Parody of Jewish-Christian Construction in The Merchant of Venice
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The Merchant of Venice might well be titled Comeuppance of the Jew, for the play climaxes with the “justice” handed Shylock in the courtroom scene—all previous action builds toward it and all subsequent action flows dreamily away from it (a bit like post-coital bliss). Ostensibly a comedy, the play is, curiously, not very funny. Shards of brief humor appear here and there, scattershot, but the whole is an admixture of the amusing and the disturbing. An example of the former would be the romance of the casket contest: the list of unsuitable suitors, Portia’s unsubtle put-downs, the inevitability of Bassanio’s triumph. The latter concerns the treatment of Shylock, of course, and the unflattering barbs aimed (by inference) toward the victorious, exultant Christians—who finally get their chance to screw the Jew.
Merchant reads almost like melodrama: “The conflict…between good and evil depicted in absolute terms. Plot…emphasized at the expense of characterization.” Oversimplification is the key here: compared to the deep psychological probing of The Taming of the Shrew (to cite but one example), Merchant seems one-dimensional. Too pat the resolutions, too smug the reification of “providentialist Christianity,” and far, far too vile the portrayal of Shylock.
Dismissing the possibility that Shakespeare was simply pandering to his audience, one has to look for another form of sophistication. According to Moisan,
It may be fair to suggest that what we encounter in the play is “merely” a mirroring both of the myths by which the [Elizabethan] age read itself and of the anxieties those myths could not entirely dispel. Yet in holding up the mirror to its age so faithfully, does the play affirm the myths it enacts, or does it subvert them by mirroring their qualifications as well? Or, rather, does it affirm the myths it dramatizes by mirroring their qualifications, by admitting them as qualifications which ultimately can be contained and “lived with”?
The utter superiority of Christian virtue (wrapped in material prosperity) compared to the depravity of the Jew (who ekes out a parasitic existence through usury) is the myth. Attempting to answer the questions raised above is itself problematic, for there is no definitive answer. One can only speculate and report how the text is perceived individually. Thus, I read The Merchant of Venice as a parody—of other popular works perhaps, but certainly of the aforesaid myths.
According to Goldman, parody is a split vision “which cherishes and derides its target in the same breath.” Just because Shakespeare appears to be lampooning the myths of Christian and Jewish construction doesn’t mean that he disagreed with them. One would hardly bother to parody a discourse one finds repugnant, so “sending it up” may be a gloriously insincere form of flattery. And a very English form as well—a type of humor that often escapes non-British audiences.
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Far from a fully realized dramatic character (which Shakespeare was extremely adept at creating), Shylock is a caricature of Jewishness—a walking stereotype. The first words out of his mouth sum up the essence of his being: “Three thousand ducats; well.” Coupled with his crass mammonism is a hatred of Christianity, “How like a fawning publican he looks! I hate him for he [Antonio] is a Christian.” Antonio is the object of Shylock’s personal grudge as well because he “lends out money gratis and brings down/The rate of usance here with us in Venice.” Thus, Antonio’s Christian charity (and refusal to charge interest) cuts into Shylock’s profits. So great is his animosity, the Jew even rejects a dinner invitation, abhorring the smell of pork, “…the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil into.”
Even Shylock’s family life is poisoned by thrift—a euphemism for avarice. Jessica declares that “Our house is hell…” and secretly schemes to “Become a Christian” by eloping with Lorenzo. After she makes good on that promise, Shylock utters these infamous words (via Salanio), “My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats! Justice! The law! my ducats, and my daughter!” In this portrayal an incestuous relationship between family—the most intimate of human bonds—and money festers like an open wound. And if ever there was a doubt as to which comes first in Shylock’s mind, he later declares, “I would my daughter were dead at my foot…would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin!” In the end, Jessica’s only means of escape is to renounce her Jewish identity.
Finally, in the courtroom scene (where Shylock gets to demand his justice), the pernicious need for revenge trumps even his money-lust. Bassanio offers to double his losses, but the Jew insists on his bond (a pound of Antonio’s flesh). When offered thrice his losses, Shylock objects, “An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven…” Pleas of the court to show even an ounce of mercy fall on deaf ears—all the arguments being couched, incidentally, in biblical allusion. Mercy is thus equated to Christianity (with salvational overtones) while avarice and the thirst for revenge proceed naturally from Jewishness. Almost no subtlety is added to these binaries: the Jew is a despicable heretic inviting extermination. Ignoring the benevolent entreaties of his Christian fellows, he blindly marches toward oblivion.
To look beyond the language of bigotry and stereotype, however, we must consider not only historical roots but the self-conception of Jews and Christians. The inability of one to apprehend the other forms the subtext of Shakespeare’s play; and since his characters provide little insight (deliberately, I think), we will have to unravel it here.
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Judaism could almost be called a victim of its own success, for one of its minor sects—Christianity—mushroomed into a major world religion, engulfing the Roman Empire and writing the subsequent history of western Europe. Although Christianity worshipped a Jewish messiah and adopted the Hebrew Bible as part of its cannon, Jews themselves became objects of derision. Christians thus came to define themselves, in part, by distinguishing the Jewish “Other.”
