Dramaturkey

I'm getting bored of the popular and scholarly debates about the levels of anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice. I'm just not sure what can be gleaned from them; I certainly haven't come across anything revelatory in my research. It's obvious from a textual standpoint that the play utilizes and expresses contemporary anti-Semitic beliefs. Shylock's a Jew and he ultimately acts with cruelty (even the most sympathetic stage portrayal of Shylock will fail to justify the moment when he stands in the courtroom, knife in hand, to carve Antonio's heart out--though I suppose we understand the metaphor: haven't Antonio and the Merry Gentiles escaped with Jessica?). And then the play is chock full of anti-Semitic references: is the "pound of flesh" representative of the blood libel charge of ritual murder, or of circumcision? Shylock is a usurer; he keeps kosher; he does not like to mix socially with Gentiles (but why should he? They spit on him and call him names!). Shylock hates Antonio because the latter aids delinquent borrowers, thus depriving Shylock of the monetary interest on which his business depends. So we have: money-lending Jew, isolationist, wary of Christians and contemptuous of their habits, obsessed with lucre, and ultimately vengeful. Add the potentially typological construct of the play (angry God Old Testament soundly appropriated by the new and improved New Testament mercy), and we have ourselves a pogrom in a book.

Based on this evidence, it seems silly to protest that the play is not anti-Semitic. This is like saying that Shakespeare is not fanatically obsessed with the dichotomies light/dark, white/black, fair/foul, English/black or that all Shakespearean super-villains are not invariably other, and that this other is not invariably associated with darkness. Or, if that analogy does not work for you, ignoring the anti-Semitism in Merchant is like letting Romeo and Juliet survive the crypt. Adding a Spielbergian twist to plays whose meanings reside in devastating loss (and human pettiness) is as horrible as watching the last hour of AI. Not everyone's stories end happily: therein lie the lessons.

So what lessons can we take from a production of Merchant? Surely not that the Portia form of mercy is superior to the Shylock form of revenge? Surely not that Jews are all scurrilous?

Perhaps the best lesson for today's audience is that people become as ugly as your hatred for them. Was this Shakespeare's intent? Probably not...he was a savvy businessman (by historical accounts, anyway) and knew that a bad Jew would sell tickets. But to pretend in a post-Holocaustal world that Jews are inherently good because of the historical evil done to them--or to infer that somehow having been irreparably damaged, Jewish reprisal is sanctified--is to fall into the Shylock trap.

There are serious problems with this interpretation, the first one being that Shylock's verbal pleas--and indeed his early attempt at kindness, by offering Antonio a ridiculous bond--fall on deaf ears, much the way that his later violence does. Shylock can do NOTHING in this play to win, and that is a poor lesson for Jews and others, that Jews occupy a perpetually subsidiary role in the Gentile world. The choice for Jews cannot be to shut up and convert or shove out, though that was certainly the case in Shakespeare's England. And that is, of course, anti-Semitic.

So, I have effectively resolved nothing. But I remain unhappy with the literature of apology and blame that surrounds this play. And I'm exhausted, so I'll just have to spend some more time deciding how on earth I am going to write a succinct and accessible dramaturgical note both analyzing the play's literary complexities and offering (as the director asked) a Jewish perspective.

Dramaturkey indeed!