Laura and I watched the Merchant of Venice yesterday. I'd never seen nor read the play before. As with all Shakespeare, it's on the dense side; you can easily get lost if you're not paying careful attention. In case you haven't seen it either, it's where the "if you prick me, do I not bleed" monologue comes from. No, I'm an uncultured heathen and I didn't know that before. What do you want from me?

One thing that really caught my attention (so to speak) was the preponderance of nudity in Shakespearian Italy. Many women were hanging around outside, "hanging out" if you get my drift. Laura says that these women were prostitutes, but there sure seemed to be a lot of them and well dressed at that. In fact, other than the fair Portia, her friend Nerissa, and Shylock's daughter Jessica, every woman in this movie was a prostitute!

The only other thing more hilarious than an overabundance of prostitutes, is when people like Screen It! Parental Review get their hands on a movie like this. Strangely they seemed to be most concerned with the subtle homoeroticism (so subtle that I never caught it while watching the movie). But there are some classic criticisms such as:

• We hear that there's intolerance toward Jews in Venice, especially regarding locking them into a ghetto at night (guarded by Christians) and forcing them to wear hats to identify them as such.
• Masked men arrive by boat and enter the gated ghetto at night, but it turns out they're there to see Jessica for benign reasons.
• Some viewers may worry about Antonio (who's strapped to a chair, is gagged with a strap and appears nervous) when it appears he's lost his case in court that will allow Shylock to cut a pound of flesh from his body. Shylock then holds his knife to Antonio's chest, but a court ruling stops him.
• Bassanio kisses Antonio on the lips and homosexual sex is somewhat implied (their business agreement was made in the bedroom).
• There's some possible joking innuendo by Gratiano about never winning at sports with the "stake down" (while pointing down).
• Knowing Bassanio gave up his wedding ring to save Antonio's life (to her when she was in disguise as Antonio's legal rescuer), Portia tells Bassanio that she won't come into his bed until she sees that ring. A comment is then made about "the doctor lay with me" (meaning sex) and Nerissa then says the same about a young man "laying" with her (which is a white lie to put Gratiano in his place).
• Some dialogue indicates that Gratiano and Nerissa are headed off to bed (they're married).

These are the kind of people who want to ban Chaucer for being subversive. They're criticizing the contents of a Shakespearian play for heaven's sake! Now, I could understand some of these criticisms if you were concerned about small children watching this movie. However, not only is the movie fairly faithful to the Shakespearian dialog (i.e. hard to understand to our modern ears), but it's rated R! So it's fairly unlikely that children are going to be following the intricate plot details of this movie to begin with.