Blog Post: WTF, Will! parts 14 – 15

[From Our Blog]

New blog post by Vagabond Heart – discussions in this thread, please
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I’d now hit the stage where I was half enjoying this challenge and half wishing I hadn’t told everyone I was gonna do it. There were expectations, and I’m never good with those. But I knew many of the famous plays were on their way, so that was good.

14. The Merchant of Venice
Sadly, I was completely unprepared for the impact of this one. It was an odd, uncomfortable, and disturbing play to read in the current climate, with racism very firmly at its core.

First, we had a time when charging interest on moneylending was regarded as a sin by the Catholic Church. However, the Jewish people weren’t allowed to own land or work in government, and most craft guilds wouldn’t accept them. So moneylending was pretty much the only occupation left.

Then there was Antonio – depicted as a saint of a man in the rest of the play – who openly spat on and abused Shylock for the double ‘sins’ of being Jewish and a moneylender. So, just a knobhead then. It should come as no surprise that Shylock hated Knobby Mc Knobhead back, with an unflinching passion.

Although painted as a greedy, mean-spirited, Scrooge-like character, Shylock still got the best speech in the whole play: –

‘He hath disgraced me, and hinder’d me half a million; laught at my losses, mockt at my gains, scorn’d my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew.

Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?

If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.’

Great stuff, right? But this led to a crap bargain for both parties and the whole ‘pound of flesh’ thing kicked off.

As for the other main character, Portia, I was completely flummoxed. I’d genuinely no idea why she dressed as a man to go and be both prosecuting counsel and judge (no conflict of interest there then) in the Shylock/Antonio showdown.

And then Shylock was forced to convert to Christianity. Jeeeeesus! (see what I did there?)

3/10 because WTAF?



And then, oh joy, another frigging Henry. But I figured one of them must be good, right? And this one took me by surprise.

15. Henry IV part 1

It struck me that any play kicking off with a King saying, ‘well, everything’s peaceful here; let’s bugger off and assault the holy land’ will invariably include a messenger bouncing in from the side, muttering, ‘yeah, but there’s trouble out west’. Obvs.

And, of course, after that, all the usual ho hum.

But then I encountered Sir John Falstaff, who crops up in so many of the plays he got his own opera. Probably the first spin-off star, ever.

And, due mainly to the presence of said Falstaff, I learned more inventive insults than I thought possible. I made a list.

You got the usual adjective/noun pairings:
Fat-kidney’d rascal
Whoreson caterpillar
Bacon-fed knave (what did bacon do?)
Gorbellied knave
Fat chuff
Frosty-spirited rogue
Pagan rascal
Mad-headed ape
Clay-brain’d guts
Dried neat’s tongue
Naughty varlet (is there another kind?)
Gray iniquity (my new nickname)
Smiling pick-thanks
Base news-monger
Sneak cup
Soused Gurnet
Hot termagant

Then some that didn’t seem that offensive:
Lack-brain
Cuckoo
Sheath
Bow-case
Tailor’s yard
Eel-skin
Reverend vice
Father ruffian
Vanity in years
Stock-fish
Trunk of humours
Foot land-raker
Long-staff sixpenny striker
Bed-presser (?)
And my particular favourite: A bunch of radish (just, why?)

Then some with a bit more bite to them:
Bull’s-pizzle
Whoreson round man
Vile standing tuck
Old white-bearded Satan
Bolting-hutch of beastliness
Swoll’n parcel of dropsies
Huge bombard of sack
Stuft cloakbag of guts
Villainous, abominable misleader of youth
Whoreson, obscene, greasy tallow-keech

I rather liked the oddly specific: Roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly.

And a special shout-out should go to the rather wonderful: Mad mustachio purple-headed malt-worm. That’s a species that could give a Tardigrade a run for its money in the category of just plain weird.

But if none of those took your fancy, there’s always this mouthful: Leathern-jerkin, crystal-button, nott-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddies-garter, smooth-tongue, Spanish-pouch.

3/10 because Falstaff.



I sneaked a look at the next few pages and realised I was nowhere near done with the Henrys. But, on the upside, my repertoire of cuss words was getting hugely extended, so perhaps it was win-win after all.
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Get the discussion going – post your thoughts & comments in the thread below…
For more posts by Vagabond Heart click here WTF, Will! parts 14 – 15 – Litopia

https://colony.litopia.com/forums/how-to-start-your-own-writers-blog-on-litopia.182/

 

[mickleinapickle]

Shylock's famous speech can still move me to tears. It would be close to 10/10 for me. Old Will was about 500 years ahead of his time with that one.

 

[Vagabond Heart]

Yeah, I thought I'd like it more. But go and read it now, and see if that one speech is enough to cover all the weird injustice that jumps out. I was surprised by how nasty bits of it were.

 

[Sedayne]

I think fat chuff and mad-headed ape are still in use. Or maybe I just saw them in someone's medical notes somewhere.

 

[E G Logan]

I was surprised by how nasty bits of it were.

Before we 'did' (worked through the text of) the play at university, our Prof introduced it as a classic example of how Elizabethan expectations of characters were often quite different from those of present day readers/audiences.
I think most of us – those who hadn't already slaved over 'The Merchant' word by word at an 'A' level crammer, but had maybe only read it themselves (me, for one) – were startled, and probably woke up sharply, when the old boy said that in the days of Good Queen Bess Shylock would have been seen as a comic figure, and played for laughs! That, he said, was how Shakespeare intended it.

 

[Vagabond Heart]

Good grief, and yuk, and yet he still gives him that speech? Weird.

 

[E G Logan]

Weird.

It did seem so at the time, but it shines a different light on the character of Antonio, and what he's doing, which would not be seen by contemporary audiences as in any way reprehensible. (I always thought Bassanio was a drippy twerp, at the very least, and probably not much use to Portia.)

Remember: 'Oh, my daughter! Oh, my ducats!' That's Shylock the moneylender, the butt of all the revenge jokes. He rated them both equally and – what a laugh! – has now been robbed of both.

See it in context: Elizabethan theatre was nasty and weird... and lots of other things any one of which would get Our Will cancelled these days. Seems blood, gore, fantastic cruelty, not forgetting Revenge, was what the people in the pit wanted to see.