Patrick Stewart on Shylock

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The production they reference can be found here: www.rsc.org.uk/the-merchant-of-venice/about-the-play/stage-history Described: "JOHN BARTON (1978) Since this production was staged in the RSC's studio theatre, The Other Place, there could be little in the way of scenery. A few pavement café tables and the late-nineteenth-century costume suggested an Italy where women and Jews might well be oppressed. Patrick Stewart's Shylock spoke with the carefully precise enunciation of a non-native speaker. Only his yarmulke and the glimpse of a yellow sash under his shabby black waistcoat indicated any cultural difference, both of which were ostentatiously on show in the trial scene. Despite his wealth, this Shylock was too mean to spend any of it on outward show; he smoked miserly little hand-rolled cigarettes, the stubs of which he kept in a tin for future use. At the end of the trial he himself knocked off his yarmulke and exited on a forced laugh at his own expense in response to Gratiano's brutal joke. This Shylock was survivor, whatever the personal cost might be. Portia's household had a strongly Chekhovian atmosphere. She was first seen wrapped in her dead father's black greatcoat, contemplating the caskets as the key to freedom and happiness, the unlocking of which was not in her power."