Say it ain't so: Shakespeare is racist

I didn’t read The Merchant of Venice very carefully at all when I was in high school. Otherwise I probably would have been horrified by how racist it is.

Here’s Shylock:

 

Signior Antonio, many a time and oft

In the Rialto you have rated me

About my moneys and my usances:

Still have I borne it with a  patient shrug,

(For suff-rance is the badge of all our tribe)

You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,

And spet upon my Jewish gaberdine,

And all for use of that which is mine own. (1:3)

 

            Shylock is just a businessman trying to make a ducat in the uncircumcised man’s world. The Christians think it’s wrong to loan people money at interest, but Jews aren’t allowed to own property, so what else can they do? And now Antonio and Bassanio come to him to borrow cash, and this is what Antonio responds to Shylock’s accusations:

 

I am as like to call thee so again,

To spet on thee again, to spurn thee too. (1:3)

 

            Shakespeare lived in an England where Jewish people were expelled from the country unless they converted to Christianity. A converted Jew was drawn and quartered after being convicted in a plot to poison the queen. Shylock is a comic villain, like Don John and Malvolio. He was probably played in a red wig with a false nose and was meant to be laughed at and ridiculed.

            Now, it’s possible that we should read The Merchant of Venice the way we read Huckleberry Finn, with an understanding that the author lived in a racist time and used words that we find offensive today. But there’s a difference. Huck Finn is a character better than the world that he lives in, we can see that Mark Twain’s intention was to criticize his America by telling the story of someone who sees the hypocrisies around him and decides for himself what is right.

            Here we are confronted with a play where the wise heroine dispenses justice and waxes eloquent on the nature of mercy, and then refuses to demonstrate any in her judgment. Not to mention that she’s racist herself. When Portia talks about her suitors, she dismisses each one with a racial stereotype.

             The Frenchman:

 

If a throstle sing, he falls straight a-cap’ring, he will fence with his own shadow. (1:2)

 

            The Scotsman:

 

He hath a neighborly charity in him, for he borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman, and swore he would pay him again when he was able. (1:2)

 

How does she like the German?

 

Very vividly in the morning when he is sober, and most vividly in the afternoon when he is drunk. (1:2)

 

            Okay, so the Arden and Riverside footnotes say these are all racial stereotypes of the era, but other than the drunk German one, they’re over my head.

Portia’s suitors have to choose between the three caskets if they want to marry her. One casket is gold, one silver, and one lead. If a suitor chooses the one with her picture inside then she has to marry them. So, the Prince of Morocco arrives. He is described as a “tawny Moor all in white.” Here’s what he says:

 

Mislike me not for my complexion,

The shadowed livery of the burnish’d sun,

To whom I am a neighbor, and near bred. (2:1)

 

            Mislike him not? Um, are you a white Venetian frat boy who wants to marry Portia for her cash money? No? Then I think you’re out of luck. Of course, the Moor chooses the gold casket, which is wrong, and this is Portia’s response:

 

A gentle riddance, -- draw the curtains, go, --

Let all of his complexion choose me so. (2:7)

 

            Blacks, Jews, Scottish dudes, Frenchies, Sheakespeare’s characters are racist against everyone. But here’s the thing: I think that’s okay.

            People are racist. It sucks. I think like alcoholism or drug addiction, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. 

I live in a city where there are tons of Armenian people. I was at the grocery store waiting patiently in line to pay, when an Armenian employee opened up a second register. I was the next person in line, but she didn’t wave to me. She waved to the Armenian guy behind me to come over to her register. My first thought was “That’s cool. They’re both Armenian. Gotta look out for your own.” Then I was like, “hold on, that’s exactly why it’s not cool!”

            That’s pretty tame racism, but I’m biracial and usually people look at me and aren’t sure what I am. That’s the benefit of a non-descript ethnicity, people don’t hate on me out of the fear of hating in the incorrect way.

            I know Shylock goes on this anti-racism diatribe:

 

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? (3:1)

 

            This is a great speech for equality, but in the context of the scene Shylock is using it as a justification for revenge. It continues:

 

And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. (3:1)

 

We all want to believe Shakespeare was the best guy ever. But this play is not a tragedy about Shylock’s loss of his daughter and religion that Pacino’s Shylock transforms it into. It’s a comedy and the audience was meant to cheer when Shylock is forced to convert to Christianity. I find it fascinating and heartbreaking that the only way to stomach this play in performance today is to contradict the original intention.

