TIBOR EGERYARI
I am Jewish. I was born in Budapest in 1938, two months after the Anschluss. The fact that I survived is either a miracle or a stroke of luck, depending on your beliefs. The Stalinist regime that saw to much of my schooling had little interest in the Shoah. At home, we spoke about it only in roundabout ways and in hushed tones. In any case, my mother, who had lost a son and a husband, categorically refused to discuss it. And I felt no vocation to bear witness.1
While I am not a Shakespeare scholar in the academic sense of the term (by trade, I am a theatre director), I have been familiar with the Bard since my childhood in Budapest. Nearly all of Shakespeare’s plays could be seen in Stalinist Hungary, but not The Merchant of Venice. In the same way that the regime ‘settled’ the anti-Semitism problem by purging it from the official rhetoric, it simply eliminated any plays that could not be given a ‘correct’ Marxist interpretation from the repertory. A performance of The Merchant no doubt would have disturbed the established order of ideas. As a result, I did not see The Merchant until 1970, at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. What struck me most about that production was its failure to grasp the Jewish questions in the play, which to me were obvious. I was not alone in this reaction. Theatre critic Arnold Edinborough echoed my response in his article ‘A Gallic Romp through Shakespeare’: ‘Though Donald Davis is a fine actor and his presence on the stage unmistakable in its authority, [Jean] Gascon [the director] made him present his character as that of a man who merely drives a hard bargain, not as a Jew … There was no ultimate degradation of the Jew when he was forced to convert to Christianity’ (459).
I will limit my remarks to two points related to Jewishness that the production patently ignored. First, for Shylock, who is a widower, losing his only daughter to a Christian amounts to both the death of his daughter and the end of his lineage: a tragedy coupled with breaking the commandments. The text is clear in this regard: ‘I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! Would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin!’ (Merchant, 3.1.91–4). As in other productions I saw later, the references to the jewels were interpreted as further proof of Shylock’s cupidity without noting that those ornaments pertain to Jessica and Jessica only. The dowry ornaments – for marriage to a Jew, of course – are an integral part of his daughter and therefore must die with her.
The other point pertains to the blood that Portia forbids Shylock to shed by taking the pound of Antonio’s flesh to which he is ‘entitled.’ Obviously, blood spilled by a Jew, especially in the late sixteenth century, recalls the medieval persecution of Jews for supposedly using Christian blood, and what’s worse, from young children, in making their Passover matzo. This ignominious accusation played an important role in the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the nineteenth century. It also can be seen in relation to the kosher food rules that prohibit Jews from consuming blood in any form. To me, Portia’s cruel allusion seemed sufficiently clear to warrant attention in even a minimally thoughtful staging. Edinborough again had it right: ‘There was thus no pathos in the Court scene – just Portia’s triumph’ (Edinborough 459). Having made these observations, I felt quite sure I had identified the fundamental issue of the play and the flagrant errors of the production. I also took note to address them should I direct the play.
A few years later, I found myself heading a large theatre in Bussang, in the Vosges region of eastern France – a ‘people’s theatre,’ or théâtre populaire as the French call it. The Théâtre du Peuple was founded in 1895 by Maurice Pottecher, and until the early 1970s it performed his plays exclusively. On summer Sunday afternoons the vast wooden building with the stage back opened to reveal the landscape, unique in France, and welcomed audiences representing almost every level of French society. When I took over as artistic director, my first move was to change the repertory by adding several Shakespeare plays, because if anyone ever wrote for the people, it was the Bard. The Merchant of Venice was an obvious possibility, and I decided to study it with a view to production. I was in for a brutal shock. I knew that Shylock had ‘usurped’ the leading role, of course, but I had had no idea of the riches this usurpation was concealing. The first discovery was what I believe to be the main theme, which is the transactions or commerce, in the broad sense of the term, between and of men and women. As in all his major plays, Shakespeare has organized the dramatic structure of The Merchant of Venice to reflect the main theme, with each scene shedding light on one of the facets. A glance at act 1 confirms this:
Scene 1: The conversation between Antonio, Salanio, and Salarino basically revolves around the merchant’s business; then Antonio’s conversation with Bassanio leads to the possibility of acquiring Portia’s fortune. Bassanio begins the description of his future wife – ‘In Belmont is a lady richly left’ (Merchant, 1.1.161) – and the deal is sealed. Antonio lends his name and reputation so that Bassanio can borrow the money he needs to capture the inheritance and the woman who comes with it. So goes the world where everything is bought and sold.
