Times have changed. It’s a simple fact, and be it only a couple decades or a couple centuries, famous works have been revamped and modified to fit the sensibilities of the audience for whom the work is being performed. Things that were acceptable fifty years ago – the Jim Crow laws, for example – are no longer acceptable today. Likewise, things that were alright to speak openly and with bias about hundreds of years ago are no longer alright to speak so heavy-handedly on. Ever since World War II, Americans, Europeans, and other nations alike, are very leery when it comes to talking about the treatment of people of Jewish faith because of the horrific events of the war and the mass-murder of around six million innocent Jewish men, women, and children in concentration camps because of the fanatical and mislead opinion of one very charismatic man. The topic of the British, likewise, probably would have been a very sensitive subject for the new Americans after the Revolutionary War, and the issue of slavery was more than likely a hot topic for the north and south after the Civil War. So, it goes without saying that things that would be labeled as a “hot potato” would be muted or redone with the intention of soothing the audience and drawing revenue for their performances – after all, true to reality or not, actors have to eat. That’s to say, it would make sense that there are moments in Shakespeare’s works that, depending on history, were reworked to soften the impact of certain lines or speeches or even characters in general. A good example of a character reworked and reworked again throughout the years would be Shylock from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, since Shakespeare pointed out heavily that Shylock was, in fact, Jewish.
Shylock, to give brief summary, is a banker/money lender by trade and is a Jewish man. (Riverside) He has a daughter named Jessica who is in love with a Christian – and Shylock isn’t very happy about that fact (Riverside). The man is likewise allowed to collect interest on the loans he gives to others because of the fact that he is Jewish; at the time, Jews were the only ones who were allowed to charge and collect interest because Christians believed it was a sin under the terms of usury. (Prindle, Riverside ) (Also questioned and examined, though not herein in great depth, is the question of homosexuality and homosociality between the characters Antonio and Bassanio, for this goes likewise with the sins of usury – a taboo by any who followed a Christian religion. (Prindle) ) Antonio, to help his dear friend Bassanio, takes a loan from Shylock after spitting at him and pointing out rather derogatorily that Shylock is, in fact, Jewish (Riverside ).
The price of interest? A pound of Antonio’s flesh cut from his body should the man not be able to pay Shylock back the loan. (Riverside ) This sounds harsh; however, keep in mind that Antonio did spit in the money lender’s face – not a smart thing to do before a person borrows money from another who happens to be the only one able to charge interest on said loan. Antonio, unfortunately and rather predictably, has some trouble paying the older man back the money he was lent, and that gets the young, bright-eyed, best friend Antonio into some legal trouble when Shylock goes to the courts to collect. (Riverside) Portia, whom Bassanio married, the wedding and woman the reason the loan was taken from the Jew in the first place, discovers the trouble that her husband and his friend are in. (Riverside ) She and her lady in waiting disguise themselves as male lawyers to free the two of their current predicament, and Portia is able to weasel poor Shylock out of all his money and his faith, leaving him a thoroughly broken man. (Riverside)
This is more or less a happy ending for the play, and it seems odd in this day that a “happy” ending constitutes a man being forced to change his faith, since Americans have freedom of religion – not to mention the fact that people today generally don’t care about the religion of a person as long as nothing too radical is done in the name of said religion. Ben Brantley writes:
In the Hartford Stage Company's reflective, politically circumspect production of "The Merchant of Venice," directed by Mark Lamos, the very mention of the word Jew can cause characters to cross themselves like Transylvanian peasants in the presence of a vampire. Indeed, by the play's end, the cross itself has become a shiny symbol of Christian oppression and superstition. It seems appropriate, therefore, that the play's most voluble exponent for Jews converting to Christianity, the servant Launcelot Gobbo, should be portrayed (by David Manis) as a lout in circus-clown makeup. (Brantley)
Brantley describes one of the most recent productions of “The Merchant of Venice” in which political correctness plays no part. It’s not to say that it’s wrong to be either Jewish or Christian; rather that, in the time of Shakespeare, if one wasn’t a Christian, he or she was obviously wrong. At the time, based on general knowledge that the majority of people – religious or not – know, Christianity in the late 1500s and early 1600s when Shakespeare lived was the only real religion recognized. And even then, depending on the current monarchy, it was only a specific sect of Christianity. It would seem that modern directors agree that the stigma that Christianity is the only way to go is more than silly. After all, as Bentley writes, Launcelot the servant is “a voluble exponent for Jews converting to Christianity… should be portrayed as a lout in circus-clown makeup” (Brantley). By the time the performance ends, those who were Jewish are Jewish no longer. In the original production, it would go without saying that Launcelot would be widely liked by the audience because he is so set on the conversion of religion. However, in modern times, where people are more open and accepting, these champion-like actions are perceived a little as clownish and/or childish.
