Ministry of higher and secondary special education of the republic of uzbekistan теrmez state university

4.Features of revealing the character of Shylock
Not too long ago, television screened a documentary on "Shylock" that was interesting, not so much for showing Shakespeare's intention when he created the character but more for the range of different attitudes towards him. No one seemed to agree, not even on the way Shylock looked! Orson Welles saw him as rather scruffy, with the black garments of the European Hassid, scraggly beard and tangled hair topped with a funny black hat. When the actor Charles Macklin, himself violent, having killed another thespian in a duel, played him as a ferocious devil figure, Alexander Pope maintained Shylock was portrayed the way Shakespeare wrote him.At the other extreme was Dr. Jonathan Miller's vision in the person of Laurence Olivier: a very well dressed, opulent, modern integrated Jew, very much the businessman and a far cry from the slimy character with the hooked nose and evil leer of anti-Semitic literature and posters.⁸ Miller tried to divest the character of the stereotype Jew devil, the dirty, filthy pig suckler and eater of pig excrement, the foul polluter of the holy Christian world, so he made him a gentleman no different from the Christians around him. However, he had a hard time with Shakespeare's text. He believed Shakespeare made him only momentarily human but then reverted to the stereotype. Miller felt the line: "I hate him because he is a Christian," too much perpetuated the caricature of the Jew, so he cut it out.
"The Merchant of Venice" is called Shakespeare's anti-Semitic play - and with good reason. It has a Jewish villain who gets his comeuppance at the hands of Christians, which gave Will's audiences something to cheer about. Most Jews hate the play and wish it were not in Shakespeare's body of work. Some even protest its presentation. Anyone who sits through a traditional performance has every reason to believe that Shakespeare must have been a bigot. But was he? Let us take a closer look at the play, to get some new insights into it and the man who wrote it.
He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated my enemies - and what's his reason? I am a Jew.
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be, by Christian example? Why, revenge? The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
A strange speech to put into the mouth of a villain, one that suggests that vengeance and villainy are not part of a Jew's nature and must be learned from Christians, with great difficulty and effort. The play is supposed to be virulently anti-Semitic. Would an anti-Semite have written those lines? Why does Shakespeare give the Jew such words to mouth? Why does Shakespeare go out of his way to give the Jew grounds for hating Christians?In Elizabethan times, when anti-Semitic plays were extremely popular in England, especially after the Jewish doctor Roderigo Lopez was convicted of trying to poison the queen, it was enough to say a character was a Jew to make him a despicable villain, one who would descend to any level of depravity. But Shakespeare gives Shylock very good reasons for hating the merchant. Why did he do that for an audience steeped in centuries of anti-Semitic tradition? Why did Shakespeare not let the Jew behave, well, like a Jew? And why did Shakespeare let the honest, Venetian gentleman merchant not conduct himself like a Christian? Let us review Shylock's words: "He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated my enemies - and what's his reason? I am a Jew."
Is this any way for a good Christian to behave? We had better take a more meticulous look at the heroes in this play.Before we do, however, let us first establish Shakespeare's mastery of human psychology. His genius lay in his ability to comprehend all the moods of man. His plays are so well crafted they move from scene to scene with a logic no modern psychiatrist could fault. A. C. Bradley, Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford and lecturer on Shakespearean Tragedy, drew attention to "the multitudinousness of Shakespeare's genius" and spoke of "his almost unlimited power of conceiving and expressing human experience of all kinds." Here are one or two examples.In the second scene of King Lear, Shakespeare shows us the sorry sight of an old monarch hovering on the edge of senility; he shows us the self-sacrificing loyalty of the honourable Kent, he shows us the cruelty in the goodness of Lear's daughter, Cordelia and the villainy of deceit in her sisters. Within a single scene, each of his characters are so sharply drawn that he reveals the confidence of a man who knows what he is about. His plays hinge on the credibility of his characters and their behaviour. This realisation is extremely important, for the rise and fall of the fortunes of his characters were founded on their behaviour patterns. If he did not give them a solid basis for their motivation, then the grand design of his plays would crumble. They do not.
