"Shall I Not Have Barely My Principle?": Anti-Semitism and The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice at the Cambridge Union promised a bold reinterpretation to address the issue of anti-Semitism. Yet despite their intentions, columnist Ralph Jeffreys argues that the final product served to reinforce, not dispel, anti-Semitic stereotypes.
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Last year, the Cambridge Union put on a production of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. For those unfamiliar with the play, it centres around a conflict between two Christians (Antonio and Bassanio) and a Jewish moneylender (Shylock). The former borrow from the latter, but when Bassanio’s ships are wrecked they are left unable to repay the loan. This is where the narrative becomes sinister. Shylock had set as his terms of default that he would get a pound of Bassanio’s flesh, and this is what he demands. Despite an offer of triple compensation, Shylock adamantly refuses anything but the flesh, and is only thwarted in his demands by legal trickery from a disguised Portia, the love interest of Antonio, for whom the money was borrowed as a dowry.
The play has difficult themes and includes not only anti-Semitic characters and slurs, but, if handled insensitively, the potential to also reinforce anti-Semitic stereotypes. When I went to watch the play, I was shocked to see that this is exactly what had happened. What is crucial - and I want to stress this - is that it was done despite the very best of intentions. This play is not an example of a cast and crew who are all secretly anti-Semites. It is, however, an example of how persistent anti-Semitic narratives have embedded themselves in our culture and how this can lead to the proliferation of blind spots around anti-Semitism. We have seen the subconscious downgrading of anti-Semitism as a form of discrimination. This is then a societal, not an individual issue, and one that affects Jews as well as non-Jews and which we must seek to redress.
As I’ve mentioned, the production’s intentions were clearly admirable. The application pack for directors, for example, stated:
“This production is a bold reimagining of The Merchant Venice, set in modern Britain, with the location of Venice transposed to the corporate business district of London. The play will be told through a modern lens, focusing on the rise of anti-semitism, hate crimes and conspiracy theories.”
Clearly the goal was to address modern anti-semitism. Intentions then, are not the issue. Neither is the issue entirely about representation. Both the executive producer and the actor who played Shylock were Jewish. Somewhere in the rehearsal room, however, it seems much of this focus was lost, and worrying mistakes started to slip in. Perhaps it was a case of not enough Jewish voices on the project. However, ultimately the efforts to address anti-Semitism were insufficient and somewhere along the way the production's bold ambitions were lost.
Let us revisit the claims of that application pack again. The only real nod to ‘modern Britain’ and ‘the corporate business district of London’ was the costuming (black tie and dresses for the Christians, plainer clothing for Shylock) and the setting. The discussion of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories was notably absent, despite this being one of the most prominent forms of anti-Semitism in Britain today. Attempts to reframe the narrative included shifting focus away from the love story of Bassanio and Portia, and having Shylock watch over the ‘happy’ ending for the Christians. These efforts were, however, vague and all too subtle to combat the anti-Semitism in the text, let alone offer an insight into or a statement about modern anti-Semitism.
They were also decisively undercut by the portrayals of both Shylock and Jessica. To play Shylock as a blemishless hero would simply be to deny the text. Yet the production at the Union struggled to integrate Shylock’s worst qualities into a broader narrative of anti-Semitism. The actor playing Shylock described him as “a character who has power, and can’t be fully acquitted for his actions either. [I intend to play him as] a character that is never passive to his circumstances.” While not wanting to play Shylock without agency is laudable, the production failed to explain Shylock’s actions in light of his own abuse and powerlessness as a Jew.
Jews in 16th century Italy existed with little to no formal protection, as they have always done, as a minority group always aware of their own precarious existence. And this fact is revealed in the play. Shylock’s success despite discrimination is easily whipped away from him due to his lack of true citizenship. Moreover, his wealth and position as a money lender derives not from his own desire for wealth but a simple historical fact - Jews in Italy at this time (and across most of Christendom) could only work as moneylenders. Shylock lives an abused life and what power or wealth he has is threatened by and defined by his position as a second-class citizen.
