The Merchant of Venice

With its powerful universal themes “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare – first performed in London in 1598 – it poses to contemporary audiences issues of absolute necessity: ethical clashes, social and interreligious relationships that have never been reconciled, love, hate, the value of friendship and loyalty, greed and the role of money.

È a fundamental text that the Teatro Stabile del Friuli Venezia Giulia together with the Centro Teatrale Bresciano and the Teatro de Gli Incamminati are producing in a new, refined production signed by Paolo Valerio: It is interpreted by a remarkable company of actors led by Franco Branciaroli, who gives a masterly performance in the role of Shylock, a multifaceted, mysterious figure, cruel in his thirst for vengeance, but who also arouses the spectators' compassion.

To him, a Jew, moneylender, turns Antonio, a rich Venetian merchant, who, despite having committed his wealth to risky trades, does not hesitate to act as guarantor for his friend Bassanio, who needs three thousand ducats to arm a ship and reach Belmonte, where he hopes to change his fate. Shylock, who has a grudge against the gentiles and a thirst for revenge for the contempt they show him, imposes a ruthless obligation. If the sum is not returned, he demands a pound of Antony's flesh, cut close to the heart.

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At the same time as the dastardly pact Antonio signs, other plot lines evolve, creating a dramaturgic architecture of symmetries and specularities dense with meaning.
There is the dimension of Belmonte, a sort of Arcadia where the noble Portia, obeying her father's wishes, will only give herself in marriage to the suitor who solves a riddle by choosing the right one from three caskets: Bassanio aspires to this and wins by opting for the poorest casket. Mirroring this is Jessica, Shylock's beautiful daughter, who instead betrays her father's aspirations, joins a Christian and escapes by stealing a ring that belonged to her mother. And if Portia and Bassanio decline their love in a “lofty”way; more popular but symmetrical appears the relationship between his friend – Graziano – and Nerissa, Portia's trusted maid.

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Sarà the highly intelligent lady “en travesti” to intervene as a lawyer in defence of Antonio, when the latter – having lost his ships – finds himself in the dramatic position of paying the bloody debt to Shylock. With witty arguments, he saves Antonio's life, punishes the moneylender's vengeful fury, secures Jessica's wealth and future, and even succeeds in reproaching her husband Bassanio for his lack of constancy.

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A changing and vibrant world of characters embodying anxieties, chiaroscuros and complexities of absolute modernity.
Piermario Vescovo in “A reading of “The Merchant of Venice” from its source” points out in fact «It only takes (…) a tiny portion of the entire extent of these motifs in the text to understand that Bassanio è the realisation of Antonio's desire for ‘nobility’ of Antony (including his expenditure of representation) and that Antony finds in turn – from the incomprehensible «sadness», neither mercantile nor amorous, which distances him from the interest in the offering of his flesh worthy of the ancient Roman virtue – a path to elevation. So much so, that the Antony who spits on Shylock's beard and robe and declares himself willing to do so even after the loan is lent is certainly different from the imprisoned Antony patiens who awaits his sentence, perhaps more Roman hero than Christian martyr.

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The young man, ‘soldier’ and ‘humanist’ who accompanied the Marquis of Monferrato, has therefore studied and behaves like a nobleman and will become one by marrying Portia, precisely not for a venal calculation that saves him from ruin or that still allows him to squander, but for a relationship that is explained only in symbolic terms. To marry Portia one must, in fact, be worthy of her, have ‘a kind heart’ which means – in the path devised by the former lord of Belmonte – to be able to prefer what apparently has no value (lead) to gold and silver: to be able to find the real treasure by not being fooled by appearances and especially by the misleading mottos of the caskets, which, as in a’‘enterprise’, accompany an’image (the’gold, the’silver, the’lead), with the characteristic that the mottos are here witty and not didactic, and therefore ‘treacherous’. He who wastes money or does not care for it is more apt than he who hoards it or wisely invests it in enterprise: this is the capital difference between Bassanio, Shylock and Antonio’.

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