Stephen Greenblatt gives inaugural Gollancz lecture
Stephen Greenblatt, John Cogan Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Swerve, gave the inaugural King’s Gollancz Lecture entitled ‘Shakespeare’s Life-Making’ at King’s College London on 16 February 2017.
This is the first lecture in an annual series co-sponsored by three Arts & Humanities Research Institute Centres: the London Shakespeare Centre (LSC), the Centre for Late Antique & Medieval Studies (CLAMS) and the Centre for Early Modern Studies (CEMS).
Personal experience and 'reading texts that hurt'
Focusing on Shakespeare’s characterisation of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Professor Greenblatt consciously echoed one of the keenest interests of Sir Israel Gollancz, Professor of English at King’s from 1906 to 1930, in whose honour the lecture is named. He began by recalling his own personal experience of being the target of anti-semitism as an undergraduate at Yale in the 1960s and reflecting on the choice he made to ‘keep reading texts that hurt’ – perhaps above all The Merchant of Venice.
Representation in Kömurjian and Shakespeare
Professor Greenblatt's discussion ranged from Eremya Chelebi Kömurjian’s Armeno-Turkish poem ‘The Jewish Bride’, which shares many elements of characterisation with The Merchant of Venice, to last year’s 500th anniversary of the Venice Ghetto.
He also noted the extent to which Shakespeare negotiates his English inheritance, showing a better understanding of the Jewish faith than many of his peers, emphasising the proximity of Jews and Christians in his dramatised version of Venice. The play, he argued, resists attempts to bring it into the enlightenment, retains the genre of comedy and thus creates much discomfort for modern playgoers.
The key, for Professor Greenblatt, is the level of excess energy that Shakespeare conferred on his Jewish protagonist, which continues to unsettle us to this day and may also have unsettled Shakespeare himself. Shylock remains the clearest instance of a Shakespearean character seeming to acquire a life independent of the play in which he appears.