Dự án Portia: Người thừa kế Belmont trên sân khấu và màn ảnh của Ann McCauley Basso

University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2011 The Portia Project: The Heiress of Belmont on Stage and Screen Ann Mccauley Basso University of South Florida, abasso@mail.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons, and the Theatre History Commons Scholar Commons Citation Basso, Ann Mccauley, "The Portia Project: The Heiress of Belmont on Stage and Screen" (2011). Graduate Theses and Dissertations.edu/etd/3000 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact scholarcommons@usf.

The Portia Project: The Heiress of Belmont on Stage and Screen by Ann McCauley Basso A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Sara Munson Deats, Ph. David Bevington, Ph. Denis Calandra, Ph. Robert Logan, Ph.

Date of Approval March 4, 2011 Keywords: Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare, Performance, Theater History, Seana McKenna, Kelsey Brookfield, Marni Penning, Lily Rabe Copyright © 2011, Ann McCauley Basso Dedication To Giulio and Valentina, the two brightest stars in my universe. Acknowledgements I am profoundly grateful to Sara Deats, the most insightful, helpful, and utterly delightful director any dissertation writer could ever hope for. You have been my professor, my mentor, my supporter, and my friend, and you have enriched my life in countless ways. My heartfelt thanks also go to my esteemed committee: David Bevington, Denis Calandra, and Robert Logan.

I am fortunate to have had such eminent and astute readers, and I am exceedingly thankful for the generous gifts of your time and advice. Thank you to the actors and directors who allowed me to interview them: Kelsey Brookfield, Seth Duerr, Edward Hall, Seana McKenna, Douglas Morse, Marni Penning, and Lily Rabe. I would also like to express my appreciation to the Interlibrary Loan staff at the University of South Florida, especially Sandra Law. These unsung heroes tracked down the most obscure articles and books quickly and efficiently, and I could not have completed this work without their help.

Thank you also to the librarians at the Folger Shakespeare Library and to Georgianna Ziegler, who graciously assisted me with citing the many promptbooks I used. My gratitude goes also to the English Department at USF, which granted me a University Graduate Fellowship and further supported with me a teaching assistantship. Finally, my sincere appreciation goes to Sheila Diecidue, whose enthusiastism and encouragement started me on the path to being a Shakespearean scholar. Table of Contents Prologue .1 Chapter One: Literary History .5 The Early Critics .5 Nineteenth-Century “Character Criticism” .6 Cultural and Historical Criticism .14 Portia and Medea .25 Comic Resolution and the Comic Heroine .39 Friendship or Homoeroticism .43 New Historicism and Cultural Materialism .46 Legal Analysis - The Courtroom Scene and the Law .56 Chapter Two: Performance History .64 The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries .65 The Turn of the Century to World War Two .72 Major Post-War Productions in the USA.77 Repertory Productions around the U.88 The Royal Shakespeare Company and Beyond .92 Global Productions in Translation .101 Shakespeare’s Merchant and Marlowe’s Jew .105 Homoerotic Productions, Homophobic Critics .107 Pushing the Envelope .109 The Big Screen and the Small Screen .122 Chapter Three: Seana McKenna .125 Chapter Four: Marni Penning .142 Chapter Five: Kelsey Brookfield .158 i Chapter Six: Lily Rabe.231 Appendix: List of Productions .242 ii List of Tables Table 1: Portia, Shylock, Bassanio and Antonio .2 iii Abstract Until now, there has not been a performance history of The Merchant of Venice that focuses on Portia, the main character of the play.

Although she has the most lines, the most stage time, and represents the nexus of the action, Portia has often been hidden in Shylock’s shadow, and this dissertation seeks to bring her into the spotlight. The Portia Project is a contribution to literary and theatrical history; its primary goal is to provide a tool for scholars and teachers. Moreover, because of Merchant’s notoriously problematic nature, the play invites different perspectives. By presenting the diverse ways that actors and directors have approached the play and resolved the cruxes associated with Portia, I aim to demonstrate that there are multiple valid ways in which to interpret the text.

Chapter one explores the literary criticism of The Merchant of Venice, centering on the treatment of the play’s female protagonist. The early twentieth century produced wide-ranging interpretations of Portia, and the last fifty years have seen her analyzed through the lenses of feminism, cultural materialism, psychoanalytic criticism, and queer theory. Having analyzed the literary criticism, I next concentrate on the performance history of The Merchant of Venice, with particular attention to Portia. I then turn to those who have performed the role in a wide-range of theatrical venues.

Chapter three features the input of Seana McKenna—star of the Canadian stage and a mainstay of the Stratford Festival in Ontario—who played Portia in a 1989 production. Michael Langham directed in an atmosphere of trepidation over the play’s reception and its portrayal of Shylock’s forced conversion. For chapter four I interviewed iv Marni Penning, a veteran of the smaller repertory companies that are sprinkled about the United States. For chapter five I talked to Edward Hall, artistic director of the all-male Propeller Theatre Company, and Kelsey Brookfield, a young black actor who played Portia for the group’s 2009 production.