Yet this simple binary of Jew vs. Christian turns out to be much more complicated than traditionally thought. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 similarities between the Jewish Essene community and early Christianity were too obvious to ignore. Dating from 200 to 100 B.C., these scrolls included such documents as Manual of Discipline, Habakkuk Commentary, The War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness, and Zadokite Fragments. Further excavations of the region—where John the Baptist and Jesus had preached—uncovered an Essene monastery, suggesting that both men might have been affiliated with this community. Moreover,
…the Essenes…believed in a divinely sent messiah whom they called the “Teacher of Righteousness,” and who had died a violent death at the hands of the Sons of Darkness. The followers of the Teacher of Righteousness called themselves the “Elect of God” and their religious community the “New Covenant.” Members of the New Covenant were initiated through baptism. They had a protocol for seating which is almost identical to that of the Last Supper as described in the New Testament. The Manual of Discipline describes a ritual which could be mistaken for the Christian Communion.
The Teacher of Righteousness, whose name remains unknown, died about 65-53 B.C., but his role was later filled by another rabbi—Jesus of Nazareth. For two millennia the existence of this group was but a passing footnote in the writings of such scholars as Josephus, Philo, and Pliny, but “with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls the scholars were vindicated. Josephus, Philo, Pliny…all had been right. ‘Christianity’ had existed at least two hundred years before Jesus, its greatest and noblest spokesman, but not its originator.”
In fact, the religion of Jesus himself—as he understood it and practiced it— bore very little resemblance to medieval, reformation, or present-day Christianity. According to Harris,
Jesus was a Jew, of course, and his mother a Jewess. His apostles, to the last man, were also Jews. There is no evidence whatsoever, apart from the tendentious writings of the later church, that Jesus ever conceived of himself as anything other than a Jew among Jews, seeking the fulfillment of Judaism—and, likely, the return of Jewish sovereignty in a Roman world. As many authors have observed, the numerous strands of Hebrew prophecy that were made to coincide with Jesus’ ministry betray the apologetics, and often poor scholarship, of the gospel writers.
The rise of Christianity as a world religion can be attributed to Saul of Tarsus (renamed Paul), as a result of his dispute with Peter and the other disciples (who knew Jesus while alive). Peter and his clique insisted that only Jews could be Christians—and for good reason: Jesus himself taught this. Matthew 15:22-28 tells the story of a Canaanite woman who approached the disciples, crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is possessed by a demon.” But Jesus ignores her, and when advised by his disciples to send her away, he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” When she begs him to reconsider, he replies, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” To which she responds, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” This show of humility sparks his compassion and he heals the daughter. But the message is clear: Jesus did not intend to minister to Gentile peoples.
Here we have the Jewish self-image: a people set apart from all others. The covenant established between God and Abraham (Gen. 17:1-8), initially signified by male circumcision, was a land covenant. In addition to the promise of descendents without number was the promise of a homeland. Later came the Mosaic Law and the (somewhat tedious) Deuteronomic legal system, but all of these are considered outward manifestations of the original covenant—which is supposed to be eternal and everlasting. The word covenant, of course, means “contract,” which implies a set of obligations for both parties. The Jewish part is to obey the commandments and laws—a religious and political responsibility. In a word: the Jew has to remain a Jew (by resisting assimilation). God’s part is to provide a homeland and all the material prosperity that comes with it. Note that all aspects of the Jewish covenant are focused on earthly life. While some Jews believed in an afterlife and some did not, there was very little in Hebrew Scriptures to suggest that one’s reward lay beyond this world.
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Saul of Tarsus, according to Dimont, “became to Jesus what the Talmud became to the Torah—a commentary and a way of life.” A Pharisee and early persecutor of Christians, his conversion had followed a dramatic spiritual experience on the road to Damascus. Fourteen years later, in 45 A.D., Saul accompanied another disciple, Barnabas, on a missionary trip. It was after this journey (during which Saul’s proselytizing efforts outstripped his companion’s) that he made the fateful decision to break from the Jews.
The schism was largely the result of his inability to rise in the church hierarchy. He was rebuffed in his attempt to become an Apostle—an honor reserved for Peter and the other disciples who had known Jesus in person—and then got into a bitter dispute with James (Jesus’ brother) over the conversion of pagans. Hitherto, pagans first had to become Jews—enduring circumcision, foreswearing pork, etc.—before they could be Christians.
Christianity became a separate religion from Judaism when Saul—who now adopted the Roman name Paul—made three important decisions:
Since the Jews would not have Christianity, Paul took it to the pagans. To make it easier for them to join his new religion, he made a second decision, that of abandoning Jewish dietary laws and the rite of circumcision. His third decision was to substitute Christ for the Torah, and this was the most crucial one, for it caused the final and unalterable break between the Father and the Son religions. The Jews believed then, as they do now, that man can know God only through…the Torah. The Pauline doctrine stated that man could know God only through Christ. The schism between Jew and Christian was total.
Thus, Paul’s transformation was an act of Jewish self-nullification (a fate that is forced on Shylock in Merchant)—the “assimilation” that the people of Israel had been struggling against for hundreds of years.
During Paul’s famous missionary journeys, between 50 and 62 A.D., the Epistles were written—the oldest part of the New Testament. Between 70 and 120 A.D. the Gospels appeared, each with its own peculiar agenda. Gradually, Paul “changed early Christianity into a new Pauline Christology.”
The differences between the old, “Jewish” Christianity and the new Pauline religion are striking. Consider the concept of messiah: in Judaism this means “anointed one,” a king or conqueror (like Alexander the Great), who would restore the throne of David, cast off the yoke of foreign domination, and return Israel to the halcyon days of yore. But he was nothing other than a man:
To the early Christians, Jesus had been human with divine attributes conferred upon him after resurrection. To Paul, Christ was divine even before birth. To the early Christians, Jesus had been the Son of God. To Paul, Christ was coequal and cosubstantial with God. Jesus had taught that one learned to love God by loving man. Paul taught that one learned to love Christ by incorporating him into oneself. Paul also shifted the early emphasis from Jesus the messiah to Christ the redeemer of sin.
