ELEMENTOFANTISEMITISM

INMERCHANTOFVENICE

In the partial fulfillment for the requirement of

the project on the subject of LegalEnglish of B.A.
LL.B (Hons.), second Semester.
Submitted to: - Mr. Pratyush Kaushik
Submitted By:- Adarsh Tripathi
Second Semester

Roll No :706

PREFACE
I feel great pleasure in presenting the project under study. I hope that the
readers will find the project interesting and that the project in its present
from shall be well received by all. The project contains the explanation and
analysis relating to Anti -Semitism and one of its role in merchant of
venice .

Every effort is made to keep the project error free. I would gratefully
acknowledge the suggestions to improve the project to make it more useful.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I have been taught the subject of Legal English by our Assistant Professor,
Mr.Pratyush Kaushik sir who helped me all through in the accomplishment
of this project. My sincerely thanks to the Respected Professor, who helped
me to gather the various sources which I could give final shape to the topic
under study. He not only provided me a platform to compile but also guided
me at various levels.
I, also thank the members of the library staff and computer section for the
cooperation in making available the books and accessing the internet even
during their free time.
I hope that the project in its present form shall be received by all.

TableofContent
Chapter 1
1.1 Introduction of Shakespeare.
1.2 Early life .
1.3 later years and death .

Chapter 2
2.1 An introduction of Merchant of Venice
2.2 Synopsis of Merchant of Venice

Chapter 3
3.1 Anti Semitism
3.2 usage and etymology
3.3 Definition of anti-semitism
3.4 Forms of anti Semitism

Chapter 4
4.1 Shylock as a villain
4.2Shylock as a sympathetic character

Bibliography

Chapter1

AnIntroductionofWilliamShakespeare
1.1INTRODUCTION
William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 23 April 1616) was an English poet
and playwright , widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English
language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called
England's National poet and the "Bard of Avon. His extant works, including
some collaborations , consist of about 38 plays 154 sonnets , two long
narrative poems , two epitaphs on a man named John Combe, one
epitaph on Elias James, and several other poems. His plays have been
translated into every major living language and are performed more often
than those of any other playwright.
Shakespeare was born and brought up in At Stratford-upon -avon the age
of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children:
Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he
began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of
a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the
King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49,
where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life
survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters
as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the
works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613 .
His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to
the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century. He
then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear,
Othello, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English

language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as

romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and
accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell,
two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published the First Folio, a
collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays
now recognised as Shakespeare's. It was prefaced with a poem by Ben
Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as "not of an age, but
for all time."
Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his
reputation did not rise to its present heights until the 19th century. The
Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the
Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard
Shaw called "bardolatry". In the 20th century, his work was repeatedly
adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and
performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly
studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political
contexts throughout the world.

1.2 Early life

William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and
a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the
daughter of an affluent landowning farmer.He was born in Stratford-uponAvon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual birthdate remains
unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, St George's Day. This
date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholar's mistake, has
proved appealing to biographers, since Shakespeare died 23 April 1616.
He was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son.
Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers
agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School
in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile from his
home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but

grammar school curricula were largely similar, the basic Latin text was
standardised by royal decree, and the school would have provided an
intensive education in grammar based upon Latin classical authors At the
age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The
consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage license on
27 November 1582. The next day two of Hathaway's neighbors posted
bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage. The
ceremony may have been arranged in some haste, since the Worcester
chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the
usual three times,and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a
daughter, Susanna, baptized 26 May 1583. Twins, son Hamnet and
daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2
February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was
buried 11 August 1596.
After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is
mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592, and scholars refer
to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years.
Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many
apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeares first biographer,
recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to
escape prosecution for deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas
Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by
writing a scurrilous ballad about him. Another 18th-century story has
Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre
patrons in London. John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a
country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars have suggested that
Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander
Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain
"William Shakeshafte" in his will. Little evidence substantiates such stories
other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a
common name in the Lancashire area.

1.3 Later years and death

Rowe was the first biographer to pass down the tradition that Shakespeare
retired to Stratford some years before his death. It is perhaps relevant that
the London public playhouses were repeatedly closed for months at a time

during the extended outbreaks of the Plague ( a total of over 60 months

closure between May 1603 and February 1610), which meant there was
often no acting work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time,
and Shakespeare continued to visit London. In 1612, Shakespeare was
called as a witness in Bellott v. Mountjoy, a court case concerning the
marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. In March 1613 he
bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory; and from November
1614 he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall.
Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and was survived by his wife and two
daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607, and
Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before
Shakespeares death.
In his will, Shakespeare left the bulk of his large estate to his elder
daughter Susanna. The terms instructed that she pass it down intact to
"the first son of her body". The Quineys had three children, all of whom
died without marrying. The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married
twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeares direct line.
Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably
entitled to one third of his estate automatically. He did make a point,
however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to
much speculation.[66] Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to
Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been
the matrimonial bed and therefore rich in significance.
Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days
after his death. The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave
includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided
during restoration of the church in 2008:

Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,

To digg the dvst encloased heare

Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones.
(Modern spelling: Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, | To dig the dust
enclosed here. | Blessed be the man that spares these stones, | And
cursed be he that moves my bones.)
Sometime before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory
on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque
compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil. In 1623, in conjunction with
the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published.
Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials
around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral
and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

MERCHANT OF VENICE
CHAPTER 2
2.1 INTRODUCTION OF THE PLAY
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare,
believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified
as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with
Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most
remembered for its dramatic scenes, and is best known for Shylock and
the famous 'Hath not a Jew eyes' speech. Also notable is Portia's speech
about the 'quality of mercy'.
The title character is the merchant Antonio, not the Jewish moneylender
Shylock, who is the play's most prominent and most famous character.
This is made explicit by the title page of the first quarto: The most
excellent History of the Merchant of Venice. With the extreme cruelty of
Shylock the Jew towards the Merchant....
.

