Date: Sun, 19 May 96 12:42:00 EDT From: DAVID BASCH Subject: SHYLOCK IN PERSPECTIVE TWO ARTICLES FOR FYI - A SLIGHTLY ABRIDGED VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE OCTOBER 15, 1993 EDITION OF THE CONNECTICUT JEWISH LEDGER. IT IS A SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 2 OF THE HIDDEN SHAKESPEARE AND WAS A FORERUNNER OF THE DEFINITIVE FINDINGS PRESENTED IN CHAPTER ONE OF THAT BOOK. SHYLOCK ON APPEAL by David Basch The trial of Shylock the Jewish moneylender, one of the more famous trials in history, of course, never happened. It comprised a portion of Act IV of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, written sometime after 1594. Shylock was alleged to have plotted against the life of a Christian merchant and was ruled guilty. As punishment, his wealth was confiscated and he was forced to convert. The irony is that, had his trial been held today, Shylock would have been found not guilty. Consider the evidence. Those who witnessed the trial in its thousands of reenactments saw an angry and obsessed Jew sharpening his knife. Was it for the purpose of cutting a "pound of flesh" from the Christian who Shylock believed helped his daughter, who robbed him and fled with a Christian? What other purpose could Shylock have had in mind? To sort this out, consider Shylock's character. He is a thrifty business man, for that is what a moneylender is -- the equivalent of today's banker. Moreover, in the the earlier scenes of the play we saw a benign Shylock giving a FREE LOAN to the Christian as a gesture of peace. The famous "pound of flesh" clause in the loan was presented AS A JEST. It turns sour later on when Shylock felt himself wronged and the Christian merchant defaulted on his loan through a fantastic run of bad luck. So much for premeditation, unless Shylock controlled the winds and the seas on which the merchant's ships traveled. So what was Shylock about in the courtroom? More than fifty years ago, Yiddish actors, Jacob Adler and Abraham Morevski, recognized that the great Shakespeare could not have consistently envisioned Shylock as a vicious killer. Apropos, they played the courtroom scene as a "serious jest" in which Shylock meant only to throw a scare into the merchant, to humble him so that he would beg for forgiveness in public from the Jew he had wronged -- an interpretation AMPLY SUPPORTED BY THE TEXT. For example Shylock tells Tubal, his Jewish friend concerning the merchant, "I'll plague him, I'll torture him...." He did not say, "I'll kill him." Later, during the trial, when a friend of the merchant rants at Shylock, "Can no prayers pierce thy heart?", Shylock counters, "None that thou hast wit enough to make." As actor Morevski noted, this was Shylock's way of hinting that he ________________________________________________________________________ 2 of 3 would be open to an appeal for mercy from the merchant himself. But no such appeal pierces Christian hearts as the judge, who was not impartial -- she was Portia in disguise, the wife of the merchant's best friend -- pulls the curtain on the trial before Shylock could follow through on such a plan. While in real life an opposite scenario from the same facts used to convict would and has been sufficient to bring about a reversal of fortune, critics have refused to accept the interpretation of a good Shylock. They do so since it would too starkly conflict with the accepted story line of a Portia of Christian grace, pitted against Shylock who demanded Jewish justice. For what on earth could Shakespeare have had in mind if suddenly two GOOD leading characters faced off? It's an impossible dramatic situation. That is, unless, just as Shylock was misjudged, we have also misjudged Portia, and as Bassanio, who later marries her, declares, "Portia's counterfeit." To be sure, Bassanio says this of her portrait and seems to mean that the picture doesn't do her justice. But the line could also mean that Portia IS counterfeit (Portia's counterfeit"). It is significant what Shakespeare tells us through this line. For the action of the play confirms that Portia is IN FACT a counterfeit of the values she preaches. First, while she makes an impassioned plea to Shylock for mercy, she herself demonstrates A LACK OF MERCY and JUSTICE to the Jew. She had masqueraded as an impartial judge and renders to him, not mercy, but harsh punishment. Second, while Portia poses as a dutiful daughter, she does break her vow to her father not to reveal the secret of the "caskets." She had been "forsworn" to marry whichever suitor selected from among three chests -- a gold, a silver, and a lead -- the one which