round the first draft of his screenplay of The Merchant of Venice. All Shakespeare’s text, but set in the Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas. We got within a couple of weeks of filming – it was all cast, the locations were set, everything was there – then the funding disappeared. It was disappointing, we were so close. But the whole concept of Rupert’s stage production was developed from John Logan’s screenplay.
What was it you said that convinced him it’s a wonderful play, and not a play that he never wanted to see again?
Well, the first thing to take up was the anti-Semitism, and I argued that it is as humanist a play as any that Shakespeare had ever written. The fundamental underlying message of the play is about respecting one’s fellow individuals. That is unmistakeably Shakespearean, archetypically Shakespearean. If you view the characters in the context of their time and status, you can see that anti-Semitism fits them perfectly, it was everywhere. My wife came back from York recently and she asked if I knew about the Jewish massacre there. Well, I did, because I’m a Yorkshireman. There was a pogrom and huge persecution of the Jewish population.
When was this?
I would say it was thirteenth-century. They were rounded up and executed. Many of them in York were just butchered. But people do not spring into the world angry and vengeful. They become that. And I think Shakespeare is pretty clear that the young Shylock, the Shylock we never get to see, was not the man who demands his pound of flesh from Antonio’s body. And there is one line that is, for me, most telling in that respect, and it’s classical Shakespeare.
I know what you’re going to say.
You know the line.
‘It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor; I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys’ [3.1].
Exactly.
Wonderful. It’s a trademark moment when Shakespeare brilliantly turns the whole thing upside down. The man seems so vile at one moment, and your heart goes out to him at the next.
That’s right. And how is it turned upside down? It’s turned upside down by telling us two things. There was a woman who loved him and gave him a ring, presumably either an engagement ring or a wedding ring. I don’t know the Jewish customs in that respect. But even more telling is the use of that word ‘bachelor’, with all its associations of being young and single, and possibly even romantic and optimistic. I thought that word was enough to tell me who Shylock used to be. His rage, his fury, his murderousness are all learned, and where is it learned? It’s learned at the hands of Christians.
Shylock is repeatedly referred to as ‘the Jew’. You’re not Jewish yourself, are you?
Me? No, I’m not.
I’m coming back to something you said earlier about feeling an outsider. Maybe his outsiderness is as important an aspect of Shylock as his Jewishness. Or to put it another way, have you ever felt that not being a Jew was a drawback, an impediment to playing the part?
I have not. But then, certainly in a contemporary context, nor have I ever thought that not being black was a handicap to playing Othello. Or Aaron or the Prince of Morocco. And of course, talking about Morocco, there is racism in the play as well. What does Portia say about him after he exits?
Oh yes. He chooses the wrong casket and leaves, and she says ‘Let all of his complexion choose me so’ [2.1]. In other words: I have no wish to marry a black man!
That’s it. But I think it’s not possible to separate the outsider from the Jew. John Barton, who directed my third go at Shylock, for the RSC in The Other Place, gave me a note which I’ve never forgotten. He said it’s important to understand that Shylock is a bad man, but he is also a bad Jew. Now, I’d never heard him spoken about in that context before. But what I think John meant was that under Jewish law you do no violence to someone else. To harm another individual, regardless of who they are, is anathema to Jews of faith. You have nothing but absolute respect. Of course, there is irony in what I’m saying, given what’s going on in Palestine. But Shylock is being a bad Jew in his determination to exact revenge on Antonio, by cutting off a pound of his flesh.
That doesn’t seem to me a very helpful note for a director to give an actor. Because you must surely always see your own character’s point of view, sympathise with your character, must you not?
Wherever possible, absolutely, yes. But I have watched performances where the Jewish aspect of Shylock is very sentimental, and I don’t see that anywhere in him, or in Tubal for that matter. Shylock is a man of faith and a believer, who is provoked by the humiliation, the abuse and the violence that is aimed at his Jewishness. But to become violent himself, and to delight in the anticipation of taking the life of a Christian, is not acceptable in a person of any faith.