Antonio a merchant of Venice

Bassanio Antonio's friend; suitor to Portia

Gratiano, Solanio, Salarino, Salerio friends of Antonio and Bassanio

Lorenzo friend of Antonio and Bassanio, in love with Jessica

Portia a rich heiress

Nerissa Portia's waiting maid- in love with Gratiano

Balthazar Portia's servant, who Portia later disguises herself as

Stephano Nerissa's disguise as Balthazar's law clerk.

Shylock a rich Jew, moneylender, father of Jessica

Jessica daughter of Shylock, in love with Lorenzo

Tubal a Jew; Shylock's friend

Launcelot Gobbo a servant to Shylock

Old Gobbo father of Launcelot

Leonardo servant to Bassanio

Duke of Venice Venetian authority who presides over the case of

Shylock's bond

Prince of Morocco suitor to Portia

Prince of Arragon suitor to Portia

Magnificoes of Venice, officers of the Court of Justice, Gaoler, servants to

Portia, and other Attendants

2.2 SYNOPSIS OF MERCHANT OF

VENICE
Bassanio, a young Venetian of noble rank, wishes to woo the beautiful and
wealthy heiress Portia of Belmont. Having squandered his estate,
Bassanio approaches his friend Antonio, a wealthy merchant of Venice
and a kind and generous person, who has previously and repeatedly
bailed him out, for three thousand ducats needed to subsidise his
expenditures as a suitor. Antonio agrees, but since he is cash-poor - his
ships and merchandise are busy at sea - he promises to cover a bond if
Bassanio can find a lender, so Bassanio turns to the Jewish moneylender
Shylock and names Antonio as the loan's guarantor.
Shylock, who hates Antonio because of his Anti-Judaism and Antonio's
customary refusal to borrow or lend money with interest, is at first
reluctant, citing abuse he has suffered at Antonio's hand, but finally agrees
to lend Antonio the sum without interest upon the condition that if Antonio
is unable to repay it at the specified date, he may take a pound of
Antonio's flesh. Bassanio does not want Antonio to accept such a risky
condition; Antonio is surprised by what he sees as the moneylender's
generosity (no "usance" interest is asked for), and he signs the
contract. With money at hand, Bassanio leaves for Belmont with his friend
Gratiano, who has asked to accompany him. Gratiano is a likeable young
man, but is often flippant, overly talkative, and tactless. Bassanio warns his
companion to exercise self-control, and the two leave for Belmont and
Portia.

Meanwhile in Belmont, Portia is awash with suitors. Her father left a will
stipulating each of her suitors must choose correctly from one of three
caskets one each of gold, silver and lead. If he picks the right casket, he
gets Portia. The first suitor, the luxurious Prince of Morocco, chooses the
gold casket, interpreting its slogan "Who chooseth me shall gain what
many men desire" as referring to Portia. The second suitor, the conceited
Prince of Arragon, chooses the silver casket, which proclaims "Who
chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves", imagining himself to be
full of merit. Both suitors leave empty-handed, having rejected the lead
casket because of the baseness of its material and the uninviting nature of
its slogan: "Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath." The last
suitor is Bassanio, whom Portia wishes to succeed, having met him before.
As Bassanio ponders his choice, members of Portia's household sing a
song which says that "fancy" (not true love) is "engend'red in the eyes,
With gazing fed." prompting Bassanio to disregard "outward shows" and
"ornament" and choses the lead casket, winning Portia's hand.
At Venice, Antonio's ships are reported lost at sea. This leaves him unable
to satisfy the bond. Shylock is even more determined to exact revenge
from Christians after his daughter Jessica had fled home and eloped with
the Christian Lorenzo, taking a substantial amount of Shylock's wealth with
her, as well as a turquoise ring which was a gift to Shylock from his late
wife, Leah. Shylock has Antonio brought before court.
At Belmont, Bassanio receives a letter telling him that Antonio has been
unable to return the loan taken from Shylock. Portia and Bassanio marry,
as do Gratiano and Portia's handmaid Nerissa. Bassanio and Gratiano
then leave for Venice, with money from Portia, to save Antonio's life by
offering the money to Shylock. Unknown to Bassanio and Gratiano, Portia
has sent her servant, Balthazar, to seek the counsel of Portia's cousin,
Bellario, a lawyer, at Padua.
The climax of the play comes in the court of the Duke of Venice. Shylock
refuses Bassanio's offer of 6,000 ducats, twice the amount of the loan. He
demands his pound of flesh from Antonio. The Duke, wishing to save
Antonio but unable to nullify a contract, refers the case to a visitor who
introduces himself as Balthazar, a young male "doctor of the law", bearing
a letter of recommendation to the Duke from the learned lawyer Bellario.

The doctor is actually Portia in disguise, and the law clerk who
accompanies her is actually Nerissa, also in disguise. As Balthazar, Portia
repeatedly asks Shylock to show mercy in a famous speech, advising him
that mercy "is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."
However, Shylock adamantly refuses any compensations and insists on
the pound of flesh.
As the court grants Shylock his bond and Antonio prepares for Shylock's
knife, Portia points out that the contract only allows Shylock to remove the
flesh, not the "blood", of Antonio . Thus, if Shylock were to shed any drop
of Antonio's blood, his "lands and goods" would be forfeited under
Venetian laws. Further damning Shylock's case, she tells him that he must
cut precisely one pound of flesh, no more, no less; she advises him that "if
the scale do turn, But in the estimation of a hair, Thou diest and all thy
goods are confiscate."
Defeated, Shylock concedes to accepting Bassanio's offer of money for
the defaulted bond, first his offer to pay "the bond thrice", which Portia
rebuffs, telling him to take his bond, and then merely the principal, which
Portia also prevents him from doing on the ground that he has already
refused it "in the open court." She then cites a law under which Shylock,
as a Jew and therefore an "alien", having attempted to take the life of a
citizen, has forfeited his property, half to the government and half to
Antonio, leaving his life at the mercy of the Duke. The Duke immediately
pardons Shylock's life. Antonio asks for his share "in use" (that is,
reserving the principal amount while taking only the income) until
Shylock's death, when the principal will be given to Lorenzo and Jessica.
At Antonio's request, the Duke grants remission of the state's half of
forfeiture, but on the condition of Shylock converting to Christianity and
bequeathing his entire estate to Lorenzo and Jessica (IV,i).
Bassanio does not recognise his disguised wife, but offers to give a
present to the supposed lawyer. First she declines, but after he insists,
Portia requests his ring and Antonio's gloves. Antonio parts with his gloves
without a second thought, but Bassanio gives the ring only after much
persuasion from Antonio, as earlier in the play he promised his wife never
to lose, sell or give it. Nerissa, as the lawyer's clerk, also succeeds in
likewise retrieving her ring from Gratiano, who does not see through her

disguise.
At Belmont, Portia and Nerissa taunt and pretend to accuse their
husbands before revealing they were really the lawyer and his clerk in
disguise (V). After all the other characters make amends, Antonio learns
from Portia that three of his ships were not stranded and have returned
safely after all.

