♪♪ -What would you do if you knew you were despised?

♪♪ If you were ridiculed, humiliated, resented?

♪♪ If you had the chance to take revenge, would you?

♪♪ This is the choice facing one of Shakespeare's most vilified characters, Shylock.

♪♪ The play has polarized audiences, but's impossible to ignore.

♪♪ Shylock may be fictional, but he's alive.

He's with us.

He forces us to ask ourselves, what does it mean to be different?

How does it feel not to belong?

♪♪ Shylock is not allowed to belong because he is a Jew.

But in this play nothing is what it seems.

♪♪ And few present themselves as they really are.

♪♪ Lives will entwine in ways that no one had wanted.

♪♪ Nothing ends as people had intended.

♪♪ This play could be one of the strangest journeys you can take.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Funding for "Shakespeare Uncovered" ♪♪ If I say "the Merchant of Venice," people will probably think Shylock, that he is a Jew.

that he's a victim or a villain.

Either way, he's a major character.

They'll think the play's about him, but it's not.

He's not the merchant of Venice, and the play is not a tragedy.

It's a comedy.

♪♪ The play involves Shylock, the Jewish money lender, and Antonio, the Christian merchant.

In commercial 16th-century Venice, these two business men will become dangerously entwined.

But the play starts out as a romantic comedy.

♪♪ A young man Bassanio, basically, a fortune hunter, needs money to woo Portia, a rich woman.

His good friend, Antonio, the merchant of the title, is more than happy to borrow the money to lend to his friend, so they find a Jewish money lender named Shylock who agrees to lend it to them.

♪♪ So we have a man in search of a wife, and his friend the merchant who will help him to woo her.

The merchant Antonio will be prepared to use his good credit to borrow money for his friend Bassanio.

Antonio is rich and successful, but something's not right.

♪♪ -In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.

It wearies me.

Why then, you are in love.

-Fie Fie.

-[ Laughs ] -Actually, I think he could be in love with Bassanio.

-Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsmen.

-Antonio welcomes him even though he knows Bassanio is coming to borrow money to woo a woman.

I don't understand how you can play Antonio without considering that he is gay.

-Well, tell me now what lady is the same to whom you swore a secret pilgrimage that you, today, promised to tell me of.

-In Belmont is a lady, richly left.

And she is fair and fairer than that word of wondrous virtues.

And her sunny locks hang on her temples like a golden fleece, and many Jasons come in quest of her.

-If Antonio has feelings for Bassanio, it must be hard hearing him talk about a woman.

-Be assured.

My purse, my person, my extremist means lie all unlocked to your occasions.

-As far as Antonio is concerned, I think he does dearly love him, and he's besotted with him.

He has no choice.

-Try what my credit can in Venice do, that shall be racked even to the uttermost to furnish thee to Belmont, to fair Portia.

-Oh!

-The devoted Merchant will put himself in debt to help his beloved Bassanio.

♪♪ Antonio is lost.

It's a tough situation.

I think we've all been there.

♪♪ -With Antonio's help, Bassanio may be able to woo the wealthy Portia.

-She lives in an idealized place called Belmont.

Given the status of this heroine, it's fair to imagine a 17th-century villa like this.

Bassanio's right.

You'd need a lot of money to impress these people.

♪♪ Living a comfortable life attended by servants, Portia should be happy.

But this is not your usual comedy, and so, like Antonio, she's not.

-By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is a weary of this great world.

-You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are.

-She's miserable because her father's will controls whom she can marry.

All suitors are set a riddle.

-Your father was ever virtuous, and holy men at their death have good inspirations.

♪♪ -Whatever her father's wisdom, Portia is trapped waiting for a suitor.

Maybe her answer lies in Venice.

♪♪ -Back in the city, the hopeful Bassanio is planning to try his hand with Portia but he will not be able to unless he secures his loan.

And this will bring Antonio, the merchant, to Shylock, the money lender.

It should be straightforward, except they loathe each other.

