Which is the

Merchant here,
and which the
Jew?in The Jew
Jewish Otherness

of Malta and The Merchant of

Venice

Hath not a Jew eyes?

D. M. Cohen argues that the moment paints

Shylock in an unfavourable light:

His speech of wheedling self-exculpation is surely

intended to be regarded in the way that beleaguered
tenants today might regard the whine of their
wealthy landlord: Hath not a landlord eyes? Hath
not a landlord organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions? Instead of eliciting sympathy
for an underdog, Shakespeare intended the speech
to elicit detestation for one in a privileged and
powerful position who knowingly and deliberately
abases himself in a plea for unmerited sympathy.
(Cohen 1980: 60-1)

The question of AntiSemitism

Is Shylock a money-grubbing usurer

eager to take a knife to Christians, or a
Lear-like Jew, more sinned against than
sinning? How do we reconcile his forced
conversion after he has been stripped of
his wealth, his work, and his daughter
with the plays comic closure? (Shapiro
2007)
Can we ask similar questions of The Jew
of Malta?

Jewish stereotypes: The

Bible

The story of Barabbas

When Pilate saw that he
could not prevail, but
rather that a tumult was
beginning, he took water
and washed his hands
before the multitude,
saying, I am innocent of
the blood of this just
person. See ye to it. Then
answered all the people
and said, His blood be on
us, and on our children!
Matthew 27: 24-5, King
James Bible, 1611

Barabbas as depicted in Mel

Gibsons The Passion of the
Christ (2004)

Jewish stereotypes:
Usury

If thou lend money to any of my people that is

poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an
usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.
Exodus 22: 25, King James Bible, 1611
And the Lord spake unto Moses in mount
Sinai, saying And if thy brother be waxen
poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then
take thou no usury of him but fear thy God;
thou shalt not give him thy money upon
usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.
Leviticus 25: 35-37, King James Bible, 1611

Jewish stereotypes:
Greed

Their breath stinks with lust for

the Gentiles gold and silver; for no
nation under the sun is greedier
than they were, still are, and
always will be, as is evident from
their accursed usury. They live
among us, enjoy our shield and
protection, they use our country
and our highways, our markets and
streets. Meanwhile our princes and
rulers let the Jews, by means of
their usury, skin and fleece them
and their subjects and make them
beggars with their own money.
Martin Luther, Von den Juden und Ihre
Lgen (About the Jews and Their
Lies),1543

Jewish stereotypes: Murder

The Black Death and

poisoning wells
Child murder and Saints
cults:

Saint William of Norwich,

1144
Saint Harold of Gloucester,
1168
Saint Robert of Bury, 1181
Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln,
1255

Geoffrey Chaucers
Prioresss Tale

Massacre in York, 1190

York had a small but significant Jewish community.

Locals in York grew resentful of their wealth.
Following the coronation of Richard I in 1189, a
spate of violence against Jews swept across
England based on a false rumour that the King
had authorised the violence.

Edict of Expulsion, 1290

English Jews had to

wear identifying
yellow badges from
1218
All Jews were ordered
to leave England by
Edward I in 1290
Most settled in Spain,
Germany, Poland and
Itlay (Venice, of
course, had its own
Jewish Ghetto)
The edict was not
overturned until 1656

Roderigo Lopez

A Portuguese Jew, physician to Elizabeth I,

confessed in 1594 that upon a contract for 50000
ducats he had promised to poison the Queen:

At the Bar, Lopez spake not much, but cried out that he
intended no hurt against the Queen, and that he had no
other meaning but to deceive the Spaniard and wipe him
of his money.
They were all of them condemned, and after three
months put to death at Tyburn, Lopez affirming that he
had loved the Queen as he loved Jesus Christ, which from
a man of the Jewish profession was heard not without
laughter.
(William Camden, The Historie of the Life and Reigne of
that Famous Princesse, Elizabeth , 1629.)

Described by his prosecutors as a vile Jew

Hanged, drawn and quartered on 7 June 1594.

Shylock and Barabas

as the Jewish Other

Mary Metzger describes Shylocks first appearance as

the incarnation of the inherently evil Jew of medieval
and early modern Christian legend: scheming,
greedy, satanic, and bloodthirsty (1998: 56).
SHYLOCK. (aside) How like a fawning publican he looks.
I hate him for he is a Christian;
But more, for that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis, and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice. (1.3.39-43)

Compare Barabas first appearance in The Jew of

Malta, in his counting-house, with heaps of gold
before him, and his later assertion to Ithamore: Both
circumcisd, we hate Christians both (2.3.216).

