Merchant of Venice Conversation between Rabbi Neil Amswych (RNA), Justin Sellick/Shylock (JS), Denise Mallender/Director (DM) 

Recorded by Tammy Kader

We join our conversation in a discussion about leaving the corners of one’s beard left unshaven… 

RNA: You will find a lot of ultra-Orthodox will shave their heads because hair is seen as a sign of arrogance but who will then grow long beards.

DM: So why is the hair of the beard different to the hair on the head in the sense of arrogance?

RNA: Beard hair is wisdom. Or, if you’re in the theatre, the bearded person is the person whom you normally suspect of evil. So if you want to set up a red herring in a murder mystery, give them a beard because it hides the face.

DM: So what does that say about you in real life?!?  [RNA has a beard!]

RNA: I don’t know!

DM: Tammy has just said that her first degree was in drama so we’re all actually theatre-minded.

RNA: So there are many questions we can ask of this play, but where should we start?

DM: We could look at the question of whether or not The Merchant of Venice is anti-semitic.

RNA: There was a thing in the Jewish Chronicle a few months ago where some Orthodox Jewish children have refused to study The Merchant of Venice, saying it is anti-semitic, and that it promotes racial hatred, that it’s not a play that Jews should be studying or that the rest of the world should be studying. There was a fascinating discussion in the letters page from different Jews saying, “Yes, I believe this is problematic,” or “No, I don’t believe this is problematic.” I guess part of the reason that we’re here talking today is to investigate that, to work out what we feel about the text, how it portrays the Jewish community and what it asks of us as an audience?

DM: And I would also suggest we can widen it in that, yes, we’re specifically here today to talk of the Jewish question, but I also look at the play as a wider look at belief systems, and how Christians are presented in the play, because there is an aspect of the play which very definitely shows Christians in such a bad light that you could almost say that it’s as anti-Christian as it is anti-Jewish.

JS: I would say that he probably at the time was trying to open everybody’s eyes to their use of religion in a way, because it all came across as hatred of the Jew, hatred of the Jew, but if you turn that round, what’s that saying about those Christians he’s portraying in the play? So he’s asking the audience, “What are you doing? What are you doing to that fellow human being? It doesn’t matter what religion they are - how are you treating that person?” Interesting enough, when he starts talking about his wife, Shylock says, “It was my turquoise that I had of Leah when I was a bachelor,” (3:1) and you think, ‘He’s human, he’s loved,” and the audience see that, but before this they’re seeing this hateful person. And they’re picking on it all the time, and making him like that, so while you’re saying he’s portraying the Jews in one light, I think he’s portraying both groups in a different light and saying “Look at yourself whatever religion you are.”

DM: I think he didn’t have an agenda in that sense, I think that as a dramatist he was creating plays that put “bums on seats.” At the time there hadn’t been any Jews in England, or those professing it openly because they had all been banished and, unfortunately, what happened in the theatre that the depiction of Jews was from way back, from the idea that if you wanted a stock villain - as you were saying with a beard - you wanted a villain? Take it off the shelf, the Jews. Everybody had these absolutely stereotypical views of who the Jews were – totally false – but in a way almost what we’re doing today about Muslims.

JS: I can’t remember if it was you that told me, Denise, that the picture of a clown today with a cap and the orange hair is taken from the depiction of how they would take the mick out of a Jewish person. Now, that’s exactly what you’re saying to do with religion and belittling, but Christians being in bad light – I think they do that all by themselves!

DM: Yes…in the play. This is what I mean when I say that I don’t think Shakespeare had an agenda. We study it now minutely. He knew what reaction he was going to get by plucking off the shelf his central character…he took his plots anyway from well-established stories, but I do believe that what he tried to do with Shylock was to go further than that, he was imitating Marlowe’s ‘The Jew of Malta’ which was really, really strong and very anti-semitic, and I think what Shakespeare actually did was say that human beings are much more exciting if you show them in all their vulnerability as well as stock characters.