contained her likeness. This capacity for selection was to be the sign of a suitor's worthiness and virtuous ability to see through artifice. Suitor Bassanio seems to be such a worthy. But just as Bassanio later breaks his sacred vow to Portia concerning her ring, she reveals her duplicity by also betraying her vow to her father. She does so by having HER MAID, NERISSA, convey the secret to Bassanio -- for which deed Nerissa gets a "fee," a husband. Shakespeare signals us to search for this scam through an incident in the play in which Portia declares her likeness in spirit to the vow-breaking Bassanio. What is more, the hidden scheme is surprisingly simple when the numerous signposts to it are pointed out. It had gone unnoticed because charm in the person of Portia is deceitful, and no one thought it worth while to look beyond the inconclusive false hint of the song in the garden with its rhymes to the leaden material of the true chest. So why would Shakespeare create a play within a play that brings to light the opposite of what seems to be a conventional Jew baiting story? It is all but unthinkable that a Christian playwright would have resorted to such deep devices to extol a Jew and severely ____________________________________________________________________ 3 of 3 criticize his persecutors. The other explanation, up to now unthinkable, is that Shakespeare is NOT a Christian. And there is a signpost for this explanation, the Shakespeare family name. There is historic evidence that Shakespeare's father, John, was given an inheritance by his father under the name Johannem Shakere. Shakere" is a Hebrew word meaning "false," or "deceptive." Is that not what the Marrano, or secret Jew was, who lived a lie as a Christian? Shakespeare's play, with its underlying play within a play in which the true character of the characters presented are revealed, a theatrical device also used to reveal the hidden in Hamlet, gives us the parallel of the secret life of the Marrano -- the secret life of William Shakespeare. ************************************************************* This is the article THE JEWISH PRESS printed on February 15, 1996. ============================================================= 3/15/95 A PURIM MASQUERADE by David basch It is a common misconception that Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice, is a rank form of anti-Semitism. Therefore, it will be surprising to learn that central to the texture of this play is the Book, or Scroll, of Esther, a story of Jewish triumph. Here it becomes a play within a play, guiding the action and directing our sympathies toward the Jew in the story. In the end, this play shares in the message of its biblical forebear. It is a unique characteristic of the Book of Esther that the role of G-d in events and even G-d's name is hidden. Shakespeare has respected this uniqueness by repeating again and again the motif of hiddenness in his own play. Moreover, since the theme of Esther (and Purim) is reversal of events, "v'nahapoch hu," Shakespeare fittingly provides characters who are opposite to what they appear to be, the "hidden," but real meaning of the play. Thus hidden in Shakespeare's play is Esther herself. For it is offstage "fair" Esther, a woman of valor who feared the L-rd, who contrasts with "fair" Portia and all the women in the play. She serves as the standard against which all others are judged. But more about that later. We immediately see the parallel in the two stories when both women are faced with a marriage lottery. Like the lottery of the beauty contest which makes Esther a Queen and bride of Ahaseurus, Portia too must be won through a "lottery," as she herself calls it. As devised by her father, she must wed the man who solves the riddle of the caskets. A second reference to lottery, or "pur," is used in Esther by the evil Haman to determine the date marked out for Jewish destruction. This too is paralleled in The Merchant of Venice in the trial of Shylock, which is also a lottery in the sense that justice is a chance outcome. For justice is not what his trial was about. Not justice? How is this shown? Did not Shylock attempt to take a pound of flesh from Antonio the Christian in the court? Had he not earlier in the story stated that he hated Antonio "for he is a Christian"? Appropos, Shylock would truly have gotten what he deserved -- the justice that he explicitly called for. The idea that Shakespeare could have conceived of a Jew who would attempt such a heinous crime marks him in many eyes as an anti-Semite, as has been alleged. But can anyone imagine that the greatest dramatist, the friend of the underdog