Esta Tese de Doutorado tem por objetivo discutir a questão da mimesis da interioridade no Mercador de Veneza, de William Shakespeare. A pesquisa está embasada na obra Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance, de Maus (1995), e na obra Shakespeare Philosophy, de McGinn (2007), na crítica literária da peça. Maus apresenta a interioridade como um constructo social e cultural da Renascença Inglesa. Ela analisa a interioridade tomando como base a oposição entre aparências, consideradas falsas e enganosas na época, e interioridade, que era tida como manifestações sinceras e verdadeiras das dimensões interiores do indivíduo. Contudo, McGinn vai além da discussão de Maus sobre interioridade, ao perceber que Shakespeare representou as dimensões obscuras incontroláveis do indivíduo. Ele apresenta as forças misteriosas que controlam os pendores interiores das personagens. Além disso, a tese busca analisar a constelação de motivos e a retórica da interioridade que representam sentimentos interiores na peça de Shakespeare. Parte da hipótese de que a mimesis shakespeariana da interioridade é representada em sinais, sutis tais como os silêncios, os não-ditos, as rupturas de linguagem, gestos corporais, pathos, contradições de ideias e pensamentos, a consciência, vergonha e atos falhos. Ademais, a mimesis shakespeariana da interioridade é construída através do artifício do espelhamento que é a representação das dimensões interiores e os pendores da mente nos sentimentos, ideias, gestos, pensamentos, comportamento e atitude de outras personagens. Na verdade, Shakespeare não inventou a interioridade, mas aprofundou a representação da interioridade introduzindo traços inovadores na linguagem do drama. Este trabalho também discute o estranho desenvolvimento da crítica sobre a peça, apresentando que a crítica dos séculos XVIII e XIX lia Shylock como um herói trágico, ao passo que a crítica do século XX lia Shylock como um vilão cômico, provavelmente influenciada pelo antissemitismo da primeira metade do século. Essa pesquisa foca sobre a estranha relação entre Antonio e Bassanio, assim como sua relação com Shylock. Sua relação é representada como homoerótica e o desejo de um frívolo sacrifício de Antonio por Bassanio sugere a interioridade de Antonio. Shylock é também representado como o pai primordial da peça e esse detalhe sugere a causa da tristeza de Antonio no começo da peça. Analisa também o teste dos escrínios de Portia e demonstra seu desejo de defraudar o testamento de seu pai, tão logo ela pede que se toque uma canção que sugere em suas rimas o verdadeiro escrínio. Discute os problemas da consciência de Launcelot e da interioridade de Jessica. Analisa também a relação distante entre Jessica e Shylock, como também sua partida da casa de seu pai e roubo de seu dinheiro, como uma forma de afrontar o poder patriarcal. Centra-se também na cegueira de Shylock para com as intenções reais de sua filha. Interpreta a cena do julgamento de Shylock e como Portia forja um julgamento fraudulento, anulando o contrato de Shylock a tomando sua propriedade. Apresenta uma discussão sobre a mimesis shakespeariana de interioridade, com base nas considerações de Auerbach e Dubois, assim como discute o problema do gênero da peça, sugerindo que a peça não é uma mera comédia, mas uma tragicomédia. / This Doctorate thesis aims at discussing the issue of mimesis of inwardness in The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare. This survey is based on Maus‘ Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance (1995), McGinn‘s work Shakespeare Philosophy (2007) and the literary criticism on the play. Maus presents inwardness as social and cultural construct of the English Renaissance. She analyses inwardness based on the opposition between appearances, considered false and deceitful in the age, and inwardness, which was taken as true and sincere manifestations of the inward dimensions of the self. However, McGinn goes beyond Maus‘ discussion on inwardness, perceiving that Shakespeare represented the uncontrolled obscure inward dimensions of the self. He presents the mysterious forces which control the characters‘ inward dispositions. Moreover, the thesis aims at analysing the constellation of motifs and the rhetoric of inwardness which represent inward feelings in Shakespeare‘s play. It parts from the hypothesis that Shakespearean mimesis of inwardness is represented in subtle signs such as silences, non-said, breaks in language, bodily gestures, pathos, contradictions in ideas and thoughts, conscience, shame, and verbal slips. Furthermore, Shakespeare‘s mimesis of inwardness is contructed through the mirroring device which is the representation of a character‘s inward dimensions and dispositions of the mind in other character‘s feelings, ideas, thoughts, gestures, behaviour and attitude. Actually, Shakespeare did not invent inwardness, but he deepened the representation of inwardness introducing innovating traits in language in the drama. This work also discusses the awkward development of the criticism on the play, presenting that the 18th and 19th century criticism read Shylock as a tragic hero, whereas 20th century criticism read Shylock as a comic villain probably influenced by anti-Semitism of the first half of the century. This research focuses on the awkward relationship between Antonio and Bassanio, as well as their relationship with Shylock. Their relation is depicted as homoerotic and Antonio‘s desire of a frivolous sacrifice for Bassanio suggests Antonio‘s inwardness. Shylock is also depicted as the primordial father of the play and such detail hints at the cause of Antonio‘s sadness in the beginning of the play. It analyses Portia‘s casket trial and demonstrates her desire of outwitting her father‘s will, as soon as she demands to play a song which suggests in its rhyme the true casket. It discusses the problems of conscience in Launcelot‘s and Jessica‘s inwardness. It also analyses the distant relationship between Jessica and Shylock, as well as her leaving her father‘s house and taking his wealth, as a way of affronting the patriarchal power. It focuses on Shylock‘s blindness towards his daughter‘s real intentions. It analyses the trial scene and how Portia forges a fraudulent trial, undoing Shylock‘s bond and taking his property. It presents a discussion on Shakespeare‘s mimesis of inwardness, based on Auerbach‘s and Dubois‘ assumptions, as well as discusses the problem of the genre of the play, suggesting that the play is not a mere comedy, but a tragicomedy.

