Trying to Return The Merchant of Venice to Comedy Was Not Funny

Jan 29, 2025 by Two Sues On the Aisle

By Two Sues on the Aisle, Susie Rosenbluth and Sue Weston (Updated January 29, 2025)

It’s hard to castigate a director who wants to present a Shakespearian play in a production that might represent what the Bard had in mind when he wrote it. Hard—but not impossible.

The Merchant of Venice, produced recently by the Classic Stage Company at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater in New York, is a good example. Written as a comedy sometime between 1596 and 1598, The Merchant, these days does not dredge up images of drollery, satire, or farce. Unless it seems, the director is Igor Golyak, who also adapted the play for this production.

Mr. Golyak, whose New York production before The Merchant, was the dizzyingly powerful and important Our Class, decided to set the controversial Shakespearian play as though it were taking place in a nightclub showcasing poor late-night comedy. That might have been interesting had Mr. Golyak trusted Shakespeare to make the leap dramatically, retaining the original dialogue. But he didn’t. Perhaps Mr. Golyak thought Shakespeare just wasn’t funny enough.

Comedic Elements

From the beginning, Shylock the Jew played a major part in the play, but he wasn’t the title character. The merchant is Antonio, a Venetian businessman who takes out a large loan from the Jewish moneylender on behalf of his dear friend, Bassanio, who needs the money to woo the wealthy Portia. The unfortunate loss of his ships at sea, causes Antonio to default on the loan, for which he has already pledged “a pound of flesh.”

According to all reports, The Merchant was originally played for laughs, especially the romantic turns between Bassanio and Portia, who, towards the end of the play, dresses up as a young male lawyer to present the legal arguments to save Antonio from death. Although she is sufficiently smart and learned to pull this off, Shakespeare still has her become almost a caricature of sit-com humor when, for no dramatic reason, she puts her husband-to-be in the silly predicament of explaining why he gave up a ring he promised never to remove from his finger.

And all this while Shylock is portrayed as a malignant villain, a repulsive clown, worthy of the audience’s jeers when, to save his life, he is forced to convert to Christianity.

Photo by Pavel Antonov

Antisemitic?

This raises the question: Was Shakespeare an antisemite? It’s hardly likely that he hated any individual Jews; he probably didn’t know any. The England in which he lived had no Jews—except for a few secret ones who may have slipped into the country from elsewhere to do business or serve as physicians to those able to afford to smuggle them in. Jews had been expelled at the end of the 13th century. There is no indication that the Bard, who wrote to please his audience, had any intention to serve as a defender of the oppressed Jews.

Some modern scholars have suggested the playwright was being ironic in his treatment of Shylock, showing how hypocritical the Christians were in the face of a Jew who had been abused both socially and legally. It’s not an unreasonable assumption given the details at the beginning of the play when Antonio first applies to Shylock for the loan. The Jew doesn’t want anything to do with the man, for Antonio had already antagonized Shylock, taunting him and shaming him publicly—activities considered perfectly normal to the Elizabethans.

Appealing as some find this theory, Shakespeare, in all likelihood, wasn’t trying to engender sympathy for Shylock. Irony is not an outstanding element of any Shakespearean plays. No, in Shylock, Shakespeare was giving his audience a villainous, usurious Jew whose rage against Christian society prompted him to want to kill. But while the Bard’s contemporary playwright Christopher Marlowe, could present a cardboard monster in The Jew of Malta, Shakespeare was unable to produce a two-dimensional character, not even a villain. To make good theater, Shylock had to be human—with relatable feelings that the audience could share. He does that in the famous “Hath not a Jew eyes” speech, a soliloquy that has made the part a prize sought by many actors over the centuries.

No Longer a Comedy

Ever since 1814, when the small-statured British actor Edmund Kean sympathetically portrayed Shylock with dignity, virtually no one has considered The Merchant to be a comedy. If Shylock wants the law to allow him to kill Antonio, the actors playing the character portray him as tragic, dignified, and abused.

Mr. Golyak doesn’t seem quite sure what to do with him, so, in New York, Richard Topol underplayed him, even his famous speech, which left many in the audience squirming, especially in light of the acrobatic high jinx going on across the stage at the same time.

Yes, The Merchant was written as a comedy—some say Shylock’s forced conversion at the end was considered a happy ending; after all, it means the Jew is “saved” and can go to heaven —but it is no longer viewed as such. To modern eyes, the villains are Christian society and, especially, Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, who, for reasons never explained (because, presumably, they would be self-evident to the Elizabethans) converts to marry an unpromising Christian and, in the process, steals and squanders her father’s money and makes of mockery of him.

That Shakespeare intended The Merchant to be funny just goes to show that sometimes the creation takes on a life of its own, one more powerful than perhaps the creator intended.

Two Sues on the Aisle bases its ratings on how many challahs (1-5) it pays to buy (rather than make) to see the play, show, film, book, or exhibit being reviewed.

The Merchant of Venice received 3 challahs for effort

Run Time: 2 hours 50 minutes, including intermission