Sam Probber, The Merchant of Venice – Act 5: What does it reveal about the rest of the play?
Comments(3) What genre of play does The Merchant of Venice fall into? After reading Act 5 of the play, it certainly appears to have characteristics of a comedy, but I struggle to find humor in most of the play. After the tension of the court scene and the merciless sentencing of Shylock, Act 5 opens with gushing lovers Jessica and Lorenzo, and a comedic appearance of Launcelot. It closes with Portia and Nerissa joking about sleeping with the characters they played earlier in court. The jolly ending seems too light to fit with the preceding acts, and caused me to rethink how I read the play. Alyssa’s previous post made me shift my perspective on Shylock’s role from enigmatic depiction of a marginalized minority to obscene caricature of an exotic race. In my opinion, Shylock is meant to be the play’s fool, but the religious aspect hinders his effect to me as a reader. I can imagine that his impotent stature is highlighted in the on-stage portrayal and his greed and “blood lust” are comical to an audience that believes this stereotype of Jews. The play ridicules the Venetians, but Jews occupy an even lower position in the minds of the English audience. It might have been funny when it was written, but now it is definitely amongst the grossest examples an anti-Semitic work. Is it still a comedy?
I agree that watching a performance of the play today might not be deemed as funny as it might have when the play was first performed in the 17th century. The stereotypes that revolve around the Jewish faith in this play only lower Shylock. In this play the stereotypes that are associated with the Jewish faith strengthen the view that Jews are greedy and merciless. I think that at first Shylock is made out to be the victim in the play. He talks about how he is treated by Antonio and even talks about how Antonio spit on his Jewish gabardine. When in public Shylock always asks rhetorical questions about how people treat Jews saying “if you prick us, do we not bleed?”. I think that this is done to draw sympathy for his character. All in all I do feel that Shylock was treated poorly in the play. Although he tried to get a pound of flesh from Antonio, the punishment that he received was just as bad as what he tried to do. I do not think that this play would be viewed as comical today as it might have been before.
I definitely had a hard time determining the genre the play falls into as well, a lot of the jokes made, and “funny aspects” were quite controversial and did depict venetians and jews in an extremely negative light. I at first really despised Shylock but as the play went on I ended up pitying him. He was made the butt of all of the jokes, especially the fact that his daughter abandoned him and the court ruling was a tad over the top in my opinion. Maybe it was a comedy centuries ago, but today it would certainly demand a lot of attention from the media and people who would certainly be offended by the content.
I definitely agree that for the Elizabethan era, this play was meant to be a romantic comedy. Although the romance is certainly there, I have a hard time really identifying the comedic portions as well, although this play has been labeled as a comedy for centuries. My only deduction is that this is supposed to be a relatively crass brand of humor – Jews were seen as bad guys back them so many audiences certainly reveled in the suffering of Shylock and applauded the loss of his daughter to Christianity. I believe that if you were to ask many of Shakespeare’s time, their favorite part of the play would be Shylock’s forced conversion to Christianity, as that is seen as the villain getting his just desserts. Certainly though, publishing something like this would certainly gain much media scrutiny if published for the first time nowadays.