Scene 2: This scene could be compared to the famous portrait scene in Molière’s Misanthrope, where Célimène ridicules her entourage,2 but Shakespeare goes much further. Contrary to the young, financially independent widow Célimène, Portia, in principle immensely wealthy, is bound hand and foot by her dead father’s wishes. In her conversation with Nerissa we learn how the father’s will disposes of his daughter and his fortune without giving her a say in the matter. Her hand – I was going to say ‘the goods’ – is to go not to the highest bidder but to the man best able, in the father’s mind, to manage the wealth and the wife.3
Scene 3: We are at the heart of the fable, at the meeting between Bassanio and Shylock (joined by Antonio), a famous scene that needs no description. The scene is most obviously driven by the central transaction in the play: ‘Three thousand ducats, for three months and Antonio bound’ (Merchant, 1.3.9–10). What is remarkable is Shylock’s initial response. Caught off guard by Bassanio, he has had no time to prepare, but even so, he knows that Antonio ‘is sufficient. Yet his means are in supposition. He hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies. I understand moreover, upon the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he hath, squandered abroad’ (Merchant, 1.3.17–22). There you have the banker at his best, fully informed about a potential client … in advance. Information is the banker’s primary tool; it is required if a job must be done right. Shylock, however, is not just a good banker. While demonstrating an extraordinary memory that no doubt houses ‘databases’ of the entire Venetian merchant class, he pretends to be addled and asks about the terms of Bassanio’s request again and again. Neither Antonio nor Bassanio recognizes the ruse, which is a fair indication of their poor business sense, to say the least.
In the same scene we see the fundamental confrontation of the two concepts of money: the medieval notion held by Antonio and the modern one held by Shylock. For Antonio, money is a mere signifier, or, if you like, a method of payment with no intrinsic value. Shylock, on the other hand, is already using money in the modern sense, if only of necessity, since usury (as all money-lending was then called) is his livelihood. Money had come to be a signifier as well, of value in and of itself. It was a commodity like any other, to be rented in exchange for payment – hence the French term loyer de l’argent (money rent), meaning interest rate.4 As is often the case, Shakespeare’s sympathy lies with the old, even as he knows the advent of the new is inevitable.
The main theme is sufficiently clear by now; going through the whole play would be tedious, but I cannot resist the temptation to add the scene in which Bassanio, having won the heiress’s hand, declares his love, which Portia seems to share (Merchant, 3.2). The language here is decidedly peculiar.
BASSANIO: So, thrice-fair lady, stand I, even so,
As doubtful whether what I see be true,
Until confirmed, signed, ratified by you.
PQRTIA: You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,
Such as I am. Though for myself alone
I would not be ambitious in my wish,
To wish myself much better; yet for you
I would be trebled twenty times myself –
A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times
More rich –
That only to stand high in your account,
I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,
Exceed account. But the full sum of me
Is sum of something which, to term in gross … (Merchant, 3.2.147–60)
While the word ‘account’ can be understood in the sense of ‘esteem,’ the multiplications and the use of terms such as ‘sum,’ ‘gross,’ and ‘livings’ leave no room for doubt about the commercial dimension of human relations. However, the most striking example comes at the end of the scene, when Portia takes leave of her betrothed: ‘Since you are dear-bought, I will love you dear’ (Merchant, 3.2.316) – a theatrically splendid line if ever there was one.
Besides the powerful theme of commerce – again, to be understood in the broadest sense – the play presents other aspects, the most important of which, to my mind, is the role assigned to women in this transactional world. The two women who marry (I do not count Nerissa, who as a waiting-maid is simply imitating her mistress) are wealthy heiresses. Portia’s hand and fortune are hidden in one of the three caskets, and once Bassanio chooses correctly, with the barely disguised help of Portia who, despite her protests is no stranger to deceit, everything becomes subject to the husband’s control. Portia is simply the depositary or trustee of the casket, a mere conduit. Locked away out of her reach, the inheritance passes directly from father to son-in-law.
