YEAR 1879

Ah your back, how pleased I am to share with you my huge success at playing a dignified, superior Shylock, who-knew a ‘Jew’ could be so liked and so popular? This year I studied Jewish traders in the Levant, making intricate notes of their dress, movement and speech. This time as I re-enact Shakespeare’s marvellous work, I intend to present the role as decidedly tragic. As quoted by one of my many admirers “his brilliantly sentimental invention show’s the weary, dignified patriarch returning home across a picturesque Venetian bridge, complete with a gondola beneath it, to find his house empty and his beloved daughter gone. It was this betrayal and loss that pushed Shylock into his murderous course of action.”

I must say, it is no easy task balancing out this play. I have to be very careful not to take away any spotlight from the ‘other’ main plot line of lady Portia of Belmont, that scheming….. oh excuse me I was quite in character there, as you probably know Portia is quite a two-faced… never mind Ellen Terry is actually a wonderful woman!