RNA: I think every playwright must have an agenda, even if that agenda is bums on seats. I think the difficulty is that this wasn’t just a stereotype from hundreds of years ago but was at the time a stereotype that was being passed on in the Church. You would have a Sunday morning sermon and, from time to time, it would mention the terrible sin that the Jews had done of killing Jesus. So in some sense a lot of Christians naturally defined themselves as being against Jews, just by virtue of the act of Judas, and the name is most certainly not accidental (“Jew-das”). I think what’s concerning for me is in trying to get bums on seats, he’s played to a very old stereotype and reinforced it, and I think that’s one of my big concerns about this play – the general stereotype is of Jews being money-grabbing which is perhaps understandable given the usury and everything that the play does discuss, but what concerns me greatly about the play is the behaviour of Shylock being so unrealistic in terms of how a Jew would actually behave in a Jewish community. Even though Shylock has faced something terrible, and I remember the quotation that he would have preferred …. “Would any of the stock of Barrabas had been her husband rather than the Christian!” (4:1) It’s a tremendously painful thing for Shylock to have his daughter stolen away, and stolen away for a Christian, but this blood-lust that he has is concerning for me because it’s given Scriptural reference, and I think the play has a lot of Scriptural references that suggest an underpinning that really this is a story about New Testament versus Old Testament as Shakespeare would call it or, as we often call them nowadays, Christian Scriptures versus Hebrew Scriptures. At the very beginning when Antonio says “Mark you this, Bassanio, the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” (1:3) This is, as far as I read the play, a suggestion that this blood-thirsty Jew comes from this idea of an antiquated Scripture which is vengeful, whereas the Christian Scriptures are merciful and, therefore, as Antonio says later, “The Hebrew will turn Christian – he grows kind!” Whereas the central tenet of Judaism is Leviticus 19:18 “Ve-ahavta l’reacha kamocha – you shall love your neighbour as yourself.” So it’s very much a strong Christian perception or, rather, a New Testament perception of Judaism that I think is reinforced in this play as opposed to just getting bums on seats.

JS: You’ve said as well that the quotations that Shylock makes are mostly New Testament quotations, not Old Testament, so that reinforces what you’re saying.

RNA: I think for some of it Shylock is portrayed as a human being as you were saying, and the most famous quotation is the Act 3 discussion – “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” (3:1) This is a human being at the end of the day. And that is very often quoted to say that this text isn’t anti-semitic or anti-Jewish or doesn’t have an agenda, and yet, I actually think this full quotation starts and ends with revenge.

JS: “To bait fish…”

RNA: Yes, “…to bait fish withal: if it feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.” (3:1) He’s not asking for a sense of humanity, as I see it, he’s asking for a sense of entitlement of revenge. Given that there’s so much in here about New Testament and Old Testament, my really strong concern with this is that it perpetuates the image of the Hebrew Scriptures being violent and outdated, and Christian Scriptures being modern, sympathetic and loving, which I think at the end of the day is what gets bums on seats in Shakespeare’s time but I think asks very difficult questions of us now.

DM: Yes, I do understand what you’re saying, and that would be the case if Shylock were presented as a rational human being. I don’t think Shakespeare created a rational human being. I think he created an irrational, prejudiced human being to set against other irrational, prejudiced human beings, and that the moments of humanity that we see – those moments when we see there are other layers to Shylock other than this absolutely overwhelming desire for revenge – are the little nuggets of gold in an otherwise pretty black character. I agree with you – I think he’s presented, and I think the whole picture that is presented, is a very black one, and from your point of view using Scripture in a distorted way. I think, however, that it’s distorting the New Testament as much as the Torah [Five Books of Moses].

RNA: I’m not sure. I’m not sure, because we end up with Mel Gibson’s Passion for good reason, that the understanding of parts of the New Testament is that the Jews killed Jesus, and that the Jews were baying for blood, that they wanted it done quickly as possible. Not throughout, but there are those very strong references, and I think there is a strong echo of that here with Shylock baying for Antonio’s blood, until he’s stopped. I think he is rational. I think in the court he’s supremely rational to the point that it’s logic that defeats him.

DM: But he’s irrational to want to carve somebody up.