How troubling are our flawed heroes.

Every genius in the world wants a grain of salt, and every victory beckons a blind eye. If you dig too deep, you’ll find drugs and hate and infidelitous text messages. How many Shoeless Joe Jacksons and Bill Clintons pepper the annals of human greatness?

Our heroes are human. Shakespeare painted complex portraits of humanity. In order to do that he had to be a complex portrait of a human. He was flawed. I mean, didn’t he have Syphilis?

But then again maybe I’m wrong (maybe = probably).

Maybe Shakespeare’s genius was so advanced that he wrote a subversive comedy that could be played only one way in his time, all the while knowing that its subtext would survive to an era of improved tolerance. A day when at least we make a show of respecting everyone. Where performance is inverted so that conspiracies of spiteful xenophobia are locked in our lead caskets and the mask of compassion struts across the public stage to clamorous praise. Virtuous ornament is the false nose and curly red wig of the day.

Which era is more dangerous?

I’ll take the silent hate myself. If the problem is out there for everyone to see, it’s so much harder to ignore.

Richard II and Andrés Escobar

            In 1994, the US defeated Colombia 2-1, the first World Cup win for the US in 44 years. It helped the US to a glorious second round appearance in the first World Cup held on American soil.

            It was a marvelous victory. I was 16 when that game was played, and my soccer mania was at its apex. That day I had played soccer all afternoon at a camp run by a group of British players who were on the UW Green Bay Soccer team. And my dad and I were running clinics at elementary schools teaching basic soccer skills to kids aged 5-8 every morning, because we believed that American soccer could be better and we were doing everything we could to contribute. The next year Major League Soccer was launched in the US and expectations and execution by the men’s national soccer team has been on the rise ever since.

One of the goals in that match was an own goal accidentally knocked in by Andrés Escobar who was brutally murdered in Medellin after Colombia were eliminated in the first round, thanks to their loss to the US. Pele had previously predicted Colombia would win the entire tournament.

 

Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe

That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow. (5:6)

 

            In Richard II the King of England is deposed and murdered and there are 8 plays which chronicle the fallout of this deed.

            Bolingbroke (the future Henry IV) suspects that King Richard II was involved in the murder of his uncle, and he wants to get to the bottom of it. The play opens on his conflict with another nobleman, whom he accuses of being involved in the plot as well. The King – perhaps out of guilt – prevents these two nobles from satisfying their honor and dueling it out. Instead he banishes them.

            Bolingbroke’s father dies and predicts a lot of bad things in Richard’s future, and so Richard takes all of his property (which should pass to his banished son) and uses it to fund a war in Ireland. Richard is a terrible king, he is extravagant and wasteful and no one really likes him, but he’s the king, so what are you gonna do? Well, if you’re Bolingbroke, you raise an army and come back to England, and demand that he return your property and title and lift your banishment. And then you force him to abdicate the crown and you quietly have him murdered so that you can be king.

            Richard is put in a tough spot when he hears that Bolingbroke has returned with a big army, but his spinelessness is only matched by his eloquence when he turns on the pessimism:

 

No matter where – of comfort no man speak.

Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,

Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes

Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.

Let’s choose executors and talk of wills. (3:2)

 

            But even though Richard sucks and no one is going to be sad that he’s no longer king, everyone seems to know that a king is anointed by God and deposing one treacherously is going to invite some divine reckoning. The Bishop of Carlisle prophesies:

 

The blood of English shall manure the ground,

And future ages groan for this foul act,

Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels,

And, in this seat of peace, tumultuous wars

Shall kin with kin, and kind with kind, confound. (4:1)

 

            This proves true as there is civil unrest for the next many generations. Fathers fight against sons, sons against fathers and brother betrays brother one after another. King Richard himself warns Bolingbroke that he’s inviting bad times on England:

 

And though you think that all, as you have done,

Have torn their souls by turning them from us,

And we are barren and bereft of friends,

Yet know my master, God omnipotent,

Is mustering in his clouds on our behalf

Armies of pestilence, and they shall strike

Your children yet unborn and unbegot,

That lift your vassal hands against my head,

And threat the glory of my precious crown. (3:3)

 

            But Bolingbroke goes ahead, has the king and his advisers killed and starts the snowball rolling. At the very end of the play he expresses some regret:

 

Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe

That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow. (5:6)

 

            Is he really full of woe? Probably. Every one wants to win honestly and to achieve a greatness that they deserve, but most of us will take victory however we can get it, which is dangerous.

