Is The Merchant of Venice anti-Semitic?

[stanley2]

In Act 4, scene 4, Portia instructs her man Balthasar to travel to "Padua." Editors Drakakis and Andrews, though, follow the earliest text which reads "Mantua," the town near Verona where Romeo goes in R&J. Given that the two plays are closely linked, Shakespeare either deliberately mentions Mantua, though Padua is near Venice, or we have another indication that both plays were on the author's mind at the same time. And thus the comment from John Gross(see post #248) is in part an invitation. That is he was asking the reader to add his or her own reasons why his use of the term "absurd" is reasonable.

[stanley2]

Some of kiki1982's notes might recall Portia's "Speak not so grossly"(MV5.1.266). Hawkman asked "is Antonio hated just for being Christian?" He goes on to say that Shylock "has good reason to hate Antonio." Yet Shylock "is necessarily the villain who drives the plot." Make no mistake, the first line of the play, spoken by Antonio, echoes the first scene of R&J. In the court scene, Antonio echoes the passion of Romeo in the last scene of R&J,"You may as well go....."(MV4.1.71-3). We are asked to compare the confrontation of Romeo and Count Paris(R&J 5.3) to Shylock vs. Antonio. Shylock and Antonio are co-villains. Why else would the Duke allow Shylock to present his case? And once again, Shakespeare and Marlowe were 8 years old when the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre happened. This was a Christian vs. Christian event, as was the plot to murder the Queen that cost Dr. Lopez his life in 1594.

[stanley2]

Professor Bate wrote that: "LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST is a play packed with wit, elegance, philosophical reflection, and filthy jokes." The character Don Armado, Marchette Chute tells us, has written a letter to the king regarding their "highly idealistic project:" "Besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air." She goes on to note that "What he does not explain is the real reason for his indignation: he is in love with Jaquenetta himself." It follows then, that the melancholy Antonio may also be leaving something out in his speech before the Duke of Venice in the court scene.

[stanley2]

And to clarify post #435, that the line in R&J is at once an allusion to DEUTERONOMY 6:4 and GENESIS 1:27 suggests that Antonio's "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose" is at once an allusion to MATTHEW 4:6 and JOHN 8.

[stanley2]

Let's return to Professor Parrott's note that Antonio "is an idealist, overshadowed, like most of Shakespeare's men of thought, with a cloud of melancholy..........For Antonio embodies the Renaissance conception of the high worth of friendship, a conception to which Shakespeare gave supreme expression in his sonnets." We've noted that in Sonnet 144 the author has "Two loves." In the court scene Antonio lists one. Perhaps then a second love is suggested by Hawkman(see post #57). That is, "love of money," as in Scripture(the Pauline text, TIMOTHY 6:10). He loves money but is ashamed to confess it.

[stanley2]

Professor Greenblatt, in his WILL IN THE WORLD book, is near to Hawkman regarding the strife Shakespeare himself faced: "In 1596, at the funeral of Hamnet[Shakespeare's son], the issue would almost certainly have surfaced. The boy's soul needed the help of those who loved and cared for him. John Shakespeare, who had virtually raised his grandson, may well have urged his prosperous son William to pay for masses for the dead child, just as likely wanted masses to to be said for his own soul...........If this delicate subject was broached, did William angrily shake his head or instead quietly pay for clandestine Masses for Hamnet's soul?" In Professor Bevington's book, SHAKESPEARE"S IDEA'S, MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH, we find: "But how, if at all, did Shakespeare respond to the horror of Hamnet's death when it occurred?............Yet despite the seemingly huge importance of the father-son relationship to Shakespeare, nothing emerges in the plays of 1596 and immediately afterwards. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, AS YOU LIKE IT, 1 HENRY IV, HENRY V, JULIUS CAESAR: none of these is concerned with the death of a son." As we have seen, MV is closely linked to ROMEO AND JULIET and AS YOU LIKE IT.

[Danik 2016]

I didn't know or remember that Shakespeare lost his son so early. Do you know the cause of his death?

[stanley2]

Unknown. Greenblatt wrote that "One out of three died by the age of ten, and overall mortality rates were by our standards exceedingly high." Bate wrote that "Plague was the single most powerful force shaping his life and those of his contemporaries."

[Danik 2016]

It makes sense. And probably many illnesses and treatments where still unknown. Oi

[stanley2]

It is important to note, I think, that scholars, especially editors, explain obscurities in their glossaries that readers might overlook and leave to the reader other things that are still important. One example is Antonio's "You may as well go stand upon the beach / And bid the main flood bate his usual height; / You may as well use question with the wolf"(MV4.1.72-3). This is plainly a deliberate echo of Romeo's speech to his man in the last scene of R&J. In the second scene of AS YOU LIKE IT, Celia, speaking to Touchstone, speaks the phrase "in the great heap of your knowledge." Scholars can't cover everything.

[stanley2]

In post #89, Hawkman wrote, "The point I'm making is that the Christians are as morally flawed as Shylock, as was pointed out much earlier." Professor Marjorie Garber, in her book, noted a famous drawing that seems to be at once a rabbit and a duck. Therefore the text indicates that Antonio may be homosexual and also that he may have desired Shylock's wife.

[stanley2]

Among the interesting notes from Charles D. and Hawkman we have "he starts in a state of sadness and we have no idea why"(#51). Professors Wilson and Parrott pointed to the Sonnets and R&J which in turn might recall(in our own time) the song from Jimmy Buffet: "Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I Know-it's my my own damn fault." Hawkman's "Shylock's relationship and interaction with Antonio constitutes the drama of the piece,"(#50) is also notable. It is Bassanio who is interacting with Shylock in Act 1, scene three before the arrival of Antonio. It is Bassanio who first responds to Shylock when Shylock presents his case before the Duke. Professor Parrott noted that there are four fully developed characters in the play, Antonio, Bassanio, Portia and Shylock.

[hellsapoppin]

Is MOV anti-Semitic?


The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes ...



Remarkably beautiful and noble words. However, it is all ironic in that while Christians preach a good, moral lesson, they practice the precise opposite by being brutally merciless upon the man called "the Jew". Thereafter, Shylock is left to wallow in misery while Christians end up profiting by deceiving and crucifying the man. He is made to look evil. They are made to look angelic despite their thieving, dishonesty, and judicial corruption. Highly ironic.

[stanley2]

Isaac Asimov's and Harold Goddard's comments on MV in their books, ASIMOV'S GUIDE TO SHAKESPEARE and THE MEANING OF SHAKESPEARE, are worthwhile. Professor Drakakis noted that when Portia says "I am informed throughly of the cause. / Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?"(MV4.1.174), we also find the word "cause" in the last scene of OTHELLO: "It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul"(OTHELLO5.2.1). The moor of Venice then proceeds to murder Desdemona, whom he thinks has had a love affair.

[Danik 2016]

I agree with hellsapoppin, allbeit the Jew has his saying too. I particularly dislike the characterization of Jessica, his daughter, who is depicted as good, because she robs her father and goes over to the Christians.