Essay for a
Conference on Anti-Semitism and the Left: Shakespeare, Shylock and
Capitalist Harmony in the Christian State
Goldie Klugman
It is commonly agreed that Shakespeare
is the greatest writer of the English language and perhaps of the western
world. In 1594, London, he created Shylock the Jew, a coinage perhaps the
greatest of all his successes and two words never again to part, nor to lose
their mutual reflection upon the stage of the imagination.
The Merchant of Venice is a remarkable
comedy, whose prescient study of the social forces within emerging
capitalism, introduces modernity to literature. London had many, many
debtors and among these were men who came to buy Shakespeare’s tickets, to
carouse and drink, to fantasize wealth and revenge. .
A comedy means the
happy resolution of all problems, which are usually solomenized by a wedding
or a series of weddings that satiate the strivings of lovers and accept the
pairs within the bonds of hope and sacrament. In this play bond, bound and
bondage have many meanings that are intertwined with the suitors, their
debts and their rings of gold upon the street of wealth and commerce, the
Rialto. And in this circle of movement, fate finds Shylock the moneylender.
The Rialto is in Venice, and London
theatergoers have come to make- believe an otherland of glamour, which is at
the same time remarkable in symmetry to their own city. Merchants, clowns,
and even playrights borrow and lend upon London streets and Shakespeare’s
scenes are both exotic and identifiable to them.
As we begin, Antonio, the real
merchant of Venice is sitting with friends upon the Rialto and bemoaning his
fate, “I hold the world but the world, Gratiano, A stage, where every man
must play a part and mine is a sad one.” These are Antonio’s most insightful
lines though we are not told exactly why Antonio’s life is miserable except
to infer ennui the disease of class and the affectation of the bored. But
the other men crowd about him, defer to him, talk of his argosies upon the
seas, and we feel soon that this is a man of privilege and distinction.
Here at this moment
Bassanio enters, and making his plea of friendship, “Tis not unknown to you
Antonio how much I have disabled my estate….but my chief case is to come
fairly off from the great debts wherein my time someting too prodigal hath
left me gag’d” Whereupon Antonio responds, “Do but say to me what should I
do” and again Bassanio continues, “ In Belmont is a lady richly left, and
she is fair and fairer than that word….nor is the wide world ignorant of her
worth, for the four winds blow in from every coast renowned suitors and her
sunny locks hang on her temples like a golden fleece…Oh Antonio had I but
the means to hold a rival place with one of them…I should questionless be
fortunate.”
This is the plot
and backdrop of the story to which we have Antonio’s reply and pledge of
honor, “Thou knowest that all my fortunes are at sea, neither do I have
money or commodity to raise a present sum; therefore go forth, Try what
credit can in Venice do that shall be rack’d even to the utmost to furnish
thee to Belmont, to fair Portia. Go presently inquire and so will I, where
money is, and I no question make to have it of my trust or for my sake.”
We know now who is sitting in the
audience, and among the young and paupered as well as those of right, dare
we say the dreams of gigilo heaven have been titillated. To woo, to woo
well, to woo and with one felt swoop to sweep aside the stings of mean
fortune. Oh Portia, how thy love is absolute in happiness. For he that gapes
in trumpian delight seeks to ape his master’s Belmont, and easily discerns
the race to be his calling. So as they look to you Antonio, measured by all
a friend and as such the measure of your class, to furnish the lovers, we in
this theater await such prosperity.
In Belmont, the
beauteous Portia is also suffering from a bit of ennui brought on by the
confluence of great wealth and the terms of her dead father’s will.
Unhappily for Portia, she is promised to the suitor who bests the trials
that shall be put before him and not one among them can she abide. We
evince, instead, the slight tremor of approval for Bassanio. But where is
he? What if a wooer come to unlock the riddle of the casket succeed the test
tomorrow and Portia is bound forever?
.
In Venice, we find
Bassanio, having lastly come to the door of Shylock the Jew, “.Ay sir, for
three months….Three thousand ducats….As I told you, Antonio will be bound.”
