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Month: December 2020

‘You have among you many a purchased slave’: Shylock, Slavery, and the NBA

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Like the Venetian aristocrats in The Merchant of Venice, the National Basketball Association is remaining quiet on the issue of slavery. Venice was the pre-eminent European city during Shakespeare’s time, its industry producing ironworks, cannon, and glassware at a time when even window glass was a relative novelty in England. And Venice was a maritime power that controlled trade across the Mediterranean, the only Christian power that traded with the Muslim world. Shakespeare recognized the potential Venice had to serve as a model for England’s future as it extended the …

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‘It would become me as well as it does you’: The Tempest, and The Queen’s Gambit

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The chess world has come back into public attention with the premiere on Netflix of The Queen’s Gambit, a charming and brilliantly executed fictional story of an orphaned girl who becomes a chess prodigy. But even when it comes to chess, Shakespeare got there first. In The Tempest, the shipwrecked Prospero plays matchmaker between his daughter Miranda and the more recently shipwrecked Ferdinand, who is the rightful Prince of Naples. After setting for Ferdinand tests of endurance that he submits to out of love for Miranda, their courtship culminates in …

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‘To be, or not to be’: Hamlet and Jeffrey Epstein Have a Chat in the Afterlife

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Hamlet deserves to keep better company, but seeing as Jeffrey Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide, and Hamlet has given the most famous speech in the language contemplating suicide, we have to wonder what the two of them might talk about in the afterlife: Hamlet: I’d prefer not to keep company with a man credibly accused of serial sex crimes with children. Honor was central to my life. After all, I said this: “Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in …

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‘Had I plantation of this isle, my lord’: The Tempest, Gonzalo, and the Endless Riots

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Was the Taking of the Capital last month, and the continuing riots on Biden’s inauguration day, anarchy? We don’t think so. In today’s Shakespeare snack, we’ll look at a real anarchistic utopian vision, presented by Gonzalo in The Tempest. Gonzalo’s utopian vision, presented in The Tempest, is fairly modest. Shipwrecked on an island in the Mediterranean, he is the councilor to Naples’ King Alonso. For a brief moment in the play, he forgets his courtly obligations and fantasizes about what he would do if he were the ruler of the …

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‘Lust and liberty creep in the minds and marrow of our youth’: Timon and Today’s Rioting

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Timon: “Lust and liberty Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth, That ‘gainst the stream of virtue they may strive, And drown themselves in riot!” Shakespeare would not have been at all surprised by the recent spate of rioting in America. Civil disorder was often on the mind of every educated Englishman. England under Elizabeth had a clear memory of the War of the Roses, an extended period of civil clashes over a disputed crown, and people were generally terrified of a recurrence. And with good reason – …

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