JS: I see it as a man who’s been constantly baited, constantly by all these people around him. Always baited, he’s lost his wife so he’s had to shut down that part of his life, he’s lost love in his life so he’s concentrated on his business and his daughter, and his daughter’s then gone and taken all of his wealth away and things are just scratching away at his humility, at his normality, and he does snap. He thinks the only thing he’s got left is his revenge on Antonio. Now if we were to follow your way of thinking, he would have gone to his Rabbi and said, “Rabbi, what do I do about this?” And he would have said, as you’ve told me, “This is too much. Walk away. It’s not worth it.” Whereas because of the way it’s written, I can’t do that! So he follows it through to the end because I see it that he’s snapped, so he stands by the law and the law is on his side, “I’m getting what I want.” He has tunnel-vision to get what he wants. He can’t see anything else. As a Jewish person in reality, he would have done something else. He would have gone to his Rabbi and said, “I’ve got nothing left, what do I do?” And he would have been calmed down by his own Rabbi. This is what I’ve been fighting with, because I’m listening to what you’re saying but I can’t follow what I want to do because it’s not there in the words, in the script. I’ve got to follow the script!

DM: It’s also, I think, and I’m not defending Shylock as much as Shakespeare… I think another thing that Shakespeare has done here is portrayed somebody who is not only personally at the end of his tether but, if you like, a nation at the end of their tether, who have been hounded out of everywhere. Yes, they were allowed in Venice, but the double-standard there was appalling. They were only allowed because that was what the Christians wanted done – lending money with interest – they were forced into ghettoes, they were forced to earn their living only in that way, they were not allowed to own land, they were treated abominably, and I think that, while I accept exactly what you’re saying, that what in many ways what Shakespeare is doing is presenting that side of things as well. So that in a way, when you watch the play you are aware of the fact that more than just the individual, Shylock represents a people that has been pushed to the very limit.

JS: But then again, going back to that, if you follow that in reality, I think that the Rabbi in Venice would say, “Don’t be baited by this. Stick to your guns.”

RNA: The problem is that Shylock gives a voice to the Jewish people to a Christian audience.

DM: Yes, I appreciate that.

RNA: And one of the biggest problems is that it’s not the kind of voice that the Jewish community would have or would want to have representing them. I think part of my concern throughout is that I keep seeing Shylock as a foil, as a tool of other characters’ happiness, regardless of his feelings at the end of the play when he’s utterly broken and literally everything possible from him is taken, even his sense of being is taken. What happens at the end of the play? It’s all happy because love wins out! And Shylock acts as a tool to get that joy – he’s a catalyst – and it doesn’t matter what happens to that catalyst. It can fizzle out, it doesn’t matter. But throughout, from the very beginning, it was all hinted at that maybe he’ll become a Christian because he’s kind and so on, and at the end, being able to take a man so proud of his Judaism and taking him out from his very community so that he has no-one left, disturbs me as a Jew to see that that was at the end of the play…it’s all well and good, because love wins out. Even though the play is called The Merchant of Venice, is it actually the love story that’s the focus, you just need to explore a lot of the depth of Shylock in order to get through so that you understand the final message?

DM: Perhaps.

JS: Isn’t it two stories that he merged? The Portia story is one and the Jew of Malta story is another and he merged the two together to create The Merchant of Venice.

DM: It’s three, actually. There’s the casket one, the Antonio-Bassanio thing, and the Shylock thing as well.

RNA: For me, one of the things I know we’ve discussed briefly which is worth mentioning is this question, “Is Shylock’s humiliation at the trial made even worse by the fact that it’s a woman examining him?” Bad enough that he’s beaten in court, but did the audience know that, because this was a woman, was it for them even worse? Was this the worst possible humiliation for Shylock? If so, why? Why was it necessary for the play?

DM: I think that because one of the strands in the play is this idea of the feminine world of Belmont winning out over the masculine world of Venice, so it’s not just Shylock, it’s Bassanio as well. The rings, the end of the ring sequence, is very definitely Portia having said, “You are my lord etc., and I’m handing everything over to you,” actually, she doesn’t at all, and she’s the one that has the whip-hand at the end of the play because she has given Bassanio the ring in the first place almost as the opportunity to test him and she does that with great glee. And “Look, you’ve failed me and this means that I will have the upper hand forever,” so, in a way, what she’s doing to Shylock is no worse than what Shakespeare makes her do to Bassanio. It is a play on female-male sexual politics.

RNA: But isn’t there a difference between testing and humiliation? The fact that at the end of the ring sequence she has the upper hand and good on her in the marriage, that’s great, but that’s a very different outcome to what Shylock has, which is he is left with nothing, even exiled from his community or self-exiled. So, yes, I think that’s very astute to see that echo, but it disturbs me how much more it is for Shylock.

