Shylock, My Students, and Me: What I've learned from 30 years of teaching The Merchant of Venice

Paula Marantz Cohen:

I have been teaching literature for 30 years, and the longer I teach, the more I enjoy teaching Shakespeare. As I grow older and wearier, his plays seem to deliver greater matter and art in a more condensed and lively way than any other text I could choose. To be clichéd about it: Shakespeare offers more bang for the buck.

While Shakespeare now draws me more than ever before, one work in particular draws me most. This is The Merchant of Venice. For me, this extraordinary play grows increasingly subtle and supple with time. It continues to excite me with its language, its depth of character, and its philosophical, political, spiritual, and pedagogical implications. Looking back over my years of teaching the play, I see that the way it has been received by my students is an index to how our society has changed. I also see how much the play continues to push against established readings and to challenge even the most seemingly enlightened perspectives. The Merchant of Venice is both a mirror of our times and a means of transcending the bias of our times. It teaches how to teach.

My response to the play may be connected to the nature of my career in literature. I was exposed to highbrow literary criticism in the 1970s at elite undergraduate and graduate institutions. This was a time when multi­culturalism was making inroads in academia but when progressive thinking coexisted with an ingrained snobbism regarding how literature should be taught and who should teach it.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at February 12, 2010 2:55 AM
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