A question, then, for Shylock:
How merry was your bond? When you set the forfeit at an equal pound of Antonio's fair flesh, to be cut off and taken from whatever part of his body it pleased you, what intended you by it? What intended you by it in the spirit of jest – that's to say how far in earnest were you, and how far playing the devil they expected you to be? And what intended you in the matter of anatomy? Did you mean salaciously, flirtatiously even, to designate Antonio's penis as it pleased you to take? Was that the pound of his fair flesh – weighing hyperbolically – you originally had your sights set on, before all jests went out of the window with your daughter?When I was in grade nine, The Merchant of Venice was the first Shakespeare that I studied. The casket plot, the rings plot, the cross-dressing court scene: there's something about your first Shakespeare that stays with you forever. And, of course, it was Shylock himself who left the greatest impression upon me: for four hundred years, the image of the money-hungry Jew who demands his pound of flesh has hunched over Western culture, and no matter how nuanced my English teacher's interpretation of Shylock was, I, too, believed Shylock was more villain than victim. Along comes Howard Jacobson, and as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series, he has reinterpreted and updated The Merchant of Venice in Shylock Is My Name; and as one might imagine from such a prominent writer on modern Jewish themes, Jacobson doesn't merely acknowledge Shylock's looming presence; he invites the moneylender into the plot.
The book opens with Simon Strulovitch – a rich art dealer and nonobservant Jew – visiting his mother's grave to inspect her new headstone. He is aware of a fellow mourner – Of course Shylock is here, among the dead. When hasn't he been?– and when he leaves, Strulovitch proposes for Shylock to come along with him. The two men talk extensively about Jewish law and culture, comparing their different times; for though Shylock is presumably alive and well and real, he is indeed the Shylock of Shakespeare, with the events of the play always in his immediate past: Action had stopped arbitrarily for Shylock, but time hadn't. Time had embalmed him.
Strulovitch has a pressing reason for wanting Shylock's advice: just as Shylock' own daughter Jessica had run off with a Gentile, Strulovitch's daughter, Beatrice, has been tormenting her father with her love of non-Jews and is currently trying to get him to meet her new boyfriend: a semipro soccer player infamous for parodying the Nazi salute on the field. Although Strulovitch doesn't eat kosher or attend temple, at the moment of Beatrice's birth he felt the presence of God and the weight of His covenant with the Jewish people, and despite having once married a Gentile himself, Strulovitch can't bear the idea of his daughter leaving the clan. The new crowd of friends that Beatrice meets through the soccer player are parallels to characters from The Merchant of Venice and events are put into motion that force Strulovitch – the nonobservant Jew; the generous philanthropist and benefactor – into playing the stereotypical Shylock; into demanding his payment in flesh.
Howard Jacobson, as a British Jew, has something very particular to say about modern Jewish life. Strulovitch must watch as his offer to open a museum of Jewish art is refused as not in keeping with the local Manchester historical character (despite the artists themselves having been born in the area); he witnesses a group of protesters who want to stop a company from providing local trash collection because they also produce sewer systems for a disputed West Bank settlement; even the parody of a Nazi salute on a soccer field is based on actual events: while no one is literally spitting on Jews (as mentioned in Shylock's famous “If you cut us do we not bleed?” monologue), the modern Jew still suffers by association with a maligned past and with a lumping in with their larger community; and with the assumptions that others make about their motives and their desires; behind every Jewish businessman, the Gentile recognises the presence of Shylock fingering his ducats.
The two men, who would rather not, in any circumstances, wish to be exchanging glances, direct their gazes over each others' shoulder. If D'Anton were a pirate with a parrot, Strulovitch would be addressing that. D'Anton himself is looking even further to the rear of his guest, as though at Strulovitch's grandparents in their headscarves and skullcaps, falling under the hooves of Cossacks' horses, muttering to their mouldy god while their hovels go up in flames...But enough of that, D'Anton tells himself.I find Jacobson to be a very funny writer, and there is much dark humour here. Purists might not like that this isn't a straightforward modernisation of The Merchant of Venice, but I liked the device of having Shylock serve as counsel and example as Strulovitch stumbles right into Shylock's own dilemma: the irony is rich as the art dealer has every opportunity to not sink to the expectations of others, but whether through spite or devilry, sink he does. If the central conflict in Merchant is Shylock's quest for justice counterpoised against Portia's call for mercy, it was a nice touch for Shylock here to lecture her modern equivalent on that theme:
It is wrong not to know where you got your sweet Christian sentiments from. It is morally and historically wrong not to know that Jesus was a Jewish thinker and that when you quote him against us you are talking vicious nonsense. Charity is a Jewish concept. So is mercy. You took them from us, that is all. You appropriated them. They were given freely, but still you had to steal them.So does that demonstrate what Shylock had always believed, or is it the result of four hundred years of thinking? Four hundred years later, why couldn't a non-observant Jew like Strulovitch embrace mercy? Shylock Is My Name is an interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking book.
Here's a passage I liked, between Strulovitch and his first (Gentile) wife:
"That psychological scarring we once discussed," she began.
"Whose?"
"Yours."
"What about it?"
"It's there every time you make one of your footling, thing-centered jokes."
"How could the trauma of mutilation have turned me into a footler? If I'm the trivial man you accuse me of being it must mean I wasn't mutilated enough."
"That's a naive understanding of cause and effect. You footle to disguise the pain. You cannot bear to accept that what was done to you was bestial in the extreme and so you try to joke it away -- the proof of that being that your joking is always phallocentric."
He felt suddenly very weary. Words ending in "centric" always had that effect on him. "You're right", he said. He couldn't tell her one more time that joking wasn't in his nature. Nor could he tell her he neither looked nor felt mutilated. That would sound like empty denial or brute insentience, and both only went to show how badly mutilated he was.
In a way, Shylock Is My Name is one big phallocentric joke, so here's another:
We were out for dinner last week, and Mallory was talking about how useless it feels to be taking Religion, but since it's required for graduation, take it she must. (And I'll insert here that although I was a nonobservant Catholic when the girls were born, I understood what Strulovitch meant by recognising the weight of God's presence at their births; and wanting them to be admitted to a community of faith that goes back thousands of years; for the community if not the faith. And so I sent them to Catholic school where they could learn about and feel membership in that community; yet, Catholic marriage will not be required of them.) So, there's Mal griping about her Religion course but saying that at least it was better than the year before.
In grade eleven, the course was called World Religions, and the students were taught about all the biggies (which can only be a good thing in the modern world, I do believe). As a part of that class, they visited a mosque, a Hindu temple, and a synagogue. The teacher (who is admittedly dumb) embarrassed the students when, in the synagogue, she asked the rabbi where the baptismal font was and he had to gently inform her that they did not do that sort of thing there.
Dave laughed and put on a high-pitched ditzy voice, "Of course. Well, where do you perform the circumcisions?"
Mallory lowered her voice and deadpanned, "Generally, on the penis area."
And Dave laughed and laughed, and I pointed out to Mal that she had made her Dad really amused by that one (her jokes usually get a "Huh" or an eyeroll out of him). Proving, of course, that the twelve-year-old boy never dies in the man.
*****
Books in the Hogarth Shakespeare series:
Shylock is My Name
Vinegar Girl
The Gap of Time
Hag-Seed
New Boy
Dunbar
Macbeth
And Related:
Nutshell
