The Merchant of Venice
Director’s Notes 

So may the outward shows be least themselves—
The world is still deceiv’d with ornament…
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But being season’d with a gracious voice
Obscures the show of evil?

Act III, sc 2, The Merchant of Venice

Here are some of the questions I ask myself as I think about The Merchant of Venice:

• What issues and themes is Shakespeare examining in this play?
• What is the play’s core?
• What are the deeper observations Shakespeare’s making about the mercantile world?
• Who’s the central character within the play?  Shylock? Antonio? Portia?
• Who is Shylock?  Why is he in this play? How are we meant to see, read, hear, respond to him?
• What is true about this play today that was true in 1598 when the play was first written? 
  

Here’s what I know—clues, really, derived from studying the text:

• The play, in part, is about contracts: verbal commitments between friends, written contracts between enemies.
• Things are never what they appear to be—all that glisters is not gold.
• Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and sometimes those reactions are not so equal or opposite.
• Things are rarely what we expect or want them to be.
• The play shows us a highly sophisticated and diverse society of merchants, aristocrats, sycophants, servants—a society in which assimilation is of primary importance if one is to advance in the world.  When the desire for assimilation butts heads with those who assume entitlement—a classic case of the have’s and the have not’s—madness is not far behind in the breaking down of norms, be they civic, legal or personal.
• The cost of assimilation can be catastrophic in terms of one’s humanity, one’s morality, one’s perception of the world—one might even ask: what do we give up and what do we gain when we strive to thrive?
• The language of the play is at times irregular, broken, a-rhythmic—it is meant to resemble the rhythms of natural speech—real people thinking real thoughts in real time.  Rhyming couplets are held to a minimum, music is used to advance the narrative, the world is meant to be liquid, ever changing, cinematic, seen in close up, not long shot.
• The world of the characters is psychologically complex—these people are not what they appear to be—at times they are opaque, at other times transparent, translucent, evanescent.  They are subject to whim, impulse, fancy, deceived by their image of themselves and therefore vulnerable and unpredictable; at other times they are stubborn, intractable, recalcitrant.
• They are as modern as any character written by Ibsen, Strindberg, Pinter or Mamet—and as open to interpretation by Freud and Jung as they are by the Renaissance theory of humours.

      I think The Merchant of Venice is a deeply troubling and very modern play.  It raises as many questions—more perhaps—than it answers, but they are questions worth asking and answers worth seeking.

                   Sabin Epstein, Director

Download the Synopsis

Back to The Merchant of Venice Home Page