So not only did Christianity break from Judaism, it deviated from its own earliest incarnation—which was an outgrowth of the Essene community.
It has sometimes been argued that the God of the New Testament is a different entity from that of the Old Testament, and in one sense this is true regarding the deification of Jesus. The Nicene Creed declares that he is “begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made.” He “…came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man…”
The three sections of the Creed deal with, respectively, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—aspects of the new tripartite God—“unam; sanctam; catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam,” and “[e]xpectamus resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam futuri saeculi.” The essential promise is paradise in the afterlife; meanwhile, following the injunction to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15), Christianity was universalized.
There is one similarity between the Old and New, however: exclusive truth claims. Mark 16:16 is quite unambiguous about this: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” Non-Christians, in other words, are destined for hell. And as Auerbach points out, this tradition has its roots in the Hebrew Bible:
The [Old Testament’s] claim to truth…is tyrannical—it excludes all other claims. The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be a historically true reality—it insists that it is the only real world, as destined for autocracy. All other scenes, issues, and ordinances have no right to appear independently of it, and it is promised that all of them, the history of all mankind, will be given their due place within its frame, will be subordinated to it.
But whereas the Jewish Covenant was concretized in the land (the physical nation of Israel) the Christian Covenant was both universalized and abstracted—i.e., earthly “salvation” and a promised place in the Kingdom of the great beyond. The role of the nation was fulfilled by the catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam, with excommunication being equivalent to exile.
Thus, the Christian self-image: the Pauline doctrine of original sin postulating what may be called “blanket condemnation”—that is, every person by virtue of being born is sentenced to an eternity in hell. The only way to escape that horrible fate is through Christ. So it is not a matter of one religion as opposed to another, but a matter of where one chooses to spend eternity. Compared to the “salvation” offered by Christ, everything else is of little consequence. Moreover, man-made institutions, such as the State, are seen as indirect agencies of God’s work, but agencies nonetheless.
A Christian is not, therefore, an adherent of one faith amid many, but a participant in God’s Holy Plan of Redemption. Beyond the boundaries of Christendom lie the infidel and the heathen—enemies of Christ. And occupying a special seat of honor among these are the Jews: the very people who nailed Jesus to the cross.
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Not surprisingly, Christian anti-Semitism began as early as the ministry of Paul. In Thessalonians 2:14-16 he writes:
For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judea; for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out and displease God and oppose all men by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last!
Failing to grasp the contradiction, apparently, between the teaching that Jesus was sent to die and the idea that Jews murdered Christ, this indictment had become cant by the time the Gospel of John was written, and this bit of dialogue attributed to Jesus himself:
Jesus said to them [the Jews], “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies…If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? He who is of God hears the words of God; the reason why you do not hear them is because you are not of God.” (John 8:42-47)
Thus, pious Christians, who identified themselves with God, could only explain the apostasy of the Jews by associating them with Satan—now assigned the role of ancestor. When Christianity became Rome’s state religion in 312 A.D., after the conversion of Constantine, the legal status of Jews began to degrade: they were barred from holding public office, forbidden to proselytize or marry Christian women (under pain of death). The Justinian Code of the sixth century outlawed the Mishnah (Jewish law code) and made disbelief in the Resurrection and Last Judgment capital crimes.
Although an adequate account of Christian anti-Semitism cannot be given here, two pertinent examples are worth mentioning. First, the “blood libel”—throughout the Middle Ages Jews were routinely accused of killing Christians (infants in particular) to take their blood. It was believed that Jews required Christian blood to perform certain rituals, heal ailments, ease childbirth, promote fertility, and any number of things. These accusations turned Jews into medieval “vampires,” reinforcing the image of a parasite. Second, following the official Church doctrine of transubstantiation (the idea that the wafers and wine used in Holy Communion were magically transformed into the literal body and blood of Christ) Jews often found themselves accused and persecuted for “host desecration.” Harris elaborates:
After this incredible dogma [transubstantiation] had been established, by mere reiteration…Christians began to worry that these living wafers might be subjected to all manner of mistreatment and even physical torture, at the hands of heretics and Jews. (One might wonder why eating the body of Jesus would be any less of a torment to him.) Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defenseless crackers? Historical accounts suggest that as many as three thousand Jews were murdered in response to a single allegation of this imaginary crime. The crime of host desecration was punished throughout Europe for centuries.
By the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 (which also legalized the use of torture for the Inquisition), Jews were forbidden to own land and barred from military service. The fact that they had to wander the earth in exile, a hated minority, reified the “greatness” of the Gospel and ultimate triumph of Christianity.
Considering all the restrictions placed upon them, it is not too surprising that the Jewish people turned to banking as a way to survive. They were outside the feudal system of Europe during the Middle Ages—which is to say, not part of the three estates (clergy, nobles, and serfs)—and so became merchants. Dimont describes their commercial ascendancy:
…in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, most Mediterranean seaports were beehives of Jewish commercial activity. In his account, Benjamin of Tudela carefully noted the Jewish glass-manufacturing industries and the many Jewish shipyards, where new ships for expanding trade were built. By 1500, before the Jews were banished from Spain, they were predominant in the wool and silk trades, and they were chief importers of sugar, pepper, and other spices. Before the Jews of Italy were banished or placed in ghettoes, they dominated that country’s silk and dyeing industries and carried on vast commercial dealings with India.
