When Shakespeare sat down to write The Merchant of Venice, he was tapping into the well-established Elizabethan genre of the “Jewish Villain”. After The Merchant of Venice itself, Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta is the most famous example of the genre, but it was only one among a dozen or more plays of the same type which had been written in the 1580’s and early 1590’s.

And the genre was currently hot stuff.

In 1594, Queen Elizabeth’s personal physician, Rodrigo Lopez, was convicted as part of a conspiracy to poison the the queen. Lopez was a converted Jew from Portugal, and his identity as a marrano (or hidden Jew) played a major role in the publicity surrounding his trial.

The salacious nature of the case hyped interest in Jewish villain plays. For example, The Jew of Malta, originally produced in 1589, enjoyed renewed success and a fresh spike of interest that lasted for several years (as indicated in Henslowe’s Diary by the frequent performances it received). So The Merchant of Venice, like a modern Hollywood blockbuster, was pretty much calculated to take advantage of the current theatrical trends.

One can see the influence of the genre on The Merchant of Venice when Shylock first turns to address the audience and, like Marlowe’s Barabas, uncloaks his villainy:

How like a fawning publican he looks.
I hate him for he is a Christian:
But more for that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis, and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
He hates our sacred nation, and he rails
Even there where merchants most do congregate
On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrift,
Which he calls interest: Cursed be my tribe
If I forgive him.

But in the process of creating Shylock, Shakespeare applied his natural instincts as a playwright. There are few authors in the history of the world with Shakespeare’s grasp of human psychology or his ability to evoke it in his characters. Shakespeare couldn’t simply conjure up the image of a Jewish boogeyman on the stage; he needed to understand the root and nature of it. He needed to create Shylock’s soul. And a few lines later, he begins to find it:

Signior Anthonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug
(For sufferance is the badge of all our Tribe);
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help:
Go to then, you come to me, and you say,
“Shylock, we would have moneys”, you say so:
You that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold, moneys is your suit.
What should I say to you? Should I not say
“Hath a dog money? Is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats?” Or
Shall I bend low, and in a bondman’s key,
With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness,
Say this: “Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last,
You spurn’d me such a day, another time
You call’d me dog: And for these courtesies
I’ll lend you thus much moneys”?

What would drive a man to such depths of villainy? Revenge. Revenge for his way of life being mocked. Revenge for his livelihood being threatened. Revenge for being treated like a dog. Revenge for his daughter being stolen from him.

The result is a deeply unsettling play because, even as it takes the form of an anti-semitic genre, Shakespeare’s gifts create a completely believable, psychologically rich, and utterly believable Jewish character to serve as its villain. It is much easier to deal with bigoted literature when it stars vapid, mindless caricatures. But it is deeply disturbing when a genius finds exactly the buttons necessary to turn the soul of man into the most horrific stereotypes and then proceeds to relentlessly push them.

It has been argued that The Merchant of Venice was designed from the beginning to highlight Christian hypocrisy and the painful dangers of bigotry. I don’t know if that’s true (there’s much to suggest that it isn’t). But as we delved into the play, I became increasingly certain of this: As he explored the hateful depths of the Christian bigotry he used to create Shylock’s villainy, Shakespeare found that he didn’t like it very much.

Beyond the ambiguous boundaries of the play itself, consider Shakespeare’s later contribution to Sir Thomas More. More has confronted a riot of Englishmen seeking to attack and exile immigrants:

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding tooth ports and costs for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.

Shakespeare characterizes those who would act on their racist impulses as specifically destroying “the majesty of England” in one of the most effective evocations of the dangers of irrational bigotry in all of English literature. How easy is it to see Gratiano’s bull-headed racism in The Merchant of Venice as one of those “other ruffians” that “with self same hand, self reasons, and self right would shark on you”?

And then there’s this: Phrases like “I am a Jew if I don’t do X” and “if you don’t do X, then you are a Jew” were a common parlance in Elizabethan English. Given this important context, consider anew Shylock’s most famous speech:

I am a Jew: Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

I am a Jew. In saying that, Shylock is claiming for himself something which was inherently shunned in the language of the time. And then he transforms it and humanizes it. He forces the audience to put themselves into his shoes.

Shakespeare, too, had used the “I am a Jew” turn of phrase routinely, turning it into a punchline for Two Gentlemen of Verona (twice), Henry IV Part 1, and Much Ado About Nothing. He also used other Jew jokes in Love’s Labours Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

But after writing The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare abruptly stopped using Jew jokes. In fact, depending on when one dates the composition of Much Ado About Nothing, after writing The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare never used another Jew joke (although he would continue writing for another 15-20 years).

We know this wasn’t a shift in the language: Other writers were still using the phrase. But in writing The Merchant of Venice something had shifted in Shakespeare. In creating the soul of Shylock, he had transformed his own.