And we hear Shylock’s response, “Antonio shall become bound.”, which,
repeated as it is, from a man so precise in negotiation, so close in his use
of language, is immediately arresting. The word bound, a veritable tool of
the trade, has now given him pause to think. In light of the repugnance
Shylock shows for the concept of being bound, which we will see all through
the lines which are to later follow, let us look at the intent of the law,
Exodus Chapter 21, Verses 2-6 which is to set men free from servitude. The
injunction is that there be a jubilee year, a seventh year, when all debts
are cancelled and , “he shall go out free for nothing” But if the servant
shall say, “I love my master, my wife my children, I will not go out free”
only then shall he become bound. For it is a man’s consciousness of freedom
and duty to himself as an autonomous being, his rejection of servitude, that
differences the buying and selling of goods- the material- from the
spiritual life of man
Antonio, by bonding
himself, has put himself in this very position. “He hath an argosy bound to
Tripoli, another to the Indies, a third at Mexico, a fourth for England and
other ventures he hath squandered abroad. But ships are but board and
sailors but men, there be land rats and water rats, water thieves and land
thieves, I mean pirates, and then there is peril of waters, winds and rocks,
” To Shylock squandered means overly expansive in all his dealings, not only
in the four gambles at sea, but that Antonio is so self-righteous in
the love of his own virtues and birth, that he squanders like a youth in
stylized personal display only to beggar away his very hide. And he mocks
Antonio as a member of his class and the antithesis of what he takes to be a
man..
In answer to
Bassanio’s invitation to dine, Shylock shows the strength of his autonomy as
he answers Bassanio and speaks of the “varnished faces of Christian bonding”
and then continues with, “Yes to smell pork, to eat of the habitation which
your prophet the Nazarite conjur’d the devil into. I will buy with you sell
with you, walk with you, and so following: but I will not eat with you,
drink with you, nor pray with you.” The personal and free use of his
unlimited privacy, his non-instrumentality as a subject for others, is
expressed in his refusal to eat pork, to drink and pray with Christians, and
he openly flouts his contentious rivalry with Venetian custom.
The Jew, characterized throughout
medieval literature as vile in his disobedience, is given an added
dimension. The domain of economic stability and self-reliance is freedom,
its alternative is servitude. No, Shylock does not willingly bind himself to
another’s will and he scorns Bassanio’s relationship with Antonio, one’s use
of the other as an instrument of his own needs, and perceives them as mutual
parasites.
As Antonio
approaches him Shylock says, “A bankrout, a prodigal, who dares scarce show
his head on the Rialto; a beggar that was us’d to come so smug upon the
mart; let him look to his bond…… ”He was wont to lend money for a Christian
cur’sy….But more, for that in low simplicity he lends out money gratis and
brings down the rate of usuance here with us in Venice. If I can catch him
on the hip I’ll feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. He hates our sacred
nation and he rails even there where merchants do most congregate on me my
bargains and my well-known thrift which he calls interest.” The words “low
simplicity” are ironical and intended to expose the synthetic humbleness or
christian cur’sy” of his kind, as Shylock strips his adversary to bare flesh
and mocks the flock Antonio feeds.
Antonio’s response is to flaunt
principle: superior is the man who is not dirtied with the idea of profit,
“Albeit I never lend nor borrow by taking nor giving in excess, Yet to
supply the ripe wants of my friend; I’ll break the custom.” We’ve come to
the argument of interest, or excess as against Shylock’s thrift, or
Christianity and the blessings of providence. The elect. Here we pause to
say, Henry VIII financed Hebrew scholarship with a view that some legality
making possible the annulment of his marriage to Queen Catherine of Aragon
would be found. Considering the intellectual circles in which Shakespeare
moved, it is not at all unlikely that he, among his friends, studied
biblical texts. Certainly the story of Jacob and Laban are the perfect pick
upon which to formulate testimony, or we might say the genetic inheritance
of the jewish soul, namely, as the question is presented in The Merchant,
the issue of profit and morality.
