< Return to Video

Shakespeare, Marlowe, and their Jews | John Kleiner | TEDxWilliamsCollege

  • 0:10 - 0:13
    Marlowe and Shakespeare walk into a bar...
  • 0:13 - 0:14
    (Laughter)
  • 0:14 - 0:16
    So runs the beginning of the joke
  • 0:17 - 0:20
    that Tom Stoppard concocted in 1997
  • 0:20 - 0:21
    about playwriting.
  • 0:22 - 0:24
    Stoppard was at that point
  • 0:24 - 0:27
    working on the screenplay
    for "Shakespeare in Love,"
  • 0:27 - 0:29
    a film that, to a remarkable degree,
  • 0:29 - 0:33
    concerns itself with the kind of questions
    usually left to literary critics.
  • 0:34 - 0:36
    Why did Shakespeare become
    a tragic dramatist?
  • 0:37 - 0:39
    Where did he find his voice?
  • 0:39 - 0:42
    Where did the idea
    for "Romeo and Juliet" come from?
  • 0:43 - 0:45
    In the end, "Shakespeare in Love"
    answers these questions
  • 0:45 - 0:48
    along fairly conventional Hollywood lines.
  • 0:49 - 0:51
    Love, it turns out, is the answer.
  • 0:52 - 0:55
    Love, it turns out, explains
    Shakespeare's genius.
  • 0:56 - 0:58
    But, before the movie gets there,
  • 0:58 - 1:00
    Marlowe and Shakespeare walk into a bar...
  • 1:00 - 1:03
    (Video) Shakespeare:
    And the chinks to show for it.
  • 1:03 - 1:05
    I insist -- and a beaker for Mr. Marlowe.
  • 1:06 - 1:08
    I hear you have
    a new play for the Curtain.
  • 1:09 - 1:11
    Marlowe: Not new... my "Doctor Faustus."
  • 1:11 - 1:13
    S: I love your early work.
  • 1:13 - 1:16
    "Was this the face
    that launch'd a thousand ships,
  • 1:16 - 1:19
    and burnt the topless towers of ilium?"
  • 1:19 - 1:21
    M: I have a new one
    nearly finished and better:
  • 1:21 - 1:24
    "The Massacre at Paris."
  • 1:25 - 1:26
    S: Good title.
  • 1:26 - 1:28
    M: Hum... yours?
  • 1:29 - 1:31
    S: "Romeo and Ethel:
    the Pirate's Daughter."
  • 1:33 - 1:35
    Yes, I know, I know...
  • 1:35 - 1:37
    M: What's the story?
  • 1:38 - 1:39
    S: Well, there's this pirate...
  • 1:43 - 1:45
    In truth, I have not written a word.
  • 1:46 - 1:48
    M: Romeo...
  • 1:48 - 1:51
    Romeo is Italian,
  • 1:52 - 1:53
    always in and out of love...
  • 1:54 - 1:56
    S: Yes, that's good... until he meets...
  • 1:57 - 1:58
    M: Ethel...
  • 1:58 - 1:59
    S: Do you think?
  • 1:59 - 2:00
    M: The daughter of his enemy.
  • 2:00 - 2:02
    S: The daughter of his enemy.
  • 2:02 - 2:05
    M: His best friend is killed
    in a duel by Ethel's brother
  • 2:05 - 2:07
    or something. His name is Mercutio.
  • 2:07 - 2:08
    S: Mercutio...
  • 2:08 - 2:09
    Good name.
  • 2:09 - 2:11
    A man: Will, they're waiting for you.
  • 2:11 - 2:12
    S: Yes, I'm coming.
  • 2:13 - 2:15
    Good luck with yours, Kit.
  • 2:18 - 2:23
    John Kleiner: This fall I ran a tutorial,
    that was in my own mind at least,
  • 2:23 - 2:25
    a restaging of Stoppard's joke.
  • 2:26 - 2:29
    Every week Marlowe and Shakespeare
    walked into my office.