Shakespeare never wrote a careless word; he weighed each one scrupulously. Every speech either drove his story forward or revealed a facet of character necessary for understanding his play. Hamlet's indecision gives us Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. In "Julius Caesar," Brutus' naive nobility - his impractical thinking, which leads to disastrous errors of judgement - drags him to his doom. Macbeth's ambition, Anthony's obsession with the Queen of Egypt, Othello's jealousy, all are so well delineated that we have no trouble believing the motivation that drives these characters to behave as they do.
Let us return now to our Christians in "The Merchant of Venice." Antonio, a rich merchant has hazarded all his fortunes in ventures overseas. He is an unmarried man, inordinately fond of a handsome young rake, Bassanio who is already heavily in debt to him, having borrowed his money to enjoy a wild and reckless life. Once again Bassanio approaches the merchant who loves him so dearly, to lend him more money so he can woo a rich maiden and thus (as the law allowed him in those days) to become master of an estate that would pay off all his debts and still leave him rich.Here is the reason Shakespeare gives his handsome hero for needing the money that Antonio the merchant does not possess in cash. The merchant not so much as questions his friend's integrity let alone suggests that this is another hair-brained scheme to indulge yet another caprice. So much does Antonio love Bassanio, he is prepared to borrow the money, to furnish his young friend to woo the wealthy lady. After all, Bassanio is doing this not for love – simply for profit. Their relationship will not be affected. On the contrary, Bassanio will be even more indebted to him.If Shakespeare had wished, he could have found several noble causes for his hero to need money - patriotism perhaps, or philanthropy - but instead he subtly implies that Bassanio's homosexual paramour is prepared to give him any amount of his fortune for the basest of reasons.Now let us take a look at our heroine Portia who, to blinkered readers over the centuries, has been the embodiment of goodness and purity. Mary Lamb who, with her brother Charles wrote "Tales From Shakespeare," quotes the hero, Bassanio, to describe Portia thus: "The rich heiress that Bassanio wished to marry lived near Venice, at a place called Belmont: her name was Portia, and in the graces of her person and her mind she was nothing inferior to that Portia, of whom we read, who was Cato's daughter, and the wife of Brutus." Let us bear in mind this is Bassanio, describing the woman he wants to wive, to his friend, the merchant Antonio, from whom he wishes to borrow the money to accomplish his base purpose. Nothing in that portrait could be further from the truth. Nothing could be more ironic, as it was Shakespeare who drew both women. Brutus' Portia has two major scenes in "Julius Caesar" where, with masterful strokes, Shakespeare shows us a steadfast, loyal woman of honour and love and truthfulness.
And what do we see of the Belmont Portia? Shakespeare introduces her through the fairy tale story of the three caskets of gold, silver and lead, to give a picture of an enchanted princess. However, in this castle, nothing is what it seems. Portia spends her opening scene ridiculing her suitors. The first to enter upon the stage is a black Moroccan prince, whose skin, from living under a burning sun, has evolved to prevent absorption of Phoebus' harmful rays. He and the Spanish prince of Aragon have come to win the fair lady's hand. It is significant that Shakespeare chooses to have a black prince woo Portia and to give him not one but two scenes. Why not an English royal or a French noble with the Spaniard? How can we doubt, knowing the Bard is cognisant of every physical and emotional move of his characters, he wishes to introduce the subject of racial prejudice? These are the amazing lines Shakespeare gave the regal Prince of Morocco: "Mislike me not for my complexion, the shadowed livery [the dark clothing, meaning skin] of the burnished sun to whom I am neighbour and near bred. Bring me the fairest creature northward born, where Phoebus' fire scarce thaws the icicles, and let us make incisions for your love to prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine."
Pretty Portia prettily replies: "If my father had not scanted me and hedged me by his wit to yield myself his wife who wins me by that means I told you (choosing the right casket), yourself, renowned prince, then stood as fair as any comer I have looked on yet for my affection."But what does our lovely heroine, Portia say when the Prince finally fails the test? "A gentle riddance! Draw the curtains, go. Let all of his complexion choose me so."
Good riddance says she. She's not interested in the right character, only in the right complexion. Else why should she prefer a man like Bassanio, our hero, of whom the late, great authority on the Bard, Harley Granville-Barker admitted, rather reluctantly, in his Prefaces to Shakespeare: "Logic may land us anywhere. It can turn Bassanio into a heartless adventurer."Portia's late father entrusted her not to reveal the secret of the caskets. But when it comes to the choice of the handsome rake, Bassanio, she sings a song: