blog post #18

For my response project for The Merchant of Venice my group and i decided to make a short film. The film would alter the ending of the Merchant of Venice to highlight that no matter what Shylock did he would have been treated terribly from the people of the city. It went mostly well, we got done filming in one day and everything was in on time. however, I feel that there could have been more preparation, it should not have taken us 10 hours to film, and the camera work needed work. however despite these errors with preparation i was proud of the finished product and i can now look back in future years and remember that yes i made a short film. I would and will do other projects like this in the future. if there was one thing I could change about the project it would definitely be not checking our shots before pressing record.

Blog Post #17

For my blog post I chose to explore the significance of Bissanio in Antonio's plot line. Well this may seem quite obvious but without Bissanio there would almost be no plot. first of all he asked for the loan from Antonio which lead to Antonio taking money from Shylock. Secondly if it were not for him and his wife Portia interfering Antonio would have likely died at the hands of Shylock. so in a way we can root all of Antonio's problems back to Bassanio. that is not to say that all that happened to Antonio was Bassanios fault. In-fact I do not think Antonio minded almost dying for Bassanio as he was basically in love with him.

merchant of venice/blog post #16

1. In Act 4, Scene 1 (pp. 78-79) Portia gives a speech about the mercy vs. justice ("The quality of mercy is not strained..."). Explain what Portia is saying about justice and mercy, and why is this important in the play?

portia in this scene is  disguised as a doctor of the law. she is trying to convince shylock to give mercy to Antonio and not take justice. she does this by explaining the qualities of justice. she says " the quality of mercy is not strained it droppeth as a gentle rain from heaven". what i think she means is that mercy is not forced it is something wonderful that you should want to do. she also says the thing along the lines of mercy is in a king's heart, and that god possesses mercy. i believe she did this to almost glorify mercy, saying that if he were truly a good man he would spare Antonio. how is this important to the play. well this is important because we get to see how portia planned to free antonio. as i was reading i was thinking to myself "is what she saying sincere, or is she just saying this to try and get Antonio off the hook". even if her speech was not sincere i must say it was truly inspiring, and i think can apply to many things in our modern world.

1. On page 49 (Act 3, Scene 1) Shylock gives his speech that seems to be sympathetic to the plight of Jews ("I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes?..."). Considering the rampant anti-Semitism in the play, why do you think Shakespeare would have included this speech? How does it change what we think of Shylock? 

when we were reading the merchant of venice, moore specifically the first act you could definitely see the hate that a lot of the characters had towards jewish people. one of the bigger actions in that first act was when we learned how bad antonio had treated shylock (that he had spit on him and made fun of him). at the time i thought this was just a way shakespeare was almost making fun of shylock and to make him out to be the villain. but after shylock gave his speech about how he is still human i am not so sure. i instead think that he did this to make his characters not seem so black and white, and make them more realistic. this would also make the audience think of the way they have treated jewish people. as to how this affects how we think of shylock. at least for me i think it adds a lot more depth to the character, it made it so that i don't know who the good guy and who the bad guy is.