DM: But looking at it theatrically, there were no women in Shakespeare’s plays, so it was always a male.

JS: I would say that he was cherishing women, not disrespecting your thoughts on how he’s treated as a Jew by her, but he’s giving a voice to a woman, a strong voice, that she in those times women weren’t lawyers, so he’s saying, “Look, these people are just as strong as us, as men.” I would argue that point rather going against your point about being humiliated because it’s a woman. That’s a possibility, but I think it’s more about showing the strength of women.

RNA: Positive discrimination.

JS: Possibly, yes.

DM: If we have Tanya here who is playing Portia, she’s really searching and I’m struggling. She and I hold slightly different views. She’s desperately trying to offer more opportunities to Shylock, she keeps trying to soften it, and I’m saying “No, no, you can’t actually soften it.” But she’s offering every opportunity over and over again to change his mind, but dramatically, of course, that makes it stronger.

JS: I do see it in the trial scene that she’s leading him up to a place where he can jump off, basically. She’s saying “This is your chance, after this there’s no going back. Here’s another chance. I’m giving you another chance. Right, no more chances, this is the law, you’ve got to take this and if you don’t, you die.” So she, in a way, is leading him up the mountain. That’s how you see I think too.

DM: Yes. To come back to the really central issue which is, “Should this play ever be performed nowadays?” Should we in 2008 on Brownsea Island be going all out to pull no punches, because that’s what I’m trying to do? My own justification for it is that it’s a powerful play, it’s a very exciting, funny play, it’s got a lot of variety in it and I think it’s one that will lead a lot of people to think about a lot of things, not just this aspect of things. And I feel, in a way, with due deference and respect to what you’ve said (big caveat there!), that we perhaps underestimate the effect that all the period of time that’s elapsed since Shakespeare wrote it, and Shakespeare’s audience viewed it, and how a 2008 audience views it. We have had a lot of water under the bridge since then, including, as we all know, the Holocaust, and I think that even allowing for what you’re quite rightly pointing out which is that people listening to the Scriptural references won’t question them and may take them in subliminally, and therefore yes, that in itself is a problem. The rest of it, I think, we could say “No, this play should never be done” but I think that would be a shame because I hope this is a play that will make a lot of people very uncomfortable. I want people to feel “Ooooh, this is so anti-semitic, how can they do it?” Good!

JS: In a way, if it makes you wonder about how you as a person treat your fellow man, brilliant! Because hopefully, if we get it right on the trial scene, he’s going to treat me like rubbish, and if that makes people think “Is that how I treat somebody from a different religion?” Not just the Jewish religion. We should all be treating people with respect, whatever your religion. If that’s what it does, maybe we’ve done something good. That’s what you’ve got to look at, because it is an old play, it is old words, and you are right, some of the words don’t fit in a way because you wouldn’t do it if you were Jewish, you would have gone to your Rabbi, you would have said, “No, what am I doing?” So, I’m thinking that if one person says, “I wish I hadn’t treated that Muslim, Irish person, whatever, the other day in a bad way.” Then it’s working.

DM: In a way, what I should have done is asked whether we could bring along a local Church of England minister to come and say, “Actually, the way it’s presenting Christians is incredibly bad, it’s using Scriptures as badly, it’s twisting Scripture against the Christians as well as against the Jews.”

JS: I don’t know if I agree that it’s twisting against the Christians! I actually stand slightly differently to that. As you’ve pointed out with the blood libel – there was a big thing that was going towards suggesting that the Jews wanted Christian babies’ blood, and that’s not a great thing!

DM: But taking that, it appears as if the play purports to imply that the Christians have got it right and that the Jews are vengeful. But the Christians in this play are appalling. Portia, who is held up as some kind of great thing because of the trial scene is so anti…look, what she says regarding Morocco – “Let all of his complexion choose me so.” It’s equally presenting the discerning audience member a view of Christianity which they won’t feel comfortable with.

RNA: I very strongly take your point about the difference between Shakespeare’s audience and the contemporary audience. The most notable difference being, of course, that in the contemporary audience you have Jews who are there, whereas in Shakespeare’s audience you didn’t, so it didn’t really matter what you said about them. In some sense, it helped form a social unity, because you can enjoy the humiliation of the Jew as a group. When you said that there are bits in the play that are funny, it doesn’t make me laugh.