During the feudal period, Jewish money often replaced lost crops and livestock, provided nobles with the means to build castles and pay for tournaments, and assisted the Church in cathedral building, among other enterprises. Although money lending was seen as a despicable activity by medieval Christians, it was nonetheless a vital practice in the maintenance of feudal Europe. A cynical relationship of use and abuse had developed between Christian and Jew, and out of that emerged the familiar stereotype of the “money-grubbing Jew.”
The stereotype, like everything else in that period, originated from the Church:
The Church called the lending of money not “banking” but “usury.” To modern man the word “usury” means the lending of money at exorbitant rates; in medieval times it simply meant the lending of money for interest, no matter how low. Any Christian today who accepts 3 percent interest on his bank savings or government bonds would have been regarded as a blackhearted usurer by the medieval Church, for the simple reason that the Church viewed the lending of money at interest as a mortal sin. How then could it permit Christians to lend money if that meant that their souls would go to hell? With the Jews it was another story. As the Jews were not Christians and in the eyes of the Church were going to hell anyhow, one more sin—that is, money-lending—could not add much to the punishment they would receive in the hereafter.
Although stereotypes may be built upon a grain of truth—as in propaganda and demagoguery—only one side of the issue is ever disclosed. That is the chief criticism of a play like The Merchant of Venice, but the question we have to ask is—what was Shakespeare trying to achieve by taking such a cheap shot at the Jew?
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One could simply accuse Shakespeare of mindless anti-Semitism—and perhaps not be far off the mark; after all, he was a white, middle class Christian. But “mindless” he wasn’t. The characteristic ambiguities are there, suggested by the line, “Which is the merchant here? and which is the Jew?”—an unnecessary question unless one must discriminate between two similar quantities. One could rephrase it, asking, “Which is the prodigal, and which is not?” Shylock says, “…I’ll go in hate, to feed upon/The prodigal Christian.” And later, referring to Antonio (whose ships have been lost), “There I have another bad match: a bankrupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto.”
This “resonance” is noted by Moisan: “The word ‘prodigal’ occurs several times, twice on the tongue of Shylock, who employs it as a term of derision for Christians whose ‘prodigality’ clearly differentiates them from the ‘thrift’ Shylock tends to associate with his own endeavors.” That is to say, they are economically prodigal.
Another kind of “prodigality” is religious or ideological, suggested in section ד: the deviation of Christianity from its Jewish roots. In one of the most beautiful parables of the New Testament (Luke 15:11-32), Jesus describes the departure of a son from his father, the grief it causes the father, the son’s penitent return, and the father’s willingness to not only forgive but rejoice (much to the displeasure of the elder son—the non-prodigal). Christianity’s historical treatment of Jews, briefly recounted above, resembles the attitude of the elder son, who doesn’t understand his father: “Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf!” The accusation against Jews as Christ-killers is one of prodigality, but considering the implications of the Dead Sea Scrolls (not to mention Jesus’ own words and deeds, and those of his first followers), who is really the prodigal here? Putting that particular word in the mouth of Shylock carries some weight, I would argue.
Further ambiguity comes from the equation of usury to heresy: “That shylock should ‘choose’ to do wrong reminds us…of the simultaneously most damning and yet socially and ideologically most reassuring charge to be leveled at usurers in Shakespeare’s time, namely that usurers are heretics, willful choosers of the wrong course and, therefore, most deserving of unqualified reproach.” And if it is heresy, who is more culpable—the lender or the borrower? Even monarchs benefited from these services: “…that the resources of usurers were sought, not only by profligate young gentlemen and capital-hungry merchants, but by Parliament and the Queen herself, are facts well-established and oft remarked.” The analogy of the drug dealer can illuminate this nicely: without the existing demand for illegal drugs, the dealer would soon be out of business. The insistence of modern day governments in targeting the supply side of the problem is arguably the same kind of thinking that led Christians to condemn usurious Jews. But as history shows, today’s heretic is tomorrow’s prophet.
Finally, the play’s resolution is quite problematic, largely because it is so unreal. Part of that comes from the genre—comedy—with a less secure footing in “reality” than other forms of drama. While the Christian characters speak eloquently about mercy and kindness and justice, no one seems to notice how little of these virtues are afforded Shylock. While he certainly is villainous, and deserves to take a loss, and to be rebuked for his lack of charity, no rational person would say that his terminal fate is, in fact, just. In the end, the “Jew” is eliminated altogether—nullified like Saul of Tarsus. Assimilation complete. This prescient depiction of the “final solution” as comic relief (in many ways more frightening than tragedy), leads to at least one hypothesis regarding intent: parody.
References
Arp, Thomas R. Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. 7th ed. New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1998.
Auerbach, Erich. “Odysseus’ Scar.” in Mimesis. trans. William Trask. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 2003.
Dimont, Max I. Jews, God, and History. New York: Signet, 1962.
Forma Recepta Ecclesiae Orientalis A.D. 381. http://www.creeds.net/ancient/nicene.htm
Goldman, Albert. The Lives of John Lennon. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.
Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York:
W.W. Norton, 2004.
Moisan, Thomas. “ ‘Which is the merchant here? and which is the Jew?’: Subversion and
Recuperation in The Merchant of Venice.” Shakespeare Reproduced. 188-206.