Shylock and Barabas

as the Jewish Other
SOLANIO. I never heard a passion so confused,
So strange, outrageous, and so variable
As the dog Jew did utter in the streets.
My daughter! O, my ducats! O, my daughter! (2.8.1215)

Like Shylock, Barabas is never clear which he

loves the most: his gold, or his daughter.
BARABAS. O girl, O gold, O beauty, O my bliss! (2.1.54)

But both texts leave space for either

interpretation

Ludicrous stereotypes
in The Jew of Malta

Are we supposed to credit Barabas

claims here?
BARABAS. First, be thou void of these affections:
Compassion, love, vain hope, and heartless fear.
Be moved at nothing; see thou pity none,
But to thyself smile when the Christians moan.
As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights
And kill sick people groaning under walls;
Sometimes I go about and poison wells (2.3.1707)

Ludicrous stereotypes
in The Jew of Malta

How might we respond to the following

exchange?
FRIAR BARNADINE. First help to bury this, then
go with me
And help me to exclaim against the Jew.
FRIAR JACOMO. Why? What has he done?
FRIAR BARNADINE. A thing that makes me
tremble to unfold.
FRIAR JACOMO. What, has he crucified a child?
(3.6.45-9)

Endemic corruption
in The Jew of Malta
BARABAS. I can see no fruits in all their faith
But malice, falsehood, and excessive pride,
Which methinks fits not their profession. (1.1.114-16)

Indeed, Fernezes sudden imposition of the tax

on the Jewish population is, by any account,
impulsive, grossly unfair, and ultimately
dishonest.
Maltas ruling class are duplicitous and corrupt,
while the friars are lustful, mercenary and
violent.

Endemic corruption
in The Jew of Malta

Ferneze is capricious in his imposition of law:

FERNEZE. Sir, half is the penalty of our decree.
Either pay that, or we will seize on all.
BARABAS. Corpo di Dio! Stay, you shall have half.
Let me be used but as my brethren are.
FERNEZE. No, Jew, thou hast denied the articles,
And now it cannot be recalled. (1.2.89-94)

Ferneze ultimately defeats Barabas through

the kind of Machiavellian deception we have
come to associate with Barabas himself.
Does Fernezes concluding promise to let due
praise be given / Neither to fate nor fortune,
but to heaven (5.5.122-3) ring a little hollow?

The Merchant of Venice

The trial scene:

arguably the darkest moment in
Shakespearean comedy (Berry 2002:
126).
The Duke calls Shylock an inhuman
wretch / Uncapable of pity, void and
empty / From any dram of mercy.
(4.1.3-5)

The trial scene

Berry on Shylocks conversion:

Although some critics (mercifully few)

argue that from an Elizabethan
perspective forced conversion
represents genuine mercy, the moment
seems intended to shock. By losing his
status as other, Shylock loses his
sense of self. Acceptance of the
other seems in this case more
malicious than ostracism. (2002: 126)

Disrupting Shylocks
Otherness

Portias question Which is the merchant here,

and which the Jew? (4.1.171) immediately
disrupts any stable sense of self and other.
Shylock makes a valid point about the Christian
characters hypocrisy:
SHYLOCK. You have among you many a purchased slave
Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts
Because you bought them. Shall I say to you
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs.
Why sweat they under burdens? Let their beds
Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates
Be seasoned with such viands. You will answer
The slaves are ours. So do I answer you. (4.1.89-97)

Disrupting Barabass
Otherness

We might be reminded here of Barabas, who points out

Christian hypocrisy by citing scripture:
FIRST KNIGHT. If your first curse fall heavy on thy head
And make thee poor and scorned of all the world,
Tis not our fault, but thy inherent sin.
BARABAS. What? Bring you scripture to confirm your wrongs?
Preach me not out of my possessions.
Some Jews are wicked, as all Christians are;
But say the tribe that I descended of
Were all in general cast away for sin,
Shall I be tried by their transgression?
The man that dealeth righteously shall live;
And which of you can charge me otherwise? (1.2.108-18)

We might also be reminded of The Jew of Maltas slavemarket, where Every ones price is written on his back
(2.3.3).

Disrupting Shylocks
Otherness

Shylocks vengefulness marks him as a Jew,

an other to the Christians, who espouse the
doctrine of mercy that Portia enunciates in the
trial scene. Yet as the scene unfolds, Shylocks
vengefulness comes to seem almost
indistinguishable from a Christian charity that
outwits and breaks him. (Berry 2002: 131)
PORTIA. Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the
Duke.
(4.1.360)

Disrupting Shylocks
Otherness

Portias eloquent and oft-quoted speech on the

quality of mercy which, in the context of the
trial scene urges on Shylock a generosity of
behaviour that Portia herself will ultimately fail
to show toward him. (Garber 2004: 283)
An echo here of Ferneze?
PORTIA. He hath refused it in the open court.
He shall have merely justice and his bond.
(4.1.335-6)

Disrupting Shylocks
Otherness

the certainty of the moral superiority of the Christian /

Catholic over the Jew is eroded by Shylocks scathing
account of his customary treatment by Antonio
(ORourke 2003: 377):
SHYLOCK. Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances. []
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat, dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own. []
ANTONIO. I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too. (1.3.105-29)

As Shylock says himself: The villainy you teach me I will

execute. (3.1.66-7)

Other Others?