Without this fuller understanding, the interpretation of Shylock suffered. We could see that he was being discriminated against and it was clearly bad. However, when the text encountered Shylock’s worst moments, the performance blamed his poor character, immense greed and lust for revenge. Take, for example, Shylock’s reaction to his daughter, Jessica, running off with her Christian lover and taking with her Shylock’s money and jewels. At the Union, the text was taken at face value with Shylock more angry at the hit to his wealth than sad at the loss of his daughter. I will not pretend that re-interpreting this scene is easy. Shylock speaks the lines:
“I would my daughter were dead at my foot and the jewels in her ear; would she were hearsed at my foot and the ducats in her coffin.”
Without careful reinterpretation, this line depicts a Jew more in love with money than his own daughter. I cannot think of a more blatant stereotype. The lines were however spat out with vitriol and rage. This scene also ends with Shylock being comforted by the news that Antonio’s ships have been destroyed and he therefore won’t be able to repay the loan. “I’ll plague him, I’ll torture him. I’m glad of it!” Shylock tells his Jewish friend Tubal. Again at the Union, Shylock’s joy was faithful to the text. This problem continued in the courtroom scene, with Shylock excited to kill Antonio, who accepted Shylock’s demands for his life with a quiet grace. His displays of greed and vengefulness undermined any attempted anti-racism messages, and by the end of the play the image that was conveyed to the audience was deeply problematic.
Crucially, however, this is not an issue of a text beyond reinterpretation. Last winter, I saw a different version at the Globe where Shylock’s rage and anger were woven into a larger story of discrimination, revealing how abuse damages people. When Shylock spoke of the jewels stolen by Jessica it was clear he did so because he could not bear to speak about the far worse loss of his daughter. He was not angry, but distraught, literally collapsing into the arms of Tubal. Likewise, the courtroom scene achieved a completely different effect. At the Globe Shylock was terrified, literally shaking at the prospect of taking a life. He was instead an abused minority figure, seeing literal fulfilment of the contract as the only path to justice. He was equipped with a tupperware and a butterknife, not a cleaver and a set of heavy iron scales.
These differences in interpretation can genuinely affect an audience’s understanding of anti-Semitism. The director of the Globe production found a 2005 survey done during a production of The Merchant of Venice in Stockholm, which found that more of the audience agreed that “the reason for anti-Semitism is the behaviour of Jews in history” after seeing the show than before it. This demonstrates the potentially dangerous impact of productions of this show which fail to properly address anti-Semitism.
You may be wondering why I’m writing this about a play that was put on almost a year ago now, and the truth is I wrote an article for another Cambridge newspaper which decided to pull it at the last minute. After agreeing to a final draft, there was silence for many weeks before I received an email telling me that they would no longer publish the piece because they felt I hadn’t justified the accusation that the Union had been guilty of anti-Semitism. Frankly I was enraged. This was at the time when people like Jordan Peterson were being platformed, yet it seems that the limits of free speech do not quite stretch to challenging privileged institutions on their bigotry. Moreover, at no point in the article did I allege that the Union, or indeed the play, was overtly anti-Semitic. The question I wanted to answer is how well-intentioned people could still fail to produce a show free from anti-Semitic stereotypes, so that these mistakes can be avoided in future.
I have suggested that more Jewish representation might have helped. Yet a deeper answer lies in the peculiarities of anti-Semitism and its uncertain position in progressive politics. Jews, as with most other kinds of discrimination, are frequently portrayed as subhuman and inferior. Unlike other racisms however, we are also seen to be rich, powerful and in charge of the world. This narrative can serve to obscure the dangers of anti-Semitism by suggesting Jewish people occupy a privileged position in society. The idea that Jewish people wield a privileged position is therefore used to degrade anti-Semitism to being a second-class form of discrimination. Yet the supposed wealth of the Jewish community does not justify discrimination, conspiracy theories or make anti-Semitism any less violent. What matters is that this link continues to linger on and damage efforts to address this issue in progressive circles. One need only think of the Labour Party’s continuing struggle with anti-Semitism to see this.
The issue, therefore, is one of blind spots: failing to fully see anti-Semtisism and deal with it, rather than actively espousing it. It is in this context that the Union’s Merchant of Venice must be understood. Again, I must stress that I am certain none of this was consciously done. This is the power and danger of these deep-rooted societal narratives. I know that I have myself often fallen prey to internalising anti-Semitic tropes about myself. All of us living and growing up in unequal societies will take on some of its messages subconsciously, even those who belong to discriminated groups. To suggest otherwise is to be naive. This means it is all the more important to call this out when we do notice it.
