Why I believe Merchant of Venice should NOT be taught in schools.
Yes, I'm talking about the popular drama by Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Though it's a famous piece by a well known author, it isn't really a good study material. In this post, I'll write down in points why I think so.
1) It's practically a fanfiction.
Fanfiction, in popular terms, is a piece of work done by someone who is a fan of that particular work and wants to write something different based on those characters from that work. It's NOT the fan's original work, and the fan does NOT own that story.
The entire story plot for Merchant of Venice, as we may (or may not) know, has been taken from the original story "The Lady, The Pound of Flesh, And The Ring", written by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino in 1558 in Italian.
This is what we'd call 'plagiarism' in modern times. Sure, we don't know whether Shakespeare took Giovanni's permission or not while writing Merchant of Venice, but it doesn't really change the fact that he has, in fact, copied an entire plot.
And before you say, it's just an unfortunate coincidence, please read through the summary of "Il Percone" by Giovanni once. Both the stories are way too similar to be passed as mere coincidence.
I think it's not great for students to read this particular story because it gives the idea that plagiarism, or copying someone's work, is perfectly alright, not like it's illegal or anything.
2) Characterization.
All the characters in Merchant of Venice have their own attributes, but it's way too easy to notice that all the characters are extremely shallow, and have no specific qualities that make them stand out.
I'll start with Salerio and Solario. Both of them are side characters, and half of the time I can't even differentiate between them. Same with Launcelot and Old Gobbo and Lorenzo.
Then we have Lorenzo's wife Jessica. Shylock's daughter, loves a Jew, can be witty if she wants. That's all. She's the only side character whose personality shines a tiny bit even with the minimal amount of lines she has.
Then we have Portia and Nerissa. Thought she's the female lead of the drama, Portia has quite the dual nature. While she's shown to be very intelligent and reliable, when it comes to Bassanio, she's falling all over him, which quickly gets real annoying. Nerissa is that goody two shoes who obeys to all Portia's commands, even if she's a tad bit curious sometimes.
Now we come to Gratiano. He, by far, is the most annoying character in the story, who doesn't deserve all those large paragraphs given to him. He's supposed to be a jokester, but neither are his jokes funny, nor are there any good qualities about him. He just parrots everything that he hears, like a talking parrot.
All I can say about Bassanio is that he's the most reckless person, an unfaithful husband, and a greedy money shark. He appears to be all noble and self-sacrificing, but in reality, he's loves no one but the money. Why did he marry Portia? Cuz she has money!
To me it seems that the real antagonist is not Shylock but Antonio. From the moment he entered the scene he has done nothing but play the victim and verbally harass Shylock just because he's a Jew.
At last we have Shylock, the real antagonist of the story. He's by far, the only character, other than Portia, whose personality we can actually see, through his dialogues. While mostly we can see his vengeful nature in the story, we can see some of his other emotions and sides too.
Humans are complex creatures whom Shakespeare tried to put in specific boxes, creating within students the wrong idea of humans in real life.
3) Verbal harassment and Suicide baiting.
Now let's talk about some serious issues.
In Merchant of Venice, from the very beginning, we can see that there's a huge rift between Jews and Christians.
We can see that because of the minority of Jews, they're always object to verbal harassment by the Christians. In the court scene, we could clearly see everyone insulting Shylock, yet no one, not a single person, not even the Duke, stood up to him or defended Shylock.
Imagine staying in a place where you have exactly one ally and you get insulted everyday. We can't really blame Shylock for wanting revenge after being harassed like this for years.
And now, the thing that disturbed me the most. Suicide baiting. In the court scene, after Shylock lost the case, we can see multiple times that Gratiano did this horrible thing to Shylock. Here are few examples.
"Beg that thou may'st have leave to hang thyself...." - Act 4 Scene 1, line 362
"A halter gratis; nothing else, for God's sake!" - Act 4 Scene 1, line 377
Is it something students should learn? Is this appropriate?
Students, who are still children, not adults, are impressionable, and studying such material can be potentially dangerous for them. Instead of reading such questionable text, isn't it better to read something which can actually help them in real life too?
What does Merchant of Venice teach students? Showing cruelty but masking it as showing mercy? Seeing in the world in black and white, when there are thousands of shade out there? Defending the wrong side, even when they clearly in the wrong?
I'm not saying Shylock's completely innocent, but punishing him like that, is that called mercy?
I would ask everyone to think about it seriously and share your opinions.
