Heretic’s Foundation XV: Is ‘Merchant of Venice’ a Cannibal Satire?

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Heretic’s Foundation XV: Is ‘Merchant of Venice’ a Cannibal

Satire?
Friday, October 30, 2009
Heretic’s Foundation

By John Hudson
darkladyplayers@aol.com
Special to the Clyde Fitch Report

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Heretic’s Foundation XV: Is ‘Merchant of Venice’ a Cannibal Satire? « Clyde Fitch Report 10/31/09 10:39 AM

Running Nov. 28 through Dec. 20, the York Shakespeare Company will mount a repertory of The Merchant
of Venice and Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta at the Manhattan Jewish Community Center (344
Amsterdam Ave. at W. 76th St.). Jewish groups have a long tradition of Merchant hostility: As recently as
1981, the Anti-Defamation League attempted to stop the PBS transmission of a BBC production of the play,
much as the New York Board of Rabbis had done with a proposed national broadcast of Joe Papp’s
production 19 years earlier. This repertory, at a Jewish venue, therefore deserves some consideration.

In 1998, an international survey of 1,000 teachers carried out by the education arm of the Globe
Theatre found 61% did not find Merchant to be anti-Semitic. Some 20% were unsure: they felt anti-
Semitism in Merchant resulted from directors presenting the play in a certain fashion, not from what is
inherent in the text. Just 17% found the play anti-Semitic.

It is important not to judge Merchant, and the matter of it perhaps being anti-Semitic, by the arguably
anachronistic standards of the 21st century theater. Rather, it is important to consider the play by the
standards and the context of the time in which it was written. In Elizabethan England, Jews were routinely
referred to as dogs or worse; you can read more about this in Kenneth Stow’s Jewish Dogs: An Image and
Its Interpreters. On the Elizabethan stage, the traditional depiction of the Jew was as a stage-devil; the
presentation in The Jew of Malta was very much in that vein. Merchant, however, goes a step beyond this.
And the author borrowed much of the plot, including the man who goes to a Jewish moneylender to help a
friend and is asked for a pound of flesh should the money not be repaid on time.

Dustin Hoffman as Shylock

The source material is Ser Giovanni Florentino’s The Big Sheep, a collection of stories available only in
Italian as Il Pecorone (1558). In Florentino’s story, the Shylock character is limned as highly legalistic,
demanding the exact terms of his fiscal agreement be fulfilled. In a culture that considered Jews to be dogs
or devils, the character’s demand that he be accorded basic rights as a human being, that Jews be seen as
subject to the same passions, diseases, organs, dimensions and affections as Christians (III.i.49-61),
represents an extraordinary, amazing plea for equality. When Merchant was written, Jews were banned in
England. They had to practice in secret (they were called Conversos or Marranos), lest they be imprisoned,
tortured or, on occasion, executed.

To understand the real meaning of Merchant, as with all sophisticated Elizabethan literature, one must look
beyond the honeyed sweetness of the verse and solve the underlying allegories of the play. The name
Shylock resembles Shiloh, which is mentioned in the Talmud as one of the names of the Messiah. It is
derived from Jacob’s blessing in Genesis (49:10) — which is why Caleb, a contemporary European

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Heretic’s Foundation XV: Is ‘Merchant of Venice’ a Cannibal Satire? « Clyde Fitch Report 10/31/09 10:39 AM

messianic candidate, was called Caleb Shilocke.

As Anthony Brennan notes in The Three Trials in Merchant of Venice, unlike the simple trial in Il Pecorone,
the author of Merchant puts Shylock through three of them. The first: before the Duke (IV.i.16-118). The
second: before Portia, ending with Shylock’s declaration to leave (IV.164-344). The third is the judgment
(IV.i.345-98).

After echoing the traditional anti-Semitic slander about Jews eating human flesh — “to feed upon/The
prodigal Christian” (II.v.14-15) — Shylock is condemned. If he does not convert to Christianity, which is
obviously contrary to his beliefs, all his property will be confiscated. At the end of the play, he sends a
“special deed of gift,” leaving all of his possessions to his Christian daughter and her Christian husband
(V.i.293). So what do these characters, Jessica and Lorenzo, receive? They refer to themselves as “starved
people” (V.i.294). There has been a reference to a choir of cherubin (V.i.62), alluding to the Te Deum sung
during the Eucharist, in which “cherubin and seraphin continually do cry.” The ceiling, oddly, contains
golden communion plates or “patens” (V.i.59). Whatever they receive is described as “manna” for starved
people (V.i.293-4). The word “manna,” as stated in Exodus 16:15, means “What is it?” This is indeed the
key question for the audience to answer because, using a technical legal term, all of which Shylock “dies
possess’d” (IV.i.385) or “dies possess’d of” (V.i.293) is his naked body.

We do not have to look far for a parallel example of a Jewish Messiah associated with the motif of eating
human flesh. Or one who undergoes three trials: one among Jewish leaders, a second by Pontius Pilate, a
third by Herod. Or one who is unfairly condemned. Or one who leaves his dead body to be a feast, eaten off
golden patens to the singing of the Te Deum. Unless someone can come up with a better explanation, it
looks very much as if Shylock is a fairly blatant allegorical parody of the Last Supper as a cannibal feast.
This is not anti-Semitic, quite the opposite. It is an anti-Christian satire. And it is not the Jews who are
depicted as the cannibals.

In today’s Off-Off-Broadway theater, one in which a cannibalistic production of Twelfth Night, made for
Halloween in 2007, was greeted with full houses and a New York Times review, perhaps the time is near
when the cannibal satires in Shakespeare can finally be presented. That would be as interesting, and perhaps
more, than inventing new ones for Halloween — and Merchant would be a good place to start.

John Hudson is a strategic consultant who specializes in new industry models and has helped create
several telecoms and Internet companies. He has recently been consulting to a leading think tank on the
future of the theater industry and is pioneering an innovative Shakespeare theory, as dramaturge to the
Dark Lady Players. This fall he will be Artist in Residence at Eastern Connecticut State University. He
has degrees in Theater and Shakespeare, in Management, and in Social Science.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 6:33 pm and is filed under Heretic’s Foundation. You can follow any
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