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Monday, December 15, 2008

Books / Theater Shylock Was Right

Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 4:16 PM

The New Yorker reports on a retrial in the Shylock "pound of flesh" case from The Merchant of Venice.

“Lawyers were one of the first groups, along with theatre directors, to see Shylock’s position,” Weisberg, who takes a pro-Shylock reading of the play, said last week. “Shylock really has the best lines—there isn’t a lot of argument about that—but in the nineteenth century a prominent German legal philosopher, Rudolf von Jhering, was among the first to argue that he actually had the better legal case.” This was an exhibition hearing (Weisberg arranged a similar one for Melville’s Billy Budd in 2006), but the legal lineup was extremely legit. Hearing the case: the First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams; Jed S. Rakoff, a federal district judge in New York; Justice Dianne T. Renwick, of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court; the federal appeals-court judge Richard Posner; the Columbia literature professor Julie Peters; Bernhard Schlink, the law professor and novelist; and Anthony Julius, best known as Princess Diana’s divorce lawyer.

Merchant of Venice is my favorite Shakespeare play, as I've written before. The trial, I think, is the least interesting part of it, although Portia's speech is pretty goddamned good. You can read the verdict here. And here is Al Pacino performing a monologue as Shylock from the so-so 2004 movie:

Comments (3) RSS

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The punchline is the best:

"This is one of those cases in which we’ve just heard very fine lawyers argue the cases, but the litigants are all disreputable people. This is often true, particularly in the twenty-first century."

Posted by Greg on December 15, 2008 at 4:42 PM

"If I chew the scenery, do you not wince?"

Posted by Uncle Vinny on December 15, 2008 at 4:53 PM

The thing that gets the heart of the matter is that Skylock's case is legally sound with regards to the letter of the law, but violates the spirit of the law so grossly that allowing him to have his way would be a miscarriage of justice for the ages. I felt that Portia was too hard on Shylock, but she was completely right to stop him from getting his pound of flesh. In modern times, it would have been thrown out as an unenforceable contract. Portia was also quite correct to charge Shylock with attempted homicide- on that charge he was manifestly guilty.

I sympathize with Shylock as a person and I see where he is coming from, but his behavior- trying to use legal machinations to commit and get away with murder- is indefensible.

Posted by east coaster on December 16, 2008 at 10:18 AM