Les couleurs de la Méditerranée dans The Merchant of Venice de William Shakespeare
"All that glisters is not gold"—this famous motto that was made popular by Shakespeare in one of his early comedies located in Italy, is regarded as a warning against the allurements of ornament and deceiving outward appearances. While the colours featured in Shakespeare's Venice are...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Presses Universitaires du Midi
2017-12-01
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| Series: | Caliban: French Journal of English Studies |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/caliban/4508 |
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| Summary: | "All that glisters is not gold"—this famous motto that was made popular by Shakespeare in one of his early comedies located in Italy, is regarded as a warning against the allurements of ornament and deceiving outward appearances. While the colours featured in Shakespeare's Venice are more often than not envisioned as a stark contrast between black and white with his tragedy Othello, his comedy, The Merchant of Venice (1597), highlights the ambiguous and deceiving nature of the colour of gold, mocking the delusions stemming from human senses and exposing the illusions created by rhetorical and artistic trompe-l'oeil. By re-enacting the Greek myth of the Golden Fleece embodied by Portia's golden hair and her father's fortune as well as questioning the Italian literary model of feminine beauty, Shakespeare delves into the complex mechanism of colourful delusions on the page and the stage, highlighting the contrast, and sometimes conflict, between the cultural readings of colours and their visuality embodied on the stage. |
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| ISSN: | 2425-6250 2431-1766 |