In February 2009, a woman named Samira Jassim in the Diyala province of Iraq confessed to organizing the rape of 80 women. The “shame” these women felt at being raped allowed Jassim to recruit them as suicide bombers to “redeem” their honor.

No less shocking are the thousands of “honor killings” that take place every year in various Asian and Middle Eastern cultures as men kill their sisters and their daughters for “dishonoring” the family. Even in countries where authorities have attempted to outlaw the practice, cultural imperatives often continue to create needless tragedies. For example, Turkey’s efforts to severely punish “honor” killings (by applying life sentences not only for the perpetrator but for all family members involved in the decision-making) have given rise to the increased practice of “honor suicides” among Kurdish girls.

The story of Lucrece reminds us that these practices are not some peculiarity of the East. These beliefs and practices are part of the cultural tradition of the West, as well. And, in fact, it was consideration of the Lucrece story itself which played a large part in the philosophical revolution in Europe that overturned the beliefs that led to Lucrece’s tragedy. (For example, Thomas Aquinas’ refutation of Lucrece’s ethical justification for her suicide had, and continues to have, a major impact on the Catholic perception of the issue.)

Shakespeare’s Lucrece captures and recapitulates the entirety of this ethical and moral debate, while simultaneously personalizing it into a moving and dramatic portrayal of Lucrece’s inner and outer struggles in coping with unimaginable trauma.

Originally posted on August 12th, 2011.

In 1592 a massive outbreak of the plague hit London (over the next two years 15,000 people would die). As was common during times of plague, the theaters were closed in an effort to slow the spread of the disease. Acting companies were forced to leave the city on tour and the demand for new plays became virtually nonexistent.

During this time, Shakespeare wrote his two epic poems: Venus & Adonis and Lucrece (now more commonly known as The Rape of Lucrece). These poems were dedicated to the Earl of Southhampton, and the popular hypothesis is that the young Shakespeare — faced with destitution in the face of the plague — sought out a patron for his poetic arts. Even more hypothetically, it may have been Southhampton’s patronage which made it possible for Shakespeare to purchase a share in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1594 when the plague came to an end.

Shakespeare never wrote another epic poem, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, the tale of Lucrece continued to influence his work: Macbeth goes “with Tarquin’s ravishing strides” to murder Duncan; in Coriolanus the downfall of the Tarquin kings (as a direct result of the events depicted in Lucrece) serves as a backdrop for the political drama; Hamlet, like Lucrece, dwells on the death of Priam and the weeping of Hecuba as an analog for his own grief; in both Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream the imagery of raped Philomel transformed into the singing nightingale is evoked (as it is in Lucrece); in Twelfth Night Shakespeare even gives us a little personal product placement for Lucrece (by using it as Olivia’s signet ring).

Originally posted on August 10th, 2011.

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.