Shylock is only in five scenes, two of them very short. Is it possible or even desirable to try to homogenise them, or do you play the differences?
Well, it’s certainly possible to homogenise them, as you might do with a lot of characters. But again thanks to John Barton, whose name will probably crop up a lot, I learned to respect the contradictions in Shakespeare’s characters, embrace them, not try to explain them away or smooth them out so that you’ve got one nice, recognisable, acceptable surface. Go for the contrast, because that’s part of what makes them human. I wish I’d learned that earlier in my career. I think I had a misunderstanding about what theatre performance was for a long time. I thought it was a case of getting it right and repeating it again and again, and that you had to find a consistent tone to be the character. That was very misguided, and with time, and different experiences, I rejected that completely and now look for the extremes in characters and expose them. Incidentally it’s exactly what I’m doing at the moment with my character Hirst in No Man’s Land. He has three scenes and is totally different in each one. And here is a general comment: I always feel about performing any Shakespearean role that it’s not complete until you’ve said the last line. Your full understanding and appreciation of the character, even when you come to his or her last scene, is still growing, still in development. We were discussing this in rehearsal only today, how with playwrights of brilliance like Harold Pinter and William Shakespeare, the process of character growth never stops. You don’t reach a point when you can say: Well, we coast from here on. And that’s certainly not the case with Shylock, whose penultimate line if I remember rightly is ‘I am content’, under the circumstances a shocking and surprising three-word sentence to come from the man. You’re right, five scenes, each one quite different.
Let’s move on to Las Vegas. Rupert Goold seems an iconoclast, a director who loves to defy expectation, throw tradition out of the window.
He certainly didn’t need any persuading to direct that Merchant, he was thrilled by the idea.
Tell me about the opening. You had gaming tables, mobsters, a mini-skirted hostess yelling ‘Keno, keno!’ – whatever that is – and someone doing Elvis impersonations. Am I right?
Yes, yes, we did, we did.
This was the opening, before anyone spoke a line of Shakespeare’s text?
Yes. It was very Rupert Goold in style. It began with just an empty stage, and then gaming tables came rolling on from the wings with a lot of flamboyantly dressed showgirls and tourists and croupiers and workers in the industry. And the main individual in that section was the actor who later proved to be playing Launcelot Gobbo. He was an Elvis impersonator, he sang one of the King’s hit songs dressed as Elvis, while the opening developed into a riotous Las Vegas cabaret scene. And Shylock walked very briefly across the back of the stage. People would not even have been aware that I was there, but I said: Everybody’s in this scene, I’ve got to be part of it too in some way! And then the scene dissolved, dissolved, dissolved, until sitting alone at a café table was Antonio with Salerio and Solanio.
Tell me about Shylock’s first proper appearance, in Act 1, Scene 3.
In Rupert’s production it was set in his office, which was very luxurious and beautiful. I chose to play it almost exclusively for comedy, because I find it very funny. And to mock the play’s description of Shylock almost as an animal on the first occasion we saw him. I was beautifully dressed in a pale grey three-piece suit, looking very elegant and very, very sophisticated and not remotely Jewish.
No beard? No gaberdine? They’re mentioned in the text.
I had a small trim beard, nothing big and bushy. But no gaberdine.
‘You… Spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,’ he says [1.3].
There are garments that Jews wear on certain festival days. I seem to remember rationalising it in that way. But when he goes to do business he looks like everybody else. I wore a toupee. I had beautiful silver hair, perfectly cut with a parting, and looking elegant and respectable and quite attractive – I hoped. And one of the things we did was to emphasise that Shylock was a serious money-lender. He loaned huge sums to contractors, and in fact he was also a property developer. We had models of high-rise buildings that he was obviously underwriting and building himself.
So he was extremely rich.
Very rich, yes. I had a walking stick that I carried all the time, which I sort of needed because Shylock had a bad leg. But it could double as a weapon, something to defend himself with if necessary. It also served as a golf club. In the opening we put an upturned tumbler on the stage and I had three rolled-up bits of paper – this was my invention which Rupert embraced – and I turned my walking stick upside down and was potting the balls of paper trying to get them into the glass, going across the width of the Stratford stage. I never once got one in until the very last performance, the last ball.