♪♪ In Venice, the Christian Antonio could roam freely, while the reviled Jewish Shylock, would have had to live behind walls.

♪♪ It was here that the very first ghetto was created.

♪♪ As a Jew, Shylock knew he'd never belong.

♪♪ I've played this role many times, and I understand why he has captured the imagination of generations.

The earliest moviemakers were inspired by Shylock's story.

I think everyone understands Shylock.

Whether they understand the length to which he goes, that's another story.

But they absolutely understand what it means to be an outsider.

Everyone's been a teenager what's more outside than that.

♪♪ Antonio must now borrow money from Shylock, one business man to another.

But they have a history.

Antonio has routinely humiliated Shylock, and as a Christian, he's lent money without charging.

Now it's Shylock's commercial rival and persecutor who's comes to seek his help.

♪♪ -3,000 ducats.

-When he first meet him, he's funny, defensive, angry, and calculating.

-Aye, sir, for three months.

-For three months.

[ Laughs ] Mm.

Mm.

[ Laughs ] -He's a nasty piece of work.

He is someone who's accumulated a lot of gall, and he hates Antonio.

-For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall be bound.

-Antonio shall become bound?

-He hates the Christians, he hates his competition.

-This is Signor Antonio.

-But the play insists, oddly, that he has also occasion and reason to have accumulated so much anger.

-How like a fawning publican he looks!

I hate him for he is a Christian, But more, for that in low simplicity, he lends out money gratis, and brings down the rate of usance here with us in Venice.

He hates our sacred notion.

You call me misbeliever, cutthroat dog, and spit upon my Jewish gaberdine.

And all for use of that which is mine own.

Well then, it now appears you need my help.

♪♪ -I wanted to talk to the actor Henry Goodman about the relationship between his Shylock and Antonio.

♪♪ -This is a man who wants to publicly shame me.

It's not just a nasty comment as he passes by my house, which is in the ghetto, closed off.

This is a man who feels it's his duty to humiliate and diminish me every single day.

So I feel about him wariness.

I say I hate him, and I do hate him.

But in day to day life, what I had to do is say "hello, good evening, how are you?"

To the man that I hate, who I know at any minute is going to lecture me, spit at me, and all the things that we have to believe he says Antonio does.

-But you do hate him.

-Absolutely.

-Another time, you called me 'dog'.

And for these courtesies, I'll lend you thus much moneys?

I am as like to call thee so again, to spit on thee again.

-Having been maltreated for so long, it's like I cannot believe this guy, after everything he's done to me, needs me.

-Shylock then comes up with a strange offer.

He will lend money, not for interest, but against a pound of Antonio's body.

-Okay, this is payback time.

And in the moment, he thinks of something that if this works out, he'll be utterly dependent on me.

-[ Laughs ] Let the forfeit be nominated.

[ Laughs ] For an equal pound of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken in what part of your body pleaseth me.

[ Laughs ] ♪♪ -The bargain is potentially lethal.

Yet, we've only just begun the play and it's supposed to be a comedy.

All a bit of a puzzle, really.

♪♪ I wanted to explore this with two friends and experts.

♪♪ -I would say that this was one of the most subtle plays in introducing the main figures.

Antonio's sadness isn't explained in the beginning.

Even's Bassanio's affections, whether they tend towards men or towards women, or towards both isn't quite clearly established early on, so that, I think for audiences used to Shakespearean comedy, romantic comedy, there would have been some confusion about what exactly is going on here, what don't we know, and how soon will Shakespeare tell us.

Where is that pound of flesh gonna come from?

-It does seem like Shakespeare left the question open deliberately at the beginning.

In fact, it seems explicitly from any part of your body that I choose.

And that leaves open the possibility, as I think everyone -- certainly everyone in the late 16th century would have immediately thought, "ah, what part of the body would a Jew want to take from a male?"

And you expect that it's circumcision or worse.

-But maybe the contract was a kind of private joke.

-What is he doing?

Why does him what that?

As he says, completely pointless stipulation, because he can't eat it, sell it.