  • 2:29 - 2:33
    Every week we brought
    the two playwrights into contact.
  • 2:33 - 2:36
    Over the term we read
    four Shakespeare's plays,
  • 2:36 - 2:40
    four Marlowe's and their
    too long narrative love poems:
  • 2:40 - 2:43
    "Venus and Adonis," "Hero and Leander."
  • 2:43 - 2:45
    The point of the tutorial
  • 2:45 - 2:49
    was not to prove anything particular
    about Marlowe or Shakespeare,
  • 2:49 - 2:50
    but to run an experiment:
  • 2:51 - 2:54
    what happens when these two playwrights,
  • 2:54 - 2:56
    who lived side by side
  • 2:56 - 3:00
    and who may or may not ever
    have met each other,
  • 3:00 - 3:03
    are read side by side?
  • 3:03 - 3:07
    What happens when Marlowe
    and Shakespeare walk into a bar?
  • 3:07 - 3:11
    Today I'm going to restage Stoppard's joke
    in a slightly different form.
  • 3:11 - 3:15
    I'm going to put into
    conversation two passages:
  • 3:15 - 3:18
    one representing Marlowe,
    one representing Shakespeare,
  • 3:18 - 3:20
    and see what they have
    to say to each other.
  • 3:24 - 3:26
    The passage on your left
    comes from Marlowe.
  • 3:26 - 3:30
    It is from his 1589 play,
    "The Jew of Malta."
  • 3:31 - 3:33
    And it features the play's eponymous hero,
  • 3:33 - 3:36
    a Jewish merchant named Barabas.
  • 3:37 - 3:41
    Barabas is, when the play begins,
    fantastically wealthy,
  • 3:41 - 3:44
    far and away the richest man
    in all of Malta.
  • 3:44 - 3:47
    So great is Barabas' accumulated wealth
  • 3:47 - 3:49
    that, in the play's opening speech,
  • 3:49 - 3:52
    he says he finds
    the counting of it tedious.
  • 3:53 - 3:57
    Then, barely a hundred lines
    into the play, Barabas loses everything.
  • 3:58 - 4:01
    His ships, his goods, his wealth,
  • 4:02 - 4:04
    they're all stripped from him.
  • 4:04 - 4:08
    He is turned out of his house,
    which is converted into a nunnery.
  • 4:08 - 4:11
    This happens because
    the Christians of Malta
  • 4:11 - 4:13
    need money to pay off the Turks
  • 4:13 - 4:17
    and because Barabas,
    as a Jew, is an easy target.
  • 4:17 - 4:22
    This is the entire explanation
    for Barabas' dispossession.
  • 4:22 - 4:28
    Marlowe makes no effort to disguise
    or ameliorate the Christians motives.
  • 4:29 - 4:31
    In the passage on your left,
  • 4:31 - 4:34
    Barabas gives voice to his loss.
  • 4:34 - 4:37
    Even as the other Jews urge patience,
  • 4:37 - 4:39
    Barabas insists on being heard,
  • 4:40 - 4:42
    insists on expressing himself.
  • 4:42 - 4:46
    He wants his audience
    to know what he is feeling,
  • 4:47 - 4:50
    to share imaginatively in his disgrace.
  • 4:50 - 4:54
    And so he compares himself
    to a captain in a field of battle
  • 4:54 - 4:57
    whose weapons have been
    stripped from him
  • 4:57 - 5:00
    and whose soldiers lie dead at his feet.
  • 5:01 - 5:04
    Shouldn't such a man
    be allowed to grieve?
  • 5:06 - 5:09
    What Barabas asks
    may seem to us unremarkable,
  • 5:09 - 5:12
    but was hardly so in 1589.
  • 5:12 - 5:16
    The action that takes place
    fictively at Malta
  • 5:16 - 5:19
    echoes the actual dispossession
    of the English Jews.
