The merchant of Venice

¶ … Merchant of Venice is a framework for expressing Shakespeare's anti-slavery sentiments in a most vivid and gruesome way. It has been argued that it is too obvious, for Shakespeare to be expressing these sentiments, speaking out of the mouth of Shylock, the angry, vengeful Jew, but that is only because Shakespeare makes his Jewish character all too real. Shakespeare makes Shylock human through his weaknesses, his vanity, pride and humanity, and he speaks out of pain suffered at the hands of a Christian culture, which hates him.

The plot of the Merchant of Venice, combines a common fairy tale theme, where the prince (Bassanio), in order to marry the princess (Portia) must choose the correct object from among three objects (caskets), and is then given in marriage to her by the king. In effect, this scenario is set up by Shakespeare in the first act, with a twist. In order to go to Venice, Bassanio must have some money, which his friend Antonio borrows from a Jewish moneylender in the city of Venice, anticipating the return of his trade ships. The moneylender is Shylock, who has a grudge against Antonio, and agrees to lend Antonio the money interest-free, with the stipulation that, if the debt cannot be paid, he will extract from Antonio a pound of flesh. Antonio quickly agrees, despite Bassanio's begging him not to.

Meanwhile, a servant of Shylock, Lancelot, decides to work for Bassanio. In another subplot, Shylock's daughter, Jessica, elopes with Lorenzo, Antonio's friend, thus sealing Antonio's fate, should he lose the money to pay off the loan, which seems certain, since Shylock hears that Antonio's ships have been wrecked and he will not have the money to pay the debt.

Bassanio goes to Venice, wins Portia's hand in marriage and returns with her to Venice upon hearing the bad news about Antonio's ships. Portia and Nerissa, her friend, return with the men to Venice disguised as men.

Then the trial begins. Shylock ignores the pleadings to try and save Antonio, who has not only lost his ships, but his cargo, money and now his life., for cutting off a pound of flesh will certainly kill him.

It is here, in the Merchant of Venice, the Jewish Shylock makes a case against slave ownership. He reaches the trial, an opportune time in the play where one might be able to make a point and make a point Shylock certainly does. Even though it has been argued that Shakespeare was anti-Semitic, in actuality, the Merchant of Venice shows that he is not insensitive to the Jewish plight and in fact is more anti-slavery than anything else. Even though the hero, Antonio, his friend, Bassanio and the duke triy to save the day, all are against him, Shylock does not waver, but continues with his request for a pound of flesh, as he says, concerning slaves, "Let them be free, marry them to your heirs / Why sweat they under burdens?.... You will answer 'The slaves are ours.' So do I answer you." (IV.i.141).

A young judge (Balthasar) is sent, when Bellario cannot come to be judge because he is ill. Balthasar decides in Antonio's favor, speaking through Portia, who in this play is shown not only to be assertive, but wise. It is here that she makes the judgment that Antonio may be liable for his pound of flesh, but Shylock may not extract any blood from him, as this is not what is owed. This long scene is set up providentially, because it allows the participants to speak and tell their viewpoint on the controversies that swirled about in contemporary London. A recent play by Christopher Marlowe, the Jew of Malta, has the subject of anti-Semitism on everyone's lips in England. Marlowe's rival, Shakespeare, certainly must have thought, "I can create a better play on the same subject, which treats the subject with depth and understanding, bringing to bear society's sin against this race, and speak out on a subject that is much more vile in my eyes, that of slavery, while allowing the audience to really hate a character for his hard-nosed stance."

Having been a Jew in Venice, Shylock suffered at the hands of many Venetian gentlemen, having been derided verbally by them, even as they asked for favors. While one of the motifs is that Christians elicit human virtues such as love and fellowship, while Jewish society is depicted as focusing solely on money, in his depiction of the character of Shylock, Shakespeare could have stuck to the stereotype. And it appears that he did at times for comedic relief, for even when his daughter ran away to marry a "Goyen," Shylock appears to mourn the "ducats" that have been lost, as much as his daughter. Yet, in Act III, scene i, Shylock laments the fact that his daughter sold a ring belonging to his dead wife not only because it was valuable, but because of the ring's sentimental value. Here Shakespeare makes Shylock believable.

Yet Shylock appears to be truly villainous, as he continues to ruthlessly demand payment from Antonio in the form of human flesh, despite all those about him pleading for him not to do so, for all humanitarian and moral reasons.

It is not until Portia's argument to Shylock to cease pursuing the law without mercy, that Shylock appears so cruel and hard-nosed, compared to Portia's Christian virtues. It is in this context that Shylock comes up with his most cruel, miserly and prosaic image: "So can I give no reason, nor I will not, / More than a lodged hate and a certain loathing / I bear Antonio, that I follow thus / a losing suit against him. Are you answered?"

