Mojo, The Bard, & Me

That were a kind of bastard hope, indeed: so the

sins of my mother should be visited upon me.

-Jessica

 

The Merchant Of Venice               Act III, scene v   Line 13

Well, there’s a few directions we can head off in with this line. Yes, indeed.

Okay, let’s start with Jessica. I’ve heard that Shakespeare made up this name, or at the very least, that this is the first printed work where that name appears. So I think that’s a bit interesting. It’s certainly a popular name now, and even more so in the 1980’s. And it really is a beautiful name.

Next. The context of this line has to do with Launcelot Gobo telling Jessica that she’s going to be damned to hell for being a Jew and that one of her only hopes is that her mother cheated on Shylock her father with a non-Jew so that Jessica’s real father, and therefore Jessica, were/are not Jews. In this case ‘The sins of her mother’, i.e. infidelity, would actually be her salvation. Now of course if we want to get into this context it’s hard to ignore the whole question of the treatment of Jews by Shakespeare (and by most other Brits of Shakespeare’s time), and that fact that being Jewish would be considered a sin. And since that’s a real can of worms, the opening of which brings about all sorts of issues and risks, I’m not going to go any further with that right now. Maybe at a later date. Maybe the next time we hit Merchant.

We could look at the play on words (doesn’t Will love playing with words!) of the ‘bastard hope’. But I think I’ll leave that one to you. And, by the way, it’s a short scene so here’s the link if you’d like to read it in its entirety.

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/merchant/merchant.3.5.html.

Finally (for now, because when we start digging into these lines it seems there’s almost an endless number of things to look at), we can look for a moment at the whole sins of the mother, and by extension, sins of the parents thing. And again, I’m going to look at it in a sort of general way without getting into this particular damned for being Jewish thing. What’s Will saying, if anything, about us dealing with, or being in any way responsible for the sins of our parents? Not surprisingly, in this instance he’s attacking this question with a double meaning. He’s claiming that Jessica has sin just for being born of a certain religion (her parents’ religion). So that seems to advocate that we do inherit sins of our parents. But then he gets into sins of our parents (in this case infidelity) being redemptive. And to further complicate it, we should remember that it’s Launcelot Gobo who’s bringing this up in the first place. Launcelot, who’s listed in the cast of characters as a clown. So the whole thing gets a bit confusing and contradictory; like life in general, and like most of Will’s work.

Well, what do you think Will is saying about the sins of the parents? Do we inherit them, or not?

This is my parents. Whilst I'm sure they weren't perfect, I'm not aware of any great sins that they might have passed down to me. So I guess I'm lucky that I don't even have to worry about the question. Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad.