Friday, June 19, 2026

The Quality of Mercy in The Dick Van Dyke Show

“Dear Mrs. Petrie, Your Husband is in Jail.” By Jerry Belson and Garry Marshall. Perf. Dick Van Dyke, Herkie Styles, and Jackie Joseph. Dir. Jerry Paris. The Dick Van Dyke Show. Season 3, episode 29. CBS. 15 April 1964. DVD. Allied Vaughn, 2023.
Here, The Dick Van Dyke Show draws from a new Shakespeare play, putting Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet on the shelf for the time being.

The plot sends Rob Petrie off to catch an old friend's act at what I can only assume is an off-off-off-Broadway theatre. Once there, he gets drawn into the increasing chaos backstage. The performers are wandering in and out while an illegal game of craps is underway.

The title gives away the end—Rob ends up in jail. But, before he's arrested, he's approached by a performer who wants another chance to audition for The Alan Brady Show. And her big audition piece seems to be Portia's "The quality of mercy" speech from The Merchant of Venice—semi-sung to something of a dance number.

Here's the scene:


It's an odd direction to go, but I do appreciate the variety!
Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

 —The Tempest