15.1 Renaissance Society Guided Reading Activity Answers

[1] Norman Rabkin, �Meaning and Shakespeare,� Shakespeare 1971: Proceedings of the World Shakespeare Congress, ed. Clifford Leech and J. M. R. Morgan (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1972) 90; Harley Granville-Baker, Prefaces to Shakespeare, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1947) 345; Leslie Fiedler, The Stranger in Shakespeare (New York: Stein, 1972) 90.

[2] John Dover Wilson, ed., The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1926) 100.

[3] Quotations from The Merchant of Venice are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, et al., 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton, 1997) 284-319; quotations from The Jew of Malta are from the Revels edition, ed. N. W. Bawcutt (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1978).� These plays are cited parenthetically throughout.

[4] Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984) 207.

[5] J. L. Simmons, �Elizabethan Stage Practice and Marlowe�s The Jew of Malta,� Renaissance Drama ns 4 (1971): 104.

[6] �The will to play flaunts society�s cherished orthodoxies, embraces what the culture finds loathsome or frightening, transforms the serious into the joke and then unsettles the category of the joke by taking it seriously, courts self-destruction in the interest of the anarchic discharge of its energy.� This,� writes Greenblatt, �is play on the brink of an abyss, absolute play� (220).

[7] The phrase derives from Rowley�s 1609 play, A Search for Money: or, The Lamentable Complaint for the Loss of the Wandering Knight, Monsieur l�Argent, ed. J. Payne Collier (London: Percy Society, 1840) 19.

[8] On the �radical realism� of the stereotype, see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage-Random, 1979) 72.

[9] For, as Abigail poignantly avers, �there is no love on earth, / Pity in Jews, nor piety in Turks� (3.3.50-51).

[10] On the foetor judaicus in The Jew of Malta, see James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia UP, 1996) 36-37.� Marlowe ingeniously democratizes this myth by having Barabas smell out the two grasping friars before they arrive to blackmail him (4.1.21-23).�

[11] Cf. Marlowe 2.3.23-25; 2.1.47-54.

[12] This view is represented in Thomas Cartelli, �Shakespeare�s Merchant, Marlowe�s Jew: The Problem of Cultural Difference,� Shakespeare Studies 10 (1988): 255-60.

[13] M. M. Mahood, introduction, The Merchant of Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987) 8.

[14] Graham Holderness, The Merchant of Venice, Penguin Crit. Stud. London: Penguin, 1993.� xi-xii.�

[15] Ursula K. Le Guin, introduction, The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1969) xi.

[16] Frank Whigham, �Ideology and Class Conduct in The Merchant of Venice,� Renaissance Drama ns 10 (1979): 98-99.

[17] August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, trans. John Black (London: Bohn, 1846) 388.

[18] Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern, Shakespeare in Parts (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007) 195.

[19] Homi Bhabha, �The Other Question: Stereotype, Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism,�� The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994) 66.

[20] Bhabha 66.

[21] Mahood, for example, observes that �Shylock, for all his dramatic prominence, does not have a long part and makes only five appearances� (43).

[22] John Gross,� Shylock: A Legend and Its Legacy (New York: Simon, 1992) 64.

[23] Shapiro 132.

[24] Cf. 1.3.111-29, 2.8.14, 3.3.6-7, and 4.1.128-38.

[25] Louis Althusser, �Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation),� [trans. Ben Brewster], rpt. Slavoj �i�ek, ed., Mapping Ideology (London: Verso, 1994) 130-31.

[26] James S. Grubb, �When Myths Lose Power: Four Decades of Venetian Historiography,� Journal of Modern History 58 (1956): 43-44.�

[27] David C. McPherson, Shakespeare, Jonson, and the Myth of Venice (Newark: U of Delaware P, 1990) 36.

[28] Althusser 110.

[29] Gross 83.

[30] Gross 78.

[31] The phrase is from McPherson, who describes four strands of the early modern �Myth of Venice�: �Venice the rich,� �Venice the wise,� �Venice the just,� and �Venezia-citt�-galante� (27-48).

[32] Shapiro 189.

[33] Althusser 111.

[34] Althusser 112.

[35] They appear together in 1.1, 2.4, 2.7, 3.1, and arguably in 4.1 as well, though Salerio is the only one who speaks in the courtroom scene.� Salerio appears alone in 2.6 and 3.2, as does Solanio in 3.3.

Responses to this piece intended for the Readers' Forum may be sent to the Editor at M.Steggle@shu.ac.uk.