CHAPTER 3

3.1

ANTI -SEMITISM

Antisemitism is a prejudice, hatred of, or discrimination against Jews for

reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. A person who holds such
views is called an "antisemite".
While the term's etymology might suggest that antisemitism is directed
against all Semitic peoples, the term was coined in the late 19th century in
Germany as a more scientific-sounding term for Judenhass ("Jew-hatred"),
[1] and that has been its normal use since then. For the purposes of a
2005 U.S. governmental report, antisemitism was considered "hatred
toward Jewsindividually and as a groupthat can be attributed to the
Jewish religion and/or ethnicity."
Antisemitism may be manifested in many ways, ranging from expressions
of hatred of or discrimination against individual Jews to organized violent
attacks by mobs, state police, or even military attacks on entire Jewish
communities. Notable instances of persecution include the pogroms which
preceded the First Crusade in 1096, the expulsion from England in 1290,
the massacres of Spanish Jews in 1391, the persecutions of the Spanish
Inquisition, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, Cossack massacres in
Ukraine, various pogroms in Russia, the Dreyfus affair, the Holocaust,
official Soviet anti-Jewish policies and the Jewish exodus from Arab and
Muslim countries.

Usage
Despite the use of the prefix anti-, the terms Semitic and anti-Semitic are
not directly opposed to each other. Antisemitism refers specifically to
prejudice against Jews alone and in general, despite the fact that there are
other speakers of Semitic languages (e.g. Arabs, Ethiopians, or Assyrians)
and that not all Jews speak a Semitic language.
The term anti-Semitic has been used on occasion to include bigotry
against other Semitic-language peoples such as Arabs, but such usage is
not widely accepted.
Both terms anti-Semitism and antisemitism are in common use. Some
scholars favor the unhyphenated form antisemitism to avoid possible
confusion involving whether the term refers specifically to Jews, or to

Semitic-language speakers as a whole. For example, Emil Fackenheim

supported the unhyphenated spelling, in order to "[dispel] the notion that
there is an entity 'Semitism' which 'anti-Semitism' opposes."

3.2Etymology
Although Wilhelm Marr is generally credited with coining the word antiSemitism (see below), Alex Bein writes that the word was first used in
1860 by the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider in the phrase
"anti-Semitic prejudices". Steinschneider used this phrase to characterize
Ernest Renan's ideas about how "Semitic races" were inferior to "Aryan
races." These pseudo-scientific theories concerning race, civilization, and
"progress" had become quite widespread in Europe in the second half of
the 19th century, especially as Prussian nationalistic historian Heinrich von
Treitschke did much to promote this form of racism. He coined the phrase
"the Jews are our misfortune" which would later be widely used by Nazis.
In Treitschke's writings Semitic was synonymous with Jewish, in contrast to
its use by Renan and others.
In 1873 German journalist Wilhelm Marr published a pamphlet "The
Victory of the Jewish Spirit over the Germanic Spirit. Observed from a nonreligious perspective." ("Der Sieg des Judenthums ber das
Germanenthum. Vom nicht confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet.") in
which he used the word "Semitismus" interchangeably with the word
"Judentum" to denote both "Jewry" (the Jews as a collective) and
"jewishness" (the quality of being Jewish, or the Jewish spirit). Although he
did not use the word "Antisemitismus" in the pamphlet, the coining of the
latter word followed naturally from the word "Semitismus" and indicated
either opposition to the Jews as a people, or else opposition to Jewishness
or the Jewish spirit, which he saw as infiltrating German culture. In his next
pamphlet, "The Way to Victory of the Germanic Spirit over the Jewish
Spirit", published in 1880, Marr developed his ideas further and coined the
related German word Antisemitismus antisemitism, derived from the
word "Semitismus" that he had earlier used.
The pamphlet became very popular, and in the same year he founded the
"League of Antisemites" ("Antisemiten-Liga"), the first German

organization committed specifically to combatting the alleged threat to

Germany and German culture posed by the Jews and their influence, and
advocating their forced removal from the country.
So far as can be ascertained, the word was first widely printed in 1881,
when Marr published "Zwanglose Antisemitische Hefte," and Wilhelm
Scherer used the term "Antisemiten" in the January issue of "Neue Freie
Presse". The related word semitism was coined around 1885.
3.3 Definition
Though the general definition of antisemitism is hostility or prejudice
against Jews, and, according to Olaf Blaschke, become an 'umbrella term
for negative stereotypes about Jews,' a number of authorities have
developed more formal definitions.
Holocaust scholar and City University of New York professor Helen Fein
defines it as "a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as
a collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth,
ideology, folklore and imagery, and in actions social or legal
discrimination, political mobilization against the Jews, and collective or
state violence which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace,
or destroy Jews as Jews."
Elaborating on Fein's definition, Dietz Bering of the University of Cologne
writes that, to antisemites, "Jews are not only partially but totally bad by
nature, that is, their bad traits are incorrigible. Because of this bad nature:
(1) Jews have to be seen not as individuals but as a collective. (2) Jews
remain essentially alien in the surrounding societies. (3) Jews bring
disaster on their 'host societies' or on the whole world, they are doing it
secretly, therefore the antisemites feel obliged to unmask the
conspiratorial, bad Jewish character."
For Sonja Weinberg, as distinct from economic and religious anti-Judaism,
antisemitism in its modern form shows conceptual innovation, a resort to
'science' to defend itself, new functional forms and organisational
differences. It was anti-liberal, racialist and nationalist. It promoted the
myth that Jews conspired to 'judaise' the world; it served to consolidate
social identity; it channeled dissatisfactions among victims of the capitalist