It's not mutton, it's not this and that.

What does he want it for?

-Yeah, it is bizarre.

-And all I could imagine is that he wants to frame it and put it up on the wall.

Every time he walks through the room, he's going to want to see it on the wall -- "that's Antonio."

-When he has friends in, "take a look at that."

[ Laughter ] ♪♪ -Whatever Shylock intends, Shakespeare had set out to write a comedy.

And, so, now that Antonio has borrowed the money for his friend, Bassanio is free to woo that wealthy woman.

♪♪ But remember, she is unhappy.

According to her father's will, she must marry the first man who selects a specific casket.

He has a choice of three.

The one that contains her portrait wins Portia.

I can imagine the casket scene being set here.

♪♪ Whew.

-What says this leaden casket.

♪♪ -We're in a world of fairytale choice right.

You choose the right casket, you get the princess.

♪♪ -Here, do I choose!

Oh hell!

[ Laughter ] -So far, no suitor has made the right choice.

-The men who have shown up seem to have come from a United Nations of Europe and beyond to try for her hand.

♪♪ And she has no respect for, basically, any of them.

-Gold, silver, and lead.

-She's in a difficult situation, because she is dealing with a very oppressive father.

She cannot choose because of her father's will.

-Interesting that they put her up on a pedestal behind him.

It's almost like a slave's auction block.

I've never saw that before.

-Give me a key for this.

♪♪ -In a way, of course, that's exactly what is happening.

-She is an heiress.

And of course, marriage in the 16th century was a matter of property.

The woman was property, but also bringing property from one place to another.

And, so, this is definitely a mercantile transaction that we are talking about.

-What's here?

♪♪ [ Laughter ] ♪♪ -The actors from Shakespeare's Globe theater have reassembled three years after their original production to reconsider the play.

-Oh, sorry.

How long -- -They're rehearsing the scene where we first see Portia bemoaning her lot.

-Have you seen any, or has it been a long time?

-We use the word "choose" in this scene repeatedly, but there is no real choice.

-There is no choice.

And we're at the mercy of their brains or otherwise.

And she knows that it is something that has to happen.

-Exactly.

-She's not trying to avoid it, because there's no way out.

-No.

She's cloistered.

She has no freedom.

She's a woman of great intelligence and independence that she's not allowed to live.

-Okay, shall we give this one a go?

-O me, the word "choose!"

I may neither choose whom I would nor refuse whom I dislike.

So is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father.

Is it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one, nor refuse none?

-But there is glimmer of hope.

-Do you not remember, lady, in your father's time, a Venetian?

-Yes, yes!

It was Bassanio, as I think he was so called.

-Portia will have to wait until her Bassanio reappears.

♪♪ In this play, the tangle of love and money seeps into every relationship, and we are about to see another dimension to Shylock.

♪♪ Shylock is a widower, but he has a daughter.

♪♪ Shylock and his daughter Jessica -- that's a very tricky relationship.

He doesn't know a thing about raising a daughter.

All he knows is he wants her to be a good Jewish girl.

So what he's faced with is being very strict and at the same time very loving without being able to express his love for her.

It's a frustrating hard position for him to be in.

♪♪ The first time we meet his daughter Jessica, it seems the father-daughter relationship has completely broken down.

But we don't know why.

-I'm sorry thou wilt leave my father so.

Our house is hell!

-I think this is one of these cases with the father and the daughter, where we actually learn very little.

We don't have home with the Shylocks.

-Instead, we are confronted with Jessica who apparently has a Christian boyfriend and is having her servant help her to elope.

-Give him this letter, but do it secretly.

And, so, farewell.

-In the play as written, you never see, really, any of their relationship between her and her father.

-So we improvised a scene that was then translated into Yiddish because we didn't want to do cod Shakespeare.

And also, it sort of emphasized their otherness that they would not have been speaking the same language as the Italians in Venice.

-Jessica!

Jessica... [ Speaking Yiddish ] -[ Speaking Yiddish ] -[ Speaking Yiddish ] -We improvised as real father and daughter possibly those kind of arguments you would have had.

Like, "don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you."

And the daughter saying, "why are you being like this?

I told you, I'm not listening."

-[ Speaking Yiddish ] -It's a kind of classic sociopathic pattern... -[ Speaking Yiddish ] -...that someone who has been constantly being spat on and kicked and beaten couldn't fight back in the street, and his only outlet for anger was at home.

-I mean... My casements.

[ Sighs ] -Frustrated, Jessica has made up her mind.

♪♪ -In a tragic blend of love and money, Jessica and her Christian lover take their chances, leaving with much of Shylock's wealth.

-Here, catch this casket.

It is worth the pains.

♪♪ -Descend.

♪♪ -I will make fast the doors and guild myself with some more ducats and with be with you, straight.

-Now, by my hood, and gentile and no Jew.

-[ Laughs ] -If e'er the Jew, her father, come to heaven, it shall for his gentle daughter's sake.

And never dare misfortune cross her foot.

-Beshrew me, but I love her heartily.

♪♪ What, art thou come?

♪♪ -When Jessica elopes and leaves her father, she has run out with part of his soul.

I don't think she is seeing this through at all.

I think it's a wild moment with this frustrated teenage girl.

She really has not thought it beyond this moment, this exciting, thrilling moment of escape that simply breaks his heart.

♪♪ -She's someone who definitely doesn't think of consequence.

I think she's swept up.

She's looking for an escape.

and it's exciting.

And she's a young woman.

I think effectively she wants to wound him at that moment.

-It is total betrayal.

We do not hear her ruminate about this.

We do not hear her divided in any way She doesn't confide to anyone we hear about "should I do this, shouldn't I do this?

What will Shylock think?"

She abandons him at the first available moment.

♪♪ -I think the play turns emotionally when Jessica elopes.

It is, for Shylock, the fundamental insult to his being, and I think we feel in the play the deep turn, the knife being turned in him, and the rage that has already been there spiking at that point and never actually receding.

♪♪ -We don't see Shylock but the loss of his daughter and his fortune is parodied cruelly by Antonio's friends.

-[ Laughs ] -I've never heard a passion so confused, so strange, outrageous, and so variable as the dog Jew did utter in the streets.

-Oh.

-[ Laughs ] "My daughter!

O my ducats!

O my daughter, Fled with a Christian!

O my Christian ducats!

-Shh.

Shh.

Shh.

-[ Laughs ] "And jewels -- two stones, two rich and precious stones."

-Why, man, all the boys in Venice follow him, crying, "His stones, his daughter, and his ducats!"

[ Both laugh ] -Shylock must have been in shock and despair.

♪♪ -It's a questioning of everything one believes.

If you're wrong about your daughter, what else are you wrong about?

♪♪ -Watching the play today, we sympathize with Shylock.

but we don't know how his predicament would have been perceived in Shakespeare's Britain.

♪♪ -I'm meeting a historian by the Globe in what would have been Shakespeare's local church.

♪♪ Do you think Shakespeare knew any Jews?

-That's a really tough question, and obviously, if he had met any Jews in London, they would have had to have been pretending to be Christians.

So, unless he was deeply friendly with them and perhaps went back to their homes, he wouldn't have known they were Jews.

-Since 1290, when the Jews are expelled by Edward I, there technically shouldn't have been any practicing Jews in the whole of England.

Any of Jewish heritage, who might have been in England, would have to have had to convert to Catholicism, or by Shakespeare's time to Protestantism.

-What would happen to them if they didn't?

-They would have been fined.

They almost certainly would have been roughed up quite badly.

England didn't have an inquisition, but it certainly had a set of church courts and lots of jails.

Shakespeare's world is one that's defined in binary opposites.

We're good Protestants, everybody else is evil.

-In England, there was a particular abhorrence of Jews dating from Biblical times.

-Jews killed Christ.

That's the worst sin.

Their major horror was the blood libel that there were nasty Jewish rabbis lurking about, ready to kidnap, capture, murder, and bleed out young children for religious ritual.

They're like early modern horror stories.

♪♪ -These fantasies could be exploited at any time to incite hate crimes or, believe it or not, to entertain.

-Just before Shakespeare wrote "The Merchant of Venice," there had been a stormingly successful revival of a play about a Jew written by his rival Christopher Marlowe.

The play is "The Jew of Malta," starring Barabas, a caricature of a villain, a pantomime character, who was accused by the Christians of committing all the atrocities that Jews are supposed to do and more.

And this is the theater where it was first performed.

♪♪ I've never been here before.

Apparently, all that's left is the foundation.

This is it.

This was where it was first done.

This is thrilling.

I played Barabas, and I loved playing it.

♪♪ Set against the backdrop of a Christian and Ottoman conflict, Barabas is happily amoral.

He poisons nuns, smuggles gold, and betrays Muslims.

Too bad, he ends up in the boiling cauldron he'd intended for his enemy.

♪♪ -As for myself, I walk abroad at night and kill sick people groaning under walls.

♪♪ Sometimes, I go about and poison wells.

And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves, I am content to lose some of my crowns, That I may, walking in my gallery, see 'em go, pinioned about by my door.

[ Groans ] [ Laughs ] Shh.

♪♪ I love this place.

Shakespeare would have known this play.

We don't know what he thought about it.

-"The Jew of Malta" was a blockbuster, so Shakespeare decided to write his own Jew, in "The Merchant of Venice," which was initially called "The Jew of Venice."

♪♪ In Shakespeare's play, we've reached a tipping point.

Shylock's world has fallen to pieces.

His daughter has abandoned him, stolen from him, and eloped with a Christian.

But the pivot of this play is love and money, risk and fortune, and the tables could be about to turn in Shylock's favor.

♪♪ Shylock has lost his daughter but Antonio, too, may have losses.

Word is that his ships have sunk, and Antonio may not be able to repay his loan.

Shylock will be given the power to hit back.

♪♪ Out on the street, Shylock meets two of Antonio's mocking friends who had helped his daughter escape.

♪♪ -You knew, none so well as you, of my daughters flight.

-That's certain.

I, for my part, knew the tailor that made the wings she flew withal.

-And Shylock for his own part... -The scene turns when Bassanio's friends test out what he would do if Antonio's ships are lost?

-The Devil may be her judge.

-Let him look to his bond.

He was wont to call me usurer, let him look to his bond.

He was wont to lend money for a Christian courtesy, let him look to his bond.

-Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh.

What's that good for?

-To bait fish withal.

If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.

-[ Scoffs ] -He hath disgraced me and hindered me half a million.

-Shylock's answer has taken them by surprise.

But at last, he will speak his mind.

♪♪ -He hath laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains.

♪♪ And what's his reason?

♪♪ I am a Jew.

-They see a man pushed to such extremes that he speaks from somewhere existentially, deeply, "explain to me the logic of racism."

-Aah!

-[ Groans ] Hath not a Jew eyes?

Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, passions?

-This speech was the reason why I wanted to do the play, because I felt like a lot of people needed to make a plea for understanding and tolerance.

And, uh... And 2015, 2016, 2017, this speech and this play has never been more vital, pertinent, and necessary.

-If you prick us, do we not bleed?

If you tickle us, do we not laugh?

If you poison us, do we not die?

And if you wrong us... shall we not revenge?

♪♪ -It's fury, it's frustration.

It's that moment when you explode with the freedom of being able to say or do exactly what you feel.

-If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?

Eh?

Revenge.

If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example?

Why...

Revenge.

The villainy you teach me, I will execute.

And it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction.

-If you keep doing this to me and my people, I'm going to fight back, and I'm going to fight back in the way you have taught me, that the violence that you have used, I've learned it from you.

♪♪ -Shylock will have his pound of flesh.

Leaving us wondering whether his speech is a plea for tolerance or a justification of violence.

♪♪ -It's both.

It's both.

That's the strange effect of Shakespeare -- to force you to feel how this is working to justify for Shylock irrational murderousness that he knows will get him nothing, except the murder of this one enemy, as he intends it legally, and at the same time, to the amount of pain that's there, the amount of human presence that we are called upon to share.

-The pain of the outsider never goes away and it had a special resonance for Venice in 2016 -- the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish ghetto.

An international cast assembled to prepare a production of the play.

-I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.

-Antonio.

-Karin Coonrod was the director.

-Two things provided more, that for this favor, he presently become a Christian.

-[ Laughs ] -It's an incredible experience to be here and what it means, is it brings together the space and the time.

And, so, to be doing this piece, once in a millennium experience opportunity, to do this piece and bring this international company together, is a holy experience.

-You have, five different actors playing Shylock.

-Yeah.

-Why?

-I think Shylock is an outsider, an immigrant, an alien, and I wanted to approach him from different perspectives.

I didn't want to see one person interpret it, especially here in the ghetto.

I wanted to see each scene a different Shylock, and bring them all together.

So we have one woman, we have an older man, we have a younger man from India, a Venetian man, and a Croatian man who also lives in Venice.

It's about London, it's about New York, it's about the West, it's about all our greed.

And it's not Shylock who can be singled out as the greedy one, you know?

The others -- the others around him are the wretches.

-It's a play for our time?

-It is exactly -- a play for our time.

♪♪ -Pushed to extremes, Shylock insists he will claim his bond.

And yet, the play is still a comedy, and we have to return to Portia and Belmont.

♪♪ According to her father's will, Portia must accept the first suitor who picks the right casket.

To her relief, so far none of them have.

But now it's the turn of her favored Bassanio.

She's even tempted to cheat.

-I would detain you here some month or two before you venture for me.

I could teach you how to choose right.

-Unh!

Unh!

Unh-unh-unh-unh!

-At last, Bassanio makes his own choice.

-What find I here?

[ Laughter ] Fair Portia's counterfeit!

If you be well pleased with this and hold your fortune for your bliss, turn you where your lady is and claim her with a loving kiss."

A gentle scroll!

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ -But is this really a big happy moment?

I'm not so sure.

♪♪ -Bassanio is...eh...

He's a problem for me.

I don't like him.

And at the same time, I'm charmed by him.

It's a mark of a real hustler.

You know he's not a good guy, but at the same time, you're kind of pulling for him, because he's so good at what he does and he's very attractive.

So the casket scene is tricky.

Despite my doubts, Portia marks the surrender of herself and her goods with a precious gift for her husband.

-I give them with this ring, which when you part from, lose, or give away, let it presage the ruin of your love.

-Ah.

Portia's maid Nerrisa and Bassanio's servant Gratiano also declare their love for each other and exchange rings.

-But within moments, any joy is banished.

-Sweet Bassanio.

-News arrives of Antonio's shipwrecks.

He cannot repay the loan.

♪♪ -Shylock's bond will be tested in a court of law.

The surprise is Portia, determined to help her betrothed, will disguise herself as a male lawyer and attend the trial with her maid.

Shylock will have his day in court.

-The bond will enable him to do what he has been dreaming of doing, which is to get rid of his enemy, the enemy who sums up all the enemies that he's had to deal with in his life, and he can do it legally.

♪♪ -To cut a man's flesh is completely against his faith.

♪♪ He knows this, but his rage drives him on.

And it clarifies his hatred and his irrationality.

♪♪ It's a terrible thing that he is going to do, and I think it's killing him.

♪♪ The trial opens.

-Bassanio attempts to offer Shylock money instead of the bond.

♪♪ -For thy 3,000 ducats, here is 6,000.

-If every ducat in 6,000 ducats were in six parts, and every part a ducat, I would not draw them.

I would have my bond.

♪♪ -But he is about to be approached by someone that no one recognizes.

It's Portia, disguised as a lawyer.

And she tries a very different tack.

♪♪ -Do you confess the bond?

-I do.

-Then must the Jew be merciful.

-On what compulsion must I?

Tell me that.

-The quality of mercy is not strained.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.

It is twice blessed.

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

-Portia doesn't sound like a lawyer.

-She says this is beyond the courts, this is beyond the King's power, this is God's gift to us.

As a character, Portia then is, in a sense, breaking script with the very legalese world that she has just entered.

And perhaps that's a sign that this truly her passionate moment of belief that she can change something, that she can change the terms of this world.

-Mercy is above this sceptered sway.

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings.

It is an attribute to God himself.

-There's a magnificent logic and an honesty and a kindness and an insight and a sensitivity which I'd never seen apparent in almost all the people around me.

she takes me to a place where I think not only is she wise, but she's -- it's not just purple prose.

There's a beautiful humane logic to what she says.

Be bigger than nastiness.

♪♪ -And yet he insists upon his bond.

-My deeds upon my head.

I crave the law.

-Shylock will have his pound of flesh taken, we now hear, from the heart.

-You must prepare your bosom for the knife.

-O noble judge!

Excellent young man.

-He has brought, it turns out, a balance to weigh the pound of flesh, he's brought a knife.

So the expectation is that he will be awarded the pound of flesh and is prepared to take it.

-Give me your hand Bassanio.

-Staring death in the face, Antonio reveals his true feelings.

His words have significant implications for Portia., -Commend me to your honorable wife, tell her the process of Antonio's end, say how...

I loved...you.

♪♪ -Antonio is willing to pledge his own life, his own body, his own blood, his own pound of flesh for -- because of Bassanio, and that actually makes him more alive than he was at the beginning of the play.

-For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, thou'd pay it instantly with all my heart.

-Bassanio responds with his own pledge.

-Antonio... ♪♪ I am married to a wife which is as dear to me as life itself.

But life itself, my wife, all the world are not with me esteemed above thy life.

I would lose all high, sacrifice them all, adhere to this devil to deliver you.

-Your wife would give you little thanks for that if she were by to hear you make the offer.

♪♪ -Portia will not forget this moment, but the trial must continue.

-And you must cut this flesh from off his breast.

-The law allows it, and the court awards it.

-Suddenly Portia intervenes -Tarry a little!

There is something else.

This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood.

-If Shylock sheds any blood, all his goods will be confiscated, and he will die.

The choice is his.

-All he has to do is to stab him, but he'll die.

And that's the stop moment.

He has to think, "will I do this at the cost of my own life?"

And the answer is, no, he won't.

♪♪ -Now the court simply crushes Shylock.

For merely threatening the life of a Venetian, his life and lands are forfeit unless he agrees to one condition.

-That for this favor... he presently become... a Christian.

♪♪ ♪♪ -The scene is the most emotionally fraught of the whole play.

The Christians have made a mockery of mercy.

Shylock is broken, yet Antonio will survive.

♪♪ -I always feel as an audience member, that I'm glad he doesn't do it.

But there's another a part of me that wants him to do it.

-I completely agree.

I think the play is demonic in encouraging that part of you that you don't like to say is there, that wants to say, "go for it.

To hell with it being legal or not legal, go for it."

-And all of us have been humiliated, to watch somebody act out a response to that.

-But then, God knows, the world we live in brings home the full force is that you have to find a way of living in civil society without allowing murder, legally or illegal, to take place.

You have to figure out a way.

Otherwise, there is no state.

Otherwise, we're living in a terrifying community of violent animals and not of people in a society.

♪♪ -Shylock's pain has been so palpable, and yet this is supposed to be a comedy.

And the lovers have yet to be reunited.

♪♪ -But, you know, it isn't such a jump.

♪♪ In this scene, there's a real deep melancholy and, I think, doubt.

♪♪ Portia has saved Antonio, but it's come at a price.

She now knows how much he loves Bassanio.

And as she is leaving, she and Nerissa play a trick on their husbands that has the potential to go sour.

