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Representing the outsider
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Shylock is one of the most controversial characters in theatre. Is he to be pitied as a victim of persecution or hated as a villain? UMA MAHADEVAN-DASGUPTA talks to Gareth Armstrong, whose one-man show tries to explain the enigma of Shylock.
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IT was a full house at Mumbai's NCPA Experimental Theatre that evening, despite the sudden bandh that left the city streets silent and empty.
Suddenly, in the midst of these troubled times, questions some 400 years old seemed to have gained even more significance: what is the root of discrimination; why do some groups of people feel compelled to persecute others?
And who, really, is the Jew Shylock? Is he merely the comic villain who loves his ducats more than his daughter, or is he the bitter and tragic victim of persecution? Only Tubal, the other lone Jewish character in the play and, indeed, in all of Shakespeare, can tell us. Tubal is Shylock's only friend.
It is through the device of Tubal's narration that British actor Gareth Armstrong, in his one-man theatre performance "Shylock", traces this story of rootlessness and persecution across 2,000 years — from Pontius Pilate washing his hands off his crime, to Adolf Hitler and his agenda of extermination; from the horror of Dracula to the wickedness of Fagin, and then, finally, the Wandering Jew. Figures, real and fictional, representing the different and disturbing ways in which society looked at these "outsiders" within its midst.
When I met Armstrong in Mumbai, he had just arrived in the city after performing in Ahmedabad. I asked him how the audiences there had received the play. "There was a very palpable effect," he said soberly, "There were certain lines of Shakespeare that came out with a different sound altogether."
Shylock is a relatively small part in Shakespeare, not as central or as fascinating as say Hamlet or Lear. And yet, the Jewish moneylender is arguably Shakespeare's and, indeed, theatre's most controversial character.
Over the centuries, the character has been portrayed by the finest actors of the day, and each portrayal has been coloured by the way in which Jews have been perceived by society at the time.
It was while researching the character for his own role as Shylock in a Salisbury production of "The Merchant of Venice", that Armstrong realised that Shylock's story deserved its own telling. "Until about the 19th Century, Shylock was played by actors wearing a false nose and a ginger wig (because Judas Iscariot was said to have had red hair).
Edmund Kean was the first actor not to do so. Assimilation began somewhere by the end of the 19th Century. Not to say there wasn't anti-Semitism all the same. Look at Dickens, for instance, who got into a lot of trouble with Fagin. He was first called `The Jew', which the Jewish community protested against as offensive, and then Dickens changed it to Fagin."
Born in Wales, Armstrong attended Hull University, from where he graduated in drama. After seasons with the National Youth Theatre, he began his professional career at the Leeds Playhouse, and then worked as actor in various regional theatres across Britain. He has played the gamut of Shakespearean characters, from Puck to Richard III, and Andrew Aguecheek to Macbeth.
Having been a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he is an associate artist at Salisbury Playhouse, where he played Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice".
With "Shylock", he has travelled to over 30 countries, taking with him a sobering message that speaks out against discrimination of any kind.
In collaboration with writer Stephen Davies, Armstrong's new project is entitled "Doctor Prospero". It is based on the story of the Elizabethan magus-doctor John Dee — alchemist, necromancer, astrologer to the Queen, and known for his white magic — who fell into disrepute because he believed he could talk to angels, and could learn the language of Heaven. Strange, the things for which society persecutes people.
A lesser-known paradox: officially, in the England of his day, Shakespeare wouldn't have met a Jew at all, because Jews were then forbidden to practise their religion in England. But he might have met some unofficially, for some remained hidden, covertly practising their faith. A cruel programme of persecution had driven most of them out, with the rest either converting or going into hiding.
The Welsh-born Armstrong is not Jewish. "In trying to explain the enigma of Shylock as I saw him, I can empathise with him, and what he goes through as a Jew." He sees Shylock's bitterness as a product of systematic persecution.
"Jews have always been portrayed as the archetypal `baddie'. To a Christian, the Jews are responsible for the death of Christ — which makes them guilty of the worst crime in history. It's also a handy way of putting down the unputdownable. Many Jews are very successful financially, after all. Having been rootless for 2,000 years, they must have needed to acquire certain characteristics. Above all, a resilience, and a tremendous sense of humour."
How did Shakespeare intend his character to be viewed, I asked the actor-director.
"Shylock was intended perhaps as a comic villain, I think. But implicit in the text is a sort of tragic dignity, because of the way he's treated. Not that his behaviour is to be condoned."
I asked him about how Jewish audiences had responded to the play.
"I was not telling them what they didn't know already. Jewish audiences aren't surprised by the play, but what sometimes surprises them is that I'm not a Jew. But one can be passionate about a subject that isn't part of one's own experience. That's what theatre is, after all."
So audiences still find the Bard relevant today? "Shakespeare is a wonderful storyteller. He spins a wonderful yarn, and his language is unsurpassed. He has something to say about everything, and says it better than anyone else. And ultimately there is something special about performing Shakespeare, taking his words from the page, onto the stage. When audiences see the plays and hear the words spoken, it adds something to their effect."
The play has taken Armstrong to countries across the world. "Shylock" is a political play, with the spotlight on the representation of the outsider in any community. I asked him how other audiences, especially in Europe and Israel, have received it. "There were silences of different kinds. There was guilt, there was remembrance." And at the Edinburgh festival, too, the play received a tumultuous response. And so it is that the prejudices and passions of Elizabethan England continue to ask questions of audiences four centuries later.
`The play, after all, is not just confined to anti-Semitism but about people who are different, and how societies treat them. The message is the same. When we try to marginalise and demonise them, they react."
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