Given the nature of the dominant ideology and social

ethos of Elizabethan England, one is not surprised to
find in Shakespeares comedies biases in favour of
aristocratic, male, white, English, heterosexual
Christians. In Elizabethan culture, such categories
define a normative self; those who fall outside
them are considered other. (Berry 2002: 124)

By Berrys logic, nearly all the characters in The

Merchant of Venice are othered in some way.
The whole play becomes about a system in
which every character is included somehow, but
excluded in another way.

Other Others: Class

Antonio as merchant vs. Bassanio as

aristocrat
Class bonds:
Gratiano to Bassanio
Nerissa to Portia
Launcelot Gobbo and Old Gobbo to
Shylock

Other Others: Race

MOROCCO. Mislike me not for my complexion,
The shadowed livery of the burnished sun,
To whom I am a neighbour and near bred.
Bring me the fairest creature northward born,
Where Phoebus fire scarce thaws the icicles,
And let us make incision for your love,
To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.
(2.1.1-7)
PORTIA. A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go.
Let all of his complexion choose me so. (2.7.78-9)

Other Others: Gender

PORTIA. this reasoning is not in the fashion to
choose me a husband. O me, the word choose! I
may neither choose who I would nor refuse who I
dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed
by the will of a dead father. (1.2.20-4)
PORTIA. Myself and what is mine to you and yours
Is now converted. But now I was the lord
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
Queen oer myself; and even now, but now,
This house, these servants, and this same myself
Are yours, my lords. I give them with this ring.
(3.2.166-71)

Other Others: Gender

BASSANIO. Sweet doctor, you shall be my
bedfellow.
When I am absent, then lie with my

wife. (5.1.284-5) All three central female

characters in the play blur

gender lines by crossdressing at some point.
Berry argues that a similar
disruption of categories of
self and other is at work:

Each of these characters is a

shape-shifter, capable of calling
into question the very nature of
identity itself. (2002: 129)

Other Others:
Homosexuality
DISCLAIMER: The idea that sexuality is a defining
factor in a persons identity is a relatively modern one.
While some Elizabethans certainly engaged in what
we might now call homosexual activities, then, they
did not think of homosexuality in anything like the
modern sense (indeed, the word did not then exist).
SALERIO. And even there, his eye being big with tears,
Turning his face, he put his hand behind him
And, with affection wondrous sensible,
He wrung Bassanios hand; and so they parted.
SOLANIO. I think he only loves the world for him.
(2.8.46-50)

Other Others:
Homosexuality
SOLANIO. Why then, you are in love.
ANTONIO.
Fie, fie. (1.1.46)
ANTONIO. My purse, my person, my extremest
means
Lie all unlockd to your occasions. (1.1.138-9)
ANTONIO. Commend me to your honourable wife.
Tell her the process of Antonios end.
Say how I loved you. Speak me fair in death,
And when the tale is told, bid her be judge
Whether Bassanio had not once a love. (4.1.270-4)

Other Others:
Homosexuality

Antonio promises to pass Shylocks wealth to

Jessica and Lorenzo, not to his own heirs.

If Antonio is excluded from the good life at the

end of the Merchant, so the gay man is excluded
from the plays address. It is the
Shakespearean text that is reconfirming the
marginalization of an already marginalized group.
(Sinfield 1996: 128)
Antonio hates Shylock not because he is a more
fervent Christian than others, but because he
recognizes his own alter ego in this despised Jew
who, because he is a heretic, can never belong to
the state. He hates himself in Shylock: the
homosexual self that Antonio has come to identify
symbolically as the Jew. (Kleinberg 1985: 120)

Other Others a final

observation

Not only were there no Jewish

moneylenders in London in 1594,
but the hated foreign usurers in
London in the 1590s were mostly
Italians (ORourke 2003: 376).

References

Berry, Edward (2002) Laughing at Others,

in Leggatt, A. [ed.] The Cambridge
Companion to Shakespearean Comedy,
Cambridge: C.U.P., 123-38.
Cohen, D. M. (1980) The Jew and Shylock,
Shakespeare Quarterly, 31: 1, 53-63.
Garber, Marjorie (2004) Shakespeare After
All, New York: Pantheon Books.
Kleinberg, Seymour (1985) The Merchant of
Venice: The Homosexual as Anti-Semite in
Nascent Capitalism in Kellog, S. [ed.]
Literary Visions of Homosexuality, New York:
The Haworth Press.

References

Metzger, Mary Janell (1998) Now by My Hood,

a Gentle and No Jew: Jessica, The Merchant of
Venice, and the Discourse of Early Modern
English Identity, PMLA, 113: 1, 52-63.
ORourke, James (2003) Racism and
Homophobia in The Merchant of Venice, ELH,
70: 2, 375-397.
Shapiro, James (2007) The Villainy You Teach
Me, Financial Times, January 12.
Sinfield, Alan (1996) How to Read The
Merchant of Venice without being Heterosexist,
in Terence Hawkes [ed.] Alternative
Shakespeares 2, London: Routledge, 122-39.