Originally posted on December 6th, 2010.

The source of the Jew’s alien threat in the Elizabethan consciousness, of course, lies in their religious ostracism. Curiously, however, the religious perception of Jews in Elizabethan England was a double-sided one of both villification and hope. On the one hand, the ancient slander that the Jews had murdered Christ and were thus cursed by God were alive and well (and “explained” for some why God refused to let them assimilate into society like other immigrants). On the other hand, they were still considered to be play an important role in God’s ultimate plan.

Specifically, English Protestants, in their conflict with Catholics, needed some explanation for why God had allowed the false faith of the Catholic Church to rule for hundreds of years. To greatly simplify the matter, they looked for their answers in the Book of Daniels and the Book of Revelation:

And I saw an Angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he took the dragon, that old serpent which is the devil and Satan, and he bound him a thousand years.
(Revelation 20:1-2)

This passage, taken from the Geneva Bible of 1587, was interpreted to mean that the Catholic Churhc had, in fact, been doing Satan’s work for a thousand years. The Pope was thus transformed into the Antichrist and the fact that God had allowed the false Catholic Church to flourish was, in fact, all part of the divine plan leading to Christ’s return. The rise of the Church of England was interpreted as the breaking of Satan’s chains, the fulfillment of God’s promise, and the beginning of the end of days.

And at that time Michael shall stand up, ye great prince, which standeth for the children of thy people, and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there began to be a nation unto that same time: And at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
(Daniel 12:1)

Combined with the visions of Revelation, the visions interpreted by the prophet Daniel linked the salvation of the Jews to the end of the world. For the Elizabethans, this meant a mass conversion of the Jews to Christianity. (How else could they be saved?)

So if they were right and the Catholic Church was wrong, it meant that the end of the world was nigh. And if the end of the world was nigh, then the Jews should all be converting very, very soon now. In other words, Elizabethan Protestants needed the Jews to convert in order to prove them right.

Around this time there was a major debate regarding whether the Jews should be allowed to return to England. There were, of course, political and economic factors driving this debate. But the major reason cited by proponents of a Jewish return was that Jews should be brought to England so that they could be converted in God’s chosen land (and, thus, bring about the end of the world).

When Shakespeare has Shylock (and then Gratiano) name Portia a “second Daniel” repeatedly throughout the final trial scene of The Merchant of Venice, there is a specific invocation of a millenaristic prophecy which was directly tied in the popular mind to the conversion of the Jews… which is then immediately sequeled by the conversion of a Jew.

Many modern texts will gloss the reference to Dnaiel as referring specifically to the tale of Susannah (in which Daniel saved Susannah from false accusation in a public court by cleverly questioning her accusers). If so, the choice is interesting: The tale of Susannah is not, in fact, part of the Jewish Tanakh and appears only in Christian scripture. Shakespeare would likely have been aware of this, because the tale of Susannah was also explicitly excluded from being a part of official church doctrine in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (for similar reasons). Thus, in a religiously charged sequence, Shakespeare may be choosing to specifically allude to a key division between both Jews and Christians, and also between Catholics and Protestants.

But I’m not certain Susannah is the essential crux here, as Daniel was generally understood to be “ten times better than all the enchanters and astrologians that were in all [King Cyrus’] realm” (Daniel 1:20). Daniel was, in particular, given a particular speciality in the matter of visions and dreams (Daniel 1:17), and in that role he interpreted the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar while under the false name of Belteshazzar (just as Portia is appearing under the false name of Balthazar).

In either case, the allusion to Daniel in general ties the conversion of Shylock to a more universal debate regarding the importance of converting Jews to Christianity. Which, in turn, raises questions regarding the universal quality of the conversion-as-punishment: Shylock sought to unmake Anthonio’s Christianity; so the punishment meted by Anthonio is to unmake Shylock as a Jew. So (in the Elizabethan conception) did the Jews seek to destroy Christ and would be converted in the due course of God’s plan. And Daniel evokes Christ for us by revealing Nebuchadnezzar’s vision of a statue of gold, silver, brass, and iron (in a play where gold, silver, and lead caskets are similarly given symbolic meaning) destroyed by a great stone (later interpreted as Jesus) cut from a mountain (as the flesh is to be cut from Anthonio).

Have we delved deep? Are we now staring into our own navels instead of the play? Perhaps.

But what is certain is that the religious content of The Merchant of Venice is not a thin glaze applied to coat Shylock’s villainy. The Biblical allusions are thick in this play, and the scriptural questions often explicit. If the play thus opens itself to the rich ambiguities inherent in the apprehension of the religious experience it is almost certainly to the play’s credit.

Originally posted on December 5th, 2010.