The Merchant of Venice might well be titled Comeuppance of the Jew, for the play climaxes with the “justice” handed Shylock in the courtroom scene—all previous action builds toward it and all subsequent action flows dreamily away from it (a bit like post-coital bliss). Ostensibly a comedy, the play is, curiously, not very funny. Shards of brief humor appear here and there, scattershot, but the whole is an admixture of the amusing and the disturbing. An example of the former would be the romance of the casket contest: the list of unsuitable suitors, Portia’s unsubtle put-downs, the inevitability of Bassanio’s triumph. The latter concerns the treatment of Shylock, of course, and the unflattering barbs aimed (by inference) toward the victorious, exultant Christians—who finally get their chance to screw the Jew.
Merchant reads almost like melodrama: “The conflict…between good and evil depicted in absolute terms. Plot…emphasized at the expense of characterization.” Oversimplification is the key here: compared to the deep psychological probing of The Taming of the Shrew (to cite but one example), Merchant seems one-dimensional. Too pat the resolutions, too smug the reification of “providentialist Christianity,” and far, far too vile the portrayal of Shylock.
Dismissing the possibility that Shakespeare was simply pandering to his audience, one has to look for another form of sophistication. According to Moisan,
It may be fair to suggest that what we encounter in the play is “merely” a mirroring both of the myths by which the [Elizabethan] age read itself and of the anxieties those myths could not entirely dispel. Yet in holding up the mirror to its age so faithfully, does the play affirm the myths it enacts, or does it subvert them by mirroring their qualifications as well? Or, rather, does it affirm the myths it dramatizes by mirroring their qualifications, by admitting them as qualifications which ultimately can be contained and “lived with”?
The utter superiority of Christian virtue (wrapped in material prosperity) compared to the depravity of the Jew (who ekes out a parasitic existence through usury) is the myth. Attempting to answer the questions raised above is itself problematic, for there is no definitive answer. One can only speculate and report how the text is perceived individually. Thus, I read The Merchant of Venice as a parody—of other popular works perhaps, but certainly of the aforesaid myths.
According to Goldman, parody is a split vision “which cherishes and derides its target in the same breath.” Just because Shakespeare appears to be lampooning the myths of Christian and Jewish construction doesn’t mean that he disagreed with them. One would hardly bother to parody a discourse one finds repugnant, so “sending it up” may be a gloriously insincere form of flattery. And a very English form as well—a type of humor that often escapes non-British audiences.
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Far from a fully realized dramatic character (which Shakespeare was extremely adept at creating), Shylock is a caricature of Jewishness—a walking stereotype. The first words out of his mouth sum up the essence of his being: “Three thousand ducats; well.” Coupled with his crass mammonism is a hatred of Christianity, “How like a fawning publican he looks! I hate him for he [Antonio] is a Christian.” Antonio is the object of Shylock’s personal grudge as well because he “lends out money gratis and brings down/The rate of usance here with us in Venice.” Thus, Antonio’s Christian charity (and refusal to charge interest) cuts into Shylock’s profits. So great is his animosity, the Jew even rejects a dinner invitation, abhorring the smell of pork, “…the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil into.”
Even Shylock’s family life is poisoned by thrift—a euphemism for avarice. Jessica declares that “Our house is hell…” and secretly schemes to “Become a Christian” by eloping with Lorenzo. After she makes good on that promise, Shylock utters these infamous words (via Salanio), “My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats! Justice! The law! my ducats, and my daughter!” In this portrayal an incestuous relationship between family—the most intimate of human bonds—and money festers like an open wound. And if ever there was a doubt as to which comes first in Shylock’s mind, he later declares, “I would my daughter were dead at my foot…would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin!” In the end, Jessica’s only means of escape is to renounce her Jewish identity.
Finally, in the courtroom scene (where Shylock gets to demand his justice), the pernicious need for revenge trumps even his money-lust. Bassanio offers to double his losses, but the Jew insists on his bond (a pound of Antonio’s flesh). When offered thrice his losses, Shylock objects, “An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven…” Pleas of the court to show even an ounce of mercy fall on deaf ears—all the arguments being couched, incidentally, in biblical allusion. Mercy is thus equated to Christianity (with salvational overtones) while avarice and the thirst for revenge proceed naturally from Jewishness. Almost no subtlety is added to these binaries: the Jew is a despicable heretic inviting extermination. Ignoring the benevolent entreaties of his Christian fellows, he blindly marches toward oblivion.
To look beyond the language of bigotry and stereotype, however, we must consider not only historical roots but the self-conception of Jews and Christians. The inability of one to apprehend the other forms the subtext of Shakespeare’s play; and since his characters provide little insight (deliberately, I think), we will have to unravel it here.
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Judaism could almost be called a victim of its own success, for one of its minor sects—Christianity—mushroomed into a major world religion, engulfing the Roman Empire and writing the subsequent history of western Europe. Although Christianity worshipped a Jewish messiah and adopted the Hebrew Bible as part of its cannon, Jews themselves became objects of derision. Christians thus came to define themselves, in part, by distinguishing the Jewish “Other.”