            The universe finds a way to balance itself. And retributive discord is the weight of celestial choice.

The day Andrés Escobar was killed my family and I were going to Chicago to see the second round match between Germany and Belgium at Soldier’s Field when the news came over the radio.

There was a moment of silence before the game began, and later in the day my dad asked me: “If you could change it, so that the US loses that game, and Escobar doesn’t get shot, would you?” It seemed like a terribly unfair question, but I thought about it, and before I could answer, he said, “You shouldn’t have to think about it.”

            I used to have a T-shirt with a quote from Bill Shankly, a famous British Football manager that said: “Soccer isn’t a matter of life or death, it’s much more important than that.” Soccer players often say that a big game is a kind of war, and if they’re American they’re dutifully reprimanded for the insulting comparison. In other countries they’re more understanding of the extreme simile.

            We didn’t kill Andrés Escobar. I don’t think American soccer is under a curse or part of some cosmic balancing act as a result of what happened to him the way the usurping House of Lancaster is in the Shakespearean histories. So is it wrong to think that when the US does lose games that other innocent lives are saved? In the next World Cup we lost to Iran 2-1 in a brutal game in France. What might have happened if the result had gone the other way? Impossible to know.

A goal was stolen from us by bad officiating when we played Slovenia, but Slovenia is a tiny country. The repercussions of soccer victories there could be life-changing, nation-saving. If Colombia had won the World Cup in 1994, what could it have meant to the citizens of that troubled nation?

            Didier Drogba of the Ivory Coast, became the first African player to ever score a goal against Brazil in the World Cup yesterday. He is playing with a broken arm. It is said that he once prevented civil war in Ivory Coast by asking that an important match be played in the north, even though he is from the south of Ivory Coast. It is likely that he will one day run for president of his country much like George Weah of Liberia, 1995 World Footballer of the Year.

            Soccer is an important force in the world. At 16 I may have been reluctant to surrender the memory of Tab Ramos and Tom Dooley racing around the Rose Bowl with American flags draped over their shoulders for anything, even the life of someone I never met. But my dad helped me put that into perspective.

There are more important things than being kings of world soccer. If someone had taught Bolingbroke a parallel lesson, maybe England would have avoided a great bloody brouhaha for 86 years.

I guess no matter how hard we try, men have a tendency to take some things way too seriously.  

Andrés Escobar

I just read King John, now I want to go see Robin Hood

Did you see Robin Hood?

            I didn’t. I heard it was boring. But I’m thinking about going to see it because it takes place at around the same period in history as Shakespeare’s King John.

            Shakespeare’s King John is the self same evil Prince John of Robin Hood lore, younger brother of Richard the Lionheart. You remember him, he was played by a skinny lion in the Disney cartoon, by Claude Rains in the Errol Flynn version, and of course by Richard Lewis in Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

            In some of these versions of the classic tale, Robin Hood is depicted as a commoner who stands up for his fellow commoners. Sometimes he is depicted as a nobleman, Robin of Loxley. Sometimes he is even depicted as an American who built a baseball field and made friends with the Sioux before growing gills.

            I just checked the world’s most reliable source of information (Wikipedia) and learned that in the new Russell Crowe movie he is a commoner who assumes the identity of a nobleman. This tricky elevation to nobility twist resonates with the Shakespearean character of Philip the Bastard of Falconbridge, who becomes Sir Richard Plantagenet when King John recognizes him for who he really is... the bastard son of Richard the Lionheart.

            King John begins with some difficulties at court. It’s the early 13^th century AD and France and England are at it again. You see, John became King after his brother –Richard the Lionheart – died, but he wasn’t technically next in the line of succession. The next was their middle brother Geoffrey (who was never king, because he died in the middle of Richard’s reign). However, Geoffrey had a son named Arthur. And France believes that Arthur should be King, and they’re ready to go to war over it, because the French are never happy unless they’re getting their asses kicked in something (this is called Ennui). 

