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

Tell me, where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourish-ed?
Reply, reply.
It is engendered in the eyes,
With gazing fed, and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies.
Let us all ring fancy's knell.
I'll begin it - Ding, dong, bell.
"And fancy dies in the cradle where it lies. Let us all ring fancy's knell." Bassanio correctly deduces not to select outward show and ornament but to choose lead, that which sounds like bred, head and nourish-ed. So, the good Portia cannot even remain faithful to her father's dying wish.During the trial, she makes a lofty speech about mercy that every child who studies the play is forced to learn by rote.
The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest -- it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. His sceptre shows the hold of temporal power, the attribute of awe and majesty wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; but mercy is above this sceptred sway. It is enthroned in the hearts of kings. It is an attribute to God himself. And earthly power doth then show likest God's, when mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, though justice be thy plea, consider this-- that in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation. We do pray for mercy, and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.
A pretty speech! But does the lovely Portia show any mercy. She presents one of the most pitiless women when it comes to punishing the Jew. She strips him of everything, his self-respect and even his identity when she insists on his conversion to Christianity. She is, in a word, a hypocrite.
"Nothing inferior to Brutus' Portia," gushes Mary Lamb.
"Love comes out supreme in the person of Portia," puffs the Preface to the Folger Library edition, "one of the most attractive of Shakespeare's heroines… Shakespeare may have intended her to stand for the abstraction of Love."
Let us take one last look at this heroine of heroines. Portia gives Bassanio a ring and makes him swear he will never part with it. When she comes disguised as a male lawyer and wins the case for her husband's friend, she demands nothing but the ring as token payment. By means of this cheap trick, she forces him into a situation that leaves him no choice but to part with it. Later she accuses him (in loving jest, of course) of having given it to a woman (which, of course, he did). He swears on his honour that he gave it to a Doctor of the Law who refused even 3000 ducats for saving the life of his friend. What does Portia say to this? "Let not that doctor e'er come near my house.⁹ Since he has got the jewel that I loved, and that which you did swear to keep for me, I will become as liberal as you; I'll not deny him anything I have, no, not my body, nor my husband's bed. Know him I shall, I am well sure of it. (Know him in the biblical sense, to have intercourse!) Lie not a night from home; watch me like Argus (the 100-eyed monster). If you do not, if I be left alone, now by mine honour, which is yet mine own, I'll have that doctor for my bedfellow."
Can you imagine Brutus' Portia ever telling her husband what Bassanio's Portia tells hers? It is undeniably funny and the audience cannot help but laugh, but does she sound like a sweet, wholesome heroine or more like a jaded street whore?All of the last scene of the play is charged with emotional tension, from the word game Jessica and Lorenzo play at the opening to the very last line when Gratiano says: "Well, while I live, I'll fear no other thing so sore as keeping safe Nerissa's ring," for he too was given a ring by his wife to keep until death. The scene is meant to be amusing - and it is - but Shakespeare draws his humour from real emotions and never lets us forget he was on intimate terms with his characters. They do not rule him; he rules them. He just as soon could have had Portia say: "Should I become as liberal as you? Should I deny him nothing that I have? No, not my body, nor my husband's bed?" But he did not. He has her speak like the strumpet she is. And yet she remains, for those who refuse to dig deeper than the surface of the text, the embodiment of pristine purity! Shakespeare is telling us, as the curtain falls, these people are certainly not going to live happily ever after.In this play, which he rightly calls a comedy, Shakespeare laughs at the idiocy and illogicality of racial prejudice. He gives us Christian heroes with villainous traits, and a villainous Jew who makes us uncomfortable because he has heroic reasons to hate and for whom we feel great sympathy. We can only conjecture how the audience would have reacted had Edmund Kean played Shylock not traditionally costumed in the black garb with pointed beard and black skullcap, not bent over and not so very different from our Christian heroes. For despite this time-honoured and woefully wrong picture of Shylock, he acted with such pathos that spectators wept.All this is amazing because Shakespeare, most likely, never met a Jew. They had been banished from England and very few, mainly converts to Christianity, remained in the country. In the Middle Ages, Jew baiting was popular. It was enough to say a character was a Jew to accept him as the embodiment of evil. To this day, the word 'Jew' upon the stage has great emotional impact. Used to such great effect in the play "Cabaret," that those who have seen it performed will never forget how much of an impact it had.In Shakespeare's days, literally thousands of these virulent anti-Jew plays were written, so lacking in worth that virtually only two survived: Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta," and "The Merchant of Venice," acknowledged as being by far the superior. Shakespeare had his eye on the box-office and knew a good thing when he saw it. Anti-Semitism pulled in the crowds and he would have been insane not to have used it. But... this was Shakespeare, a man who could not write a worthless play - lacking art, lacking depth. We are discussing mankind's most precious literary gem, one who soars above his fellow humans even today and one who was not prepared to let his audience off easily.
