My Merchant of Venice Challenge Project

          For my Merchant of Venice Challenge Project, I partnered with Morgann, and we designed props and costumes for the Portia-Suitors scene. I sketched my designs for the costumes, and she made a sketch of her vision of the set and 3d designs of the chests. We also wrote an expository essay on why costumes, sets, and props are important in the Merchant of Venice, and specifically in this scene. I think that the creative/visual portion of our project turned out really well. We both worked really hard on it and I think they looked really good, and we had pretty solid reasons behind all of our artistic choices. I think our paper turned out all right too, but it could have been better. Also our process of writing the paper needs a lot of work. I think in the future, our paper will turn out much more smoothly connected if we improve the process of writing it by sitting down together and writing the outline step by step starting with the introduction and thesis. If this part of the writing process is more organized, our separate parts will connect more because we will both be clear what the other is writing, and how to connect our parts to it.

Why are there so many characters?

         In the Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, there are a lot of characters. There are a few small ones like Tubal and Old Gobbo, but there are also a lot of big characters, like Salario, Salanio, and a few other of Antonio's friends, that do not seem like they are that important to the story. My question is Why did Shakespeare write all these big parts in his play? I think that one of the main reasons is to make the main characters seem more real, for example, in real life, Antonio would probably have a lot of friends like he did in the play, and Portia would have maids like she did in the play. I think this reality could be achieved without all Antonio's friends being such big parts. If most of them showed up a couple times in the play, but were not huge parts, it would not change the play very much, and it would make it much more clear to the audience. Another reason Shakespeare might have written all these characters as big parts is because he wanted it to be a complicated and interesting story, but I think he has enough interesting plot lines going on in the play, that he could have achieved this complicated play with a few less seemingly unimportant characters.
          These characters may only seem unimportant to me, because I am sure Shakespeare had a reason to write them all, I think it would be helpful to me, and other audiences if he had written a little more about them to show their importance.

Is the Social Order Restored?

          In Shakespearean plays, there is social order at the beginning and the end. The social order in the beginning of the Merchant of Venice, included things like Christians had more power than Jews, Women had no power, etc. But in the end of the play, I don't think the social order was fully resolved. Part of it, Christians having more power than Jews, was still true in the end, but another important part of the social order, men being in charge and women having little or no power, did not get resolved in the text. I think that at the end of the Merchant in Venice, Portia and Nerissa, the women, still had the upper hand. In the end of the text, they were threatening their husbands because they had lost the rings, and they were talking about things they would do when their husbands weren't home, showing that the men did not really have control over them. To the audiences back in the 1600s though, this would not make sense. I think that although this aspect of the social order does not get resolved during the text, the way it was performed in the 1600s would probably imply it gets resolved after the text.

Shylock's Big Speech

          On page 49 of the Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, Shylock, the Jewish father of Jessica, gives a speech, making the point that just because he is a Jew, it does not make him any less a human than the Christians. Many people think that this is a strange speech for Shakespeare to write into his play, because up until then, Shylock was portrayed as an antagonist, and was picked on by the other characters because he was Jewish, and in the time period that this was written, that would seem completely normal. But, as I have heard so many times, Shakespeare does not write black and white characters. Shylock only seemed bad because other people spoke badly of him, but I think it is possible that Shakespeare wrote this speech, and everything else Shylock said to the other characters, and the other characters said to him to show that the other characters were not all good. It makes you wonder if the supposed protagonist and his friends are really all that good, and it makes you sympathize with the character that had seemed the antagonist up to this point. It also gives the play an unexpected twist, making it much more interesting. Especially since this is during the climax of his play, I think Shakespeare purposefully wanted to have some unexpected character development, that contrasts with what previously went on, and sheds light on hidden aspects of some of the characters.