ENG220H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Greeting Card
Document Summary
A production can change a number of variables- the size of the audience, their treatment of shylock, How much of this is about shylock the character, a blocking figure, and how much of it is about the jew". Play produces an interesting figure of female agency in portia, but her prowess, her wit, the way that she takes over the trial scene, gets antonio free, and then pushes further. We want to appreciate her triumph, even as the play pushes on the stakes of that. The exchange with rings to get back to the marriage plot. In england, jews have been officially banished 300 years earlier, where king james borrowed money from wealthy jews to pay his war, and then banished them so he wouldn"t have to pay it back. In italy they banished all the jews who refused to be baptised.