system; and it was used as a conservative cultural code to fight

emancipation and liberalism
Bernard Lewis defines antisemitism as a special case of prejudice, hatred,
or persecution directed against people who are in some way different from
the rest. According to Lewis, antisemitism is marked by two distinct
features: Jews are judged according to a standard different from that
applied to others, and they are accused of "cosmic evil." Thus, "it is
perfectly possible to hate and even to persecute Jews without necessarily
being anti-Semitic" unless this hatred or persecution displays one of the
two features specific to antisemitism.
There have been a number of efforts by international and governmental
bodies to define antisemitism formally. The U.S. Department of State
defines antisemitism in its 2005 Report on Global Anti-Semitism as "hatred
toward Jewsindividually and as a groupthat can be attributed to the
Jewish religion and/or ethnicity."
In 2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (now
Fundamental Rights Agency), then an agency of the European Union,
developed a more detailed working definition, which states: "Antisemitism
is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward
Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed
toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward
Jewish community institutions and religious facilities." It adds "such
manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish
collectivity." It provides contemporary examples of antisemitism, which
include: promoting the harming of Jews in the name of an ideology or
religion; promoting negative stereotypes of Jews; holding Jews collectively
responsible for the actions of an individual Jewish person or group;
denying the Holocaust or accusing Jews or Israel of exaggerating it; and
accusing Jews of dual loyalty or a greater allegiance to Israel than their
own country. It also lists ways in which attacking Israel could be
antisemitic, and states that denying the Jewish people their right to selfdetermination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a
racist endeavor, can be a manifestation of antisemitism as can applying
double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or
demanded of any other democratic nation, or holding Jews collectively

responsible for actions of the State of Israel.

3.4 Forms of anti Semitism

Jews (identified by the mandatory Jewish badge and Jewish hat)

being burned during the Black Death in 1348.

It is often emphasized that there are different forms of antisemitism.

Ren Knig mentions social antisemitism, economic antisemitism,
religious antisemitism, and political antisemitism as examples. Knig
points out that these different forms demonstrate that the "origins of
antisemitic prejudices are rooted in different historical periods." Knig
asserts that differences in the chronology of different antisemitic
prejudices and the irregular distribution of such prejudices over
different segments of the population create "serious difficulties in the
definition of the different kinds of antisemitism." These difficulties may
contribute to the existence of different taxonomies that have been

developed to categorize the forms of antisemitism. The forms

identified are substantially the same; it is primarily the number of
forms and their definitions that differ. Bernard Lazare identifies three
forms of antisemitism: Christian antisemitism, economic
antisemitism, and ethnologic antisemitism.[ William Brustein names
four categories: religious, racial, economic and political. The Roman
Catholic historian Edward Flannery distinguished four varieties of
anti-Semitism political and economic antisemitism, giving as
examples Cicero and Charles Lindbergh;
.

theological or religious antisemitism, sometimes known as antiJudaism;

nationalistic antisemitism, citing Voltaire and other Enlightenment

thinkers, who attacked Jews for supposedly having certain
characteristics, such as greed and arrogance, and for observing
customs such as kashrut and Shabbat;

and racial antisemitism, with its extreme form resulting in the

Holocaust by the Nazis.
Louis Harap separates "economic antisemitism" and merges
"political" and "nationalistic" antisemitism into "ideological
antisemitism". Harap also adds a category of "social antisemitism".

religious (Jew as Christ-killer),

economic (Jew as banker, usurer, money-obsessed),

social (Jew as social inferior, "pushy," vulgar, therefore excluded from
personal contact),
racist (Jews as an inferior "race"),

ideological (Jews regarded as subversive or revolutionary),

cultural (Jews regarded as undermining the moral and structural fiber
of civilization).
Cultural antisemitism
Louis Harap defines cultural antisemitism as "that species of antiSemitism that charges the Jews with corrupting a given culture and
attempting to supplant or succeeding in supplanting the preferred

culture with a uniform, crude, "Jewish" culture.[32] Similarly, Eric

Kandel characterizes cultural antisemitism as being based on the
idea of Jewishness as a "religious or cultural tradition that is
acquired through learning, through distinctive traditions and
education." According to Kandel, this form of antisemitism views
Jews as possessing "unattractive psychological and social
characteristics that are acquired through acculturation." Niewyk and
Nicosia characterize cultural antisemitism as focusing on and
condemning "the Jews' aloofness from the societies in which they
live." An important feature of cultural antisemitism is that it considers
the negative attributes of Judaism to be redeemable by education or
religious conversion.
Religious antisemitism
Religious antisemitism is also known as anti-Judaism. Under this
version of antisemitism, attacks would often stop if Jews stopped
practicing or changed their public faith, especially by conversion to
the official or right religion, and sometimes, liturgical exclusion of
Jewish converts (the case of Christianized Marranos or Iberian Jews
in the late 15th century and 16th century convicted of secretly
practising Judaism or Jewish customs).
Although the origins of antisemitism are rooted in the Judeo-Christian
conflict, religious antisemitism, other forms of antisemitism have
developed in modern times. Frederick Schweitzer asserts that, "most
scholars ignore the Christian foundation on which the modern
antisemitic edifice rests and invoke political antisemitism, cultural
antisemitism, racism or racial antisemitism, economic antisemitism
and the like." William Nichols draws a distinction between religious
antisemitism and modern antisemitism based on racial or ethnic
grounds: "The dividing line was the possibility of effective
conversion . . . a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." From the
perspective of racial antisemitism, however, "... the assimilated Jew
was still a Jew, even after baptism ... . From the Enlightenment

onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction

between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews... Once
Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its
appearance, without leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards
Jews, the new term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even
before explicitly racist doctrines appear."
Economic antisemitism
The underlying premise of economic antisemitism is that Jews
perform harmful economic activities or that economic activities
become harmful when they are performed by Jews.
Linking Jews and money underpins the most damaging and lasting
Antisemitic canards. Antisemites claim that Jews control the world
finances, a theory promoted in the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders
of Zion, and later repeated by Henry Ford and his Dearborn
Independent. In the modern era, such myths continue to be spread in
books such as The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews
published by the Nation of Islam, and on the internet.

