The Harlem River Dispatch: They Said to Brush Up Your Shakespeare, Not Deface It!

Once upon a time, a mid-level theatre professional was tapped to direct a Shakespearean play as a guest artist one semester at a liberal arts college with a small theatre department. Despite the director's trepidation at having to come up with something fresh, the college had generously granted him full creative freedom as long as it resulted in a provocative production, one which would stimulate the hearts and minds of the college community.

After two weeks of preparation, he approached the faculty with two proposals. The first was a production of Merchant of Venice which he wanted to direct as a carnival spectacle, complete with clowns, circus freaks, and acrobatics. The second was an edgy version of Romeo and Juliet into which he would infuse references to hip-hop culture and ultra-violent martial arts films. Although each presentation left the faculty thoroughly impressed, they still had a couple of concerns they wanted to hear him address.

The first was over the anti-Semitic sentiments within The Merchant of Venice (undoubtedly Shakespeare’s most controversial play) and what would he do to ensure that this production wouldn’t offend the large Jewish population in the community. The second concern was a more practical one: apparently the two male actors who would have been perfect to play Romeo and Mercutio would be abroad that semester, and the talent pool for young men in the department was shallow, so there was a great chance he might have to cast some of the male roles with female actors. The director said he would take some time to revise his proposals based on these concerns.

When he came back before the faculty department two weeks later, he presented the following adjustments: for his production of The Merchant of Venice, Venice and Belmont would still become carnival worlds, but Shylock, the oppressed Jew, would be portrayed as dignified and noble, not a villain but a true tragic hero stuck between those two lopsided worlds. As for Romeo and Juliet, he said he had no qualms about casting actors of the opposite sex, because Shakespeare himself did it all the time. In fact, this particular director suggested to go a step further and make the actual character of Romeo female, explaining that a same-sex Romeo and Juliet in a college setting would be very relatable to the many students exploring and discovering their own sexuality; and, since gay marriage was such a hot topic, he saw it as his duty as an artist to explore homosexual love within a public forum. 

Now if this director would have asked me as a fellow theatrical artist which play would have been more worth his while, I would have advised him to go back to the drawing board in both cases. My objection to these particular adjustments would stem not from an aversion to the social issues he would have infused into the plots of the plays, but rather a rigid respect for Shakespeare’s genius and an undying allegiance to the integrity of the plays as written; for I do believe that many directors working today will distort and maim the works they once held so much reverence for in a pathetic attempt to boost perceptions on their own originality and relevancy. 

It is true that Shakespeare wrote Shylock to be a sympathetic character because of the hardships he faces as Jew in an anti-Semitic time and place. But theatrical artists are mistaken in lifting him up as a tragic hero rather than a tragic villain. While racist ignorance will be present in most times and places, it takes a special kind of moral ignorance to commit atrocities as vast and as reprehensible as the holocaust – and that is the kind which generates pride enough to mercilessly cut out a pound of flesh nearest a man’s heart because that man has wronged you and owes you money. Shakespeare seems to be teaching a valuable lesson that many artists nowadays so readily ignore: that people who have been victimized will become the most vicious of villains if they refuse to show mercy when in positions of power. 

Of course, it is customary for an actor never to judge the character he plays as a hero or a villain to keep from falling into characterization. But for actors to discover what truly motivates the character he will find, if he is thorough and truthful enough, that it is either virtues like charity, diligence, kindness, and humility or vices like greed, pride, anger, and lust. Also, if more theatrical artists were more truthful and thorough in the study of a play like Merchant of Venice, they would see that the main reason Shylock despises Antonio is not Antonio’s supposed anti-Semitism but rather his disapproval of Shylock’s merciless practice of usury, and the fact that Antonio brings down the credit rates by loaning out money without interest. 

SHYLOCK

[Aside] How like a fawning publican he looks!

I hate him for he is a Christian,

But more for that in low simplicity

He lends out money gratis and brings down

The rate of usance here with us in Venice.

If I can catch him once upon the hip,

I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.

He hates our sacred nation, and he rails,

Even there where merchants most do congregate,

On me, my bargains and my well-won thrift,

Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe,

If I forgive him! 

Merchant of Venice, Act I.ii 

Now, we must be careful how we react to productions like the Romeo and Juliet example I described , because they seem to be happening more and more regularly. A depiction of the tragic star-cross'd pair as bisexual lovers should not offend us so much as adherers to an orthodox morality (for murder, arguably the greater sin, is rampant throughout Shakespeare’s canon, and one rarely decries Shakespeare’s use of it). Rather we should be offended by such a depiction as Shakespeare loyalists. As in the case of Shylock as tragic hero, too many theatrical artists are hellbent on incorporating their own passions into Shakespearean plays as if they assumed the playwright shared in them, when there is no textual or biographical evidence for such assumptions. In so many recent productions, there is falsely infused sexual tension between characters like Antionio and Bassanio, Hamlet and Horatio, or Don Pedro and Claudio, among others. When the motives of these characters are hijacked by the personal agendas of the artists portraying them, they do a disservice to the true power of the plays and distract the audience from the original themes, and the qualitative result is almost always mediocre at best. 

In the long tradition of performing the works of Shakespeare, theatre companies will more often than not transplant his plays out of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras in which he wrote them. Such maneuvers are tolerable because time and setting only encapsulate that which made Shakespeare a universal genius, and that is his impressive and unmatched understanding of what it means to be a human being in this cruel and beautiful world. But when producers start to tamper with that understanding by representing it as something other than what it really is, that’s when these productions, as Joseph Pearce puts it in his book Through Shakespeare’s Eyes, would “sacrifice truth on the altar of zeitgeist-confirming ‘originality’ and constitute an original sin against the work. This is postmodernism as vandalism. It is the philandering of the philistine.”

Wesley is an actor, playwright, and poet living in New York City. His column, The Harlem River Dispatch, will be a regular contribution to the By Way of Beauty blog.  


(Shakespeare drawing from Jerry Miller.)