Shylock's Turquoise Ring

Thursday, Nov. 5 at 7:30 p.m.
Dana Commons, Second Floor

Jane Austen, Romanticism, and Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice

On January 26, 1814, an unknown provincial actor, Edmund Kean, made his debut at Drury Lane in the role of Shylock from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Later that year in March, just as Jane Austen was completing her novel Mansfield Park, she saw Kean's performance and commented on his "exquisite acting." Professor Judith Page will consider the representation and interpretation of Shakespeare's Jew in the Romantic period through the lens that Austen and other writers provide. No longer a comic villain, Shylock emerges as a flawed but sympathetic character, and also as a cultural figure who haunts the various discourses about and representations of Jews in the Romantic period and beyond.

Judith Page is an English professor at the University of Florida and has developed special topics courses in conjunction with UF's Center for Jewish Studies. Her book Imperfect Sympathies: Jews and Judaism in Romantic Literature and Culture was published in 2004.

This event is sponsored by the Higgins School of Humanities.