A caricature from the German antisemitic Der Strmer, around

Christmas 1929. It urged Germans to avoid buying from Jewish
shops.
Derek Penslar writes that there are two components to the financial
canards.
a) Jews are savages that "are temperamentally incapable of
performing honest labor"

b) Jews are "leaders of a financial cabal seeking world domination"

Abraham Foxman describes six facets of the financial canards:
.

All Jews are wealthy

.
.

Jews are stingy and greedy

Powerful Jews control the business world

.
.

Jewish religion emphasizes profit and materialism

It is okay for Jews to cheat non-Jews

Jews use their power to benefit "their own kind"

Gerald Krefetz summarizes the myth as "[Jews] control the banks,
the money supply, the economy, and businesses of the community,
of the country, of the world". Krefetz gives, as illustrations, many slurs
and proverbs (in several different languages) which suggest that
Jews are stingy, or greedy, or miserly, or aggressive bargainers.
During the nineteenth century, Jews were described as "scurrilous,
stupid, and tight-fisted", but after the Jewish Emancipation and the
rise of Jews to the middle- or upper-class in Europe were portrayed
as "clever, devious, and manipulative financiers out to dominate
[world finances]".
Leon Poliakov asserts that economic antisemitism is not a distinct
form of antisemitism, but merely a manifestation of theologic
antisemitism (because, without the theological causes of the
economic antisemitism, there would be no economic antisemitism).
In opposition to this view, Derek Penslar contends that in the modern
era, the economic antisemitism is "distinct and nearly constant" but
theological antisemitism is "often subdued"

Racial antisemitism

Soviet prisoner of war, August 1941. At least 50,000 Jewish soldiers

were shot after selection.
Racial antisemitism is prejudice against Jews as a racial/ethnic
group, rather than Judaism as a religion.
Racial antisemitism is the idea that the Jews are a distinct and
inferior race compared to their host nations. In the late 19th century
and early 20th century, it gained mainstream acceptance as part of
the eugenics movement, which categorized non-"Europeans" as
inferior. It more specifically claimed that the "Nordic" Europeans were
superior. Racial antisemites saw the Jews as part of a Semitic race

and emphasized their "alien" extra-European origins and culture.

They saw Jews as beyond redemption even if they converted to the
majority religion. Anthropologists discussed whether the Jews
possessed any Arabic-Armenoid, African-Nubian or Asian-Turkic
ancestries.
Racial antisemitism replaced the hatred of Judaism with the hatred of
Jews as a group. In the context of the Industrial Revolution, following
the emancipation of the Jews, Jews rapidly urbanized and
experienced a period of greater social mobility. With the decreasing
role of religion in public life tempering religious antisemitism, a
combination of growing nationalism, the rise of eugenics, and
resentment at the socio-economic success of the Jews led to the
newer, and more virulent, racist antisemitism.
According to William Nichols, religious antisemitism may be
distinguished from modern antisemitism based on racial or ethnic
grounds. "The dividing line was the possibility of effective
conversion . . . a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." However,
with racial antisemitism, "Now the assimilated Jew was still a Jew,
even after baptism ... . From the Enlightenment onward, it is no
longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious
and racial forms of hostility towards Jews... Once Jews have been
emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance, without
leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new term
antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly
racist doctrines appear."
In the early 19th century, a number of laws enabling emancipation of
the Jews were enacted in Western European countries. The old laws
restricting them to ghettos, as well as the many laws that limited their
property rights, rights of worship and occupation, were rescinded.
Despite this, traditional discrimination and hostility to Jews on
religious grounds persisted and was supplemented by racial
antisemitism, encouraged by the work of racial theorists such as
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau and particularly his Essay on the

Inequality of the Human Race of 18535.Nationalist agendas based

on ethnicity, known as ethnonationalism, usually excluded the Jews
from the national community as an alien race.[55] Allied to this were
theories of Social Darwinism, which stressed a putative conflict
between higher and lower races of human beings. Such theories,
usually posited by northern Europeans, advocated the superiority of
white Aryans to Semitic Jews.
New antisemitism
Starting in the 1990s, some scholars have advanced the concept of
New antisemitism, coming simultaneously from the left, the right, and
radical Islam, which tends to focus on opposition to the creation of a
Jewish homeland in the State of Israel, and argue that the language
of anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel are used to attack the Jews
more broadly. In this view, the proponents of the new concept believe
that criticisms of Israel and Zionism are often disproportionate in
degree and unique in kind, and attribute this to antisemitism It is
asserted that the new antisemitism deploys traditional antisemitic
motifs, including older motifs such as the blood libel.
Critics of the concept view it as trivializing the meaning of
antisemitism, and as exploiting antisemitism in order to silence
debate and deflect attention from legitimate criticism of the State of
Israel, and, by associating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, misused to
taint anyone opposed to Israeli actions and policies.
Persecutions in the Middle Ages
From the 9th century CE, the medieval Islamic world classified Jews
(and Christians) as dhimmi, and allowed them to practice their
religion more freely than they could do in medieval Christian Europe.
Under Islamic rule, there was a Golden age of Jewish culture in
Spain that lasted until at least the 11th century, when several Muslim
pogroms against Jews took place on the Iberian Peninsula; including
those that occurred in Crdoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066.
Several decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were also

