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Al-Ahram Weekly 26 Aug. - 1 Sep. 1999 Issue No. 444 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 26 Aug. - 1 Sep. 1999 Issue No. 444
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Focus Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Plain talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
Arnold Wesker is one of the leading British dramatists, known for such plays as I'm Talking About Jerusalem, Roots, and Chips with Everything. He is of Jewish working class background, a devout socialist whose plays deal with the hopes and disillusions of the British socialist project. Sharp-tongued, he has had many a feud with critics who attack his plays. But above all Wesker is a fundamentalist Jew, a Zionist to the marrow. He has lately turned on Shakespeare, of all people, accusing him of anti-Semitism. His venom found yet another outlet recently, occasioned by a new production of The Merchant of Venice at the National Theatre in London. According to The Independent, Shylock is currently being rehabilitated in Trevor Nunn's revelatory National Theatre revival, but Wesker insists that the play's anti-Semitism renders it beyond redemption.
I saw the play a number of times during my stay in London. Second to Hamlet it is Shakespeare's most frequently performed work. In an Independent article headlined "Shame on you, Shakespeare" Wesker suggests reasons for the popularity of The Merchant of Venice. The play's fascination is manifold, he says. Actors and directors worldwide are thrilled by it as some old men are thrilled by a brazen whore whose reputation for wickedness promises fear.
Wesker continues with his argument, which falters embarrassingly at times. He accuses Shakespeare of two deadly flaws. First, Shakespeare chose to concentrate on the less important of the two major causes of antipathy towards Jews: their ability to handle money. And in doing this Shakespeare was, according to Wesker, being dishonest, since what he was actually targeting was something else -- what the playwright really resented was the cleverness of the Jews! Secondly, Shylock's much vaunted appeal -- "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?" -- is, according to Wesker, self-pitying, patronising, and deeply offensive. I still remember my professor at university explaining that Shakespeare was not a Jew hater, and that the bond of the pound of flesh was not his invention. Prior to Shakespeare's play there were many others that made a Jew their main character. There was, of course, Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, but long before that there was Ser Giovanni's Pecorone, collected in 1378 and published in 1554, as well as The Ballad of Gernutus the Jew of Venice.
Wesker believes in a kind of guilty conscience which, for the last 400 years, has led actors, directors and producers to try and soften the cruelty inherent in the character of Shylock, pointing always in his argument to the title in the first quarto edition of the play -- The Most Excellent History of the Merchant of Venice, With the Extreme Crueltie of Shylocke the Jew Towards the Said Merchant in Cutting a Just Pound of his Flesh.
Anti-Semites, Wesker says, feel comfortable with Shylock because he confirms the myth of which they are so fond. Yet Shylock is given lines of redemption and the anti-Semites can breathe freely as he utters his apologia and still enjoy their cherished image of the cruel Jew.
I remember a book by John Gross, the critic of The Sunday Telegraph, on the history of Shylock in performance. In one of the passages he writes, "Shylock is meant to be a villain, there can be arguments about his motives and personality, but there can be no serious argument about his behaviour." Gross goes on to defend Shylock and comes to the conclusion that Shylock belongs, inescapably, to the history of anti-Semitism. "At no point does anyone (or any character) suggest, that there might be a distinction to be drawn between his being a Jew and his being an obnoxious individual. The result is ugly... the ground for the Holocaust was well prepared."
And there goes yet another argument against anti-Semitism and bringing up memories of the Holocaust, which reminds me of what an English writer once said, If there were no Holocaust, Israel would have invented one.
