Skip to main content

“Shakespeare’s Shylock and The Merchant of Venice” by Showerman and Delahoyde presented at Folio: Seattle Athenaeum Tuesday


Earl Showerman, MD and Michael Delahoyde, PhD
 at Folio: Seattle Athenaeum, March 13, 2018
by guest correspondent Tom Townsend
March 14, 2018

Two Shakespearean scholars, Earl Showerman, MD and Michael Delahoyde, PhD discussed critical topics about Shakespeare’s impressive work The Merchant of Venice.

Dr. Showerman discussed a real person, Gaspar Ribiero, as the likely model for Shylock; Dr. Delahoyde showcased the need to view different perspectives in Merchant. These presentations took place Tuesday, March 13, 2018 at Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum where approximately 50 people attended. These conversations are timely because The Seattle Shakespeare Company is producing Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice March 20-April 15, 2018.

Showerman’s thesis: Ribiero is Shylock
Earl Showerman clearly presented many excellent reasons why Gaspar Ribiero, a Sixteenth-century, Portuguese Jew living in Venice — and forced to convert to Christianity — could likely be the model for Shylock. Dr. Showerman added that he believes Edward de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, was the true Shakespeare. Both de Vere and Gaspar Ribiero attended the same church in Venice; and de Vere may have known Ribiero. 
Ribiero’s reputation in the Venice and Jewish community, however, was well known during the time de Vere visited and lived in Venice in 1575. Further, Ribiero’s daughter eloped with Ribiero’s ducat’s — just as Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, elopes with Shylock’s money and jewels.
While Showerman offers several additional similarities between Ribiero and Shakespeare’s Shylock, perhaps none is more convincing then the unusual language used by Ribiero: he repeated words and phrases just as someone with dementia. In fact, Ribiero’s language style is mirrored in Shylock’s speaking style, with similar repeating words and phrases.

Delahoyde’s discussion
Dr. Michael Delahoyde insightfully integrates the art of Sixteenth-century Venice with the play The Merchant of Venice. He believes The Merchant of Venice should be viewed from different perspectives. He demonstrated that Venetian painting during the Sixteenth Century showed different perspectives of the same scene from different vantage points. He pointed out that while Shylock appears to be a villain, Antonio and Portia are villains to him. In the trial scene, Portia asks Shylock for mercy, but offers none to Shylock. We know both Jewish and Christian religions endorse mercy, but no one does in the Merchant. To paraphrase a critic of the play: In The Merchant of Venice we see everyone behaving badly.

There was a lively and interesting question-and-answer session after these discussions by Earl Showerman and Michael Delahoyde. Many questions and comments centered on how the true author of Shakespeare — a man from Stratford, or Edward de Vere — could have known these intimate details of characters and ambience in Sixteenth-century Venice.

Note: For more information on this topic, read:

Resources

Popular posts from this blog

What's a popp'rin' pear?

James Wheaton reported yesterday in the Jackson Citizen Patriot that the Michigan Shakespeare Festival high school tour of Romeo and Juliet was criticized for inappropriate content -- " So me take issue with sexual innuendoes in Michigan Shakespeare Festival’s High School Tour performances of ‘Romeo & Juliet’" : Western [High School] parent Rosie Crowley said she was upset when she heard students laughing about sexual content in the play afterwards. Her son didn’t attend the performance Tuesday because of another commitment, she said.  “I think the theater company should have left out any references that were rated R,” Crowley said. “I would say that I’ve read Shakespeare, and what I was told from the students, I’ve never read anything that bad.”  She said she objected to scenes that involved pelvic thrusting and breast touching and to a line in which Mercutio makes suggestive comments to Romeo after looking up the skirt of a female. The problem with cutting out...

Winkler lights the match

by Linda Theil When asked by an interviewer why all the experts disagree with her on the legitimacy of the Shakespeare authorship question, journalist and author Elizabeth Winkler  calmly replied, "You've asked the wrong experts." * With that simple declaration Winkler exploded the topic of Shakespearean authorship forever. Anti-Stratfordians need no smoking gun, no convincing narrative, no reason who, how, when, or why because within the works lies the unassailable argument: Shakespeare's knowledge. Ask the lawyers. Ask the psychologists. Ask the librarians. Ask the historians. Ask the dramaturges. Ask the mathematicians. Ask the Greek scholars. Ask the physicists. Ask the astronomers. Ask the courtiers. Ask the bibliophiles. Ask the Italians. Ask the French. Ask the Russians. Ask the English. Ask everyone. Current academic agreement on a bevy of Shakespearean collaborators springs from an unspoken awareness of how much assistance the Stratfordian presumptive would h...

Dudley nails it to the door

Michael Dudley author of The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosphy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023) Michael Dudley views his vocation of librarian at the University of Manitoba with dialectic rigor. "Librarianship has a duty to inform democracy," he said in Kathryn Sharpe's virtual bookclub on April 27, 2024. Dudley discussed his new book The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing last fall. Update 08/21/24 Dudley's book is also available as an ebook from   Google Play . In SAQ and Philosophy Dudley uses the hammer of logic to nail his accusations against the barricaded door of the Shakespeare citadel. "The question of Shakespeare's authorship is a malformed debate practiced in an unethical fashion," Dudley said. When asked why his book is important, Dudley said: "What sets my book apart from others on the authorship quest...