Charlie Rose

mattch31  04/03/2011 12:33 PM Report

Who cares REMant? Lily Rabe is HOT!

Go read Harold Bloom if you want insight into the plays (which, by your comments, it seems you already have).

JohnFallstaff  02/03/2011 08:04 AM Report

Statler and Waldorf over here.

cheirospasm  01/17/2011 12:11 AM Report

Oh thank heavens REMant, for commenting, I couldn't agree more.

I could hardly stomach this.

REMant  12/22/2010 12:28 PM Report

It must be difficult to find American actors and actresses capable of doing this kind of stuff, more so in repertory, and I don't think they succeeded here. Actually, I think we did better in college. The director's undoubtedly right about the element of political correctness in its performance history. But I don't buy Pacino's notions. Indeed they are laughable, which is what they are supposed to be. It is unquestionably directed against usurers, many of which happened to be Jews. Christianity was opposed to that, not to the people, themselves. Otherwise, why have Shylock convert at the end instead of suffering one of the Republic's grimmer punishments? We have two quite different ideas of justice here: distributive (Christian) which was opposed to usury as unsocial, and commutative or contractual (Jewish), which upholds it. Shylock simply does not understand distributive justice. For him everything involves retribution, tit-for-tat. It is as topical today as when the gospels were written. But at the time this was penned the Christian foundations of English society were as much under attack as the monarchy itself, not just from republicans, but from commercial interests. The same parties were present in the American revolution. Tom Paine, for example, was one of the latter. It is no more set in Venice than Hamlet is really set in Denmark. Portia, like St Paul, argues we all sin; we all pray for God's mercy; we are all God's creation. But Shylock is self-righteous and determined to exploit his position. The nobility had put itself at risk because of its extravagance and continual warfare and the "City" had capitalized on it. The history was well set out by R H Tawney in his 1925 introduction to Thomas Wilson's 1572 "A Disourse Upon Usury," which may be found here: http://www.cesc.net/adobeweb/scholars/tawney/tawney.pdf Shakespeare decided to make a comedy of this, and Shylock, the banker, into a stock character to be ridiculed. Those playing it seriously are seriously missing the point. Even the legal profession comes in for ridicule, when Portia turns from equity and gets Antonio off on a technicality. Except for this, the plot is no different from many a romantic comedy - including several of Shakespeare's - about mistaken identity and greed's comeuppance. Compare, for instance, the much loved Figaro stories, or Cosi Fan Tutte. Mr Brantley, I see, seems to have missed most of this.