The Merchant of Venice

The Merchant of Venice is a comedy written by William Shakespeare around 1597. It tells the story of two Venetian merchants who loathe each other, Antonio and Shylock, and their business deal undertaken on behalf of Antonio's good friend, Bassanio. One of the merchants, Shylock, is a Jew living in the heavily Christian Venetian society; and religious prejudice and tension infuse the entire play.

For Shakespeare, writing to an English audience about a Jewish moneylender might have seemed unusual, as Jews had been banished from England in 1290 under The Edict of Expulsion. How was Shakespeare to explain the Jewish presence to Elizabethan audiences, who had little exposure to Jewish culture and religion? Shakespeare's literary rival, Christopher Marlowe had actually just written a play called The Jew of Malta in 1589. That play’s title character was a Jew named Barabas, and as a greedy, cunning, and murderous stereotype, he fit the bill of "stock" Jewish characters that Elizabethan theatergoers of the time loved to hate. Of course, since there were no actual Jews publicly living in England, the worst kinds of stereotypes and legends about the entire group could prevail unchecked. The stories got more and more fantastic, including everything from sacrificing kidnapped Christian children on Easter to killing full-grown Christians for their blood to be used in Passover rituals. Christopher Marlowe’s play, and his inexplicably evil Jewish protagonist, sparked English thinking about the long-absent English Jews.

But what really made the Jewish tradition a popular topic of hatred was an assassination plot against Queen Elizabeth. Unfairly, all Jews were lumped into the same group and symbolized by one man, Roderigo Lopez.

Though Jews had been officially banned from England for nearly 300 years, small groups of Jews actually had come to Protestant England to escape the Catholic Spanish Inquisition. They lived in Elizabethan England and many made a cosmetic conversion from Judaism to Christianity. This meant that while they were Christians on paper, they still held onto their Jewish heritage and culture without openly practicing the religion. These people, called “Marranos” or “Conversos,” seemed to find some relative peace residing in a Protestant nation.

In 1593, Queen Elizabeth's physician, Roderigo Lopez, was accused of trying to poison her as part of a plot in alliance with the King of Spain. Lopez was soon convicted of treason, hanged, drawn, and quartered. While not much of his body remained, what he did leave behind was a new outbreak of anti-Jewish sentiment. Lopez, born in Portugal, was a Marrano, and the people were again hyped on hating Jews. Marlowe’s Jew of Malta was revived.

Shakespeare, with his pulse on the popular interest, presented The Merchant of Venice around 1597, hot on the heels of the Lopez trial. What is interesting about Shakespeare's Jewish merchant, Shylock, is that depending on how you read the story, he is not a caricature of all-things-evil like Marlowe's Barabas. In fact, Shylock speaks the most famous lines of the play in Scene III when he defends Jews as humans deserving the same rights and respect as Christians.

Let’s say that you, circa your kindergarten days, make a deal with your younger brother in which, if the Tampa Bay Devil Rays win the World Series, you get to stick his finger in the light socket. He’s fine with the deal because, hey, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays could never, ever win the World Series, and you’re OK with the potentially devastating results since he recently put glue in your macaroni and cheese.

Then somebody in Florida sells his soul to the devil and before you know it, your little brother is facing a pretty lively light-socket. He insists that you let him off easy because it’s the merciful thing to do, and you counter that the two of you had a bargain and you want justice.

Interesting word, that justice. What does it mean, exactly? Justice according to the law? What if there were a law saying, for example, white men were allowed to own black men? Or, a man can beat his wife who, incidentally, isn’t allowed to vote. Since those actions were actually acceptable according to the law in certain periods of United States history, they were just. Right?

OK, not so much. “Justice” is clearly tied to something other than the law. Perhaps it’s…religious? Perhaps we’re talking about divine law? Ahem, the Crusades, ahem.

So there’s obviously something else going on in our heads when we think about justice, something like ethics or morality. But what do you do when justice according to the law is not the same as justice according to religion, which is not the same as justice according to morals or human decency? Point is, “justice” is not a word you can throw out like “glue” or “light socket.” And yet “justice” has been used to justify a slew of actions – like cutting a pound of flesh from a man’s chest. Is this the new Tarantino? No, it’s The Merchant of Venice.