Yet this simple binary of Jew vs. Christian turns out to be much more complicated than traditionally thought. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 similarities between the Jewish Essene community and early Christianity were too obvious to ignore. Dating from 200 to 100 B.C., these scrolls included such documents as Manual of Discipline, Habakkuk Commentary, The War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness, and Zadokite Fragments. Further excavations of the region—where John the Baptist and Jesus had preached—uncovered an Essene monastery, suggesting that both men might have been affiliated with this community. Moreover,
…the Essenes…believed in a divinely sent messiah whom they called the “Teacher of Righteousness,” and who had died a violent death at the hands of the Sons of Darkness. The followers of the Teacher of Righteousness called themselves the “Elect of God” and their religious community the “New Covenant.” Members of the New Covenant were initiated through baptism. They had a protocol for seating which is almost identical to that of the Last Supper as described in the New Testament. The Manual of Discipline describes a ritual which could be mistaken for the Christian Communion.
The Teacher of Righteousness, whose name remains unknown, died about 65-53 B.C., but his role was later filled by another rabbi—Jesus of Nazareth. For two millennia the existence of this group was but a passing footnote in the writings of such scholars as Josephus, Philo, and Pliny, but “with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls the scholars were vindicated. Josephus, Philo, Pliny…all had been right. ‘Christianity’ had existed at least two hundred years before Jesus, its greatest and noblest spokesman, but not its originator.”
In fact, the religion of Jesus himself—as he understood it and practiced it— bore very little resemblance to medieval, reformation, or present-day Christianity. According to Harris,
Jesus was a Jew, of course, and his mother a Jewess. His apostles, to the last man, were also Jews. There is no evidence whatsoever, apart from the tendentious writings of the later church, that Jesus ever conceived of himself as anything other than a Jew among Jews, seeking the fulfillment of Judaism—and, likely, the return of Jewish sovereignty in a Roman world. As many authors have observed, the numerous strands of Hebrew prophecy that were made to coincide with Jesus’ ministry betray the apologetics, and often poor scholarship, of the gospel writers.
The rise of Christianity as a world religion can be attributed to Saul of Tarsus (renamed Paul), as a result of his dispute with Peter and the other disciples (who knew Jesus while alive). Peter and his clique insisted that only Jews could be Christians—and for good reason: Jesus himself taught this. Matthew 15:22-28 tells the story of a Canaanite woman who approached the disciples, crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is possessed by a demon.” But Jesus ignores her, and when advised by his disciples to send her away, he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” When she begs him to reconsider, he replies, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” To which she responds, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” This show of humility sparks his compassion and he heals the daughter. But the message is clear: Jesus did not intend to minister to Gentile peoples.
Here we have the Jewish self-image: a people set apart from all others. The covenant established between God and Abraham (Gen. 17:1-8), initially signified by male circumcision, was a land covenant. In addition to the promise of descendents without number was the promise of a homeland. Later came the Mosaic Law and the (somewhat tedious) Deuteronomic legal system, but all of these are considered outward manifestations of the original covenant—which is supposed to be eternal and everlasting. The word covenant, of course, means “contract,” which implies a set of obligations for both parties. The Jewish part is to obey the commandments and laws—a religious and political responsibility. In a word: the Jew has to remain a Jew (by resisting assimilation). God’s part is to provide a homeland and all the material prosperity that comes with it. Note that all aspects of the Jewish covenant are focused on earthly life. While some Jews believed in an afterlife and some did not, there was very little in Hebrew Scriptures to suggest that one’s reward lay beyond this world.
ד
Saul of Tarsus, according to Dimont, “became to Jesus what the Talmud became to the Torah—a commentary and a way of life.” A Pharisee and early persecutor of Christians, his conversion had followed a dramatic spiritual experience on the road to Damascus. Fourteen years later, in 45 A.D., Saul accompanied another disciple, Barnabas, on a missionary trip. It was after this journey (during which Saul’s proselytizing efforts outstripped his companion’s) that he made the fateful decision to break from the Jews.
The schism was largely the result of his inability to rise in the church hierarchy. He was rebuffed in his attempt to become an Apostle—an honor reserved for Peter and the other disciples who had known Jesus in person—and then got into a bitter dispute with James (Jesus’ brother) over the conversion of pagans. Hitherto, pagans first had to become Jews—enduring circumcision, foreswearing pork, etc.—before they could be Christians.
Christianity became a separate religion from Judaism when Saul—who now adopted the Roman name Paul—made three important decisions:
Since the Jews would not have Christianity, Paul took it to the pagans. To make it easier for them to join his new religion, he made a second decision, that of abandoning Jewish dietary laws and the rite of circumcision. His third decision was to substitute Christ for the Torah, and this was the most crucial one, for it caused the final and unalterable break between the Father and the Son religions. The Jews believed then, as they do now, that man can know God only through…the Torah. The Pauline doctrine stated that man could know God only through Christ. The schism between Jew and Christian was total.
Thus, Paul’s transformation was an act of Jewish self-nullification (a fate that is forced on Shylock in Merchant)—the “assimilation” that the people of Israel had been struggling against for hundreds of years.
During Paul’s famous missionary journeys, between 50 and 62 A.D., the Epistles were written—the oldest part of the New Testament. Between 70 and 120 A.D. the Gospels appeared, each with its own peculiar agenda. Gradually, Paul “changed early Christianity into a new Pauline Christology.”
The differences between the old, “Jewish” Christianity and the new Pauline religion are striking. Consider the concept of messiah: in Judaism this means “anointed one,” a king or conqueror (like Alexander the Great), who would restore the throne of David, cast off the yoke of foreign domination, and return Israel to the halcyon days of yore. But he was nothing other than a man:
To the early Christians, Jesus had been human with divine attributes conferred upon him after resurrection. To Paul, Christ was divine even before birth. To the early Christians, Jesus had been the Son of God. To Paul, Christ was coequal and cosubstantial with God. Jesus had taught that one learned to love God by loving man. Paul taught that one learned to love Christ by incorporating him into oneself. Paul also shifted the early emphasis from Jesus the messiah to Christ the redeemer of sin.