You changed Shylock’s first line: ‘Three thousand ducats’ to ‘Three million dollars’.
Yes. Again I take full responsibility for that. My first line became ‘Three million dollars, well.’ That was great. And of course I loved it because it was the first thing the audience heard me say, and if they knew what the line is normally, they understood that it was kind of setting a tone for what was to follow. So in that scene I had a lot of fun, first taunting Bassanio, then on the arrival of Antonio, through brilliant use of language, teasing him, then antagonising and finally pacifying him. Once Shylock realises the opportunity that is being presented to him, to have Antonio and Bassanio in his debt, it’s irresistible. He should have said to them: I’m sorry, I can’t help you, you’ve come to the wrong man. But he’s turned on by the knowledge that this will give him leverage over the Christians, because it’s a lot of money.
‘Signior Antonio, many a time and oft / In the Rialto you have rated me / About my moneys and my usances’ [1.3]. You did an interesting demonstration of different ways of playing that speech.
Was that in Playing Shakespeare?
Yes. John Barton’s TV series. You and David Suchet. You showed various approaches; for instance, aggressively or with bonhomie. How was it in Las Vegas?
I wanted to show him as a charming, intelligent, witty man who may or may not have been wronged, but who chose to treat it all as harmless fun, even though it was painful inside, because the objective is to seduce them both. He needs to get them to agree to borrow money from him on his terms, which of course start funny and become ghastly.
When does he think of the pound of flesh? Is it spontaneous or planned?
It certainly became spontaneous because I took quite a long time to hit on the idea. ‘Let the forfeiture be… [Patrick does an elaborate mime of ‘Well now, let me think…’] a pound of your fair flesh.’ Yes. It was just a joke, it’s a joke, that’s all. And I’m not charging you anything for this, there are going to be no penalties or forfeitures or interest: let’s just make this a joke between two businessmen. At that stage do you think he’s likely to default?
No, not a hope in hell. It’ll never happen. Shylock at that point was not, in my mind or interpretation, a murderous individual. There was no possible expectation that Antonio would default.
You’ve said that at the end of his first scene you wanted the audience to think of Shylock as good fun.
Yes. And hope that he comes back soon because they’ve had a good time with this character.
Were you being good fun earlier on, when you reminded Antonio about being spat upon, and footed over the threshold like ‘a stranger cur’ [1.3]?
Less so at that moment, perhaps. Antonio is one of his great enemies. In part because they are rivals in the financial business.
Act 2, Scene 5 is very short, but rewarding to play, I imagine.
Yes, I adore that scene. I first fell in love with it in John Barton’s production. The ‘Jessica scene’ (which is how I’ve always thought of it) became very important to me because the rest of Shylock’s scenes are out and about, but the second is a private one at home with only his daughter and a servant. In all the others, the character is on public view, which meant that Shylock had to be super-sensitive to the fact that he was being observed and that he should not, must not, do anything which is liable to give offence. So I was funny, charming, witty, apologetic, garrulous, especially in the first scene, talking, talking, talking, talking. But the second scene is domestic, inside his own house. I felt that was the one opportunity, certainly in the first half of the play, to reveal what was going on underneath this facade of bonhomie and good humour and wit. And I was a very unpleasant father. In John’s production I hit Jessica. I hit poor Avril Carson.
How come?
Avril and I developed this little piece of business where I was just picking up papers or something, and I said ‘There are my keys.’ And she grabbed them, just a bit too fast. What was that about? At that moment I saw rebellion in her eyes. What it meant of course was ‘I am leaving you’, because she needed the keys to get out that night. It made me so angry and uncomfortable that I hit her violently across the face to wipe that look off it. What a contrast to the man we’ve seen earlier.
And in Las Vegas were you equally vicious?
I didn’t do that in Rupert’s production, but I was mean, angry, constraining, unfatherly. The cruelty was much more of the mental kind.