  • 5:20 - 5:24
    Much as Barabas is stripped of his wealth
    and turned out of his home,
  • 5:24 - 5:26
    so were the Jews of England
  • 5:26 - 5:29
    dispossessed and exiled by Edward I,
  • 5:30 - 5:35
    turned out of their country,
    as so many strangers and aliens.
  • 5:35 - 5:40
    In the crowd that Barabas addressed
    in the Rose Theatre in 1589,
  • 5:40 - 5:43
    there was not a single Jew to hear him,
  • 5:43 - 5:45
    not a single Jew to weep,
  • 5:45 - 5:48
    as the Jews weep in Marlowe's play.
  • 5:49 - 5:53
    When Marlowe allows those Jews
    to express their sympathy for Barabas,
  • 5:53 - 5:56
    as if it were a basic human impulse,
  • 5:56 - 6:00
    "'tis a misery to see
    a man in such affliction,"
  • 6:01 - 6:05
    Marlowe is doing something surprising
    by the standards of his time,
  • 6:05 - 6:08
    something bordering on the illegal.
  • 6:09 - 6:13
    The second passage, the passage on your
    right, is from "The Merchant of Venice."
  • 6:13 - 6:17
    Many of you will recognize it
    as Shylock's famous Rialto speech.
  • 6:18 - 6:21
    Shylock's idiom is different
    of course from Barabas'.
  • 6:21 - 6:23
    Still the influence of Marlowe's play,
  • 6:23 - 6:27
    which precedes Shakespeare's by some
    seven or eight years, is hard to miss.
  • 6:29 - 6:33
    Again, a Jew steps forward
    to describe his mistreatment.
  • 6:34 - 6:38
    Again a Jew speaks
    his pain aloud to an audience
  • 6:38 - 6:42
    that is asked imaginatively
    to enter into it.
  • 6:43 - 6:48
    And again this invitation to empathize
    exposes a contradiction.
  • 6:50 - 6:53
    Antonio, the nominal hero
    of "The Merchant of Venice,"
  • 6:53 - 6:56
    has with his Christian friends
    scorned Shylock.
  • 6:56 - 7:00
    They have laughed
    at his daughter's Jessica's desertion,
  • 7:00 - 7:03
    they have spit upon him in the street,
  • 7:03 - 7:05
    and they have done so without compunction.
  • 7:07 - 7:10
    Shylock's degradation does not touch them,
  • 7:10 - 7:12
    as they understand it,
  • 7:12 - 7:14
    because, as they understand it,
  • 7:14 - 7:16
    he is different from them,
  • 7:16 - 7:18
    he is merely a Jew,
  • 7:18 - 7:19
    an alien,
  • 7:20 - 7:21
    a stranger.
  • 7:22 - 7:23
    "Dog Jew"
  • 7:23 - 7:26
    is one of their favorite
    epithets for Shylock.
  • 7:28 - 7:32
    And yet, when Shylock's pain
    is made visible on the stage,
  • 7:32 - 7:36
    made alive in his language,
    this justification fails.
  • 7:36 - 7:41
    To suffer is not to be
    a Jew or a Christian,
  • 7:41 - 7:43
    but to be human.
  • 7:44 - 7:46
    In his vulnerability,
  • 7:46 - 7:49
    Shylock is no different
    from his persecutors:
  • 7:50 - 7:53
    "If you prick us, do we not bleed?"
  • 7:54 - 7:58
    "If you poison us, do we not die?"
  • 7:58 - 8:02
    That Marlowe and Shakespeare both
    allow their Jews to make this point
  • 8:02 - 8:05
    suggests, I think, a shared understanding,
  • 8:05 - 8:06
    on their part,
  • 8:06 - 8:09
    about the peculiar enterprise
    they are engaged in.
  • 8:10 - 8:13
    Both playwrights recognize in theater
  • 8:13 - 8:16
    singular capacity
    to make a motion accessible,
  • 8:16 - 8:20
    a means of dissolving
    or overcoming difference.
