It was into this atmosphere that Shakespeare was born in 1580, 300 years after the Jews had been forced out of England. If there were Jews in London at the time of Shakespeare, they were certainly in the minority.
In 1589, Marlow created a play entitled the Jew of Malta. It was a play that did not vilify the Jew, but satirizes Christian society. Using a Jewish villain, Barabas, as protagonist when his property is seized and he is expelled from England, Marlow has his character embark upon a vengeful slaughter of nuns and other Christians. In the play, Barabas is boiled to death in front of the audience, creating sensational and violent theater. While the play vilifies the Jews, the main point of the play was to satirize Christian society for its cruelty, double standards and deception. Marlow's play followed shortly upon a public incident where the queen's physician was accused, tortured and executed for plotting to poison her. The physician, Rodrigo Lopez, turned out to be secretly Jewish (Portuguese) and this fact inflamed the British public against the Jews again.
This was the atmosphere surrounding the writing of the Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare drew upon historical themes from European and Eastern history, bringing together plots from El Pecorone (1558) by Ser Giovanni, Boccaccio and Gower's motif of the choosing of the correct casket in order to win a lady love, and an ancient Middle Ages story from the East about a merchant collecting a pound of flesh in return for a debt owed (Ephraim 475).
It was not until Cromwell's time, beginning in 1655, that Jews were officially allowed back into England. But until that time, the prejudice and hatred of this race of people, who were hated for both their religion (which denied Christianity) and for their bloodline, which British people assumed was tainted with evil and cruelty, was common. In Elizabethan England, Shakespeare could not have helped but notice and encounter anti-Jewish sentiments and perhaps felt some within him, having been raised on the fiction and history surrounding the vilification of that race (Kaplan 24).
In Shakespeare's play, placed in Italy, rather than England, Shylock knows he has the law on his side, as he comes before the judge. But he is mainly enraged that Christianity would take away what was his - his payment for a loan of money to Antonio. In his rage, Shylock is demanding his rightful share of Venetian society and respect by the community. He makes the speech about slavery to point out that, as the Christians own people, so does he, too, when they sell themselves to him. In allowing slavery, Venetian society is buying into Shylock's demands, and while Shylock is not given what he is due, he makes it clear that all of society is getting away with murder. Shylock is a mirror of all that is bad in society. He is the one buying and selling human flesh and demanding it, no matter the consequence. He is the one who is agonizing over the loss of everything, yet blindly pursuing monetary gain as a penance for all the wrongs that have been done to him. He has not been respected as a man, but vilified, and he is angry...
Shylock Character the Merchant Venice Portia and Queen Elizabeth: Through the trenches of the microcosm of play, no character serves as much semblance to Elizabeth Tudor as Portia. I agree so, and forthwith draw more comparisons between her and a contemporaneous learned Renaissance woman going by her terrific rhetorical skills, markedly in the trial scene. By all measure, Elizabeth Tudor was a learned woman, possibly of the highest caliber in all of
The parallels between these situations and Frye's basic assessment of the plot of New Comedies are not, perhaps, immediately apparent, but they have the same effect by the end of the play, where "the audience witnesses the birth of a renewed sense of social integration" (Frye 94). The parent/child relationships have been largely done away with in favor of te romantic ties that seem to be favored by the play.
Also, the role of the Duke would not be as prominent if the city of Venice would not have been selected for the majority of the activity of the play. The city in itself ensures a certain aura that traditional cultural life as well as the fame of a modern, yet traditional in many instances cities, that provides the story a special twist, embedded in culture, yet modern in
Shylock is also perceived and portrayed as an enemy of the Christian faith and as the nemesis of the play's protagonist, Antonio. He therefore serves a distinct literary purpose by contrasting the depth of friendship exhibited by Antonio's group. Because he is not viewed as a friend, he cannot truly betray any of them. Thus, when Shylock does not back down from his bond with Antonio he is merely
Bassanio chooses lead, when asked to select from the three caskets that Portia offers to test her suitors. She is happy that he wins, and the lead is supposed to be the correct choice, for the person who chooses lead is supposed to be a man who has hazarded all he has, to win Portia. But in truth, Bassanio has hazarded nothing and desires Portia's gold. It is Antonio
Merchant of Venice: Queen Elizabeth vs. Portia There are a number of similarities that exist between Queen Elizabeth of England and William Shakespeare's character Portia in his play The Merchant of Venice. Both women had a good amount of money and power; although Portia was not royalty, she was still a wealthy heiress in the city of Belmont. Because of the money and power associated with these women, they each had
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