He has a curious line: ‘There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest, / For I did dream of money-bags tonight.’ What did you make of that?
I played it as a joke. I mean, what do you associate with a ‘stage’ Jew? Money-bags, of course. It’s such an ugly cliché.
So you weren’t really serious?
No, no, it was a joke.
Moving on to Act 3, Scene 1, can you describe the setting in Vegas?
It was an open-air café. Shylock, we hear – we only hear – now knows of the escape of his daughter with a Christian, and a lot of his precious possessions, including Leah’s ring. There’s a wonderful description of all the children of Venice following him through the streets, ‘Crying, his stones, his daughter, and his ducats!’ [2.8]. And although the man the audience have met in the first scene didn’t seem to be like that at all, what it meant to me was I didn’t have to play it because they’d already had it described to them. So the person they meet at the beginning of Shylock’s third scene is a reserved, contained but very, very tense individual.
He is soon provoked into a scorching tirade: ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?’ [3.1], et cetera.
It’s clear why that is such a great speech, and one of the best-known speeches in Shakespeare. It is a passionate argument for the humanitarian integrity of one person. I am like you in every respect and I have feelings just like you. But here’s the important line: ‘The villainy you teach me – ’ not my villainy, but ‘The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will… [He spits out the words.] better the instruction.’ What was important to me, once again, was continually adding new elements to this man, unexpected elements.
This is the scene that catapults Shylock into his vindictiveness towards Antonio, is it not? It is interesting because what appears to upset him so deeply is Jessica’s flight and her stealing of the jewels and money, but he takes his rage out on Antonio. So it glances away from what might justifiably have been the target, because Jessica is no longer within range.
Yes, he can do nothing about Jessica. But the man she has fled with is part of that circle of wealthy, feckless young Christians, which includes Antonio. Gosh, I remember this so well. The first half of the scene with the Salads is an outpouring of frustration and hurt, despair even. But then they go off, saying ‘Here comes another of the tribe; a third cannot be matched, unless the devil himself turn Jew’, and on comes Tubal. He plays Shylock through a series of revelations culminating in ‘One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.’ That’s when Shylock says ‘Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise, I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor; I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.’ It was then that the determination to do something destructive took hold, recklessly destructive, no matter what the cost might be to him. Because something that never gets talked about is: supposing Portia hadn’t got to the trial? Supposing it had just gone ahead with the idiot Duke of Venice saying the law is the law, the Jew must take his pound of flesh? Shylock could not have continued to live in Venice. He wouldn’t last an hour beyond that action. ‘Nearest the merchant’s heart… So says the bond, doth it not?’ [4.1] So he was going to cut Antonio’s heart out. And Shylock knows that this would be for him a deadly act because, yes, he will have his pleasure in holding the heart of Antonio in his hand, but he’s not going to survive. The state is not going to let him get away with it. So in a way it’s a little bit like a suicide bomber with explosives tied to his body. He will get revenge, but it will cost.
At the end of the scene I think you did a little Jewish dance.
Yes, I did.
Can you describe it?
Tubal leaves me alone and I am now resolved. Shylock knows what his course of action has to be. And so I went into a little… [Patrick extends his arms out sideways, flicking his fingers.] What do they call it? There’s a name for this dance, they do it at weddings, at Jewish celebrations. The show had a choreographer because there was a lot of music and dance in it, and he devised this for me. So that scene ended with Shylock joyfully dancing off into the dark and giving a cry of triumph.
Then there’s a brief scene with Antonio and the jailer, followed by Act 4, Scene 1, the trial scene. It opens with the Duke making a plea, his own attempt at a ‘Quality of Mercy’ speech: ‘Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too / That thou but lead’st this fashion of thy malice / To the last hour of act, and then ’tis thought / Thou’lt show mercy and remorse more strange / Than is thy strange apparent cruelty’ – which, apparently, is to Shylock like water off a duck’s back.