DM: Oh, not necessarily, sorry. I don’t necessarily mean the Jewish bits that are funny.

RNA: No, for me it doesn’t matter, because if a mouth abuses you and then tells a joke, the joke is tainted. The joke is tarnished. And I think there’s something about at the end of the play, most Jews who read this or watch it feel a little abused, or a lot! Greatly abused. So the question is how doyou relate that to the contemporary audience, which I think is as you’ve said is really important because there’s a huge difference. There’s a difference in how we use Scripture, because generally when we disagree with each other nowadays we don’t quote Scriptural passages at each other! There’s a difference in the sense of who Jews are in today’s society, as Justin mentioned, the Blood Libel was huge at the time – the idea that Jews were killing Christian babies, taking their blood and putting it in the matzah – the unleavened bread of Passover - was so nonsensical to the Jewish community, but what was being told to Christians at the time week after week. That, I think, does give us an underpinning of this play that I think we don’t have nowadays. And yet, when you look at the report from the Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism that came out a year or two ago, the report says quite clearly, ‘We just didn’t realise how rife anti-semitism still is in this country’ and that it’s part of the fabric of our country, part of the association and the dialogues, and the things that happen in our country are based around this subconscious, or sometimes conscious, hatred of Jews…to the point that I’ve walked in the street and had abuse. I’ve had money thrown at me to see if I will bend down to pick it up, which is known as “Jew-baiting” – is the Jew so stingy that he’ll pick up money from the floor? It’s so strongly part of our culture, now with that added difficulty of people immediately associating everything to do with Israel with Jews, so that the reporting of what goes on in Israel is so skewed and that when Israel does something bad the assumption is that all Jews must support that, which also isn’t true, is problematic. So we have a real challenge here with our contemporary audience because we don’t even have the same language or thought-patterns as Shakespeare’s audience did, and I think you’re right – this play should make people feel incredibly uncomfortable. I think if someone leaves The Merchant of Venice thinking, “Well, there you go, Jew got his just desserts,” I think we have a real problem there!

JS: Yes!

DM: Believe you me, as a Director, I would fell that I had failed totally!

RNA: I think there is a place for this, but I think there’s a place for this play in the sense of a historical record of how people used to be and hoping that we can get further, but perhaps looking at ourselves and thinking, well, maybe sometimes we haven’t gone that far. You both mentioned the Muslim community before, it’s the same thing just hundreds of years later. There are political differences and there are reasons why it’s not an exact comparison, but that hatred of the Other, of the minority, of the person who is different … with the Jew I think there is something different in that the Jew is white and therefore could be a Christian quite easily. With most Muslims in Britain today, their skin colour is different and, therefore, you don’t have that same relationship as you do with Shylock here. It’s easier to spot a Muslim in this country than it is a Jew. I think that leads to a very different sense of bigotry, just the same as the Jew in The Merchant of Venice had a special hat and was easy to spot. Now I think you’re right that the Muslim community today faces a similar difficulty. So you’re right that this play should make us very uncomfortable. When I read it, I felt very deeply abused, just because it was one more knock, one more Christian or group of Christians in a text passed through generations saying, “See, those blood-thirsty, bastard Jews who just want our money or revenge, and they’re cold and uncaring.” So, so long as a production shows that not to be true, I think there’s a lot of value in it, which I think it’s great that we’re discussing it, and that people can read this discussion.

DM: I certainly think that from within the cast there are a lot of people who are thinking very hard about it, aren’t there?

JS: Oh, yes.

DM: Because I think I said to you that you can’t do this play and try to be careful. If you want to be careful, then you don’t do this play. You can’t soften it and somehow make it acceptable – that is even worse, because that’s trying to pretend that it doesn’t exist, and the way in which I think we’ll make the audience uncomfortable is to push everything to the extreme. If you leave it relatively cosy, people can go away feeling more complacent, whereas I feel it’s my job to push it so hard, if you like, that people are wincing. I want them to. The Solerio-Solanio scene is awful where they take the mickey out of Shylock when he’s lost his daughter and his ducats, and that is really an uncomfortable scene.

