Oppositional Play (written 1594-96):

Shylock:

• on stage: savage monster? or martyred gentleman?

Portia:

• the epitome of the romantic heroine, virtually a saint? (see Thomas Sully, Portia and Shylock and Henry Woods, Portia, Exhibited 1888) or a "spoiled darling" who thinks money can buy anything?
• a brilliant and just lawyer? or a conniving and "callous barrister"?

Jessica:

• an ideal portrait of a Christian convert? or a "dishonest and disloyal father-hating minx"?

Antonio:

• a model of Christian gentleness? or an underground Shylock?

Bassanio:

• a romanticized lover? or a heartless money-grubber?

 

Shylock:

One Conventional Reading: Shylock as diabolical monster, malevolent villain, and murderous dog-Jew. See title-page to 1600 Quarto.

• Shakespeare capitalizing on the trial and execution of Dr. Roderigo Lopez, a physician of Portuguese Jewish descent executed in 1594 on charges of spying and plotting to poison the queen.
• Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, probably written in 1589-90, was performed twice within ten days of Lopez's execution, in June, 1594.

 

Charles Macklin's Shylock (mid-18th c)

Played Shylock as a terrifying villain with no redeeming features.

Macklin's "badge of all our tribe" was:

• a red beard, conventional for stage Jews
• a "Jewish gaberdine"
• unfashionably wide black trousers
• a red skullcap

Claimed, incorrectly, historical accuracy.

Some Images of Macklin as the diabolically murderous Jew:

• Johan Zoffany (1733-1810), Covent Garden, 1767/68. Somerset Maugham Collection of Theatrical Paintings.
• Charles Macklin as Shylock, 1741. Hiram Stead Collection of the New York Public Library.
  • Here with his trademark attire as well as his trademark tools: knife and scales.
• Charles Macklin as Shylock

 

Another Conventional Reading: Shylock is the noble, dignified Jew, the tragic hero not the tragic villain of the play

• Shakespeare is condemning Christians who indulge in racial prejudice and persecution.
• see Morris Carnovsky's 1957 Merchant of Venice (American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, CT).

 

One More Reading: Shylock the Comic Type Character

Again, we must turn to Shakespeare's comic tradition: New Comedy and Festival Comedy

Considered in this tradition, Shakespeare's Shylock cannot be an "authentic" Jew.

He is a stock figure, derived from the continent and from native holiday celebrations.

1) a type for the restraining father that we've seen in New Comedy and a type for the usurer: Jews = Usurers

• He is thus both funny (a stock character) and evil.

 

Why is usury evil?

• a crime in England
• In the New Testament, Christ drives the money-changers from the Temple.
• In Artistotle's The Politics (Book I), he opposes the idea of money breeding (as unnatural).
  • See Shylock's reference to the story of Laban and Jacob to justify interest (p. 17; 1.3.75-87)

 

The Problem:

Inherent in both the Renaissance laws and Aristotelian position on usury is a contradiction:

• usury is illegal and ungodly but interest up to 10 percent is (sort of) okay
• usury is unnatural but it is necessary to (and thus natural to?) advanced commerce, where credit and interest go hand-in-hand.

In typing the Jew as usurer, just such contradiction in Gentile thinking is repressed.

 

2) Shylock is also the stock killjoy figure who typically stands in the way of festive holiday celebrations, and must be exorcised.

• see Malvolio, in Twelfth Night
• links to Puritanism (see Macklin's Shylock)
• links to miserliness
• Jews = Usurers = Misers
• see Shylock's reaction to news that there might be masquing afoot (p. 34; 2.5.28-38)

 

Summary

Shylock the monstrous villain and Shylock the dignified, persecuted minority need to have added to them not only Patrick Stewart's Shylock the ironist ("Hath a dog money? Is it possible / A cur can lend three thousand ducats?") but also Shylock the comic stock type (Jew/usurer/miser).

All these versions of Shylock come together in Shakespeare's imaging of the playworld's "civilization" and its "discontents."