Jessica does not wait for her father to decide. She steals the casket containing a small fortune and – note the Shakespearean dramaturgy – tosses it down to Lorenzo before joining him in the street. She no doubt feels she has no right to keep it, even for the short time it takes to go downstairs. Shakespeare thus uses the same pattern and instrument to reveal the same demonstration of woman’s role.
From a contemporary angle, The Merchant of Venice is not merely anti-Semitic; it is also profoundly xenophobic. Portia’s suitors are mocked according to their ethnic characteristics. Ethnic jokes abound. And yet for ages, even centuries, all these theatrical riches meant to delight anyone with an interest in theatre have been swept under the rug in order to devote stagings and performances either to justifying or, more rarely, to condemning Shylock. As I thought about putting the play on, I was revolted that a work like this could be reduced to such a slight question. And what defence are we offered for a character that was obviously conceived to be a villain?
More often than not, this defence is based on one of the two best-known passages of the play: Shylock’s tirade ‘Hath not a Jew eyes?’ (Merchant, 3.1.61). This speech comes at the beginning of act 3. He has just lost his daughter5 and is honing the weapon of his vengeance, which he justifies in advance. He certainly is not going to call himself a crook, especially since he sincerely believes he is within his rights. The argument he makes is powerful: If you were in my place, you would do the same thing! This is not the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; it is the skilful defence of an unsympathetic, but not yet criminal, being. Moreover, he offers it in front of two characters that have absolutely no influence.6
This led me to the conclusion that, if I were to produce the play, I would have to attempt to restore its original value. Reversing the trend seemed to be a good place to start. I naively thought that putting Shylock back in his place, so to speak, would allow me to concentrate on the dramatic riches I described. All it would take was the courage to treat him as the villain he is, to take him out of the spotlight, and all would be well! I was much younger then, and I had the audacity to take my reasoning to the finish. It was clear that I could not do it, but what would happen, I wondered, if a real anti-Semite, someone without my scruples, were to produce the play? My next thought would have very heavy consequences, not for the universal history of theatre, but for my humble self.
So there I was with my bright idea, a director righter-of-wrongs, and I found the alter ego of my folly. I imagined an SS officer, intelligent and well versed in the theatre, who obtains permission to conduct the experiment of a lifetime with slave actors – something many directors dream of – in Auschwitz. Of course I know that there were cultural and artistic activities in Theresienstadt, and none except the orchestra in Auschwitz, but I was composing in fiction, not reconstruction. To say that I fell into my own trap would be an understatement.
My intelligent director was familiar with the play and understood its riches. Instead of doing what I asked him to do, that is, to skip over the Jewish question in order to restore the play’s full meaning, he began to focus precisely on demonstrating what he considered Jewish baseness. In this he was behaving like most intelligent people who give themselves body and soul to an ideology: obsession, not to say madness, trumps reason. As the sorcerer’s apprentice, I could do nothing but follow my creation – who decided to play Shylock himself. He explains why in trying to make the project clear to a German actress he has called in, who does not know what to expect:
SHYLOCK: You are here on official assignment. It’s our duty to unveil the true face of this enemy race which the Führer has defined as a moral plague worse than the black plague of early times. Have you read Mein Kampf?
JESSICA: I … well, not completely.
SHYLOCK: Well it doesn’t make me laugh.
SHYLOCK: You will have time to read it … all.
JESSICA: But since there are Jews here, why not have them do the Jews’ parts? I could learn Portia in no time. My memory is excellent. Two weeks ago we found out that the grandmother of one of our actresses was Jewish. To think she performed all the great parts all those years. When the police arrested her, I learned her part overnight, it was …
SHYLOCK: I’ll let you know when I want your input. Do you honestly believe those Yids would project the image I wish to show of them? We’re the only ones who can unveil their true identity. You’re a professional actress, you should know that performing on stage means being someone other than yourself.
(Egervari 1.16)
Consequently, he casts the Venetians with Jewish prisoners selected for their appearance, history, and accent. He teaches these amateurs to act using highly dubious methods, including mental and physical torture, the worst, of course, being the obligation to emphasize their characters’ anti-Semitism. For the two women of Belmont, he chooses two Roma women: after all, they too are foreigners. A prisoner, who is also a kapo (overseer) is to play Lancelot Gobbo, and another completes the cast as SS sergeant, stage manager, and Tubal.