Oh yes. Shylock has prepared for the trial scene. His response is:
I have possess’d your grace of what I purpose;
And by the holy Sabbath have I sworn
To have the due and forfeit of my bond:
If you deny it, let the danger light
Upon your charter and your city’s freedom.
And he goes on at length. What he says is not just made up on the spot. He plays their game brilliantly, full of confidence, perfectly prepared.
Nerissa enters and hands a letter to the Duke. While he’s reading it, Shylock has an exchange with Gratiano, who asks ‘Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?’ Shylock: ‘To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there.’ Gratiano: ‘Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew, / Thou mak’st thy knife keen.’ In other words, Shakespeare is indicating a precise piece of stage business, sharpening your knife on the sole of your shoe. Did you do that?
Oh yes, yes. Each time I did it. It is required.
Enter Portia.
The two cleverest people in The Merchant of Venice are Portia and Shylock. They have the best minds, the best vocabulary, the best intellect. So it was always for me the most rewarding part of the trial scene when those two forces collide. It’s interesting that Portia’s ‘Quality of Mercy’ speech is in complete contrast to Shylock’s earlier reply to the Duke. She has not prepared that speech. Some actresses get it, some don’t. But what makes ‘The Quality of Mercy’ so powerful is when it’s in the moment, totally improvised. It happens because she says ‘Then must the Jew be merciful’, and Shylock comes back at her sharply with ‘On what compulsion must I? Tell me that’: Come on, you smart-arse, tell me that. She never expected to be asked that question, because to her compassion and forgiveness are natural, human instincts. This is where class becomes an issue, because Portia’s upbringing and background have taught her that you are generous and kind to those who have less than you, or those who are in trouble. And she has no expectation that Shylock will be any different. So when he says: [Growling aggressively.] Why? Why? She stammers: ‘The quality of mercy… is not… strained. It… droppeth… as the gentle rain – ’ and she’s literally thinking on her feet. She has been put on the spot. In some productions it rolls out as a famous set speech, but it makes a big difference when you see her panicked, because she’s suddenly got to defend her inherited philosophy of forgiveness, kindness, compassion.
You said a moment ago that Shylock sharpening his knife on the sole of his shoe is required by the text, therefore you always did it. But it seems at odds with your persona as a billionaire property developer and casino owner.
Yes, it’s one of the biggest contrasts. In each scene you got a different image. When you saw me first I was dressed in a pale grey three-piece suit, beautiful white shirt, cufflinks, playing putting-golf in my office. In the second scene I had changed into a dinner jacket and black tie because I was going out to dinner with the Christians. In the third scene I hadn’t changed, I was still wearing remnants of the dinner jacket, because I’d come back to find the house ransacked and Jessica gone. So my clothes were in a mess, tie gone and all of that. The fourth scene of course is the very brief one with Antonio and the jailer.
When Shylock keeps repeating ‘I’ll have my bond.’
Yes. I can’t quite remember what I wore in that. I think I was a bit less dishevelled than in the third scene, but come the trial scene I wore a tallit.
What’s that?
It’s a shawl that’s worn under the waistcoat and jacket. It has white tassels. Some Jews wear them all the time, others wear them on holy days or when they go to the synagogue. And I had the yarmulke, or kippah, on my head. Because I felt that in the trial it was important for Shylock to be seen as a Jew, and that he was speaking and acting as a Jew, hence these garments I’d not worn before.
There’s another of Shakespeare’s implicit stage directions. Portia asks ‘Are there balance here to weigh / The flesh?’ And Shylock replies ‘I have them ready.’ Which indicates that he’s brought his own scales into the courtroom.
That’s right. I had little electronic scales, very high-tech. And actually much easier to carry around. In John [Barton]’s production I had a good old-fashioned brass set of scales.
Surprising things happen, don’t they. Bassanio pleads ‘To do a great right, do a little wrong, / And curb this cruel devil of his will’ [4.1]. But Portia responds ‘It must not be: there is no power in Venice / Can alter a decree establishèd.’ Advantage Shylock! This must surely be unexpected?