  • 8:21 - 8:23
    When a character speaks his pain,
  • 8:24 - 8:25
    when he performs it,
  • 8:26 - 8:30
    an audience feels it,
    and in the process becomes like him,
  • 8:31 - 8:32
    if only momentarily.
  • 8:34 - 8:36
    Put even a Jew on stage,
  • 8:37 - 8:39
    and so long as he speaks movingly,
  • 8:39 - 8:42
    we can recognize ourselves in him.
  • 8:43 - 8:47
    This is what Marlowe and Shakespeare
    are telling each other.
  • 8:47 - 8:49
    This is what Shakespeare
    takes from Marlowe,
  • 8:50 - 8:53
    or at least this is part
    of their conversation
  • 8:53 - 8:58
    about Jews in the theater.
  • 8:58 - 9:02
    The easiest and most palatable part of it.
  • 9:03 - 9:05
    As I noted earlier,
  • 9:05 - 9:09
    the Jews in Marlowe's play
    exit with tears in their eyes.
  • 9:09 - 9:11
    Barabas bids them farewell
  • 9:11 - 9:15
    and then alone takes
    possession of the stage.
  • 9:15 - 9:17
    Once alone,
  • 9:17 - 9:21
    Barabas steps out further,
    close to the very edge of the theater,
  • 9:21 - 9:23
    or at least this is how I picture it.
  • 9:23 - 9:25
    He moves close to the edge of the stage,
  • 9:25 - 9:28
    right up to the crowd of theatergoers
  • 9:28 - 9:30
    gathered at his feet,
  • 9:30 - 9:33
    and, once there, he taunts them:
  • 9:34 - 9:38
    "See the simplicity of these base slaves,
  • 9:38 - 9:42
    who, for the villains
    have no wit themselves,
  • 9:42 - 9:45
    think me to be a senseless lump of clay,
  • 9:45 - 9:50
    that will with every water wash to dirt!"
  • 9:52 - 9:53
    This is a violent speech,
  • 9:53 - 9:56
    violent in its contempt.
  • 9:56 - 10:00
    Baraba's contempt for the Jews
    who have felt for him,
  • 10:01 - 10:03
    who have wept for him.
  • 10:03 - 10:07
    Marlowe's contempt
    for the members of his audience
  • 10:07 - 10:11
    who, like the Jews, have been
    reached by Barabas' words
  • 10:11 - 10:13
    and moved by his suffering.
  • 10:14 - 10:17
    All at once, that suffering
    is revealed to be a sham,
  • 10:17 - 10:19
    and empty spectacle.
  • 10:19 - 10:22
    Barabas has not lost everything.
  • 10:22 - 10:24
    As he subsequently reveals,
  • 10:24 - 10:27
    he still has a fortune hidden away.
  • 10:27 - 10:29
    He is not broken or wretched,
  • 10:30 - 10:33
    he has merely played misery
    like an actor on the stage.
  • 10:34 - 10:37
    What he is after is not empathy,
  • 10:37 - 10:38
    but power,
  • 10:39 - 10:42
    the power to manipulate an audience
  • 10:42 - 10:46
    and so in the process
    degrade it and debase it.
  • 10:47 - 10:49
    The Jews who pity Barabas
  • 10:49 - 10:54
    become to Barabas "so many base slaves,
  • 10:54 - 10:57
    so many witless villains,"
  • 10:58 - 11:00
    because they misunderstand him
  • 11:00 - 11:03
    and the nature of human suffering.
  • 11:06 - 11:09
    That we suffer in common
    is nothing to be proud of,
  • 11:09 - 11:11
    just the contrary, says Barabas.
  • 11:12 - 11:15
    To suffer is a sign of our common dust,
  • 11:15 - 11:20
    or to use his nastier phrase,
    "our common dirt."
  • 11:20 - 11:23
    To suffer is to be dirt.
  • 11:23 - 11:29
    To empathize with suffering
    is to be a villain and a slave.
  • 11:31 - 11:34
    Barabas' treachery and contempt are ugly.