For here Shylock, recounts the story
of Jacob, who, in his departure from the house of Laban, put certain wands
before the eyes of ewes, “who then conceiving did in eaning time fall
parti-color’d lambs, and those were Jacob’s. This was the way to thrive, and
he was blest; and thrift is blessing, if men steal not”
Whereupon Antonio
says to him, ” This was a venture sir, that Jacob serv’d for. A thing not in
his power to bring to pass, But sway’d and fashion’d by the hand of heaven.
Was this inserted to make interest good? Or is your gold and silver ewes and
rams?” Shylock retorts, “ I cannot tell, I make it breed so fast.” Antonio
says to us, those who profit, profit with God’s blessing and because of
God’s blessing. All His works are good. While Shylock is saying, profit is
man’s invention, because it appears the ones God helps are those who can
help themselves.
We know that in early Christian theory
money, being barren and incapable itself of production could not logically
command interest nor profit. It is only intended as a medium of exchange and
no distinction is made between the money lender and the merchant who became
rich on the sale of commodities. The issue is excess. But by the time we’ve
come to Shakespeare’s London, history has long since seen the two go
separate ways but only one is a perjorative concept. .” Antonio says to us,
those who profit, profit with God’s blessing and because of God’s blessing.
All His works are good. While Shylock is saying, profit is man’s invention,
because it appears the ones God helps are those who can help themselves. Two
figures stand at opposite poles: the money lender, purveyor of the imminent
capitalist future in his cheap gabardine, and the merchant prince, devout
philanthropist, patron of arts, exemplar of elegance, defending the muse of
Christian happiness.
If Providence legitimizes wealth, if
wealth is an imprint of His approval, how does this explain the Jew who
succeeds without blessing? If the Jew is illegitimate? How does the Jew
become rich if it defies the logic of numbers and morality? What the Jew has
is unnatural , he’s a cheat. But in words surpassing all other envy, it is
to our Jew that Shakespeare gave the lines protesting human suffering.
These, fortelling our modern schizophreniz, are the most powerful in the
play. They signify we have not been given a Jew without virtue, nor is he
without import.
Though the circle of friends
represents the idyllic Christian community, Belmont, for a moment the
reality of London’s trade in hypocrisy and vice arrests those in the
audience prone to listen. Then it is Shylock, whose censure into reality or
the figure of the Jew as an outsider upon the Christian world – we might say
the hypothetical creation of an objective intermediary of truth, that is the
modest symbolism of Shylock. Shylock rails against the misery by which the
wealth and leisure of an affluent class is supported.
The famous lines, “Hath Not a Jew
Eyes, Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, ……If you prick us, do we not
bleed?......” appear to be modeled on the widely read Senecan lines, “…
remember that he you call your slave sprang from the same flock,…..and on
equal terms with yourself breathes, lives and dies…..” Though Shylock is not
a slave he is the inferior, and the notion that the original evil-doer must
expect his example to be imitated by his pupil is typically Senecan.
Macbeth’s ,”we teach bloody instruction which being taught return to plague
the inventor, ” echo our Jew closely with, “the villainy you teach me I will
execute, it will go hard, but I will better the instruction.” In other
words, social conditions are responsible for what I am. A radical view for
its time. Has Shakespeare come tantalizingly close to saying Christianity is
implicit in the condition of the Jew ?
In what follows, Shylock demands the
equivalent of social justice. For though to Antonio, what is is as it should
be, for Shylock what should be is defiled by what is. This speech begins
with the Jobian lines, “what judgement shall I dread doing no wrong,”
simulating the notion that one is not moral because he fears punishment nor
because he pursues reward, but because he loves justice. The role of
autonomy or what liberals call private conscience suits Shylock’s passionate
evaluation of the Christian world. But more, it says that truth is neither
Christian nor Jew but some objectivity, if this could be found. “You have
among you many a purchased slave, which like your asses, and your dogs and
your mules you use in abject and in slavish parts, because you bought them.