They all live shut in a single room twenty-four hours a day: the prisoners in three cages (Venetians, women of Belmont, Lancelot Gobbo), the Jews in dressing rooms above them. Their routine includes warm-ups – as practiced in good theatre schools in the 1930s – humiliation sessions, corporal punishments, and rehearsals, all under the auspices of the National Socialist ideology with passages of Mein Kampf. The method also includes the systematic denigration of sacred texts, such as the Old Testament, and stories drawn from Jewish tradition, including an anecdote about Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hassidic movement.7
In the play – mine, that is – the SS director leads rehearsals of Shakespeare’s scenes, not in chronological order but close enough so that an audience unfamiliar with the original does not get lost. This gives the director the opportunity to develop a few aspects of the text, but mainly to perfect his rendering of Shylock. He is the only one in costume during rehearsals and he gradually changes his appearance until he resembles an ultra-orthodox Eastern European Jew. The others remain in their prison uniforms, with a few identifying marks here and there (see figs. 14.1, 14.2, and 14.3).
14.1 The Merchant of Venice in Auschwitz. From left to right: (on platform) Carole Bélanger as Portia, Carol Beaudry as Tubal; (on lower level) Mario Gendron as Shylock, Annick Léger as Bassanio, Robin Denault as Antonio, Mike Brunet as Gratiano, Dan McGarry as Salarino. Production photograph, Théâtre Distinct, 1993, directed by Tibor Egervari, set design by Margaret Coderre-Williams, costumes by Angela Haché.
14.2 The Merchant of Venice in Auschwitz. From left to right: Mario Gendron as Shylock (in dressing gown), Robin Denault as Antonio, Annick Léger as Bassanio. Production photograph, Théâtre Distinct, 1993, directed by Tibor Egervari, set design by Margaret Coderre-Williams, costumes by Angela Haché.
A basic costume of an orthodox Jewish boy is found for Jessica, since she disguised herself as a young man to escape from her father in Shakespeare’s play.
At the beginning of the second part, Shylock announces that he wants to rehearse the court scene in act 4, even though it has not yet been blocked. The scene is fairly static, so he summarily indicates each group’s position. He wants the scene to be ‘improvised’ and forbids anyone to interrupt the rehearsal for any reason whatsoever. Tubal plays the Duke in his SS sergeant uniform. Things go reasonably well, with the Venetians, played by Jews, railing against the increasingly hideous Shylock. Everything, however, stops when Portia enters. She is wearing an SS officer’s hat and a Hitler-style moustache drawn with charcoal. General stupefaction gives way to the imperious wish of lord and master Shylock to continue, since he is totally into his role.
Portia delivers the famous ‘The quality of mercy is not strained’ passage like a Hitler speech, complete with intonations and gestures. (A word about this tirade: Most performers and directors seem to get carried away by the grand poetry of the text, without paying attention to its dramatic value. Barely five minutes after so superbly vaunting the virtues of mercy, Portia denies it to Shylock. And to boot, she reviles the Jew even more fiercely than the Venetians.)
After the performance by the prisoner playing Portia, the Venetians move closer and closer to Shylock, who is performing as if in ecstasy. Falling to his knees, he drops his knife. Antonio picks it up and, in a flash, kills Shylock, the hated SS, and even more hated ignoble image of the Jew that he projects. Tubal seizes his revolver and regains control of the situation. The Jews die singing ‘Sh’ma Yisrael’ (Hear (O) Israel),8 the Gypsies reciting ‘Ave Maria’ in Latin, the kapo with a smile on his lips, and Jessica offering herself to the sergeant in an attempt to save her life – the last circle of Hell.
There have been three versions of the play. The first was performed in French by La Comédie des Deux Rives, the student troupe of the Department of Theatre at the University of Ottawa.