That is not to say Shakespeare did not pander to the prejudices of his audiences. However, quite the reverse of Jonathan Miller's view, whenever Shylock enters the stage he is the epitome of the stereotyped Jew, evil for evil's own sake. This was merely to satisfy the demands of his audience, particularly the groundlings, who revelled in hissing and cat-calling the actor. Until the 19^th century - reflecting the low comedy part of Judas in Biblical drama - Shylock was portrayed in a red wig, red beard and huge bulbous nose. The English public became conditioned to this clownish figure of towering wickedness.But, that, clearly, was not Shakespeare's intention for, as each of Shylock's scenes develops, a subtle change occurs that makes the audience uncomfortable. When they laugh, the laugh's on them. Shakespeare was a playwright of extraordinary skills. He was not content to let his Jew remain a one-dimensional symbol of evil. For the very first time, a writer gives the Jew a motive for his hate. To quote Harry Golden from "Only in America:" – "Shakespeare was the first writer in seven hundred years who gave the Jew a 'motive.' Why did he need to give the Jew a motive? Certainly, his audience did not expect it. For centuries they had been brought up on the stereotype, 'this is evil because it's evil' and here Shakespeare comes along and goes to so much 'unnecessary' trouble giving Shylock a motive. At last! A motive!" Not only that. Shakespeare gives Shylock emotions and sensitivity of touching humanity. The Jew could feel pain and anguish, as when he bemoans the loss of the ring his deceased wife gave him even before they were married. The audience is busy laughing at the jackass Shylock's daughter, Jessica has made of her father by robbing him, and at the Jew's hysterical outburst at losing so much at the hands of his own flesh and blood, when Tubal says: "One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey."
Shylock, in tears, in rage, in primordial pain, cries out.... "Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys."
While the audience thinks Shylock has been hit hardest because his daughter robbed him of money and jewels, he shows us a Jew most pained over a turquoise ring, a semi-precious stone that held little more than sentimental value.Now since racism is the renunciation of logic Shakespeare uses it to play with his Christian audiences. He knew his patrons fed upon anti-Semitism so he makes them renounce all logic and teases them with insults they do not feel. Shylock knows what no one could possibly know, that not one of the merchant's ships due in 30 days, will come through from different parts of the world, so he gives Antonio 90 days credit with impunity. Then the merchant himself, descending to duplicity and deceit and throwing good money after bad, knows Bassanio will be successful, and lends his friend more money on top of what he is owed, to woo a rich heiress. The audience must accept as good, a man who, on approaching the Jew for the 3000 ducats, treats a fellow human thus:
Shy: Signor Antonio - many a time and oft, in the Rialto, you have rated me about my moneys and my usances. Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, for sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. You call me misbeliever, cutthroat dog, and spit upon my Jewish gaberdine - and all for use of that which is my own. Well then... it now appears you need my help. Go to, then! You come to me and say: 'Shylock, we would have moneys.' YOU say so - YOU, that did void your rheum (spittle) upon my beard and foot me as you spurn a stranger cur over your threshold. Money is your suit? What should I say to you? Should I not say: 'Has a dog money? Is it possible a cur can lend three thousand ducats?' Or shall I bend low and in a bondman's key, with bated breath and whispering humbleness, say this: 'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last; you spurned me such a day; another time you called me dog; and for these courtesies I'll lend you thus much moneys.'?
Ant: I will as likely call thee so again, and spit on thee again, and spurn thee too. If you will lend this money, lend it not as to your friends, for when did friendship take a breed for barren metal of his friend? But lend it rather to your enemy who, if he break, you may then with better face exact the penalty.
Shakespeare's subtlety covers another glaring injustice? "When did friendship take a breed for barren metal (i.e. interest) of his friend?" Of course, Antonio can say this with impunity.¹⁰ He has no need to earn his living by usury; he could turn a penny any way he pleased, even lend money without interest, which he did to rob Shylock of his living. The Jews of Europe, as most of us know (and as Shakespeare most certainly did), were forbidden to trade in any way. Money-lending was their sole means of income. Ironically, Christian moneylenders of the time were notoriously much more usurious than the Jews. It is certainly not Christian charity that urges Antonio to give the Jew some business. He knew he would pay less interest on his 'barren metal' - as he derisively calls it.¹¹How did our charming hero Bassanio get into the merchant's debt if not by taking barren metal from his friend? Why does Antonio wish to borrow 3000 ducats now if not to bestow this barren metal upon his friend - as a stake to woo a rich milch cow? Does the good Antonio feel the least bit unchristian or uncharitable for abusing Shylock and his nation for being what they are and living only as they can? Not at all! "I will as likely call thee so again, to spit on thee again, to spurn thee too."
Now - the good Christians induce Shylock's only child, his daughter Jessica, to desert her widowed father, rob him of his money and jewels, and dressed in man's clothing (a crime in Jewish law) to steal away in the dark of night and elope with her gentile lover, Lorenzo. Audiences, hysterical with laughter at this violation of the Jew by his own daughter, miss the irony of Gratiano's remark when Jessica says:
"I will make fast the doors, and gild myself with some more ducats and be with you straight."