On its surface The Merchant of Venice invites us to cheer the calculated, merciless destruction of greedy, vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, who’s not only stripped of his possessions but forced to abandon his faith by the pack of seemingly virtuous Christians who rule Venice. Even the great Shakespeare apologist Harold Bloom condemned the work as unplayable. “It would have been better for the last four centuries of the Jewish people,” he wrote, “had Shakespeare never written this play.”
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More important, Jews were banned from Renaissance England, ousted in 1290 and not readmitted until 1655. In Shakespeare’s xenophobic London, the hated moneylenders were Italian. In fact a 1559 royal edict that tightened the regulations on “merchant strangers” noted that “the Italians above all others are to be taken heed of, for they…lick the fat even from our beards.” Italians were also stereotyped as homosexuals.
When Antonio loses all his ships and can’t make good on his loan, Shylock brings him to court. There Portia, disguised as a doctor, tries to get Shylock to show mercy. Earlier, however, she’d revealed a healthy strain of racism, and here she’s calculating, waiting until the last possible moment–Shylock’s knife has nearly pierced Antonio’s chest–to rescue him. By the end of the trial scene, it’s clear just how un-Christian the Christians are: they consistently vilify Shylock for the greed, coldheartedness, and materialism they themselves possess. Though the Jew is no saint, he fits naturally into this heartless mercantile world.
