ABSTRACT
Lorenzo appeared surprised and uncomfortable that his question had elicited from Jessica such deep and troubled emotions, as if tears had no place in his life or in Belmont. He responded to Jessica tentatively and reluctantly: he put his right arm partially and loosely around her body; then, with a slight hesitation, he placed a slack hand on her back. In the absence of specified or indirect stage directions, Lamos staged Jessica as an “outsider” figure whose reception into Christian society was something less than she had anticipated. This “through-line” for Jessica avoided reducing the play to simple polarities; it perplexed, but did not negate, the Jessica-Lorenzo relationship. The closing stage image drove home her ambivalence and accentuated our awareness of what is excluded from this comic finale. Lamos’s directorial strategy for bringing each Stratford performance to an end also had the effect of resisting narrative and generic closure in a moment of suspended possibilities.