♪♪ Pressed to take a reward for her services, Portia says she will take only the ring that she gave Bassanio.

-And for your love, I'll take... this ring.

-Good sir, this ring was given me by my wife.

And when she put it on, she made me vow that I should neither sell, nor give, nor lose it.

-Bassanio refuses, but Antonio intervenes.

-My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring.

♪♪ -Antonio wins.

Gratiano is dispatched with Bassanio's ring.

He too will later surrender his.

-My Lord Bassanio upon more advice hath sent you here this ring, and doth entreat your company at dinner.

♪♪ -The last act will begin with all that had passed in the trial and the damage that this may have done to the couples' relationships.

-We do set this up, Portia sets this whole thing up, and I make a very good argument for actually giving the ring to me, Balthasar, the lawyer who saved this man's life.

So actually in many ways, that's not hurtful.

But what is hurtful is the declaration that I haven't banked on seeing which is what I see you say to Antonio in court.

And I also just see the nature of the relationship, which is a very deep love.

-And that's a threat to, my relationship... -There's a massive third party there.

-With this in mind, they run the scene.

-My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away Unto the judge that begg'd it and indeed deserved it, too.

-What ring gave you, my lord?

Not that, I hope, which you received of me.

-Sweet Portia...[Chuckles] If you did know to whom I gave the ring, if you did know for whom I gave the ring, and would conceive for what I gave the ring, and how unwillingly I left the ring when naught would be accepted but the ring, you would abate the strength of your displeasure.

-If you had known the virtue of the ring, or half her worthiness that gave the ring, or your own honor to contain the ring, you would not then have parted with the ring.

-[ Sighs ] -Portia's game has backfired horribly.

-Nice.

-I feel kind of bad now.

Yeah, yeah.

-Dirty again.

-I thought this was going to be a fun reveal, but actually, oh, my God, just hearing you talk about your passion for the reason, your passionate cause, is deeply wounding.

You know, you have no idea how much you've hurt me and who I am.

♪♪ -With all they now know about each other, the couples must make what future they can.

♪♪ Nothing has ended as people had expected.

There are no winners.

we are left with the burden of unspoken pain.

♪♪ ♪♪ -The last act is about how you deal with things that you are not actually directly addressing, how you deal with them obliquely.

What you are dealing with mostly in Act 5 is Portia's recognition that her husband has some kind of deep emotional obligation, connection to Antonio, and she needs to find a way to break it.

And it's broken or stretched, if we could put it that way, via the game of the rings.

It's never directly confronted.

It's never discussed.

♪♪ -[ Singing in Yiddish ] -As for Jessica, she joins her new Christian husband in Belmont.

Shakespeare gives her no lines about her father.

This production imagined her feelings in prayer.

-[ Singing in Yiddish ] -Shylock haunts Act 5.

He's not present, he's not mentioned, but he haunts it.

-[ Singing in Yiddish ] -And we could say that Act 5 of "The Merchant of Venice" is a brilliant device for making us think about how we deal with trauma indirectly, how we negotiate with ghosts in the room without ever openly saying that's what we're doing.

♪♪ -"The Merchant of Venice" is hardly what we see as a comedy today.

♪♪ It's a play with dark shadows, and the character that casts the longest one is Shylock.

♪♪ Shylock will not go away, because we haven't answered his questions.

We can't explain why we still persecute difference, why we reject the outsider, why we still refuse to see each other's humanity.

♪♪ -Next time... -I'll tell the world aloud what man thou art.

-...Romola Garai on a problem play about power, morality, and sex.

-It's surprising that "Measure for Measure" should seem so contemporary.

-It's a play about when women speak up, men in power don't believe them.

-If I tell this, who would believe me?

-"Measure for Measure" with Romola Garai.

-I think it's the best play he ever wrote.

-Next time on "Shakespeare Uncovered."

♪♪ ♪♪ -"Shakespeare Uncovered" Series 3 is available on DVD.

Series 1 and 2 are also available.

To order, visit shop.pbs.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

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