Shall I say to you, “Let them be free! Marry them to your heirs. Why sweat
they under their burthens?. Let their beds be made as soft as yours…..” And
here again, deriding “the fawning ‘publican”, whose deceptions have bred
this hell, Shylock ends with, “You will say the slaves are ours”, So do I
answer you: The pound of flesh which I demand of him is as dearly bought as
mine, and I will have it”
Shakespeare’s
talent was to chrystallize the bane of the many into a singular moment, more
lifelike on stage than in the very heart itself. The story is folklore, a
Jew asks usury for what a Christian would gladly have given away gratis. So
why are they standing here at Shylock’s door? That there had always been a
thriving trade in usury in England, reaching as high at times as 80%, even
when there were few or no Jews in England, has been the boring defense of
Jews for ages. In “The Merchant”, Shakespeare retells the litany of anti-semitisms.
Here, the jew has the opportunity to lend money gratis to Antonio’s friends,
as Antonio would have done, instead he refuses and is damned to isolation.
The same rejection of Christ himself almost sixteen hundred years before has
been transposed, in the modern Jew, into a love of His opposite - a love
rather of base metal.
In this following scene the exchange
between Antonio and Shylock goes like this: Shylock, “You that did void your
rheum upon my beard, and foot me as you spurn a stranger cur over your
threshold; money is your suit?, what shall I say to you? Hath a dog money?”
While Antonio responds, “I am like to call thee so again, To spet on thee
again…..for when did friendship take a breed for barren metal?’..
The radical idea
what is excess? What is justice? becomes instead, who is breeding it? In
Belmont, the scene of Portia’s generosity - status, power, beauty, have
lived together from time beginning, naturally like manna from above, and
this circle of bonding is Shakespeare’s answer to the crudity of the modern
commercialism. Perfection via the lottery of heaven, the Christian ideal.
And when in the comedy the voyeur enjoys the buffoonery onstage, when
Shylock’s only heir exchanges her mother’s ring for a monkey portending the
end of Jewish progeny, the audience is comforted that Jacob has not
prevailed.
The use of bodily
punishment is the age-old emblem of power. It is the right of kings, and the
physical expropriation of Antonio’s body, the pound of flesh, would signal
the end of Antonio’s rights as master and the defeat of all rival
ideologies. For if Shylock were to have succeeded, his scathing censure of
Venice would dominate the hearts of men. His sense of autonomy would be the
rule.Though ostensibly the two meet at trial, rivals for control of values
and the life force itself, Shylock tells us long before that his is a
loosing suit.The breed of barren metal, prophetically invoked by our
merchant prince upon him, the premonition of his daughter’s conversion to
Christianity, tells us that the intercession of Shylock in our lives is at
an end.
There are two symbolic rings in the
play. One Portia gave to Bassanio that he may prove his love to her and he
succeeds in doing so, the model of Christian love.. The other, Shylock’s
only precious good, the golden ring he had of his wife on their wedding day,
is traded away, as expressed above, to a monkey. The loss of circle and
symbol signify the Jew is no longer among the company of men, and though
Shakespeare had opened the dialogue granting him some stage, he rejects him
here, forever and finally. The ideal of Christian harmony, of English purity
demands it. We last see him clown, buffoon, most ignoble Christian convert
in defeat. Gone. For as our play is ended and the players walk off stage, no
speck of battle remains upon the trial floor, no sign that hate or acrimony
had smudged the awesome day. All health and hearth expended in the struggle
has come full round.
A name remains, Shylock, a man or
perhaps the description of a man, or perhaps like Shakespeare a figure of
many contradictions. Our bard says for the money lender. “…no ill luck
stirring but what lights a’ my shoulders, no sighs but a’ my breathing, no
tears but a’ my shedding.”
FACING A CHALLENGE WITHIN: