Spence’s seventh annual Head’s Forum, a program created to increase the exposure of Spence juniors and seniors to stimulating and provocative topics, welcomed guest speaker Stephen Greenblatt, American literary critic, theorist, scholar, Pulitzer-Prize winning author and John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. Faculty as well parents of students in Grades 11 and 12 participated in a conversation and exchange of ideas on justice within the framework of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, an exercise at the heart of a liberal arts education.

“The first time I came across Professor Greenblatt’s name was in my Shakespeare class taught by [Head of School] Bodie Brizendine,” Davin Polk ’15 said in her introduction for the evening’s featured guest. “She posed Professor Greenblatt’s question to us: How do characters in a play who are, after all only a jumble of words upon a page, convey that they have something going on inside of them? It’s a question that helps students delve further into the story…Professor Greenblatt’s cogent words encouraged me to realize that humanity and the ebb and flow of life’s trials and how one deals with them are all woven into [Shakespeare’s] works.”

Professor Greenblatt began his discussion of The Merchant of Venice, “a notoriously ambiguous and complicated play,” he noted, with a brief history of the theater, “the cultural institution for which Shakespeare worked and wrote,” and the context in which it was written. Professor Greenblatt said these “secret histories” and “burdens” shape the work and help to inform and define justice in the play, a comedy that serves as a religious fable, a ritual and a comedy.

According to Professor Greenblatt, in The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare capitalized on the “mass phenomenon” at the time of anti-Judaism, making the play “easy, familiar, widespread, crossing class lines, full of pothole fantasy and intensity and very funny,” if you’re not the intended target of the joke. This context and the theories put forth indicate “a set of profound dualities at the heart of the play, a set of structural oppositions that literary critics and teachers have constantly dwelled upon correctly.” These dualities include old versus new laws, justice versus mercy revenge versus love, calculations versus recklessness, thrift versus prodigality and ultimately Jew versus Christian. This analysis made the topic of justice that much more complicated. “If you can no longer see clearly, who is the wicked one and who is the good one? Who gets punished and who gets rewarded?” Professor Greenblatt posed these questions to the audience.

Because these issues persist today, the conversation transitioned from the “eternity of Shakespeare” to related contemporary predicaments and situations. Relations with one another and the subjectivity of justice present human conditions and qualities we continue to grapple with today. Although a lack of clear answers exists, the dialogue, including connections to current controversies, revealed insights for all audience members.

Students and parents challenged Professor Greenblatt with their own thoughts, such as is there justice for all today, how was Shakespeare able to give Shylock the humanity he does and why has Shakespeare’s plays transcended time?

“He got it because he was somehow hugely in touch with his time,” Professor Greenblatt replied. “But he was also in touch with what wasn’t in his time, but what’s in virtually everyone’s…that’s the mystery of art really.”

Professor Greenblatt is the author of 12 books, including The Swerve: How the World Became Modern; Shakespeare’s Freedom; Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare; Hamlet in Purgatory; Marvelous Possessions; and Renaissance Self-Fashioning. He is general editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and of The Norton Shakespeare, has edited seven collections of criticism and is a founding editor of the journal Representations. The evening’s presentation and discussion revealed to parents a sense of what happens at school and left with more questions than answers.

The mission of the Head’s Forum is to increase the exposure of Spence juniors and seniors to intellectually stimulating and provocative topics. Grades 11 and 12 parents and Spence faculty members also join students in the discussion and exchange of ideas. With the goal of examining the complexity around a variety of relevant issues, the Head's Forum provides a platform for speakers to represent multiple sides of an issue in the context of honest and open discussion and debate. The opportunity to experience how experts in a given field grapple with ideas, argue their point of view, and support their stance with evidence and example will broaden students' vision of the world.