Is "The Merchant of Venice" antisemitic? Yes, but not for the reason you might think.
Shylock, the titular merchant and Jewish character, is perhaps most famous for his “hath not a Jew eyes” speech. This soliloquy is often cited by scholars and laypeople alike as exonerating the play (and by extension, Shakespeare) from accusations of antisemitism. If the Jewish character in question has a whole soliloquy on the inherent humanity of Jews, doesn’t that prove the play’s innocence?
The issue with this argument is that it ignores the last line of the soliloquy, the thesis of Shylock’s argument: “And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.”
Shylock argues that if Jews are human, then they seek revenge when they are wronged, just like everyone else. There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong or inhuman in a desire for revenge. But this definition of humanity as being founded on revenge is stated by a Jewish character, set in contrast to how the Christian characters in the play define humanity. That’s a problem.
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An Elizabethan Christian audience member might have seen Shylock’s downfall as poetic. Watch as Shylock, the Jew, is undone by the very justice system which he prioritizes over human safety. A Jew confronted with the text, however, whether in Shakespeare’s time or in ours, is struck with the disquieting realization of just how futile it would be for a Jew in 16th century Venice to seek redress against a Christian defendant before the court. Shylock is fighting a losing battle. As a Jew, he has no grounds on which to demand justice, mercy, or morality. Even when in the right, he is perpetually wronged by the very system that is supposed to uphold justice. This discomfort, however, would likely not have occurred to Elizabethan Christians. The concept of the Jew as a scheming villain in theater was previously established by Marlowe’s ‘The Jew of Malta’, and the categorization of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ as a comedy makes it unlikely that the Elizabethan audience would have sympathized with Shylock, the villain in the story. Nobody mourns when a monster is defeated when the monster looks nothing like them.
So how do Jews deal with this text?
