Tag Archives: Merchant of Venice

Caution against Purity Policing

By Robin Bates | Published: February 24, 2019

Monday One of my conservative readers wrote me recently asking me how I felt about leftist insistence that Virginia governor Ralph Northam resign for having posted a racist picture in his medical school yearbook years ago. After all, hasn’t Northam lived a fairly exemplary life since then? The reader also sent me a Quillette article […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Aphra Behn, Henry Fielding, Oroonoko, purity policing, Tom Jones, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Shakespeare Hated Bullies

By Robin Bates | Published: February 5, 2019

Tuesday Last week a reader accused me of anti-Semitism for defending Merchant of Venice. While I’m always willing to learn new things about myself—personally, I think I have more trace elements in my system of sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, and ableism than of anti-Semitism—the response sent me back to early recollections of the play. For […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged anti-Semitism, bullying, Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Lit Frees Us from Our Mental Ghettos

By Robin Bates | Published: July 7, 2017

In a fine “New Yorker” article, Shakespearean Stephen Greenblatt argues that Shakespeare was incapable to showing anything less than the full humanity of his characters, even the villains. He thereby liberates us from our “mental ghettos.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged anti-Semitism, cultural heritage, Humanities, Romeo and Juliet, T. S. Eliot, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

The Ugliness of Racial Resentment

By Robin Bates | Published: February 21, 2017

“The Merchant of Venice” is a story of resentment and thus is only too relevant in today’s political landscape of inflamed passion. Those who have been victimized–or who feel that they have been victimized–are only too ready to stick it to others when they are in power.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged anti-Semitism, Donald Trump, resentment, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Shakespeare Understood Trumpism

By Robin Bates | Published: November 3, 2016

According to Adam Gopnik, Shakespeare would have understood the rise of Donald Trump better than we do today. Whereas we see him as a historical oddity, Shakespeare would have seen him as the kind of evil that has always resided within humankind.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged 2016 presidential election, Adam Gopnik, As You Like It, Donald Trump, Hamlet, Henry V, Hillary Clinton, King Lear, Macbeth, Richard III, Tempest, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

In Defense of The Merchant of Venice

By Robin Bates | Published: October 18, 2016

Percy Shelley believes that great art transcends the prejudices of its time, even when it is cloaked in them. If he is right, then “Merchant of Venice” is less of a problem play than many people consider it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged anti-Semitism, Defence of Poetry, Othello, Percy Shelley, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Kill All the Lawyers? Nope, We Need Them

By Robin Bates | Published: October 12, 2016

A district judge reflects upon what lawyers and judges can learn from Shakespeare, including “Othello,” “Merchant of Venice, “Hamlet,” “King Lear,” most of the history plays, and others.