ABSTRACT
The curtain rises on a grand emptiness. Soft, sad yellow light illuminates a three-storied, ornate Romanesque house front. Silence seems natural to this place; conversation and music are efforts at dispelling a void, at overcoming a manmade cityscape, grand, remote, constricting and weighty. Antonio enters like a man returning from a funeral. Bassanio shows genuine affection for Antonio. The younger man is ill at ease in his recurring request for funds. He appears charming and corruptible, not decadent or prodigal in the manner of his biblical prototype. Antonio shows a chilled, isolated painfulness in his life he can forget only in the presence of Bassanio. Bassanio conveys the sense that only with Antonio can he feel himself integral, responsible, a man without ‘performance’ or pretense. Shylock in this scene does not really want to offer Antonio his friendship and trust, but he does not want to hurt him either. This Shylock does not seem initially given to malevolent deception.
