Barefoot to Palestine: the Failed Meetings of Shylock and Othello

Looking at the stage history and literary afterlives of the two Venetian plays, Shaul Bassi suggests some historical analogies between Shylock and Othello that single them out in the constellation of Shakespearean characters, and uses them to reframe some aspects of the critical commonplace of the two Venetian strangers, who have been more frequently discussed independently of each other than one might expect. Showing how the two characters seem historically to manifest an ‘excess of reality’ that triggers deep anxieties about ethnic and religious difference but also profound forms of cross-cultural identification, Bassi points out at the strategies adopted by critics, actors and directors to address this peculiar status, some of which aim at defusing the disruptive power of the plays to blur the boundaries between the stage and the world, and some others that embrace such characteristics to question the dominant ethnic and religious discourses and power relations in their respective societies.