It is obvious that he wants Antonio's death to pay for his pain, and he says, "I am not bound to please thee with my answers" (IV.i.64). Shylock is thus being as hard and illogical as some Christians are when they express and act upon their hatred of pigs, rats and Jews. Just as Christians own slaves, Shylock now owns Antonio's flesh. This may be an ironic statement on Shylock's part, as he drills into his listeners the complexity and severity of their sins against other human beings which they feel they actually own, lock, stock and barrel.

In Elizabethan England, anti-Semitism was rampant, as it had been on every continent since Jewish people began to spread into countries other than the Middle East. With their focus on other values and their amazing intellectual abilities, yet shunned by proper society, Jewish people soon found a place in almost every culture in the context of money management. They were the first money-lenders that had international networks, the first to use their monetary advantages to create power and prestige in a culture they did not dominate otherwise. Because of this decision, created out of necessity, to gain power and prestige through means other than culture and family birth, the Jews created a stereotype - that of the hard-nosed, money-grubbing shyster.

The history of the Jews in England tell the story. They entered the country in 1066, following William the Conqueror. The Crown protected the Jewish financiers and, of course, their money. Cases were trumped up against the Jews to show that they were blood-thirsty pagans and not worthy of mercy under British law. The image of the Jews as murderous and bloodthirsty was thus begun, giving anyone who had a case against a Jewish person ample reason to pursue it to its fatal end. This was called "blood libel" (Stirling, p. 3).

The Jews were then treated to higher and higher taxes, simply because they were Jewish. Taxes took 1/4 of their moveable property, while the rest of England was taxed 1/14. When rioting in 1189 burned the businesses of many Jewish tradesmen, the Crown saw it as lost revenue and created the Exchequer of the Jews in 1194. A catalogue of all Jewish holdings was created and allowed the Crown to tabulate and tax at will. The Jewish moneylenders responded to this drawing away of assets by charging higher and higher rates of interest on their loans and becoming more and more demanding. In 1217, the Jews were forced to wear yellow badges, identifying them as Jews, allowing for visual recognition and thus increasing persecution. The death of a young boy who drowned in a Jewish cesspool after falling into it himself, created rumors of "blood libel" all over again in 1255. Even today "secondary literature is still full of careless references to massacres which in fact never occurred" (Miller 345)

The Jews in England were denied protective rights again when the Crown turned to Italian bankers for financing. Jewish children were no longer able to inherit their parent's money, which was confiscated by the Crown upon their death in 1269. Hatred was building and in 1290 all Jews were expelled from England for what turned out to be 350 years of exile. It was into this world that Shakespeare was born and raised. The Jews were no longer a part of English history, and in fact were expunged from it.

It was into this atmosphere that Shakespeare was born in 1580, 300 years after the Jews had been forced out of England. If there were Jews in London at the time of Shakespeare, they were certainly in the minority.

In 1589, Marlow created a play entitled the Jew of Malta. It was a play that did not vilify the Jew, but satirizes Christian society. Using a Jewish villain, Barabas, as protagonist when his property is seized and he is expelled from England, Marlow has his character embark upon a vengeful slaughter of nuns and other Christians. In the play, Barabas is boiled to death in front of the audience, creating sensational and violent theater. While the play vilifies the Jews, the main point of the play was to satirize Christian society for its cruelty, double standards and deception. Marlow's play followed shortly upon a public incident where the queen's physician was accused, tortured and executed for plotting to poison her. The physician, Rodrigo Lopez, turned out to be secretly Jewish (Portuguese) and this fact inflamed the British public against the Jews again.

This was the atmosphere surrounding the writing of the Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare drew upon historical themes from European and Eastern history, bringing together plots from El Pecorone (1558) by Ser Giovanni, Boccaccio and Gower's motif of the choosing of the correct casket in order to win a lady love, and an ancient Middle Ages story from the East about a merchant collecting a pound of flesh in return for a debt owed (Ephraim 475).

It was not until Cromwell's time, beginning in 1655, that Jews were officially allowed back into England. But until that time, the prejudice and hatred of this race of people, who were hated for both their religion (which denied Christianity) and for their bloodline, which British people assumed was tainted with evil and cruelty, was common. In Elizabethan England, Shakespeare could not have helped but notice and encounter anti-Jewish sentiments and perhaps felt some within him, having been raised on the fiction and history surrounding the vilification of that race (Kaplan 24).

In Shakespeare's play, placed in Italy, rather than England, Shylock knows he has the law on his side, as he comes before the judge. But he is mainly enraged that Christianity would take away what was his - his payment for a loan of money to Antonio. In his rage, Shylock is demanding his rightful share of Venetian society and respect by the community. He makes the speech about slavery to point out that, as the Christians own people, so does he, too, when they sell themselves to him. In allowing slavery, Venetian society is buying into Shylock's demands, and while Shylock is not given what he is due, he makes it clear that all of society is getting away with murder. Shylock is a mirror of all that is bad in society. He is the one buying and selling human flesh and demanding it, no matter the consequence. He is the one who is agonizing over the loss of everything, yet blindly pursuing monetary gain as a penance for all the wrongs that have been done to him. He has not been respected as a man, but vilified, and he is angry and vengeful as a result.