莎劇＜威尼斯商人＞已被廣泛地從種族、性別和宗教等角度討論。然而這些非物質的角度並無法全然地描繪全劇。劇中有許多物件，並且深深地影響著劇中的角色們。這篇論文將試著探索物件和人們之間的關係，以三種人與人之間的關係來著手：猶太人和基督徒、父母親和子女以及愛情和友誼。很明顯的，在劇中，角色和物件之間的關係密不可分，甚至物件的力量會高過人們，進而產生控制。維根斯坦以聖奧古斯丁的論點來做為他的語言哲學的開端：語言以物件命名為基礎。但維根斯坦認為語言的運用並不全然建立在為物件命名，而是在不同的情境之下使用且產生不同的意義，換言之，語言重要的目的不是表達意義，而是在情境中發揮功能。而這樣使用語言的方式，描繪了人們的生活形式(Form of Life)。在劇中，物件在不同的情境之下有著不同的意義。由於戲劇能夠反映人生，因此透過探索劇中物件與角色間的關係，可以反映出人們的真實生活抑是和物件密不可分，也反映出人們的生活形式。 / The Merchant of Venice has long been discussed with the view of race, gender and religion. These immaterial aspects, however, are not able to depict the totality of the play. There are many material objects in the play, those objects which strongly involved in characters’ relationships. The thesis aims to explore when people grant force on objects and objects act upon people in return by examining objects in the play. The importance of objects can be found in three relationships: Shylock and Christianity, parents and children, love and friendship. It is obvious that objects function diversely in different situation and objects do have influence on characters. Ludwig Wittgenstein starts his linguistic philosophy with St. Augustin’s observation: the use of languages starts from naming objects. However, Wittgenstein thinks that languages function in activities, so we should consider the function of language within activities of life instead of an abstract meaning. The way people use languages can be seen as participating in activities which presents the form of life. Similarly, objects function differently in activities and have diverse impact on characters. Drama is formed by many activities and reflects people’s life. Through finding the importance of characters and objects in The Merchant of Venice, the result can reflect people’s real form of life.

This thesis explores the politics of community in five Shakespearean comedies: The Comedy of Errors (1594), The Merchant of Venice (1596-8), Measure for Measure (1603-4), The Tempest (1611) and The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613). The idea of community addresses many issues usually thought to belong to 'high politics'. Thinking about this topic therefore enables us to articulate a notion of the political firmly grounded within the functioning of the commonwealth at a local level and as a state of interpersonal relations. This thesis has three key aims. Firstly, it argues that the plays highlight the responsibility of all community members, no matter their gender or status, in shaping and contributing to their political environment by displaying civic virtue, working to obtain justice and influencing their ruler's behaviour. By so doing, it focuses on the processes of civic engagement and the political implications of everyday life within a community which have often been neglected in readings of Shakespeare's work thus far. Secondly, this thesis illustrates the inseparability of ethics and politics. It demonstrates throughout that relationships between individuals within a community can have widereaching implications, whether that be in terms of the existence of trust between friends, family members or fellow citizens; the importance of consent existing between subjects and ruler; or the ability of fellow-feeling to confer a sense of agency upon subjects. Lastly, it contends that Shakespeare's assessment of the commonwealth in his comedies, with its emphasis on civic values and on the relationship between the community and the individual, remains attuned to Aristotelian and Ciceronian thought, in contrast to the Tacitean influences critics have detected in the darkness and scepticism of his tragedies and histories. Shakespeare's comedies therefore question the commonly accepted paradigm in early modern intellectual history that Tacitus' prominence increased greatly in the intellectual climate of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, while Aristotle's and Cicero's diminished. Moving away from the predominant focus on the tragedies and histories in analyses of Shakespeare's political thought, this thesis foregrounds the significance of citizenship, the household and friendship and reassesses the role of the comedies in Shakespeare's thinking about politics.

