Short-Ish Update

An excellent demonstration of my
time management skills this week.
Originally posted on Architorture School

This week has been a spectacularly bad week for me--I have a major test or project in every single one of my classes. I've managed to do a little work on this project, but not as much as I've wanted. This post is primarily to keep you appraised of my  progress, such as it is.

• I've been doing some research on different productions of The Merchant of Venice, and I found a paper about productions of Shakespeare in Nazi Germany. Fascinating stuff, but I felt like I needed a shower afterwards. Basically, the Nazis turned Shylock into either a comic stereotype, or an evil, destructive character. This was accomplished through variations in staging: for example, in one scene, two characters talk about Shylock's reaction to finding out his daughter has eloped and taken most of his fortune (he laments both the loss of his money and his daughter in equal measure); in at least one Nazi production, Shylock's lament was actually portrayed on stage. Other productions cut out his humanizing speech, and an "authorized" edition was eventually released by the Nazi's culture ministry.
• After reading about actor Anthony Heald for my last post, I looked around to see if I can find his contact information. Apparently, he's actually a big-time film star, so I wasn't able to find anything. However, he did a series of interviews about his portrayal of Shylock, which I found on youtube (which is almost as good, right?) He offered some fascinating insights, specifially:
• There was a trend in 19th-Century England(?) that cut Act V from the play, ending after Shylock is escorted off the stage, forced to convert to Christianity and give half his fortune to his mortal enemy. Heald claims that this portrayal shortchanges the play. I plan on doing some more research on this point, to see if I can verify this.
• Heald offered a new reading of the play, one which redeems Shylock even further, turning him from a villain into a sympathetic, betrayed character. This reading also makes his persecutors more sympathetic; Portia's finding of the loophole in his contract is an attempt to honorably allow him off the hook. I plan on re-reading the play with this interpretation in mind.
• I've been talking a bit with Nyssa about her project, offering her ideas and support. I don't know how helpful I've been, but I've been making an effort to follow her progress on both the blog and in-class. I also shared a fun little video that relates tangentially to her project: a student film called "Out of Sight."
• Even though I have only a few sources, I feel like I have a decent idea of the general "arc" of Shylock's various portrayals, at least in recent history. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where I can take it from here. In class, I plan on discussing my findings with others and searching for feedback, to see if there's something I can make out of all of this. 

See you all tomorrow!