RNA: And apparently the way you’re doing that scene in particular is to have slightly over-exaggerated mockery of it, which I think is very wise because it asks every audience member who is probably going to laugh along with that…

DM: Oh, I hope so.

RNA: …Is this actually funny or is it right to laugh because it’s mocking? And there’s that sort of uncomfortable thing that reminds me of Sasha Baron Cohen when he did his Borat song “Throw the Jew down the Well” which was remarkable because he’s Jewish and his character Borat is in the deep South of America and he has this whole room of people singing along to the song “Throw the Jew down the well so my country can be free” and people are doing little hand actions and making little horns on their heads. And it’s remarkable and you’re laughing, and then you’re thinking, “But this isn’t funny.” But then you think, this is funny because it’s a Jew who showing people how ridiculous it is. Although the joke is on them because they don’t know that he’s a Jew, so creating that humorous tension is, I think, really important, because by exaggerating it even more, I think you’re asking a very important question of the audience which is “But do I normally do this? Is this how I normally speak? Do I tell those little Jewish jokes or do I mock people in certain ways that, to me is very funny, but when I see it reflected back on me actually isn’t funny at all, it’s really disturbing?”

JS: That’s exactly the truth. It’s people who make the little racist comment, but who, when it is reflected back to them, go “Oooh. That smarts.” Now if we do make that point, hopefully, that is going to come across and make a point.

DM: One of the other moments that that scene actually picks up on in a funny way is that Justin has Shylock sending himself up when he says to Antonio “Shall I bend low”… you do it…

JS: “Shall I bend low and, in a bondman’s key, with baited breath and whispering humbleness say this: {in high-pitched over-accentuated voice} ‘Fair sir, you spat on me on Wednesday last, you spurn’d me such a day; another time you called me DOG!” (1:3)

DM: They pick up that, which even Shylock was forcing them to acknowledge, was an untypical reflection.

JS: I’m trying to take it as ‘this is what happens to me every day, people come along and take the mickey out of me,’ so I’ve gone over the top again in my mockery or myself because this is what happens to me all the time. Then I said to the guys doing it, “You can do whatever you want, you don’t have to be precisely me, because then you can mock as much as you like because mockery is never a precise thing…it’s exaggeration,” so it gives them carte-blanche to do whatever they want but it also then mirrors back the idea of ‘this smarts, I’m not sure if I like having that joke thrown back at me.’

DM: Does it make it better, worse, no different, whatever, the fact that Justin clearly is not Jewish?

JS: I wondered that as well.

RNA: I think it would make a difference if, to be honest, Justin had just said, “I know how to play a Jew” and got on with it. I actually think it’s been very wise to come and talk to a Rabbi, to come and experience Jewish prayer and to be in with a Jewish community, to see how we are and how we think. It’s very interesting that very early on we were talking about what it would mean for Shylock to lose his daughter and we started talking about the Hebrew phrases and the rituals that some people go through even today in the very Orthodox community when a child marries somebody outside the faith. That extreme reaction that Shylock shows is very deep-seated and I actually think it doesn’t matter the faith or culture of the person who’s playing Shylock so long as they actually relate in some way to the Jewish community, or have some connection to the Jewish community so they can see what’s going on, hear when they start reading the play. Justin came back to me after I had read it and my loathing and almost “How could you have subjected me to this nasty piece of work?” and for him to see that I think is really important because it can be reflected in how he acts it and is clearly acting it. So I think the person who plays Shylock needs to have an understanding of the utter humiliation that the Jewish community has in the past faced from the Christian community. It’s also important, I should add, how we’re working together today very strongly, you have the Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ), you have the 3 Faiths Forum (3FF), you have the group that I set up – Interfaith Dorset Education and Action (IDEA), so you have a completely different sense. But you will always have that underlying thing because at every Passover we open up the door as we’re telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt, and we open the door to welcome in any visitors, in particular to welcome Elijah the Prophet, hopefully, because that heralds the coming of the Messiah. But at Passover when you open the door there’s always that fear of “Who’s going to come into our house?” At the same time, you’re meant to be welcoming in people, but there’s a fear that this was the time when they said that the red wine that we were drinking was blood, so for a while the wine that we drink at Passover was changed to white wine. So every time we have wine on Passover, it’s always there.