enacted in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen from the 11th century. Jews
were also forced to convert to Islam or face death in some parts of
Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad several times between the 12th and
18th centuries.The Almohads, who had taken control of the
Almoravids' Maghribi and Andalusian territories by 1147, were far
more fundamentalist in outlook, and they treated the dhimmis
harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, many
Jews and Christians emigrated. Some, such as the family of
Maimonides, fled east to more tolerant Muslim lands, while some
others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms.
During the Middle Ages in Europe there was persecution against
Jews in many places, with blood libels, expulsions, forced
conversions and massacres. A main justification of prejudice against
Jews in Europe was religious. The persecution hit its first peak during
the Crusades. In the First Crusade (1096) flourishing communities on
the Rhine and the Danube were destroyed. In the Second Crusade
(1147) the Jews in Germany were subject to several massacres. The
Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of
1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by expulsions,
including, in 1290, the banishing of all English Jews; in 1396, the
expulsion of 100,000 Jews in France; and in 1421, the expulsion of
thousands from Austria. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland.
[93] In medieval and Renaissance Europe, a major contributor to the
deepening of antisemitic sentiment and legal action among the
Christian populations was the popular preaching of the zealous
reform religious orders, the Franciscans (especially Bernardino of
Feltre) and Dominicans (especially Vincent Ferrer), who combed
Europe and promoted antisemitism through their often fiery,
emotional appeals.
As the Black Death epidemics devastated Europe in the mid-14th
century, annihilating more than half of the population, Jews were
used as scapegoats. Rumors spread that they caused the disease by
deliberately poisoning wells. Hundreds of Jewish communities were

destroyed. Although Pope Clement VI tried to protect them by issuing

the 6 July 1348, papal bull and an additional bull in 1348, several
months later, 900 Jews were burned alive in Strasbourg, where the
plague had not yet affected the city.
17th century
During the mid-to-late 17th century the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth was devastated by several conflicts, in which the
Commonwealth lost over a third of its population (over 3 million
people), and Jewish losses were counted in hundreds of thousands.
First, the Khmelnytsky Uprising when Bohdan Khmelnytsky's
Cossacks massacred tens of thousands of Jews in the eastern and
southern areas he controlled (today's Ukraine). The precise number
of dead may never be known, but the decrease of the Jewish
population during that period is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000,
which also includes emigration, deaths from diseases and captivity in
the Ottoman Empire, called jasyr.
European immigrants to the United States brought antisemitism to
the country as early as the 17th century. Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch
governor of New Amsterdam, implemented plans to prevent Jews
from settling in the city. During the Colonial Era, the American
government limited the political and economic rights of Jews. It was
not until the Revolutionary War that Jews gained legal rights,
including the right to vote. However, even at their peak, the
restrictions on Jews in the United States were never as stringent as
they had been in Europe.
Enlightenment
In 1744, Frederick II of Prussia limited the number of Jews allowed to
live in Breslau to only ten so-called "protected" Jewish families and
encouraged a similar practice in other Prussian cities. In 1750 he
issued the Revidiertes General Privilegium und Reglement vor die
Judenschaft: the "protected" Jews had an alternative to "either

abstain from marriage or leave Berlin" (quoting Simon Dubnow). In

the same year, Archduchess of Austria Maria Theresa ordered Jews
out of Bohemia but soon reversed her position, on the condition that
Jews pay for their readmission every ten years. This extortion was
known as malke-geld (queen's money). In 1752 she introduced the
law limiting each Jewish family to one son. In 1782, Joseph II
abolished most of these persecution practices in his Toleranzpatent,
on the condition that Yiddish and Hebrew were eliminated from public
records and that judicial autonomy was annulled. Moses
Mendelssohn wrote that "Such a tolerance... is even more dangerous
play in tolerance than open persecution."
In 1772, the empress of Russia Catherine II forced the Jews of the
Pale of Settlement to stay in their shtetls and forbade them from
returning to the towns that they occupied before the partition of
Poland.[99]
Islamic antisemitism in the 19th century
Historian Martin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the
position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries. Benny Morris writes
that one symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of
stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. Morris quotes a 19th
century traveler: "I have seen a little fellow of six years old, with a
troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw
stones at a Jew, and one little urchin would, with the greatest
coolness, waddle up to the man and literally spit upon his Jewish
gaberdine. To all this the Jew is obliged to submit; it would be more
than his life was worth to offer to strike a Mahommedan."[100]
In the middle of the 19th century, J. J. Benjamin wrote about the life
of Persian Jews, describing conditions and beliefs that went back to
the 16th century: "they are obliged to live in a separate part of
town Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with
the greatest severity and should they enter a street, inhabited by

Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mobs with stones and
dirt ."
Secular or racial antisemitism
In 1850 the German composer Richard Wagner published Das
Judenthum in der Musik ("Jewishness in Music") under a pseudonym
in the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik. The essay began as an attack on
Jewish composers, particularly Wagner's contemporaries (and rivals)
Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer, but expanded to accuse
Jews of being a harmful and alien element in German culture.
Antisemitism can also be found in many of the Grimms' Fairy Tales
by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, published from 1812 to 1857. It is
mainly characterized by Jews being the villain of a story, such as in
"The Good Bargain (Der gute Handel)" and "The Jew Among Thorns
(Der Jude im Dorn)."
The Dreyfus Affair was an infamous antisemitic event of the late 19th
century and early 20th century. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery
captain in the French Army, was accused in 1894 of passing secrets
to the Germans. As a result of these charges, Dreyfus was convicted
and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. The actual spy,
Marie Charles Esterhazy, was acquitted. The event caused great
uproar among the French, with the public choosing sides regarding
whether Dreyfus was actually guilty or not. mile Zola accused the
army of polluting the French justice system. However, general
consensus held that Dreyfus was guilty: 80% of the press in France
condemned him. This attitude among the majority of the French
population reveals the underlying antisemitism of the time period .
Adolf Stoecker (18351909), the Lutheran court chaplain to Kaiser
Wilhelm I, founded in 1878 an antisemitic, antiliberal political party
called The Christian Social Party (Germany). However, this party did
not attract as many votes as the Nazi party, which flourished in part
because of The Great Depression, which hit Germany especially

hard during the early 1930s.