The second version had a run of performances in English and in French by Théâtre Distinct in 1993, in Ottawa and Montreal. In Montreal, it played at Théâtre le Gesù, concurrently with a production of Shakespeare’s play at Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, a coincidence engineered by me that caused a minor uproar in the local theatre community. The third and final version was given a staged reading in a mixture of English and French at the University of Ottawa in 1998; this version was also published in English by Playwrights Press Canada in an anthology of adaptations of Shakespeare in Francophone Canada edited by Leanore Lieblein. This endeavour, which took more than two decades, was my only foray into playwriting – unintentional playwriting, that is, since I just wanted to give a magnificent play a proper staging. Even if my failure resulted in a new play, I wish I could have achieved my original goal. Artistically and intellectually it would have been more satisfying than the actual outcome, but it was impossible. In the second part of the twentieth century a number of small orchestras and individual soloists started introducing original baroque instruments to interpret music of that period. Audiences have reacted with great enthusiasm. At the same time, several stage directors attempted to apply similar treatments to plays of the past. Everything, from archaic pronunciation to set designs that imitate original physical environments, has been used to bring back the original flavour of centuries-old theatrical events. But theatre is more than reproduction; it is always a living relationship with a given audience – a hic et nunc audience.
14.3 The Merchant of Venice in Auschwitz. From left to right: Carol Beaudry as Tubal, Andre Perrier as Lancelot, Nadine Desrochers as Jessica. Production photograph, Théâtre Distinct, 1993, directed by Tibor Egervari, set design by Margaret Coderre-Williams, costumes by Angela Haché.
Contemporary audiences have already inherited several strong interpretations of The Merchant of Venice. Those who never saw or read the play at least know Shylock’s name and its associations. While it is impossible to ignore the history of anti-Semitism of the last several hundreds years, one cannot just push a reset button to cancel or change cultural references. And no ‘director’s notes’ in theatre programs will have the slightest influence on the mindset of any member of the audience. On the one hand, it is fortunate that there is no limit to the research a scholar or a director can undertake about a play, an author, or a period; but on the other hand, unfortunately, there can be serious limitations to the staging of their findings. I was under the impression that, in the case of The Merchant of Venice, these limitations were so extreme that I felt compelled to write a new play. As I have mentioned, artistically and intellectually, this was meant to be just an ersatz that I could have chosen not to write. However, the idea of this new play was not just any idea. It brought about the story I would not, I could not, speak of in any other form.
There are things that sooner or later one must do, notwithstanding the quality of the deed. If one is, as I am, a procrastinator, this necessary action can take a long time. There are people who write masterpieces in a matter of weeks or even days; others can take twenty years to produce a mediocre play. I am convinced that I will never belong in the former category and I cannot but hope not to be part of the latter. Nonetheless, I know my limitations as a playwright. That is why I was so frustrated not having realized the staging I dreamt of, and why I thought that my ‘brilliant idea’ had such heavy consequences for my humble self. Instead of doing something I thought I was quite capable of, I had to struggle with a form I did not master. This happened to millions before me, except that people used to give it a simple name: duty.
Translated from French by Marcia Couëlle.
1 It was not until much later that I realized that I am part of the last generation to have ‘been there,’ and that one does not refuse this responsibility without good reason.
2 She similarly insults her suitors at the end of the play, but this time in letters.
3 An attentive reading reveals that Portia cheats by helping Bassanio choose the right casket, thus foiling her father’s plan.
4 Today interest-free loans are considered highly suspect; in fact, a former French Prime Minister committed suicide after being accused of such borrowing.
5 Very religious Jews often sit shiva (observe the mourning rite) when a child converts.
6 One could even imagine that he is rehearsing for the trial and that, seeing the demonstration leave his listeners cold, he decides not to use it later.
7 This passage is taken from Célébrations hassidiques by Elie Wiesel.
8 ‘Hear (O) Israel’ is a basic prayer of the Jewish faith to be recited in the morning and in the evening and by a dying person.
Edinborough, Arnold. ‘A Gallic Romp through Shakespeare: An Account of the 1970 Season at Ontario’s Stratford Festival.’ Shakespeare Quarterly 21.4 (1970): 457–9.
Egervari, Tibor. Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in Auschwitz. A Certain William: Adapting Shakespeare in Francophone Canada. Ed. Leanore Lieblein. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2009. 107–84.
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. The Complete Works. Ed. G.B. Harrison. New York. Barnes and Noble, 1966.