            King John sends a messenger to France to tell them that he’s not going to be pushed around (“Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France” 1:1). And Eleanor, his mother, gives him some advice:

 

This might have been prevented and made whole

With very easy arguments of love,

Which now the manage of two kingdoms must

With fearful bloody issue arbitrate. (1:1)

 

            A few seconds later the play gets really interesting when two brothers show up. One says that the other is a bastard and has no claim to their father’s lands. King John and his mother take one look at the bastard and observe:

 

Mine eye hath well examined his parts,

And finds them perfect Richard. (1:1)

 

            And sure enough, Philip the Bastard is the bastard son of King Richard the Lionheart. Taking his mother’s advice in favor of arguments of love, the King is quick to knight him and take him into close counsel. After all, his brother was a stalwart hero of England, and his offspring will hopefully demonstrate the qualities that England sorely wants in a time of national crisis.

            Although the Bastard is knighted Sir Richard Plantagenet, it’s interesting that his name never changes in the script. In most of the histories the characters’ names change when their titles change. Richard III begins his play as the Duke of Gloucester, and the dialogue is labeled as Gloucester until he finally becomes king and the script changes to K. Richard. But the Bastard remains dutifully: Bastard.

            He goes on to inspire the people of England, to lead them in battle and to quip in colloquial asides to the audience. He is utterly likable and heroic, and he never complicates the issue of succession despite his tenuous claim to the crown as the son of the great King Richard. He is humble enough to revel in the position of honor that was unexpectedly bestowed upon him by his uncle, King John, to whom he shows unwavering loyalty. The Bastard even given provides the rousing, nationalistic speech at the very end of the play:

 

This England never did, nor never shall,

Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,

But when it first did help to wound itself.

Now these her princes are come home again,

Come the three corners of the world in arms,

And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,

If England to itself do rest but true. (5:7)

 

King John dies, having been poisoned by a monk, and his son, Henry III takes over as King. This speech brings closure to the play, because it assures us that the Bastard is interested only in the preservation of England and not in generating civil strife by using his hard-won soldier’s popularity as fuel for a campaign for the crown.

            What seems odd to me is that this Shakespearean creation of the Bastard son of Richard the Lionheart never stood as a model for Robin Hood in any of the different versions of Robin Hood I’ve seen.

Robin Hood was a folk hero from long before Shakespeare’s time and the bard must have been familiar with him and the way in which Bad King John was always cast as the villain in these tales.

            I wonder if there is a reason Shakespeare would tiptoe up to a folkloric hero like this and not introduce him in this story? Given his harshly biased portrayal of Joan of Arc in Henry VI Part 1, one might suspect that there was a great disdain of characters who were rebellious against British Monarchy. We know Elizabeth attended many of Shakespeare’s plays, if not all of them, and it wouldn’t be ridiculous to think that he was compelled to promote the greatness of the monarchy and to minimize romantic notions of rebellion.

Of course there is also the theory that Elizabeth herself is one of the actual writer’s of Shakespeare’s plays, but I haven’t done sufficient research into the authorship debate to scoff at this theory publicly.

            Robin Hood isn’t the only interesting omission in King John. John is perhaps most famous historically for being pressured into recognizing the Magna Carta, which limited Royal power by stating that even a king was bound by law. This monumental event should have taken place somewhere in the middle of Act 5. Was Shakespeare intentionally avoiding bringing attention to this important accomplishment?

The evolution of constitutional law and the redistribution of wealth are modern ideas that we might like to ascribe to Shakespeare, who is often credited with unparalleled wisdom and wit. But the fact of the matter is that he was a popular playwright and poet in a certain era. If he were around today he might be writing sex comedies for Jonah Hill. They’d probably be really good sex comedies, but I doubt they would mention the Magna Carta either, which was old news even back in the 1590s.

In any case, now I feel like going to see Robin Hood, but I’ve waited this long… Maybe I’ll just get Prince of Thieves from Netflix. It’ll be nice to see an American kicking some English ass instead of drawing even on the luckiest goal in history.

          I guess we'll take whatever we can get.

A Midsummer's World Cup Dream

            In 2002 the World Cup was played in South Korea and Japan. Which meant that the earliest games of the day were broadcast live starting at 2:30am. At the time I was working three jobs from 6am until 8pm and playing pick up soccer nearly every night.

            Ducks can sleep with only one half of their brain at a time. They have one eye open and one half of their brain awake to watch for predators. I’m pretty sure my brain developed this ability during the 2002 World Cup. I saw every one of those games. 

           With half my brain asleep, watching soccer on Univision became a more immersive experience. I could hear the roar of the crowd in the hum of my ceiling fan, and feel the eruption of heat from the dancing fans after each goal in all the warm Wisconsin breezes that came in my open bedroom window like wind off fairy wings.