Some scholars view Karl Marx's essay On The Jewish Question as
antisemitic, and he often used antisemitic epithets in his published
and private writings. Marx's equation of Judaism with capitalism,
together with his pronouncements on Jews, strongly influenced
socialist movements and shaped their attitudes and policies toward
the Jews. Some further argue Marx's On the Jewish Question
influenced National Socialist, as well as Soviet and Arab antisemites.
[108][109][110] Albert Lindemann and Hyam Maccoby have
suggested that Marx was embarrassed by his Jewish background.
Others argue that Marx consistently supported Prussian Jewish
communities' struggles to achieve equal political rights. These
scholars argue that "On the Jewish Question" is a critique of Bruno
Bauer's arguments that Jews must convert to Christianity before
being emancipated, and is more generally a critique of liberal rights
discourses and capitalism. David McLellan and Francis Wheen argue
that readers should interpret On the Jewish Question in the deeper
context of Marx's debates with Bruno Bauer, author of The Jewish
Question, about Jewish emancipation in Germany. According to
McLellan, Marx used the word Judentum colloquially, as meaning
commerce, arguing that Germans must be emancipated from the
capitalist mode of production not Judaism or Jews in particular.
20th century

The victims of a 1905 pogrom in Yekaterinoslav

Between 1900 and 1924, approximately 1.75 million Jews migrated to

America, the bulk from Eastern Europe. Before 1900 American Jews
had always amounted to less than 1% of America's total population,
but by 1930 Jews formed about 3.5%. This increase, combined with
the upward social mobility of some Jews, contributed to a resurgence
of antisemitism. In the first half of the 20th century, in the USA, Jews
were discriminated against in employment, access to residential and
resort areas, membership in clubs and organizations, and in
tightened quotas on Jewish enrolment and teaching positions in
colleges and universities. The lynching of Leo Frank by a mob of
prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia in 1915 turned the spotlight
on antisemitism in the United States.[118] The case was also used to
build support for the renewal of the Ku Klux Klan which had been
inactive since 1870.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Beilis Trial in Russia
represented incidents of blood-libel in Europe. Christians used
allegations of Jews killing Christians as a justification for the killing of
Jews.
Antisemitism in America reached its peak during the interwar period.
The pioneer automobile manufacturer Henry Ford propagated
antisemitic ideas in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent
(published by Ford from 1919 to 1927). The radio speeches of Father
Coughlin in the late 1930s attacked Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal
and promoted the notion of a Jewish financial conspiracy. Some
prominent politicians shared such views: Louis T. McFadden,
Chairman of the United States House Committee on Banking and
Currency, blamed Jews for Roosevelt's decision to abandon the gold
standard, and claimed that "in the United States today, the Gentiles
have the slips of paper while the Jews have the lawful money".

Einsatzgruppe A members shoot Jews on the outskirts of Kaunas,

19411942
In the early 1940s the aviator Charles Lindbergh and many prominent
Americans led The America First Committee in opposing any
involvement in the war against Fascism. During his July 1936 visit to
Germany, Lindbergh wrote letters saying that there was "more
intelligent leadership in Germany than is generally recognized".
The German American Bund held parades in New York City during
the late 1930s, where members wore Nazi uniforms and raised flags
featuring swastikas alongside American flags. With the start of U.S.
involvement in World War II most of the Bund's members were
placed[by whom?] in internment camps, and some were deported[by
whom?] at the end of the war.
Sometimes race riots, as in Detroit in 1943, targeted Jewish
businesses for looting and burning.

A wagon piled high with corpses outside the crematorium in the

newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp
In Germany the National Socialist regime of Adolf Hitler, which came

to power on 30 January 1933, instituted repressive legislation

denying the Jews basic civil rights. It instituted a pogrom on the night
of 910 November 1938, dubbed Kristallnacht, in which Jews were
killed, their property destroyed and their synagogues torched.
Antisemitic laws, agitation and propaganda were extended to Nazioccupied Europe in the wake of conquest, often building on local
antisemitic traditions. In the east the Third Reich forced Jews into
ghettos in Warsaw, Krakow, Lvov, Lublin and Radom. After the
invasion of Russia in 1941 a campaign of mass murder, conducted
by the Einsatzgruppen, culminated between 1942 to 1945 in
systematic genocide: the Holocaust. Eleven million Jews were
targeted for extermination by the Nazis, and some six million were
eventually killed.
Antisemitism was commonly used as an instrument for personal
conflicts in Soviet Russia, starting from conflict between Joseph
Stalin and Leon Trotsky and continuing through numerous
conspiracy-theories spread by official propaganda. Antisemitism in
the USSR reached new heights after 1948 during the campaign
against the "rootless cosmopolitan" (euphemism for "Jew") in which
numerous Yiddish-language poets, writers, painters and sculptors
were killed or arrested. This culminated in the so-called Doctors' Plot
(19521953). Similar antisemitic propaganda in Poland resulted in
the flight of Polish Jewish survivors from the country.
After the war, the Kielce pogrom and "March 1968 events" in
communist Poland represented further incidents of antisemitism in
Europe. The anti-Jewish violence in postwar Poland has a common
theme of blood-libel rumours.
In 1965 Pope Paul VI issued a papal decree disbanding the cult of
Simon of Trent, the shrine erected to him was dismantled, and Simon
was decanonized.

ANTISEMITISM IN MERCHANT OF VENICE

Shylock and the antisemitism debate

4.1Shylock as a villain
English society in the Elizabethan era has been described as
"judeophobic". English Jews had been expelled under Edward I in
1290 and were not permitted to return until 1656 under the rule of
Oliver Cromwell. In Venice and in some other places, Jews were
required to wear a red hat at all times in public to make sure that they
were easily identified, and had to live in a ghetto protected by
Christian guards.[15] On the Elizabethan stage, Jews were often
presented in an Orientalist caricature, with hooked noses and bright
red wigs, and were usually depicted as avaricious usurers; an
example is Christopher Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta, which
features a comically wicked Jewish villain called Barabas. They were
usually characterised as evil, deceitful and greedy.
Shakespeare's play may be seen as a continuation of this tradition.
[ The title page of the Quarto indicates that the play was sometimes
known as The Jew of Venice in its day, which suggests that it was
seen as similar to Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. One interpretation of
the play's structure is that Shakespeare meant to contrast the mercy
of the main Christian characters with the vengefulness of a Jew, who
lacks the religious grace to comprehend mercy. Similarly, it is
possible that Shakespeare meant Shylock's forced conversion to
Christianity to be a "happy ending" for the character, as, to a
Christian audience, it saves his soul and allows him to enter Heaven.
[
citation needed]

