As we turn into summer, I’m especially looking forward to having Karin Coonrod’s Merchant of Venice come to New Haven for a week in June, with performances 6/19-22 in the courtyard of Yale Law School.
At 5:30 pm at the Yale Center for British Art on Tuesday 6/19, I’ll be leading a conversation about money culture in the play:
Risk, Anxiety, and Generosity: Defining the Culture of Money from Shakespeare to Today
Here’s a short description of the event, which features the insights and contributions of
- Erik Blachford, venture capital investor and former-CEO of expedia.com
- Tara Bradway, Artistic Director of the Adirondack Shakespeare Company
- Judy Chevalier, William S. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Economics at Yale’s School of Management
- Holly Dugan, Professor of English at George Washington University
The Merchant of Venice represents Shakespeare’s most searching investigation into the monetization of human relations. The drama of merchants, moneylenders, profligates, servants, and heiresses shows how financial exchanges interweave themselves into all human systems, moving beyond mercantile interactions to influence families, love, politics, and religion. With attention to the play’s portrayals of risk, anxiety, and generosity – feelings most of us still have regarding money today – our panel of experts will explore how Shakespeare’s play reveals the unsetting effects of living in a money culture.
We’ll be engaging with three moments in the play: Bassanio’s fantasy of risk management and the finding of a lost arrow (1.1); Lancelot’s anxious monologue about whether he should or should not leave Shylock (2.2); and Portia’s famous “quality of mercy” (4.1) speech.
Please join us on June 19! The event is free, and you can register at the link above — and also buy tickets to the performance of Merchant later that night.