So not only did Christianity break from Judaism, it deviated from its own earliest incarnation—which was an outgrowth of the Essene community.
It has sometimes been argued that the God of the New Testament is a different entity from that of the Old Testament, and in one sense this is true regarding the deification of Jesus. The Nicene Creed declares that he is “begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made.” He “…came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man…”
The three sections of the Creed deal with, respectively, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—aspects of the new tripartite God—“unam; sanctam; catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam,” and “[e]xpectamus resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam futuri saeculi.” The essential promise is paradise in the afterlife; meanwhile, following the injunction to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15), Christianity was universalized.
There is one similarity between the Old and New, however: exclusive truth claims. Mark 16:16 is quite unambiguous about this: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” Non-Christians, in other words, are destined for hell. And as Auerbach points out, this tradition has its roots in the Hebrew Bible:
The [Old Testament’s] claim to truth…is tyrannical—it excludes all other claims. The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be a historically true reality—it insists that it is the only real world, as destined for autocracy. All other scenes, issues, and ordinances have no right to appear independently of it, and it is promised that all of them, the history of all mankind, will be given their due place within its frame, will be subordinated to it.
But whereas the Jewish Covenant was concretized in the land (the physical nation of Israel) the Christian Covenant was both universalized and abstracted—i.e., earthly “salvation” and a promised place in the Kingdom of the great beyond. The role of the nation was fulfilled by the catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam, with excommunication being equivalent to exile.
Thus, the Christian self-image: the Pauline doctrine of original sin postulating what may be called “blanket condemnation”—that is, every person by virtue of being born is sentenced to an eternity in hell. The only way to escape that horrible fate is through Christ. So it is not a matter of one religion as opposed to another, but a matter of where one chooses to spend eternity. Compared to the “salvation” offered by Christ, everything else is of little consequence. Moreover, man-made institutions, such as the State, are seen as indirect agencies of God’s work, but agencies nonetheless.
A Christian is not, therefore, an adherent of one faith amid many, but a participant in God’s Holy Plan of Redemption. Beyond the boundaries of Christendom lie the infidel and the heathen—enemies of Christ. And occupying a special seat of honor among these are the Jews: the very people who nailed Jesus to the cross.
ה
Not surprisingly, Christian anti-Semitism began as early as the ministry of Paul. In Thessalonians 2:14-16 he writes:
For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judea; for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out and displease God and oppose all men by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last!
Failing to grasp the contradiction, apparently, between the teaching that Jesus was sent to die and the idea that Jews murdered Christ, this indictment had become cant by the time the Gospel of John was written, and this bit of dialogue attributed to Jesus himself:
Jesus said to them [the Jews], “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies…If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? He who is of God hears the words of God; the reason why you do not hear them is because you are not of God.” (John 8:42-47)
Thus, pious Christians, who identified themselves with God, could only explain the apostasy of the Jews by associating them with Satan—now assigned the role of ancestor. When Christianity became Rome’s state religion in 312 A.D., after the conversion of Constantine, the legal status of Jews began to degrade: they were barred from holding public office, forbidden to proselytize or marry Christian women (under pain of death). The Justinian Code of the sixth century outlawed the Mishnah (Jewish law code) and made disbelief in the Resurrection and Last Judgment capital crimes.
Although an adequate account of Christian anti-Semitism cannot be given here, two pertinent examples are worth mentioning. First, the “blood libel”—throughout the Middle Ages Jews were routinely accused of killing Christians (infants in particular) to take their blood. It was believed that Jews required Christian blood to perform certain rituals, heal ailments, ease childbirth, promote fertility, and any number of things. These accusations turned Jews into medieval “vampires,” reinforcing the image of a parasite. Second, following the official Church doctrine of transubstantiation (the idea that the wafers and wine used in Holy Communion were magically transformed into the literal body and blood of Christ) Jews often found themselves accused and persecuted for “host desecration.” Harris elaborates:
After this incredible dogma [transubstantiation] had been established, by mere reiteration…Christians began to worry that these living wafers might be subjected to all manner of mistreatment and even physical torture, at the hands of heretics and Jews. (One might wonder why eating the body of Jesus would be any less of a torment to him.) Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defenseless crackers? Historical accounts suggest that as many as three thousand Jews were murdered in response to a single allegation of this imaginary crime. The crime of host desecration was punished throughout Europe for centuries.
By the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 (which also legalized the use of torture for the Inquisition), Jews were forbidden to own land and barred from military service. The fact that they had to wander the earth in exile, a hated minority, reified the “greatness” of the Gospel and ultimate triumph of Christianity.
Considering all the restrictions placed upon them, it is not too surprising that the Jewish people turned to banking as a way to survive. They were outside the feudal system of Europe during the Middle Ages—which is to say, not part of the three estates (clergy, nobles, and serfs)—and so became merchants. Dimont describes their commercial ascendancy:
…in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, most Mediterranean seaports were beehives of Jewish commercial activity. In his account, Benjamin of Tudela carefully noted the Jewish glass-manufacturing industries and the many Jewish shipyards, where new ships for expanding trade were built. By 1500, before the Jews were banished from Spain, they were predominant in the wool and silk trades, and they were chief importers of sugar, pepper, and other spices. Before the Jews of Italy were banished or placed in ghettoes, they dominated that country’s silk and dyeing industries and carried on vast commercial dealings with India.