            Wondrous things would happen. Turkey went up one-zero over Brazil just before half time. The US nearly won its group by defeating the host country, South Korea, only to be undone by a goal in the 78^th minute. The Korean team celebrated by re-enacting the famous disqualification of a South Korean ice skater at the hands of Apolo Ohno in Short Track at the Olympics earlier that year. Vengeance.

            I loved soccer so much.

            Boys love sports. And we dream of being pro ball players. It’s a hard day when you have to admit that you're never going to make it to the big leagues. And yet I wonder… maybe I shouldn't give up on that dream just yet. Stranger things have happened.

            Take Nick Bottom for example.

            Bottom is nothing more than a humble weaver, when he’s recruited to act in a performance for the noble Duke Theseus’s wedding. Not just act – mind you – he’s taking the lead role of “Pyramus, a lover that kills himself most gallant for love.”

 

That will ask some tears in the true performing of it.

If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes: (1:2)

 

            Nick’s enthusiasm for this opportunity is apparent when the bellows-mender is reluctant to take on the female lead, Nick Bottom asks to play that role as well.

 

Let me play Thisbe too.

I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice: “Thisne,

Thisne! – Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear! Thy Thisbe

dear and lady dear!” (1:2)

 

            Of course he can’t play both of the romantic leads, that would be ridiculous, but when he hears there’s to be a lion in the show –

 

Let me play the lion too. I will roar, that I will do

any man’s heart good to hear me. I will roar, that I

will make the Duke say: “Let him roar again; let

him roar again!” (1:2)

 

            Bottom wants nothing more than to do a good job in this, his debut performance, but Puck comes across the ramshackle troupe in rehearsal and transforms Bottom’s head into an the head of an ass. And fate carries him to the sleeping place of the Fairy Queen, Titania, whose husband has spread a love potion on her eyes so that she might fall in love with the first creature she lays eyes on. She wakes and sees ass-headed Nick Bottom and she declares her love to him. Nick takes it all in stride when she swears she loves him:

 

Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for

that. And yet, to say the truth, reason and love

keep little company together nowadays. The more

the pity that some honest neighbours will not make

them friends. (3:1)

 

            Nick is not amazed or thrown off. He is simple and even if he suspects Titania might be messing with him, he doesn’t seem to care. Stranger things have happened… probably.

            When Bottom awakes, his old head intact, and the love of Titania evacuated, he attributes the night’s miracles to dreamwork. But his confidence is elevated because of the brush with immortality and the love of an important lady, and his theatrical ambitions skyrocket:

 

The eye of

Man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen,

Man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive,

Nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I

will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this

dream: it shall be called “Bottom’s Dream,” because

it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end

of a play before the Duke. (4:1)

 

            When we’re young we have to establish the limits of reality. I remember believing that dinosaurs had existed just before I was born. And then we establish the limits of our individual abilities (I was never going to sing opera or slam dunk). The world seems to get smaller and smaller as we age and focus our ambition. Hats off to the Nick Bottoms of planet Earth who are unafraid to tackle new opportunities with gusto.

            Seeing Edson Buddle play in this World Cup is going to be a particularly satisfying experience. He is a 28 year-old forward with only three international appearances under his belt. But he scored a plethora of goals for the LA Galaxy early this season and last weekend he scored 2 in the US’s final warm-up before playing England. 2 goals in 3 appearances. 28.

            Roger Milla came out of retirement at age 38 to play in the 1990 World Cup for Cameroon, who qualified for the first time ever that year. He scored 4 goals and led his team to the quarterfinals. Pele listed him as one of the 100 best footballers of all time.

            I’m 32 now. I’ve got 4 years until Brazil 2014. I'll be a full two years younger than Roger Milla was when he made his World Cup debut.

            This year, the World Cup is coming to us from South Africa. The games are going to start at 4:30 am pacific time. It looks like my old skills of watching the games with half of my brain are going to be called into action again.

            But maybe this year the sleeping half of my brain can dream a little harder. Or with a transformative visit from a meddling Puck, I can take on a different head. And instead of just feeling like part of the crowd... in my room a soccer pitch will grow... until the walls turn into the stadium all around. And I’ll be on the field, serving up crosses that sail through night and day and in and out of weeks; only to be headed home by Buddle and Messi and Torres.

            My soccer will be a roar, and it will do any man’s heart good to see us score. I will roar and make the world say: “Let him roar again; let him roar again!”