  • 11:34 - 11:36
    Indeed, much of
    "The Jew of Malta" is ugly.
  • 11:36 - 11:39
    Much of Marlowe's art is ugly.
  • 11:40 - 11:41
    At another moment in the play,
  • 11:41 - 11:46
    Barabas will wipe out
    an entire convent of nuns,
  • 11:46 - 11:50
    including his own daughter,
    with a gift of poisoned porridge.
  • 11:52 - 11:54
    He will strangle a friar in his bed
  • 11:54 - 11:59
    and then gleefully sit up the corpse
    in the street as if it were alive.
  • 12:00 - 12:04
    That we bridle at such
    ugliness is the point.
  • 12:05 - 12:08
    We come to the theater
    expecting to be flattered,
  • 12:08 - 12:14
    expecting to be confirmed in the happiest,
    most hopeful account of who we are.
  • 12:15 - 12:17
    After all, we bought a ticket.
  • 12:18 - 12:21
    And, instead, we are
    betrayed and attacked.
  • 12:22 - 12:26
    And what of Shakespeare,
    what of his Jew, what of Shylock?
  • 12:26 - 12:30
    How does he follow up his eloquent
    plea for understanding,
  • 12:30 - 12:31
    for fellow feeling?
  • 12:33 - 12:36
    "If you prick us, do we not bleed?
  • 12:36 - 12:38
    If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
  • 12:39 - 12:42
    If you poison us, do we not die?
  • 12:43 - 12:46
    And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
  • 12:47 - 12:50
    If we are like you in the rest,
    we will resemble you in that.
  • 12:50 - 12:53
    If a Jew wrong a Christian,
    what is his humility?
  • 12:53 - 12:55
    Revenge.
  • 12:55 - 12:57
    If a Christian wrong a Jew,
  • 12:57 - 13:01
    what should his sufferance be
    by Christian example?
  • 13:01 - 13:02
    Why, revenge."
  • 13:04 - 13:07
    If Barabas opens his heart
    as a prelude to violence,
  • 13:07 - 13:09
    the same can be said of Shylock.
  • 13:10 - 13:13
    We may cite his stirring
    lines out of context
  • 13:13 - 13:16
    to teach lessons about
    the importance of empathy
  • 13:16 - 13:19
    and the value of art
    as a means of combating prejudice,
  • 13:19 - 13:21
    but that's not their function,
  • 13:21 - 13:25
    or at least not their entire function
    in Shakespeare's play.
  • 13:26 - 13:27
    In "The Merchant of Venice,"
  • 13:27 - 13:32
    Shylock delivers his moving speech
    and seems moved as he delivers it.
  • 13:32 - 13:33
    As he speaks,
  • 13:33 - 13:38
    he appears present in his words in a way
    that few of us ever are in real life.
  • 13:40 - 13:43
    And yet, what in the end
    does he speak up for?
  • 13:44 - 13:47
    Not empathy, not sympathy,
  • 13:47 - 13:48
    but revenge.
  • 13:49 - 13:51
    This is a surprising turn,
  • 13:52 - 13:53
    a disorienting turn,
  • 13:54 - 13:56
    perhaps a disappointing turn.
  • 13:57 - 13:59
    When it comes, we don't expect it,
  • 13:59 - 14:02
    just as we don't expect
    Barabas to voice his misery,
  • 14:02 - 14:05
    and then all of a sudden jeer at us.
  • 14:06 - 14:09
    And yet, the turn
    in Shylock speech is logical.
  • 14:11 - 14:15
    Empathy and revenge may,
    in a superficial sense,
  • 14:15 - 14:16
    seem opposites.
  • 14:16 - 14:19
    Empathy may even seem
    to preclude revenge,
  • 14:20 - 14:22
    but really, underneath it all,
  • 14:22 - 14:25
    they are two sides of the same coin,
  • 14:25 - 14:29
    two expressions of the same
    underlying pattern.