Also in modern times, there’s a fear of being thought of as anti-semantic – and post World War II, that’s not something that people want to be seen as – unless, of course, they’re part of the Ku Klux Klan or Neo-Nazis or some other radical, prejudiced group. Pre-World War II, there were probably lots of racial slurs going around about African Americans, Native Americans, Asians, and Jews alike. However, the horrors of World War II changed all of that.
Hitler, unfortunately, jumped on the fact that Shylock was Jewish, a money lender who could collect exorbitant interest rates, and tried to find a way to commit legalized murder on a Christian whom he didn’t like – no never mind the fact that this Christian man treated the Jewish man about as good as dirt (Gross). This regrettably became the way Shylock was portrayed, and Hitler, in his twisted, warped mind, was somehow able to use Shakespeare’s play to justify his methodical termination of Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. (Gross) One New York Times’ journalist writes:
We have no way of knowing what was in Shakespeare's mind when he began writing "The Merchant of Venice." Even if we had, what he intended and what he accomplished are not necessarily the same thing. "Never trust the artist, trust the tale." Still, we can take a reasonable guess at his intentions, and we can reasonably assume that they were at least partly fulfilled. (Gross)
Most sane people – obviously not Hitler – would take a moment to realize that Shakespeare didn’t intend to have Shylock be thought of as someone to be hated because of his Jewishness. Rather, it would be safe to assume, that Shylock is Jewish because of the fact Jews are allowed to collect interest on loans given out, thus allowing Shakespeare to finish his story.
Gross goes on to imply that perhaps Shakespeare could have chosen a Christian money lender, saying:
He is also a Jewish villain. He did not have to be. Christians were moneylenders, too, and the story would have worked perfectly well with a Christian villain. What would be almost inconceivable on the other hand would be for him to be Jewish -- in a play written in the 16th century -- and for it not to count, except in some minor or attenuated sense. Jewishness is one of his primary characteristics; he emphasizes it himself, and it is emphasized for him by everyone with whom he has dealings (Gross)
This, however, doesn’t sit well with many people. As aforementioned, and as later stated in the article (as bolded and italicized) – “His Jewish villainies, moreover, are strictly traditional. He is a usurer; he is cunning and cruel; he pursues a vendetta against Christians -- or against their noblest available representative.” – at the time, Jews were money lenders who were allowed to collect interest (Gross).
Would the story really have been the same if Shylock were a Christian money lender who wasn’t allowed to collect interest because of the sin of usury? It’s very unlikely. And is Antonio really the “noblest available representative” of Christianity, as Gross calls it? Is Antonio really that great and that pious of a man?
Scarily, though not likely to happen, thoughts such as these could have lead to Hitler’s justification. It’s likewise just as unfortunate and scary that Hitler’s versions of the play are probably closest to how it was performed in Shakespeare’s day, with the audience jeering at the Jew and cheering when he was stripped of everything in his life: his daughter, his money, and his faith.
To a highly Christianized audience, charged with their overzealousness, this would have been the only fitting ending to Shakespeare’s play. And it’s perhaps with this knowledge of his fan-base, was the reason Shakespeare chose to end the story this way, not so much his own personal anti-Semitism as Gross would propose.
