The Merchant of Venice by Charles Edelman (review)

Abstract

196 Reviews I question only the choice of text as the most appropriate means to illustrate it. I also question whether it is possible to take a morally neutral stance on the issue given that we are all part ofthe social project that Young describes. Royal Holloway, University of London Christie Carson 'The Merchant of Venice'. Ed. by Charles Edelman. (Shakespeare in Production) Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. 2002. xxii + 293 PP- ?47-5o; $65 (pbk ?16.95; $23). ISBN 0-521-77429-2 (pbk o521 -773385). Charles Edelman produces a very useful and user-friendly volume in this Cambridge 'Shakespeare in Production' series. For the last several decades, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming ofthe Shrew, and Othello have been subjected to censorship, both on stage and in print, and the plays have frequently been dropped, especially in North America, from secondary- and higher-education reading lists, in spite of objections by both teachers and students. So Edelman has his job cut out forhim in placing The Merchant of Venice in its context while still making clear the theatrical immediacy, power, and resonance of the text itself. In these tasks he succeeds, perhaps with too much discretion at times, but with the right amount of sensitivity, information, and intellectual analysis to suit both general and academic audiences. In keeping with the Cambridge series' structure, Edelman firstprovides an intro? duction tracing the performance history of The Merchant of Veniceand then annotates the text of M. M. Mahood's excellent 1987 Cambridge University Press edition with his own extensive notes on performance and productions. In his engaging introduc? tion, Edelman grapples with the ways in which directors, actors, and audiences have found, embellished, or rejected anti-Semitism, as well as misogyny and homosexu? ality, in the text of The Merchant of Venice or its representations on stage or in film. He pays very close attention to British and American productions since the play's composition but most notably discusses those done in Germany and Austria over the last three centuries, including a 1943 Viennese production in which 'Jessica became the result of an adulterous affairbetween Shylock's wife and a gentile, making her acceptable under Nuremberg laws' (p. 53). Throughout the introduction, Edelman calmly and discreetly allows the theatre personnel and reviewers he quotes to present their judgements on the play's controversies without forcing his own strict opinions on the play and its interpreters. For example, he quotes the great American director Joseph Papp, the son of Orthodox Jewish parents, telling his Shylock, George C. Scott, in 1962, 'Never turn the other cheek . . . you want to hurt these people who have hurt you. Don't softsell it. People will understand your anger' (p. 61). In refus? ing to be strident, or to take sides, Edelman may seem invisible, but instead he offers his readers enough broad scope to consider all aspects of this play, especially as his discussions or reconstructions of past performances are vivid enough to make readers feel that they are watching them through him. His analysis (p. 77) ofthe 'electrifying' portrayal of Shylock in a 1995 New York production by Ron Liebman (now known best, perhaps unfortunately, for playing Rachel's obnoxious father in the television show Friends) is particularly thought-provoking. Edelman's textual annotations are, like his introduction, clear, readable, wellorganized , and sometimes wickedly funny, as in the descriptions (pp. 192-93) of Katharine Hepburn's attempts to play Portia on stage in 1957. These annotations will be especially useful to students, who often have a hazy concept of historicity and performance methods and a limited notion of how to conceptualize or interpret staging and characterization. But the explosion of new forms of media is making modern MLRy ioo.i, 2005 197 performance criticism a cutting-edge discipline. Thus Edelman's volume can provide teachers as well as students with an understated but elegant exemplar of how to read, direct, act, perform, and respond to The Merchant of Venice, a play fated to become more controversial and contentious as the years go by. University of Reading Grace Ioppolo ' Count erfeiting'Shakespeare: Evidence, Authorship, and John Ford's ' Funerall Elegy e\ By Brian...