  • 14:30 - 14:34
    In empathizing, I make myself like you,
  • 14:35 - 14:37
    by feeling what you feel,
  • 14:37 - 14:40
    by knowing what you know,
  • 14:40 - 14:42
    by suffering what you suffer.
  • 14:42 - 14:46
    In revenge, I make you like me.
  • 14:47 - 14:49
    I force you to know what I know,
  • 14:50 - 14:53
    I force you to feel what I feel,
  • 14:53 - 14:56
    I force you to suffer what I suffer.
  • 14:58 - 15:00
    Shylock does not want empathy.
  • 15:00 - 15:02
    He wants revenge.
  • 15:02 - 15:06
    He wants the power
    to compel identification.
  • 15:06 - 15:07
    He wants the ability
  • 15:07 - 15:11
    to force another
    to see the world on his terms.
  • 15:12 - 15:14
    And, more than that,
  • 15:14 - 15:19
    he claims this desire of his
    to be the same as ours.
  • 15:20 - 15:21
    According to Shylock,
  • 15:21 - 15:25
    what links us as humans
    is not suffering
  • 15:25 - 15:29
    or the capacity to empathize
    with another's suffering,
  • 15:30 - 15:36
    but the common human compulsion
    to answer suffering with revenge.
  • 15:37 - 15:43
    He wants and we want
    the power to make others feel as we do.
  • 15:44 - 15:49
    And this is, I think, his point
    of contact with Shakespeare
  • 15:49 - 15:50
    and any other serious writer,
  • 15:50 - 15:55
    any artist who doesn't merely want
    to please his audience,
  • 15:55 - 15:57
    but to reach it, to move it,
  • 15:57 - 16:00
    whether that audience
    wants to be moved or not.
  • 16:01 - 16:03
    And by serious artists,
    let me be clear here,
  • 16:03 - 16:06
    I don't mean respectable
    high-culture artist.
  • 16:06 - 16:08
    If anything just the opposite.
  • 16:08 - 16:10
    The ambition I'm talking about
  • 16:10 - 16:14
    is the ambition to find
    some sharp or blunt instrument
  • 16:14 - 16:17
    that will allow you to compel
    an emotion in someone else,
  • 16:17 - 16:20
    to force an understanding,
  • 16:20 - 16:22
    by whatever means is available.
  • 16:23 - 16:27
    This is, I think, what Marlowe
    and Shakespeare's Jews are talking about,
  • 16:28 - 16:32
    the search for power
    that often masquerades as empathy.
  • 16:32 - 16:35
    This is, I believe, what Marlowe
    teaches Shakespeare.
  • 16:36 - 16:39
    Or at least it is the substance
    of this particular barroom lesson.
  • 16:40 - 16:42
    It is in this particular small room,
  • 16:42 - 16:44
    what they hear each other saying
  • 16:44 - 16:47
    about theater and about us.
  • 16:47 - 16:48
    Thanks.
  • 16:48 - 16:50
    (Applause)
Title:
Shakespeare, Marlowe, and their Jews | John Kleiner | TEDxWilliamsCollege
Description:

John Kleiner is a professor of English at Williams College. He is a scholar of classical and medieval literature whose work has been supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The author of Mismapping the Underworld: Error in Dante's "Comedy," he is at work on a new book, The Art of Losing: Versions of Failure from Virgil to Shakespeare. His articles and essays include "On Failing One's Teachers," "Criminal Invention," and "Diffusion of hydrogen in a' -VHx." He has taught courses on Shakespeare, expository writing, Chaucer, Dante, allegory, Hollywood film, journalism, and violence. He has a B.A. in religion and physics from Amherst College, an M.S. in physics from Cornell University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford University.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

more » « less
Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDxTalks
Duration:
17:01
  • Correction: "breath" was replaced by "grieve":

    5:01 - 5:04
    Shouldn't such a man
    be allowed to grieve?

English subtitles

Revisions Compare revisions