Oh yes. He entered the trial scene expecting chicanery, legal chicanery, possibly physical assault, anything. Watchful, alert and on his guard. A new lawyer arrives, about whom Shylock is instantly suspicious, because he assumes they’ll try to fuck him over. That’s a guarantee because they always have, and this will not be any different. Who is this young person I’ve never seen before, don’t know anything about? Very suspicious and watchful until the moment when she says: Oh, no, no, that cannot be. The law is on his side. I think I yelled out loud, or jumped up in the air in amazement and delight. Contrary to everything Shylock expected, here is a Christian lawyer standing by him, saying: No, this man is right.
Extraordinary!
And of course it’s in this scene that some of the most violently anti-Semitic expressions are used. Gratiano being the worst. Gratiano is an unspeakable character, he really is. Oh, such a shit.
Portia says ‘A pound of that same merchant’s flesh is thine: / The court awards it, and the law doth give it.’ On the verge of triumph I think you did another little Jewish dance.
Yes, I did. I repeated some of those steps from the Tubal scene, with absolute joy: it’s as if the feeling he has motivates his body to express delight. He has felt quite sure he’s going to be screwed. But what happens is so astonishing to Shylock that he loses control and stops paying attention. He has lowered his guard, which is the undoing of him. Because if he’d really been listening to the argument he would have sensed that something was wrong. Portia continually gives him clues, she drops big hints. She has repeatedly been saying: Think again, please think again, don’t go through with this, it is really important that you reconsider what’s going on; I know the law is on your side, but you have to be generous, you have to spare this man. Because actually, for a while Portia is trying to save Shylock. But he doesn’t read her. He says: No, no, you’re a clever person, you’re very clever, but no, do not try to change my mind; you’re wrong to do that. So when Portia says: No, this is the law of Venice and it must go ahead, his euphoria at the idea that she is standing by his side causes him to stop listening.
Portia was standing by your side? I’m trying to envisage the stage picture.
Well, metaphorically. Antonio and I were on extreme sides, and she was somewhere in the centre.
Shylock says ‘A sentence! Come, prepare!’ Antonio was strung up like a hog, and you drew a cross over his bare torso.
Yes, he was hanging like this. [He stretches his arms above his head.]
The right way up.
He was on his feet but pulled up on to his toes, and the others were being held back. So it enabled me to go: Hmm, yes… [Patrick outlines a cross on my chest: an unnerving experience.] Yes, yes, exactly. His chest was exposed. It was a nasty, ugly moment.
But Portia intervenes: ‘Tarry a little, there is something else. / This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood.’ And the house of cards begins to collapse. Over the next ninety lines, Shylock learns he won’t get his pound of flesh nor even his money back. He’s told that he’s an alien, his wealth will be confiscated, a death sentence hangs over him and he’s forced to become a Christian. Talk me through that part of the scene.
Well, the most significant thing was when she says: ‘If it be prov’d against an alien, / That by direct or indirect attempts / He seek the life of any citizen…’ We’re experiencing this xenophobia now, right now, every day in the papers, on the streets, all over the Middle East, all over Europe and the USA, we’re experiencing the fixation. ‘If it be prov’d against an alien…’ And in that moment Shylock knows what’s coming: I am not like them; I am an outsider. When I did my one-man show I gave it the title Shylock: Shakespeare’s ‘Alien’. Because in a contemporary production I thought that was one of the most important lines in the play. You are different, not just because you’re a Jew: you are different because you come from somewhere else. You are not one of us. And this ‘not one of us’ is what lies behind our current mayhem. So I gave a big reaction. I asked Portia to really bang that word ‘alien’: Oh God, here we go, one set of rules for them and another for us, the outsiders. It’s as though he tumbles back, back, back, back to before he was an incredibly successful businessman with a wife and a daughter and all of those things, to being an outsider struggling to make his way. So that was one of the things in both John’s production and Rupert’s that I really tried to emphasise. Yes, his Jewishness was seen as evil, but it was also because he was an outsider, not a proper Venetian. The term ‘ghetto’ originated in Venice, that’s where they were all forced to live, and were locked in at night.
