An American Shakespeare: David Belasco’s arrangement of The Merchant of Venice (1922)

Cristina Consiglio explores the role of David Belasco in the context of eighteenth and nineteenth-century American drama. In particular, her essay analyses how Belasco arranges The Merchant of Venice (1922), cutting and condensing it with a view to adapting Shakespeare’s play to a three-dimensional scenery. As Consiglio remarks, Belasco’s aim was to bring theatrical truth to Shakespeare’s poetry. He accordingly presented a wide picture of Venetian life, bringing to the stage the canals, the bridges, the gondolas and several real details of Venetian palaces. As the essay points out, though Belasco had a concern for illusionistic scenic investiture, he discarded the traditional archeological verisimilitude and, together with his designer Ernest Gros, created a Venice remote and colorful, romantic and picturesque. The essay shows how Belasco preferred the use of single, realistic details as subordinate elements in a harmonious entity in which externals like canals or gondolas had no function, while those specific details were meant to create a concrete and vivid atmosphere.