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 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.

In its introduction and four chapters, this project demonstrates that Shakespeare responded to—and powerfully shaped—the early modern English literary marketplace. Against the longstanding critical limitation of the category “Literature” that restricts it to the printed book, this dissertation argues that the literary is not so much a quality of texts as a mode of exchange encompassing not merely printed books but many other forms of representation. Whether writing for the stage, the page, or both, Shakespeare borrowed from and influenced other writers, and it is these specifically formal transactions that make his works literary. Thus, we can understand Shakespeare’s literariness only by scrutinizing the formal features of his works and showing how they circulated in an economy of imaginative writing. Shakespeare self-consciously refashioned words, styles, metrical forms, and figures of speech even as he traded in them, quickly cornering the literary market between 1595 and 1600. Shakespeare’s practice as a writer thus preceded and made possible his reputation both in the theater and in print. / text

Poststructuralism may be broadly characterized as a move away from traditional Western foundationalist thinking. Such thinking is exemplified by post-enlightenment transcendentalism, humanism and subject-centredness. This study aims to contribute to the poststructuralist decentering of the subject by means of the application of the critical practice of deconstruction – a type of analysis named and popularized by Jacques Derrida, who is himself frequently classified as a poststructuralist, in which the ruling logic of the text is undermined and the meaning of the text is therefore shown not to be fully present within it – to four texts by a writer who is arguably among the most prominent within the English literary canon: William Shakespeare. The first deconstructive reading centres around the court scene at the climax of the bond story in The Merchant of Venice. Here the apparent contrast between the restrictive law – which views Shylock’s claim of a pound of Antonio’s flesh as valid – and justice and mercy – which regard adherence to this bond as contrary to the spirit of the law – is collapsed, and justice is shown to be capable of being as restrictive as the law, while mercy becomes embroiled in all the trading that occurs in The Merchant of Venice, and demonstrates the capacity to be mercenary. The Tempest is examined next: the starting point is the apparent Nature/Culture distinction within the play. The reading is influenced by Derrida’s use of the notion of supplementarity in his examination in “… That Dangerous Supplement …” of the Nature/Culture distinction in Rousseau. Particular attention is given first to the wedding masque, where the central figure of Ceres, who is goddess of agriculture and marriage, and also the source of seasonal changes, is shown to problematize any absolute distinctions between Nature and Culture. Such distinctions are further collapsed with reference to Prospero and Miranda’s teaching of language to Caliban, as the latter, who supposedly is representative of natural man, is shown to have had his thought supplemented by language before Prospero’s arrival on the island. Hamlet is approached with a reading that again draws from Derrida – this time his exploration of Mallarmé’s “Mimique” in “The Double Session”. Plato’s theory of forms also becomes involved as this chapter plays with the distinction between Being and imitation, destabilizing this distinction within Hamlet and problematizing Hamlet’s question: “To be, or not to be”. And finally, the chapter on Measure for Measure is concerned with the ideas of restraint and freedom, inspecting Lucio’s suggestion that his restraint arises from “too much liberty”, as well as many other instances in the play where restraint, as well as freedom – which seems at times to function in the same way as restraint – seems significant. The reading draws attention to its own impulse to restrain the reader with the truisms it presents by being written in the form of thirty-four aphorisms, and thus alludes to Derrida’s “Aphorism Countertime”. / Dissertation (MA (English))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Modern European Languages / unrestricted

