'Dean asked me if I'd do a little Shakespeare'
It's fifty-five years to the day since Orson Welles delivered some incredible lines from Shylock in The Merchant of Venice on the Dean Martin Show. TV was different then.
I’m not denigrating the modern tonight show. We’re a bit bereft of good late night TV here in Australia, but we have access to the heavy hitters from around the world. The modern tonight shows throw up occasional gems like this story from Stephen Merchant on the Graham Norton Show about nearly dropping The Boss:
But when TV was still finding it’s feet, and entertainment was still something people mainly went out for, Dean Martin invited Orson Welles on his show to just ‘do some Shakespeare’. It seems so far away now, and it’s quite brilliant.
Good evening,
Dean asked me if I'd do a little Shakespeare, I decided to do something from The Merchant of Venice, you know, Sjhakespeare said just about everything that needed to be said on every subject, and I think on the matter of bigotry, no one has ever spoken out better than he has three hundred years ago, so I'm going to do a short scene from the Merchant of Venice.
Just imagine that I'm Shylock, an old Jewish moneylender, who lives in the Jewish ghetto of Venice, hated by the Christians, and he is approached by his old enemy, the merchant Antonio who wants to borrow 3000 ducats.
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat 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:
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say
‘Shylock, we would have moneys:’ you say so;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold: moneys is your suit
What should I say to you? Should I not say
‘Hath a dog money? is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats?’ Or
Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness, Say this;
‘Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn’d me such a day; another time
You call’d me dog; and for these courtesies
I’ll lend you thus much moneys’?To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.
He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million;
laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies;
And what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes?
Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?
Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?
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?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.
The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
My personal blog is called Good one, Wilson. 1400 people have signed up for a free story from me a week. Most recent post was a republished piece from a book on Fatherhood
