One of the fascinating qualities of Shakespeare’s work is that it somehow, quite effortlessly, provides confirmation of the reader’s own perceptions about people and the world. He accomplishes this, first, by peopling his imaginary worlds with the same plurality of viewpoints we experience in our lives, and, second, by avoiding any temptation to proselytize his own opinions in obvious ways. Above all, he writes as an observer rather than an evangelist. One consequence of that, however, is the difficulty of reaching some understanding of what he firmly believed and, therefore, what point--if any-- his plays try to make.
The effort to figure Shakespeare out has occupied a great many able commentators over the past 400 years, and his capacious perspectives have made him a much admired cultural icon in western literature. That, however, has begun to change. With a few notable exceptions, academic critics today emphasize the ways his work contributed to the prejudices that support the privileges western cultures have enjoyed at the expense of various minorities. Focused on characters like the Jewish moneylender, Shylock, the black protagonist of Othello, and the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, Farah Karim-Cooper’s The Great White Bard is one fairly typical example of that viewpoint which gains credence and authority from her former position as the London Globe Theater’s director of education and now as head of the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. While this approach to western literature and Shakespeare in particular may have some political and cultural value, I personally believe its quite inadequate as literary criticism which, to my mind, needs to elucidate the art and the artist, who inevitably has a worldview. Like all of us, Shakespeare did have his prejudices which are most obvious in Shylock, but to emphasize only that, as Karim-Cooper does, misses his dramatic purpose in The Merchant of Venice. That’s the point of my book, The Drama of Love and Desire: A Defense of Shakespeare’s Relevance. These blog posts are an attempt to rebalance our understanding of who Shakespeare was and what he was trying to tell us.
March 25, 2025
After a tentative start, the 2 OLLI sessions on The Merchant of Venice ended up being well-received by those who attended. We didn't avoid the play's antisemitism but leaned into that headwind and focused on the play's extensive examination of love and mercy as necessary expressions of generosity. Doing so helped explain the subtle thematic unity of the 2 seemingly disparate plots. Though one attendee thought the discussion could have benefitted from 3 rather than 2 sessions, most enjoyed the presentation and were eager for the next one, probably coming up during the winter and spring of 2026.
On a separate note, I'm contemplating changing the title of my book, which entails many behind the scene tasks, including removing it from all distribution channels for a short time. There are several reasons for doing so, besides the syntactical awkwardness of its current title which I never liked very much. In an effort to soften my disagreements with current scholarly trends, I've been reworking the preface and the introductory chapters, and the process of doing so has not only sparked a few other relatively minor changes to other chapters but has given me a much better hook into the imaginations of the readers I hope to attract. The title I'm thinking about is a much better reflection of that than the current one. So if you are looking to purchase a copy but don't find one on Amazon or B&N, try again a little later. Thank you for bearing with me through these changes.