Regardless of what Shakespeare's own intentions may have been,

the play has been made use of by antisemites throughout the play's
history. One must note that the end of the title in the 1619 edition
"With the Extreme Cruelty of Shylock the Jew..." must aptly describe
how Shylock was viewed by the English public. The Nazis used the
usurious Shylock for their propaganda. Shortly after Kristallnacht in
1938, "The Merchant of Venice" was broadcast for propagandistic
ends over the German airwaves. Productions of the play followed in
Lbeck (1938), Berlin (1940), and elsewhere within the Nazi Territory.
In a series of articles called Observer, first published in 1785, British
playwright Richard Cumberland created a character named Abraham
Abrahams who is quoted as saying, "I verily believe the odious
character of Shylock has brought little less persecution upon us, poor
scattered sons of Abraham, than the Inquisition itself." Cumberland
later wrote a successful play, The Jew (1794), in which his title
character, Sheva, is portrayed sympathetically, as both a kindhearted
and generous man. This was the first known attempt by a dramatist
to reverse the negative stereotype that Shylock personified.
The depiction of Jews in literature throughout the centuries bears the
close imprint of Shylock. With slight variations much of English
literature up until the 20th century depicts the Jew as "a monied,
cruel, lecherous, avaricious outsider tolerated only because of his
golden hoard".

4.2Shylock as a sympathetic character

Shylock and Portia (1835) by Thomas Sully.

Many modern readers and theatregoers have read the play as a plea
for tolerance, noting that Shylock is a sympathetic character. They
cite as evidence that Shylock's 'trial' at the end of the play is a
mockery of justice, with Portia acting as a judge when she has no
right to do so. The characters who berated Shylock for dishonesty
resort to trickery in order to win. In addition, Shakespeare gives
Shylock one of his most eloquent speeches:
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,dimensions,
senses, affections, passions; fed withthe same food, hurt with the
same weapons, subjectto the same diseases, heal'd by the same
means,warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summeras a
Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?If you tickle us, do we
not laugh? If you poison us,do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall
we not revenge?If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in
that.If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?Revenge. If a
Christian wrong a Jew, what should hissufferance be by Christian
example? Why, revenge.The villainy you teach me, I will execute,and

it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.(Act III, scene I)

It is difficult to know whether the sympathetic reading of Shylock is
entirely due to changing sensibilities among readers, or whether
Shakespeare, a writer who created complex, multi-faceted
characters, deliberately intended this reading.
One of the reasons for this interpretation is that Shylock's painful
status in Venetian society is emphasised. To some critics, Shylock's
celebrated "Hath not a Jew eyes" speech (see above) redeems him
and even makes him into something of a tragic figure; in the speech,
Shylock argues that he is no different from the Christian characters.
Detractors note that Shylock ends the speech with a tone of revenge:
"if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" Those who see the speech
as sympathetic point out that Shylock says he learned the desire for
revenge from the Christian characters: "If a Christian wrong a Jew,
what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.
The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will
better the instruction."
Even if Shakespeare did not intend the play to be read this way, the
fact that it retains its power on stage for audiences who may perceive
its central conflicts in radically different terms is an illustration of the
subtlety of Shakespeare's characterisations. In the trial Shylock
represents what Elizabethan Christians believed to be the Jewish
desire for "justice", contrasted with their obviously superior Christian
value of mercy. The Christians in the courtroom urge Shylock to love
his enemies, although they themselves have failed in the past. Harold
Bloom explains that, although the play gives merit to both cases, the
portraits are not even-handed: "Shylocks shrewd indictment of
Christian hypocrisy [delights us, but]Shakespeares intimations do
not alleviate the savagery of his portrait of the Jew".
Jews were highly persecuted and were discriminated . They were
forced to live in ghettos .Shylock being a jew was made a butt of
ridicule and was publicly spat on . The jews were made to wear red

caps in society .Even the BIBLE depicted them as a traitor . Tey were
only
Involved in money lending activities as the bible banned these
activities for Christians

BIBLIOGRAPHY
.

Abend-David, Dror, 'Scorned My Nation:' A Comparison of

Translations of The Merchant of Venice into German, Hebrew, and

Yiddish, New York: Peter-Lang, 2003, ISBN 978-0-8204-5798-7.

.

Adler, Jacob, A Life on the Stage: A Memoir, translated and with

commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld, Knopf, New York, 1999, ISBN 0679-41351-0.
Bloom, Harold (2007). Heims, Neil. ed. The merchant of Venice. New
York: Infobase. ISBN 0-7910-9576-2.

Caldecott, Henry Stratford: Our English Homer; or, the BaconShakespeare Controversy (Johannesburg Times, 1895).

Gross, John, Shylock: A Legend and Its Legacy, US: Touchstone,

2001, ISBN 0-671-88386-0; ISBN 978-0-671-88386-7.
Short, Hugh (2002). "Shylock is content". In Mahon, John W.; Mahon,
Ellen Macleod. The Merchant of Venice: New Critical Essays.
London: Routledge. p. 201. ISBN 978-0-4159-2999-8.
Smith, Rob: Cambridge Student Guide to The Merchant of Venice.
ISBN 0-521-00816-6.

.
.

Yaffe, Martin D.: Shylock and the Jewish question.

Jerome A. Chanes. Antisemitism: A Reference Handbook, ABCCLIO, 2004, p. 150.

Rattansi, Ali. Racism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University

Press, 2007, pp. 45.
Rubenstein, Richard L.; Roth, John K. Approaches to Auschwitz: the
Holocaust and its legacy, Westminster John Knox Press, 2003, p. 30.

Johnston, William M. The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social

History, 18481938, University of California Press, 1983, p. 27.

Chapter1INTRODUCTIONTONEGLIGE