Shakespeare in Venice

Act I, Scene I. Venice. A street.

To most producers of Shakespeare these terse instructions for The Merchant of Venice call for a papier-mache doorstep (left), a canvas backdrop with houses painted on a postcard blue sky. To Producer Max Reinhardt they call for nothing less than a street in Venice. Therefore in that Italian city last week Herr Professor Reinhardt produced a "localization" of The Merchant of Venice.

Able to understand neither the language in which Shakespeare wrote the play nor that in which his Italian mummers were to perform it, Producer Reinhardt drilled his cast from a German script. For a stage, instead of the Piazza San Marco, where most Venetian festivals are held, he chose an obscure and humble piazza called Campo San Trovaso, bounded by a church, two 16th Century tenement houses and a small canal. Shylock's miserly squawkings came from a bridge still decorated by the arms of the Venetian Republic. Gratiano cruised about the canal in a medieval gondola. A garden wall of one of the tenements was transformed into the avenue to Portia's house on the mainland.

Characteristically elaborate were Reinhardt's addenda to the play: incidental music written by Victor de Sabata; Moorish dancers to accompany the Prince of Morocco and appear in a ballet between the acts; a crowd of townsfolk to demonstrate against Shylock.

In 1,700 seats built in front of the Church of San Trovaso, a brilliant audience greeted the pageant and its cast. Umberto, Prince of Piedmont and heir to Italy's throne, gave Producer Reinhardt his congratulations. After four performances the "localization" of The Merchant of Venice, arranged to climax the biennial Venetian art exposition, closed.

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