By dressing all of the “male” characters alike, Hall de-emphasized the differences between the Christians and the Jews, while Portia, Nerissa, and Jessica were presented not as women, but as men, who have feminized themselves to survive in their harsh environment. Lily Rabe played Portia for the 2010 production of Merchant in Central Park, opposite Al Pacino’s Shylock. The production was so successful that it moved to Broadway in October of that year, and Rabe’s intelligent portrayal won universal accolades. The Portia Project explores the perceptions of literary critics, theatrical reviewers, actors, and directors, in order to ascertain how representations and expectations of Shakespeare’s most learned heroine have changed over the years and to rescue her from Shylock’s shadow.

By combining the disciplines of literary criticism, theatre, and film, an evolving picture of Portia emerges, revealing Portia’s complexity and her centrality to The Merchant of Venice. v Prologue One half of me is yours, the other half is yours (MV 3. She does not get nearly as much attention as she deserves, either from directors or from the literary critics. According to the MLA International Bibliography, roughly four times as many works have been written about Shylock (217) as about Portia (55), and not a single book-length study.

Of course, Shylock’s undeniable magnetism gives compelling fodder to literary analysts and provocative challenges to actors and directors. Moreover, post-Holocaust critics have, quite understandably, been fascinated by the question: is the play anti-Semitic or a critique of anti-Semitism? As a result, this fascination sometimes overshadows the romance that lies at the heart of the drama. Nevertheless, interest in Portia has burgeoned during the last several decades, and over the years, scholars have afforded much perceptive insight into one of Shakespeare’s most intriguing heroines. Literary discussions of The Merchant of Venice inevitably center on the Jewish usurer, and theatrical reviewers have tended to follow suit.

David Bevington points out in Shakespeare: Script, Stage, and Screen that “[v]irtually all stage histories of the play focus on Shylock and the actors who play him” (212). Portia, however, has the larger role, 574 lines to Shylock’s 352, and her part represents the fourth largest female role in the Shakespeare canon; only Rosalind, Imogen, and Cleopatra speak more lines. In addition, Portia appears in nine scenes, whereas Shylock is present in only four. 1 Moreover, the heiress of Belmont represents the nexus of the play; the quest for her hand drives the action, creating a motive for Bassanio to borrow money and initiating the bond plot, which further instigates the ring plot.

Depending on one’s interpretation, she also controls the result of the casket scenes by hinting to the highly preferred Bassanio concerning the correct casket. Furthermore, she serves as deus ex machina to resolve both the bond episode and the ring episode, manipulating the trial as well as the comic resolution of the play. Although Shylock gets more press, his role remains significantly smaller than Portia’s. Bassanio, although he has slightly more stage time than Portia, speaks even fewer lines.

Antonio technically has the smallest role of the four main characters, but he spends more time on stage than Shylock. The following chart delineates the particulars of the four main roles. Table 1 Roles and Stage Time in The Merchant of Venice 1 Portia Bassanio Antonio Shylock Number of scenes 9 6 6 4 Percentage of scenes 45 30 30 20 Lines spoken 582 332 182 353 Percentage of the play spoken 22 13 7 14 Lines for which the character is onstage 1286 1361 1008 735 Percentage of the play spent onstage 50 52 39 28 The lovers Portia and Bassanio remain on stage for half of the play, and even when they are not speaking, the audience observes their presence; clearly, the romantic story dominates The Merchant of Venice. Moreover, Shakespeare sometimes emphasizes important moments by placing them at the center of the play, and the exact halfway point 1 I used Bevington’s updated fourth edition for this analysis.

There is a total of 2598 lines in the play and 20 scenes. 2 of Merchant occurs at act 3, scene 2, line 16 when Portia says to Bassanio, “One half of me is yours, the other half is yours.” Perhaps without intending to, Shakespeare highlights an important detail about the play. The first part of the play and its emphasis on the romantic plot clearly belongs to Portia, and the Belmont plot and the casket contest drive the bond plot. Portia commands the second half as well, both in the courtroom and in her return to Belmont.

In order to rectify what has been overlooked about her fundamental importance to the play, this project seeks to shed light on representations of Portia. I begin with a survey of the literary criticism of The Merchant of Venice, centering my discussion on the treatment of the play’s female protagonist, and continue with a performance history that focuses not on Shylock, but on his courtroom adversary. The final four chapters include interviews with four very different Portias who have performed the role in a wide-range of theatrical venues: a well established Canadian actor and marquee name who played the role at the leading Shakespeare Festival in Canada; another established actor who appeared in both a much acclaimed London stage production and a film; a theatre veteran who starred in a repertory production in Florida; and a black male Portia who performed the role in a highly experimental New York production. Chapter three highlights Seana McKenna, star of the Canadian stage and a mainstay of the Stratford Festival in Ontario.

McKenna played Portia in a 1989 production that also featured Brian Bedford as Shylock and Geraint Wyn Davies as Bassanio. Michael Langham directed in an atmosphere of trepidation over the play’s reception and its portrayal of Shylock’s forced conversion. Marni Penning, the subject of chapter four, lit up the Orlando stage in 2009 with a fairy-tale Portia in 3 Disney’s neighborhood. This veteran of U.

regional festivals brought her broad experience to the magic kingdom of Belmont. Kelsey Brookfield, a young black man, did not resemble the typical Portia when he played the role for Edward Hall’s Propeller Theatre. The production—featured in chapter five—visited the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the spring of 2009, and its cutting-edge setting in a harsh prison, its all-male cast, and its highly physical approach allowed Brookfield to enact a thought-provoking and sympathetic Portia that blatantly broke with convention.