DM: There’s that moment.

RNA: Yes, it’s always in the back of your mind, so The Merchant of Venice brings it right to the fore, it opens up that scabbed wound and says, “Look, it’s still here, and it still hurts.” So, so long as Shylock sees that and senses that and feels that, I don’t think it matters where they come from.

JS: It’s like what I said to you ages ago – even if the Jews did kill Jesus, the Christians need to get over it because he did rise again!! The other thing is that, as Jewish people supposedly started it, the Romans did it. Not the Jewish people. But my main thing is that if you believe in Christ, he rose again, so get over it! If he hadn’t have risen again, you wouldn’t have had this faith.

RNA: So, then, if we’re rounding off….I guess the question is “What’s the value of this play nowadays, for the Jewish community and for the non-Jewish community, for the literature or dramatic community, and for the community of people who really don’t have much exposure to this and say ‘let’s go and see a play,’ who go and see The Merchant of Venice, and suddenly it’s dropped on their lap? What’s the value of this play?

JS: It’s as I was saying earlier – if, at the end of the play, it makes you think about how you’ve treated your fellow man whatever religion, race or creed, and it makes you think, “I need to change how I am” then it’s made a point. The lines are anti-semitic at times, and they do make the Christians looks foolish in today’s society because of how anti-semitic they are. If it makes people think anything, if it makes them think, then it’s making a point. That’s the whole point of a play – to make anyone think. It’s made you think about Portia and why is he being tried by Portia? It made you think about it. They may not have been nice thoughts, but it’s made you think. If everyone goes to that play, and leaves thinking, it’s made its point.

DM: I think if we portray Shylock sympathetically, in the sense of not pulling any punches, but not a caricature. The better Justin does his job, the more I think people will go away with a lot that will haunt them. That’s what I would like to do. I would like to set up some resonances that people go away and do feel uncomfortable, and that it stays with them. As you say, yes, there are comic bits in this play that are nothing to do with Shylock that I think people will enjoy, but the other thing that I’m doing, and this is taking it away from the text, the final moment in the play will be Antonio and Shylock separate in separate spotlights, when everybody else has gone off feeling very happy and jolly, these two are not, and their worlds have crumbled. So that, in a way, is also reminding people that not everybody is going to go swanning off into the sunset.

JS: Good point, because it isn’t a happily-ever-after ending. It’s definitely not for Shylock – he’s had everything taken away from him, it really makes me angry about the whole thing as Shylock. He’s a completely broken man, horrible thing.

RNA: I think that for me Shylock is a caricature, but by not playing him as a caricature but as a human being saying caricature words wanting vengeance and so on in a way that a Jew just wouldn’t do, I think that’s what will create those resonances that you talk about, that people will, hopefully, really struggle with. The risk is always that it will reinforce a negative stereotype, and that’s always the risk that this play is going to create – that people will, without realising it, remember that blood-thirsty Jew whom I saw and got really passionate about because he was so real, whereas if he were speaking in a very stereotypical voice with almost Fagin-like personality, that would be easier for people to deal with, I think. By playing and directing the caricature in a way that makes him sound very real, I think that’s what will have the most impact on this audience, because it will ask people – what do I think? Was that funny? Was that cruel? Am I that kind of Christian? Am I that kind of Jew? I think, if nothing else, it shows a little bit of social progress, and it show religious development. It shows, frankly, that mot of the Christian community doesn’t talk like this nowadays, and that even though you have Jews who clearly bear grudges against Christians for, as they say, “2000 years of Christian love,” there’s a different sense in the Jewish community now, I think, a sense of “We’re working together towards bringing the world to God however we understand God.” That isn’t the same for every member of clergy, but I’m talking as a progressive Rabbi who is able to express that opinion. So I think there’s a lot of value in this, but also a lot of risk. And I think that is why it’s great that we’ve been able to have this conversation – we put a little thing in the brochure so that it automatically says to people it’s not enough for this just to be a play – on your way home, start talking about this, and when you’re at home over dinner, start talking about this, and try to work out our social responsibility given that this play is hundreds of years old. If this play were written now, what kind of play would it be? So I think it asks great questions, and I think it’s great that we’ve been able to have this conversation. Thank you.

JS: Thank you.

DM: Thank you.