It’s unclear whether or not Shakespeare even wrote the “Merchant of Venice” from his own mind; it’s possible that he added some details or subtracted some or even changed some, but generally the 16th century wasn’t very concerned with copyright laws, so it’s wholly possible that Shakespeare copied Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, Il Pecorone, a story that’s very close to “The Merchant of Venice” (British). Likewise, according to the British Library Archives, it’s not known when exactly the play was written; however, it was first entered by the printer James Roberts on the Stationers’ Register on July 22, 1598. (British) It was then transferred by Roberts to Thomas Heyes October 28, 1600 (British). Also, aside from the fact that it was performed for King James I on a Tuesday in the 1600s and was requested again a week later by the king, not much else is known about the original performances. (British) Archivists, however, believe that A New Song: Shewing the Crueltie of Gernutus a Iew may have influenced some of the language that Shakespeare chose in the dialogue for “The Merchant of Venice”. (British)
It’s much more fortunate for Shylock lovers that in the centuries between the 16th and 20th, Shylock was portrayed as a much nicer man – a tragic hero, almost. Directors softened up the Jew’s image, and Walter Goodman writes:
It is against this background that Shakespeare created a more complicated image of the malignant Jew (''If you prick us, do we not bleed?'') that has long unsettled audiences. … Over the centuries, Shakespeare's Shylock has been portrayed as a model of cruelty and as a comic caricature of greed, an avatar of Old Testament justice set against New Testament mercy and a victim of a vindictive society. … efforts to humanize Shylock by emphasizing his better side, like his love for his daughter, and belittling the behavior of the society that ostracizes him and provokes his lethal inclinations…. By and large, Mr. Gross is not impressed; in the effort to clean up Shylock's reputation, he finds, postwar versions have strayed from the text of what, however disquieting, is a masterpiece. (Goodman)
While Gross may think that the “new” Shylock goes against the masterpiece that Shakespeare created with the wondrous original Shylock, perhaps the person that Goodman is referencing is Mr. Jacob Adler in the later 19th century. Mr. Adler and other actors and critics report that this tradition of a different Shylock or a more sympathetic Shylock with the actor Edmund Kean (Goodman). No longer is Shylock the idiotic fool and heathen monster as before and to come, rather, he is a man, and Kean used this role as Shylock to establish his reputation as an actor (Goodman). This is perhaps a way to let the actual genius of Shakespeare show through. It’s not so much the fact that he is no longer played as a monster; rather that the powerful words that Shakespeare wrote are able to move the audience instead of solely the vision of Shylock that the director sees.
Admittedly, it’s difficult to pinpoint the actual Shylock – what Shakespeare intended for the character and the audience to see. There is anti-Semitism in the play “The Merchant of Venice”, however not as much as what Hitler put into it in the early 20th century. Today, such taboo issues are sidestepped and the image is softened somewhat like it was in the centuries between the original debut and the 1930s. To put it simply, the play and the character of Shylock has been changed to fit the time and what the audience wants.
Works Cited and Consulted
1. "Yiddish Shylock Viewed From Ghetto Standpoint." New York Times May 01, 1903, Print.
2. Barron, James. "Toby Lelyveld, 85, a Teacher And an Expert on Shakespeare." New York Times December 01, 1997, Print.
3. Brantley, Ben. "Review/Theater; Shakespeare for These Times, With No Political Errors." New York Times October 29, 1993, Print.
4. British , Library. "The Merchant of Venice." British Library Archives . BL.UK, n.d. Web. 01 Nov 2010. .
5. Canby, Vincent. "THEATER REVIEW; Deciphering Shylock Yet Again For Contemporary Sensibilities." New York Times February 06, 1995, Print.
6. Goodman, Walter. "CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; All of the Many Versions of Shylock, Looking Into the Face of Anti-Semitism." New York Times 22 April 2000, Print.
7. Gross, John. "THEATER; Shylock and Nazi Propaganda." New York Times 04 April 1993, Print.
8. Gussow, Mel. "COVER STORY; What News On the Rialto? Decadence And Injustice." New York Times October 07, 2001, Print.
9. James, Caryn. "TELEVISION REVIEW; Shylock and Portia Speak to All Eras." New York Times October 08, 2001, Print.
10. Marks, Peter. "THEATER REVIEW; From Serban, The Shylock Of Yesteryear, A Go-To Guy." New York Times January 13, 1999, Print.
11. Prindle, Allison. "English 350: Shakespeare." Fall 2010. Otterbein. Library 126, Sept - Nov 2010. Lecture.
12. Shakespeare, William. "The Merchant of Venice." The Riverside. Comp. Print.
13. Smith, Dinita. "DECEMBER 17-23; Shylock's Dark Side Returns." New York Times December 24, 1995, Print.
14. Smith, Dinita. "It's No More Mr. Nice Guy For Shylock (or Shakespeare)." New York Times December 19, 1995, Print.
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