everywhere, could have stooped to such raw prejudice, violating the tenets of his own art that had bound him everywhere else to faithfully render individual character in truth? The allegation calls for serious investigation, for something clearly does not ring true. And when a diligent search is made, new facts emerge. It turns out that Antonio the Christian is a Meshumad, an apostate Jew, revealed through numerous lines and telling phrases. Thus, Shylock, the moneylender, scorns Antonio for lending "for a Christian curtsy" and compares him to a "publican" -- the despised Jewish tax collectors who served the Romans. When it is recognized that Antonio is a former Jew, the lines take on new meaning. Shylock merely hates him for having turned Christian and for trying to win over the gentiles by fawning curtsies ^W something far different from the sinath chinom, the groundless hatred, supposed. While Shylock is called a usurer, it is interesting to note that he grants a free loan to Antonio to "win [Antonio's] love" and as called for by the Torah in lending to a fellow Jew and, incidentally, as the Talmud requires even for a Jew who had converted. Fancy Shakespeare knowing all that? And what of the "pound of flesh" to be taken "from his flesh," the famous devilish penalty Shylock contracted for in case of a default from his loan? Well, if one follows the action, this is prepared in jest, a Jewish in-joke between the two Jews. It is in fact a reference to the talmudic penalty "me'gufo" -- the penalty to be taken "from his flesh," from the sale of the flesh of the ox that gored. Shakespeare shows remarkable knowledge of Jews and talmudic lore in an England that had been barren of Jews for almost two hundred years. There is much, much more in this vein that cannot be presented in a short article. Suffice it for now to say that Jewish triumph comes in two ways: First, while Portia makes an impassioned and world famous plea for mercy -- as did Esther -- calling on Shylock to grant mercy to Antonio -- a mercy Shylock surely intended to grant after the court, as he expected, would have acknowledged that he did have "the right" to his bond, if not the right to actually collect it -- neither Portia nor the other Christians give mercy to the Jew. Instead, Shylock is stripped of all his wealth and on pain of death is pressed to convert. The point of this is that mercy is considered the central value of the religion of the Christians. Yet, they fail to dispense it. It reflects a gross failure in their character and the failure of their cause. Meanwhile, as Edna Krane revealed long ago in an article in Midstream, there is evidence in the play that Shylock did not convert. The court had him sign and held his "deed of gift" of all his wealth to be delivered after his death to his heirs. But in the last scene, Nerissa, Portia's lady in waiting, presents the deed, meaning that Shylock must have been dead. In the context of the story, offstage, he obvious refused the court's offer to save his life by converting, dying a martyr's death for his religion -- the triumph of his cause. Other parallels between the stories abound: In both, the central character is a proud Jew and, as did the Jews of Shushan, who ate at the feast given by Ahaseurus, which according to Midrash brings on their calamity, Shylock too attends a feast given by the gentiles, enabling his daughter to bring on his calamity. Then there are the disguise or masquerade motifs: Esther masquerades as a gentile; Jessica, Shylock's daughter, disguises as a boy during a masquerade -- a touch of Purim -- and Portia disguises as a male judge, introduced with a "scroll." Other similarities are through opposites: Unlike Esther, Jessica, is disloyal to her people; like Esther, Portia plays the part of rescuer, but for the ignoble cause of cruelty to the Jew; and unlike Esther, loyal to her Jewish covenant, Portia betrays her father's covenant, failing to observe its stricture by slyly revealing the riddle of the caskets to the man of her choice -- all unfavorable comparisons to Esther. So why would Shakespeare, living in Christian England, write a play of reversals in which is hidden the story of Esther and Jewish triumph? The answer is that Shakespeare is a Jew masquerading as a gentile wishing to communicate to later ages his supreme faith in the Jewish future. ******* This article is drawn from material in The Hidden Shakespeare by David Basch. The book includes an index and a summary of The Merchant of Venice for those unfamiliar with the play. For a copy, send a $12 check to David Basch at Revelatory Press, P.O. Box 370-577, West Hartford CT 06137-0577.