Among his many and varied parts may be mentioned Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Shylock, Richard III, Wolsey, Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Richelieu, David Garrick, Hernani, Alfred Evelyn, Lanciotto in George Henry Bokers (1823–1890) Francesca da Rimini, and Janies Harebell in The Man o' Airlie.
The award-winning monologue Shylock (play), by Canadian playwright Mark Leiren-Young, focuses on a Jewish actor named Jon Davies, who is featured as Shylock in a production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
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Hyam Maccoby argues that the play is based on medieval morality plays in which the Virgin Mary (here represented by Portia) argues for the forgiveness of human souls, as against the implacable accusations of the Devil (Shylock).
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During the 1600s in Venice and in some other places, Jews were required to wear a red hat at all times in public to ensure that they were easily identified.
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The play received its American premiere on November 16, 1977 at New York's Plymouth Theatre with Joseph Leon as Shylock, Marian Seldes as Shylock's sister Rivka and Roberta Maxwell as Portia.
The anti-Jewish tradition on the English stage dates back at least to the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 and is exemplified by the characters of Shylock in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Barabas in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta.
Shylock | Shylock (play) | shylock |
During his career on the Hebrew stage, Meskin played many leading roles, including Othello; the Golem; Shylock (in The Merchant of Venice); Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman; the black pastor Stephen Kumalo in Cry, The Beloved Country; Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny and many others.
He has performed in and/or directed more than 100 stage plays including performances as Macbeth, Shylock, Polonius and Claudius, and has won best actor and best supporting actor for his theatre work.
This was remounted for CBC in Canada in 1976 with a Canadian cast which included A. E. Holland as Shylock, Allan Grey, Micki Maunsell, Jack Rigg and Barney O'Sullivan.
During the following ten years he played at small theaters in Jihlava, Klagenfurt, Opava, Budapest, Leipzig, and Liebenstein; from 1874 to 1890 he was a member of the "Meininger", and appeared in such roles as Shylock, Iago, Gessler, Franz Moor, and Marinelli.
Band members Julia Johnson, Mark Maclaine and Álvaro López play alongside guest musicians: DJ Shylock (turntables) and Mike Ausden (guitar/trumpet) and the live performance was directed by Susan Luciani (also Director of Dolls for which the band provided music).
The novel follows narrator "Philip Roth" on a journey to Israel, where he attends the trial of accused war criminal John Demjanjuk and becomes involved in an intelligence mission—the "Operation Shylock" of the title.
Valmouth (1919) is based on the lives of various people in a health resort on the West Coast of England; most of the inhabitants are centenarians, and some are older ("the last time I went to the play...was with Charles the Second and Louise de Querouaille, to see Betterton play Shylock").
"I was forty-five years old and tired of being an artist. Besides, I owed $20,000 to relatives, finance companies, banks and assorted bookmakers and shylocks. It was really time to grow up and sell out as Lenny Bruce once advised. So I told my editors, OK, I'll write a book about the Mafia...."
In 2008 it emerged that nine pupils had refused to sit a Key Stage 3 Shakespeare test on The Merchant of Venice because they felt the character of Shylock was antisemitic.