Chapter 64
“Why do you think that Jewish people have been the object of so much prejudice for so long?”
Ron started the class with this question, and as he expected, the question was met with silence. He waited to see what they would say. Lately, he had learned to become comfortable with silence in the classroom. He knew that his questions weren’t easy, and that they needed time to think if he wanted them to give thoughtful answers. It occurred to him that teachers often did not ask questions that had no right answers because they were uncomfortable with the silence that followed them. He looked into their faces. Since this was the first day of the play there were no comments about last night’s reading on the chalkboard.
“Because they are so different,” said Donna, “and they seem to think that they are better than anyone else.”
Ron waited. He knew that there would be more if he could hold out. He gazed at them. He sensed that it was not that they were confused, but that they were unsure about how they should answer. Finally Elena said, “I don’t think that I have known any Jewish people, personally.”
Ron saw a number of the girls bob their heads up and down in assent. He hadn’t considered this. They didn’t know any Jews. Then an idea struck him. “It is quite possible that Shakespeare did not know any Jewish people either. He was working from stories that he had heard. In some cases, he was working with stereotypes that had been passed down for a long time. Jews had been expelled from England a long time before Shakespeare was born, and the depictions of them were usually those of sub-human monsters, which is why, among other reasons, Shakespeare set the play in Venice. There would have been no Jews in England.”
“Where did they go?” asked Donna.
“They wandered in Europe, not being totally accepted. In some places they were forced to wear strange costumes that would mark them as Jews. In other places, such as Venice, they were not allowed to have citizenship or work at jobs. As a result, they turned to money lending, which is referred to as usury in the play.”
Then he turned to the tape player and switched it on. It was the opening scene. He had them. Not like he had them in some of the more romantic plays, but that was coming and he was satisfied. The thoughts in his head as he watched them follow the words of the actors were about how much he would acquaint them with the Jewish culture. How much would he be allowed to say? Would he be allowed to say that it was really the Italians that killed Christ? That in his head it had been one of the great bait and switches of all time to have made the Jews the scapegoats? It didn’t matter. The fact was that they were going to meet their first Jew. Ron wished hard that Shakespeare’s description was not so much of a stereotype, but he wanted to make sure that his audience got it. He wanted them to hate Shylock so that he could, in some ways, redeem him. Shakespeare had really boiled it down to two speeches, two monologues. The one “Hath a Jew not eyes…” and the other, the more famous, “the quality of mercy” It really all came down to those two and one of the strongest women he had ever seen on a stage, Portia.
After the first scene ended, he clicked off the tape. “One question that I want you to try to answer at the end of this play is “Why was Antonio sad?” He turned and wrote the question on the chalkboard. The girls all copied the question into their notebooks. They knew him well enough to know that it was from these questions that he would select their essays. The bell rang before Ron wanted it to ring. He said quickly, “Finish the first act for tomorrow and remember it takes five statements on the side board for us to be able to begin class.” There was a groan and he answered it with a smile and then they left.
The next day, Ron began by looking over at the side board. He read: “Why do parents have nothing better to do than meddle in their kids’ lives?” It was signed by Debbie. The next read, “How can she spend the rest of her life with someone based on the results of a game?” That was signed by Donna. The next read, “I don’t think that it’s fair to force us to read about Jews.” It was unsigned. Ron stared hard at it. It was unsigned for a reason. Of course the girls knew who wrote it and he could force the issue but he decided to let it go. The next read, “What’s the big deal about loaning money for interest?” That was Elena. Veronica had written a quote from the play. “All that glisters is not gold.” Next to it she wrote, “Why did we all learn that it was glitters and what does glisters mean?” It was of course from the second act and it told Ron that Veronica had read ahead. She had probably read the entire play but he would be embarrassing her if he asked. And finally Samantha wrote, “I have no idea why Antonio is sad. He’s rich.”
Ron thought quickly about where to begin and then from seemingly out a nowhere an idea struck him. He turned to the board and quickly drew ten vertical lines. Over each column he placed a number from 1-10. “Now with ten being the highest and one the lowest, tell me how much it matters to you that your parents like the man that you will eventually marry.” He had had some experience with this process and turned to give them a caution. “Now before you lowball the answer, think of this. You are out on a date and the guy you are with tells you that on a scale of 1-10 he would rate your looks a 6.” They laughed. “Would you be offended?”
“I wouldn’t be offended but I would make sure that it was the last time that I went out with him.”
“And why is that?”
“Who wants a guy who does not think that you are beautiful?” she said as if he must be some kind of moron.
“You didn’t do that to your last girlfriend did you Mr. Tuck?” said Donna.
Everyone laughed again. “No, I did not do that. If I thought she was a 6, I wouldn’t be out with her.”
The girls laughed again and Ron laughed with them. As he took the vote, it split the way that he expected that it would. It was based on their mood of the moment. Some said ten and some said one. Samantha asked if there was a category for zero. There were very few in the middle. When he finished the survey, he had 3 tens, 4 nines, 3 eights, 6 twos and 7 ones.
He stared at the results. He circled the 13 low scores. “So are you saying that your family is not important?”
Elena’s hand shot up. “No, I am saying that my family needs to have trust in my decisions. They need to respect what it is that I want for my life.”
Ron nodded again. Donna, who was a 2, said, “I may not get married but if I did, I wouldn’t want my parents choosing my partner.”
“That’s not the question,” said Ron.
Donna smiled. “No you twisted the question around, the way that you always do.”
Everyone laughed again. Ron feigned being aghast at her response. “I do not twist.” They laughed harder.
Samantha said, “You probably won a twisting contest in the olden days.”
Ron needed to move on. He did not want them dwelling on how he might be manipulating them. It would make it much harder to teach them if they did.
“What about my 10’s and 9’s here? Why is what family thinks of your prospective husband so important?”
Surprisingly Veronica raised her hand and said, “I would be lost without my family. I know it may sound weak, but I need them to like the guy that I want to marry.”
“It is not at all weak,” said Ron. He thought about how he responded to his mother’s judgments of his girlfriends. He thought that life would be easier if she had liked them but he also thought that if there was one that she liked that she would push him to marry her.
Elizabeth said, “I want my mother to be proud of who I choose. It would be great if she were proud of something about me.”
Ron let what she said sink in. He did not want to patronize her. He realized that she wanted to express what she had said, and that in some way it had been cathartic for her to be able to say it.
“For all of you who don’t like, women’s liberation, let me say that back in Shakespeare’s time, women were property. A man could actually beat his daughter to death for disobeying him and it would be within his rights.”
“My dad would have loved living back then,” said Elena.
Now Ron ran through the plot and pointed out some quotes that he suggested that the girls remember and understand. They wrote furiously. These quotes they knew would be the batch from which he would select the ones on their test. When he finished, he clicked on the beginning of Act 2.
His eyes turned to Elizabeth while they were reading and he saw that she was holding her head down and fighting back tears.
In the hall at the change of class he said to Bernadette, “What do you know about Elizabeth’s mother?”
“I never met her,” said Bernadette, “but I know that Elizabeth is frightened of her judgment. And I know that there is no man on the scene.”
“She’s a very determined girl,” said Ron.
“I assume that she gets that from her mother,” said Bernadette. “I think that her mother wants better for her and pushes her to excel. At least that’s what it sounds like.”
Ron wondered if he should find a way to meet Elizabeth’s mom.