Sample cover letter for Internship position at Nian Fish

Can money (love) buy you love (money)? What rules of exchange prevail, and when can you break/suspend them? Is the supply limitless? And when does the reckoning come due? What’s the difference?

Jessica has to forgo her father/family and change her faith to be with Lorenzo

Exchanges, crossovers, Merchant 1.1-2.6

Exchanges, equations, swaps (start with the pound of flesh)

Where are there transactions between unlike parties or involving unlike commodities – swaps that maybe shouldn’t be made?

(flesh and money, money and love, ventures and goods, friendship and cash, social life and economic life etc. Where do you find such transactions?)

Crossovers (anticipating, mirroring Bassanio’s):

à Lancelet (2.2, 2.5 etc): The parody of a moral choice. (What Biblical story does 2.2 remind us of?)

à Shylock, changing his mind from 1.3.28ff, decides to dine with the Christians (2.5.11ff). Is he already trying to devour the Christian, or does that come later?

à Jessica (2.3, 2.4, 2.6): courtship? A festival folly? A “rape”?

• -Why is she a “torchbearer”, masked?
• -n.b. the family doctrine on masques (2.5.27): why?
• -Already defined as “gentle Jessica” (2.4.18), and note the pun on gentile – always latent in the word (e.g. 1.3.170)
• -Defining herself (“ashamed to be my father’s child” 2.3)
• -cf. Lancelet’s racism (2.3.10ff, 3.5.1ff)

Two “pivot” scenes, 3.1 and 3.2

• -why are they juxtaposed?
• -How do they inflect the action?

3.1

• -Anticipated 2.8.12ff: My daughter! O, my ducats! O, my daughter! (2.8.15)
• -Impact of the crossover (Jessica’s): “My own flesh and blood…”
• -The rejoinder: “There is more difference…” (32)
• -The collapse of distinctions: 1 (daughter and jewels)
• -Collapse of distinctions: 2 (Shylock’s misfortune and Antonio’s)
• -The “I am a Jew” speech (44ff): How does it work? Liberal humanitarian statement? Or allusions to a dark prehistory?
• -And that poor turquoise (101). Sigh.

3.2

Cf casket tests (2.1, 2.7 [Morocco], 2.8 (Aragon), 3.2 (Bassanio)

• -The series of exotics (Morocco, Aragon), but why three?
• -Why are these scenes often played for laughs?
• -Is this a good method of choosing a husband or wife? Or does it just slow down choice, randomize the result, rationalize the process? Why does Bassanio get it right where the exotics get it wrong?
• -Or turn it into ceremony? The full force of 3.2: Portia’s overture, the song, Bassanio’s sententious wisdom (73ff), and then they give themselves (149ff), on what conditions? Portia’s financial imagery (153ff)
• -And of course: the rule of the extra marriage (Gratiano and Nerissa 196ff): We are the Jasons: we have won the fleece.
• -So all the news is good, right? Not so fast: news from Venice (216ff)
• -Next: lead-up to, rational of 4.1 – the turn to allegory

In casket scene everything rhymes with the word lead LOL

3.2 (cont.)

• Portia gives herself (3.2.271): what does this mean?
• the rings…and the consequent swaps (4.1, 5.1.142ff)
• The arrival of guests (3.2.216ff): why, btw. Is the welcome of Jessica markedly omitted?
• Much is made of the delights of cross-dressing (3.4.60-84)! What’s the theatrical force of the cross-dressing?

The move toward allegory (As 4.1 approaches)

• Salvation issue broached again in 3.5 (Lancelet to Jessica: “You are damned”)
• Characters begin to take on named roles:
  Portia (already in 3.2): “I stand for sacrifice” (3.2.57)
  Shylock (“I stand for judgment,” 4.1.103; “I stand here for law,” line 142)
• Couplets emphasize the clash of judgment and mercy (Duke and Shylock, 88-89)
• The great mercy “speech” (4.1.182ff) kicks off with a citation from the Wisdom book Sirach (= Ecclesiasticus (35: 18-19)

Theology: justice vs mercy

Nunn

• -Portia seems to have been spontaneously inspired – unplanned AF
• -Camera is too close or too far away, uncomfortably slow – adds to homoerotic undertones