During the feudal period, Jewish money often replaced lost crops and livestock, provided nobles with the means to build castles and pay for tournaments, and assisted the Church in cathedral building, among other enterprises. Although money lending was seen as a despicable activity by medieval Christians, it was nonetheless a vital practice in the maintenance of feudal Europe. A cynical relationship of use and abuse had developed between Christian and Jew, and out of that emerged the familiar stereotype of the “money-grubbing Jew.”
The stereotype, like everything else in that period, originated from the Church:
The Church called the lending of money not “banking” but “usury.” To modern man the word “usury” means the lending of money at exorbitant rates; in medieval times it simply meant the lending of money for interest, no matter how low. Any Christian today who accepts 3 percent interest on his bank savings or government bonds would have been regarded as a blackhearted usurer by the medieval Church, for the simple reason that the Church viewed the lending of money at interest as a mortal sin. How then could it permit Christians to lend money if that meant that their souls would go to hell? With the Jews it was another story. As the Jews were not Christians and in the eyes of the Church were going to hell anyhow, one more sin—that is, money-lending—could not add much to the punishment they would receive in the hereafter.
Although stereotypes may be built upon a grain of truth—as in propaganda and demagoguery—only one side of the issue is ever disclosed. That is the chief criticism of a play like The Merchant of Venice, but the question we have to ask is—what was Shakespeare trying to achieve by taking such a cheap shot at the Jew?
ו
One could simply accuse Shakespeare of mindless anti-Semitism—and perhaps not be far off the mark; after all, he was a white, middle class Christian. But “mindless” he wasn’t. The characteristic ambiguities are there, suggested by the line, “Which is the merchant here? and which is the Jew?”—an unnecessary question unless one must discriminate between two similar quantities. One could rephrase it, asking, “Which is the prodigal, and which is not?” Shylock says, “…I’ll go in hate, to feed upon/The prodigal Christian.” And later, referring to Antonio (whose ships have been lost), “There I have another bad match: a bankrupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto.”
This “resonance” is noted by Moisan: “The word ‘prodigal’ occurs several times, twice on the tongue of Shylock, who employs it as a term of derision for Christians whose ‘prodigality’ clearly differentiates them from the ‘thrift’ Shylock tends to associate with his own endeavors.” That is to say, they are economically prodigal.
Another kind of “prodigality” is religious or ideological, suggested in section ד: the deviation of Christianity from its Jewish roots. In one of the most beautiful parables of the New Testament (Luke 15:11-32), Jesus describes the departure of a son from his father, the grief it causes the father, the son’s penitent return, and the father’s willingness to not only forgive but rejoice (much to the displeasure of the elder son—the non-prodigal). Christianity’s historical treatment of Jews, briefly recounted above, resembles the attitude of the elder son, who doesn’t understand his father: “Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf!” The accusation against Jews as Christ-killers is one of prodigality, but considering the implications of the Dead Sea Scrolls (not to mention Jesus’ own words and deeds, and those of his first followers), who is really the prodigal here? Putting that particular word in the mouth of Shylock carries some weight, I would argue.
Further ambiguity comes from the equation of usury to heresy: “That shylock should ‘choose’ to do wrong reminds us…of the simultaneously most damning and yet socially and ideologically most reassuring charge to be leveled at usurers in Shakespeare’s time, namely that usurers are heretics, willful choosers of the wrong course and, therefore, most deserving of unqualified reproach.” And if it is heresy, who is more culpable—the lender or the borrower? Even monarchs benefited from these services: “…that the resources of usurers were sought, not only by profligate young gentlemen and capital-hungry merchants, but by Parliament and the Queen herself, are facts well-established and oft remarked.” The analogy of the drug dealer can illuminate this nicely: without the existing demand for illegal drugs, the dealer would soon be out of business. The insistence of modern day governments in targeting the supply side of the problem is arguably the same kind of thinking that led Christians to condemn usurious Jews. But as history shows, today’s heretic is tomorrow’s prophet.
Finally, the play’s resolution is quite problematic, largely because it is so unreal. Part of that comes from the genre—comedy—with a less secure footing in “reality” than other forms of drama. While the Christian characters speak eloquently about mercy and kindness and justice, no one seems to notice how little of these virtues are afforded Shylock. While he certainly is villainous, and deserves to take a loss, and to be rebuked for his lack of charity, no rational person would say that his terminal fate is, in fact, just. In the end, the “Jew” is eliminated altogether—nullified like Saul of Tarsus. Assimilation complete. This prescient depiction of the “final solution” as comic relief (in many ways more frightening than tragedy), leads to at least one hypothesis regarding intent: parody.
References
Arp, Thomas R. Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. 7th ed. New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1998.
Auerbach, Erich. “Odysseus’ Scar.” in Mimesis. trans. William Trask. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 2003.
Dimont, Max I. Jews, God, and History. New York: Signet, 1962.
Forma Recepta Ecclesiae Orientalis A.D. 381. http://www.creeds.net/ancient/nicene.htm
Goldman, Albert. The Lives of John Lennon. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.
Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York:
W.W. Norton, 2004.
Moisan, Thomas. “ ‘Which is the merchant here? and which is the Jew?’: Subversion and
Recuperation in The Merchant of Venice.” Shakespeare Reproduced. 188-206.
posted by Carl Miffleton | 7:29 AM
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