As budget deficits balloon out of all proportion
And no one has any more cash to lend you directly
They start to give you cash borrowed from an enemy
But this is nothing new as proven by Shylock
Who lends money to the reviled Merchant of Venice
A creeping gentile cur who trades in trinkets
Brought from the Middle East made for a pittance
During Carnival time when no one knows who any one is
And it matters not that trinkets suffice for jewels
In the make believe atmosphere of more urgent desires.
But just when his friend needs capital, he is cash poor,
With his assets all out at sea as ships carrying cargo,
Shylock not given to handing out favours concurs
The most dastardly condition which desperation compels;
The Merchant to give in return a pound of flesh,
His own to be cut out should the bitter debt outstand
Beyond the agreed date of a reasonable reckoning.
For now the ships are out but later when mortality
Had been restrained by a woman's rational egoism
The ships return to prove their sinking a false alarm.
Bassanio, the fortune hunter, the improbable villain
Had inspired a certain madness in the Merchant
As we wonder aloud why such a lavish sum was needed
And whether the reasons were honourable or disreputable.
A clever idea was given to Lawrence Olivier by a friend
That the three suitors who come to Portia for the test
Are all Bassanio in the disguises of his supposed rivals
The Princely Moor, the French Duke and even Bassanio
Himself are the same imposter and betrothal is assured.
Larry never understood how this would alter the plot
Because he was an actor, not a scholar of ontology,
Whereas his friend was a Macchiavellian craftsman,
A skilled illusionist to whom 'setting' was merely
The place, in the drama, for his own theory of words.
Bevagna, 21 December 2016