The amazingly awesome production of Hapgood that I directed is closing this weekend! You have just three more opportunities to catch Tom Stoppard’s beautiful blending of Cold War spy drama with Feynman-esque quantum mechanics!

Thursday 4/30, 7:30pm

Friday 5/1, 7:30pm (talkback after the show)

Saturday 5/2, 7:30pm

Facebook Event – Reserve Tickets!

One of the two main plots in The Merchant of Venice, of course, revolves around the pound of flesh which Anthonio forfeits to Shylock when he fails to repay his bond. Although an Italian collection of stories entitled Il Pecorone is usually cited as the primary source of this plot (insofar as it most closely resembles the story in Shakespeare’s play), the truth is that there were dozens of variations of this story to be found and it’s likely that Shakespeare was familiar (or at least acquainted) with several of them. (There are even versions in which it is the Christian who is attempting to claim a pound of flesh from the Jew.)

One of these stories is Alexander Silvayn’s The Orator, which shares certain turns of phrase with The Merchant of Venice and contains one particular passage which highlights a potentially revealing continuity glitch in the play:

Neither am I to take that which he oweth me, but he is to deliver it me. And especially because no man knoweth better than he where the same may be spared to the least hurt of his person, for I might take it in such a place as he might thereby happen to lose his life. What a matter were it then if I should cut off his privy member, supposing that the same would altogether weigh a just pound?

Combined with the fact that Elizabethan playwrights often used “flesh” as a pun for “penis” (Shakespeare does it multiple times in Romeo & Juliet, for example), it certainly raises the question of exactly what Shylock means when he says “an equal pound of your fair flesh to be cut off and taken in what part of your body pleaseth me” (Act 1, Scene 3). The sexual pun that also evokes the castration imagery of circumcision certainly isn’t a slam dunk from a textual standpoint, but it is a legitimate option.

Of course, by the trial scene the nature of the bond has transformed. Instead of being taken from “what part of your body pleaseth me”, Portia describes the bond as allowing “a pound of flesh to be by him cut off nearest the merchant’s heart”.

This sort of continuity glitch is far from unusual in Shakespeare’s plays. (In fact, strict continuity is a modern bugaboo that Shakespeare often ignored in favor of the immediate needs of dramatic effectiveness.) But this particular glitch may be deliberate.

One of the key distinctions drawn between Jews and Christians by Elizabethan theologians focused, perhaps unsurprisingly, on the matter of circumcision. While the Jews believed in a physical circumcision marking their covenant with God, the Christians made a metaphorical circumcision of their hearts (as described by Paul). Thus, by shifting the pound of flesh from Anthonio’s “privy member” to his Christian heart, Shakespeare is shifting from one sort of circumcision to the other. More than that, Shylock’s surgery takes a metaphorical Christian ritual and turns it into a literal Jewish ritual, while simultaneously allowing him to take from Anthonio the very thing which makes him Christian. (Consider, too, that Anthonio in this same scene is given a long speech explicitly calling out the hardness of Shylock’s “Jewish heart”, emphasizing this Elizabethan distinction between Jew and Christian.)

The ritualized nature of Shylock’s intended murder of Anthonio is now obvious. What’s particularly compelling about it, however, is that it is ritualized through the legal system; i.e., through the system of laws which defines the nation. In combination with the religious elements inherent in the circumcision imagery, Shakespeare successfully unifies all of the societal disruptions personified by “the Jew” in Elizabethan consciousness into the Jewish boogeyman of ritualized murder.

The poetic justice of Shylock’s punishment also becomes clear as the full importance of the “pound of flesh” is revealed. Shylock’s forced conversion is often viewed by modern readers and commentators as a needless cruelty, and its harshness is not tempered when one learns that it is a creation unique to Shakespeare’s version of the story. But Shylock was not threatening merely Anthonio’s life; he was threatening to take from him his Christianity. In the giving of justice, therefore, it lies with Anthonio to now “better the instruction” (in Shylock’s words) and “hoist him by his own petard” (in Hamlet’s). As Shylock tried to unmake Anthonio as a Christian, so his punishment is to be unmade as a Jew.

Originally posted on December 4th, 2010.

RedCurrent has posted an interview with me discussing Hapgood, the play by Tom Stoppard that I just finished directing for Six Elements Theater. Check it out!

Then you can come check out the show. There’s a performance tonight, a matinee tomorrow, and three more shows next weekend:

Saturday 4/25 7:30pm

Sunday 4/26, 3:00pm (talkback)

Thursday 4/30, 7:30pm

Friday 5/1. 7:30pm (talkback)

Saturday, 5/2, 7:30pm

Facebook Event – Reserve Tickets!

Note the talkback performances: I’ll be in attendance for those and the joining the cast afterwards for a Q&A session.

I’ll be seeing you…