What's His Motivation? ...

Every once in a while, I have a good thought. I don't know where they come from, but I'm glad when they arrive.

English Teacher Dave wrote yesterday and mentioned that he went to see "The Merchant of Venice" at the Chicago Shakespeare Company on Navy Pier, and " there is no reason for me to ever see that play again. There is no way any right-thinking person could not be offended by the profound prejudice of that play."

I replied, "Do you think maybe the profound prejudice was Shakespeare's point? To hold a mirror up to the absurdity of human behavior? To purposely disgust us - or shame us - into behaving differently? Just thinking out loud."

Even as I wrote that last night, I was thinking, "Huh. Where'd that come from?"

I saw the Al Pacino film version a few months ago. Al and Jeremy Irons. Hello! Two of my all-time favorites. Maybe I was too busy watching it as a movie to really think about the meaning of the words they were speaking.

But now that I've had my thought, I've become very fond of it. And so I open the topic up for discussion, among all the Shakespeare scholars I'm sure frequent this space!