So, your final exit. Portia asks ‘Art thou contented, Jew? What dost thou say?’ And Shylock answers with three very simple words: ‘I am content.’ Tell me about that.
I can’t remember what I did at Bristol, I’d imagine it was pretty melodramatic. But one day in Stratford at the end of rehearsals John asked me: ‘Patrick, old love, how are you going to get off?’ I said ‘What do you mean?’ He said ‘Well, you know, all actors make something of Shylock’s exit, so what do you think?’ I’d not thought about it at all. But I remembered seeing Olivier’s exit as Shylock, which was not only masterly but absolutely classical Olivier. He simply walked off in a rather dignified and noble way. He just left, and the whole court was hushed, looking at one another. Did this happen, has it all ended happily? And then from somewhere way off in the wings of the Old Vic Theatre, this great howl of despair arose, which was Sir Laurence having his exit and nailing it. I thought about stealing that, but it was too recent in living memory. What I did was – and I got some stick for this – when Portia asks ‘Art thou contented, Jew? What dost thou say?’ I just flipped the kippah off my head and said quietly, ‘I’m content.’ [Patrick almost whispers the words, accompanied by an expansive shrug.] I was saying: I go along with whatever you want. Because even before the scene ends, Shylock’s survival instincts come back into play. Those instincts that raised him up and helped to forge a career and a life for himself – they came about through bending. He’s so clever and he realises that she’s got him. He’s had it. So he knows exactly what he has to do, which is to give them what they want: Oh, you want me to be no longer Jewish? No problem. Look at that – it’s gone.
The conversion happens immediately, just like that.
It happens in front of your eyes with ingratiating bows and smiles. I actually bowed my way backwards off stage, intimating: You’re such wonderful people, I really admire you all, you’re all so marvellous and lovely, thank you, thank you, thank you. The important thing is he survives.
Whereas if he’d cut Antonio’s heart out, he would not have done.
No, he would have been dead within the hour.
Shylock doesn’t reappear in the fifth act.
Unless you happen to be Henry Irving.
So it has been done? Did you and Rupert Goold look for a way of doing it?
It has been done. I talked about it with Rupert, and with John. How can I get back into the play? I once saw a production where I thought they had a marvellous idea. The final scene ends with Gratiano’s couplet: ‘Well, while I live, I’ll fear no other thing / So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring’ [5.1]. They all embrace, and the romantic music begins to swell. As they do so, the solitary figure of Shylock walks silently into the Belmont garden, and the curtain comes slowly down. That was goosebump-makingly exciting. Because you’re left wondering: Has he got an Uzi under his garment, is he going to execute them all? What is he going to do? But we didn’t use it. I didn’t come back. The Victorians simply finished the play at the end of the trial scene, there was no Act 5. Which I don’t agree with because it’s one of the most beautiful acts in Shakespeare. Wonderful, exquisite poetic writing.
Can you summarise Shylock’s journey through the play?
I’ll try. From my most recent experience in the Las Vegas production, it is that of a successful survivor. A man who has built up a hugely successful business despite being clearly domestically unhappy, and publicly vilified. His status is then reduced, and he is given the impetus to change. The impetus is driven forward via his daughter’s flight and theft, through the brief Jailer scene and into the trial. He changes from a benevolent, bending man into an avenging Jewish angel, giving full rein, free rein to his passions and conviction and murderous intentions. The story describes how this charming, civilised man tears himself apart. It has a terrific emotional arc. Oh, it’s a magnificent play. It is about humanism, about forgiveness and compassion. So it’s one of Shakespeare’s plays that I would always go and see, because there are so many choices. Of course, there are choices in all his plays, but somehow The Merchant of Venice encapsulates a multitude of the most interesting ones that actors have to make. Oh dear, the problem with this session that you and I have just had is that it makes me want to play the part again. [Big laugh.] And I swore when the final curtain came down in Stratford, it was ‘Good… Bye… Shylock!’ From twelve years old to seventy, he has been in my life.