數世紀以來，《威尼斯商人》(The Merchant of Venice, 1596-1598)的批評總聚焦在「猶太人問題」(the Jewish question) 與「女人問題」(the woman question) 上：劇中放高利貸的夏洛 (Shylock) 體現了猶太人的原型，而富有、機智的波黠 (Portia) 則是強勢女性的代表。然而，這種閱讀方式將兩個問題分開處理，忽略了兩者在劇中密切的關聯，僅只以審判一景聯繫兩個角色所代表的問題。 　　本論文嘗試以「禮物交換」(gift exchange) 重新閱讀《威尼斯商人》。牟斯 (Marcel Mauss) 的著作《禮物》(The Gift, 1925) 初步定義原始社會中的交換行為與其涵意，奠定了禮物研究的基礎。禮物交換所建構的社會關係複雜多變，因此，除牟斯外，本論文亦援引佳寶 (Jacques T. Godbout) 與楊 (Iris Marion Young) 的理論，以期透視《威尼斯商人》中的角色在禮物交換之下的互動與劇情發展。 　　根據喜福特 (Alan D. Schrift) 所言，禮物描繪了「主體間的互動」(intersubjective interaction)。立基於此概念，並以上述等人的理論為架構，本論文由三個面向逐步探討《威尼斯商人》中基督男性的「自我」(self) 與猶太／女性「他者」(other) 間的禮物交換：（一）禮物交換的基礎；（二）禮物交換的聯繫與風險；（三）非對稱交換關係與重建關係。劇中安東尼 (Antonio) 與巴薩紐 (Bassanio) 的友情為禮物交換的基礎，進一步展現禮物特色，牽連／牽絆夏洛與波黠，發揮禮物效應，帶出多重「非對稱」(asymmetry) 的要素，終致重建四人的關係。 / For centuries, the Jewish question and the woman question have always been the salient concerns for criticisms of The Merchant of Venice (1596-1598): whereas Shylock the usurer embodies a Jewish archetype, Portia the clever heiress presents a powerful female figure. Nevertheless, treating the Jewish question and the woman question separately, this kind of reading ignores the close relationship between the two in the play, and connects them loosely only with the trial scene. This thesis reads The Merchant of Venice in the perspective of gift exchange. Founding the studies of the gift, Marcel Mauss’s The Gift (1925) firstly defines the reciprocity and the significance of gift exchange in archaic societies. Since social relationship established by gift exchange is subject to change, this thesis also draws on Jacques T. Godbout’s and Iris Marion Young’s theories to probe into the interaction of characters and the movement of The Merchant of Venice. According to Alan D. Schrift, the gift depicts “intersubjective interaction” (18). Based on this concept and structured with the above theories, the thesis examines gift exchange between the Christian male “self” and its Jewish/female other in The Merchant of Venice step by step in three dimensions: (1) the basis of gift exchange; (2) bond and risk in gift exchange; (3) asymmetrical reciprocity and reestablished relation. In the play, gift exchange brings its effect of bond and feature of asymmetry into full play. Grounded on the friendship between Antonio and Bassanio, gift exchange links/restrains Shylock and Portia, and reestablishes the characters’ relationships as a result.

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In this study of A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Measure for Measure I argue that the surface plots of these comedies point us to a philosophic understanding seldom discussed in either contemporary public discourse or in Shakespearean scholarship. The comedies usually involve questions arising from the conflict between the enforcement of law (whether just or not) and the private longings (whether noble or base) of citizens whose yearnings for happiness tend to be sub- or even supra-political. No regime, it appears, is able to respond to the whole variety of circumstances that it may be called upon to judge. Even the best written laws meet with occasional exceptions and these ulterior instances must be judged by something other than a legal code. When these extra-legal instances do arise, political communities become aware of their reliance on a kind of political judgment that is usually unnoticed in the day-to-day affairs of public life. Further, it is evident that the characters who are able to exercise this political judgment, are the very characters whose presence averts a potentially tragic situation and makes a comedy possible. By presenting examples of how moral and political problems are dealt with by the prudent use of wisdom, Shakespeare is pointing the reader to a standard of judgment that transcends any particular (or actual) political arrangement. Once we see the importance of the prudent use of such a standard, we are in a position to judge what this philosophic wisdom consists of and where it is to be acquired. It is just such an education with which Shakespeare intends to aid his readers.

On the assumption that different registers of translated drama have different functions and that they therefore present information differently, the aim of the present study is to identify textual features that distinguish an Afrikaans stage translation from a page translation of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. The first issue addressed concerns the nature and extent of lexical cohesion in these two registers. The second issue concerns my contention that the dialogue of a stage translation is more "involved". (Biber 1988) than that of a page translation. The research was conducted within the overall Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) paradigm but the analytical frameworks by means of which these aims were accomplished were derived from text linguistics and register variation studies, making this an interdisciplinary study. Aspects of Hoey's ( 1991) bonding model, in particular, the classification of repetition links, were adapted so as to quantify lexical cohesion in the translations. Similarly, aspects of Biber's (1988) multi-dimensional approach to register variation were used to quantify linguistic features that signal involvement. The main finding of the study is that drama translation register (page or stage translation) does have a constraining effect on lexical cohesion and involved production. For Act IV of the play an overall higher density of lexical cohesion strategies was generated by the stage translation. In the case of the involved production features analysed, the overall finding was that the stage translation displayed more involvement than the page translation, to a statistically highly significant extent. The features analysed here cluster together sufficiently to reveal that in comparison with an Afrikaans page translation of a Shakespeare play, a recent stage translation displays a definite tendency towards a more oral, more involved and more situated style, reflecting no doubt a general modern trend towards creating more appropriate and accessible texts / Linguistics / D. Litt. et Phil. (Translation Studies)