Third Time Lucky: Playing All the Suitors in The Merchant of Venice

This article offers an account of an actor's preparation to play multiple roles in a production of  The Merchant of Venice. Presented by Actors from the London Stage (AFTLS) in universities around the USA in 2006, the play was staged and performed by five actors. The article focuses on the challenge of playing all three of Portia's suitors: Bassanio, the Prince of Morocco, and the Prince of Arragon, and the insights the interplay of these roles affords. The need effectively to differentiate the characterization of the three suitors highlighted for the actor the ways in which the roles are defined against each other, and how the errors of the Princes of Morocco and Arragon frame the space that Bassanio must fill. Looking beyond the way in which the roles are balanced structurally, the actor describes in detail the process of exploding oversimplified notions of good winners and bad losers, grappling with the racially coded presentations of the Princes of Morocco and Arragon that the text prompts while mining the ambiguities and discrepancies in Bassanio's behaviour. Through an in-depth consideration of the use of physicality, costume, comedy and vocal delivery, the article ultimately seeks to demonstrate the inherent performative nature of Shakespeare's text, the challenges and benefits of performing the play through the prism of multiple roles, and specifically the rewards of exploring traditionally 'two-dimensional' characters and how the experience of playing the unfortunate suitors added deeper resonance to the unfolding of Bassanio's fortunes.