Shylock and Jewish Representation Shylock and Jewish Representation Author Laura Huysman Supervising Editor Kate McPherson Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globablink Research Internship

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 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Laura Huysman, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

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 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Editor A person, family, or organization contributing to a resource by revising or elucidating the content, e.g., adding an introduction, notes, or other critical matter. An editor may also prepare a resource for production, publication, or distribution. For major revisions, adaptations, etc., that substantially change the nature and content of the original work, resulting in a new work, see author. LEMDO uses the general term editor only in edition metadata and only to indicate when a person is responsible for editing all parts of an edition. Otherwise, use the more granular terms to describe the precise nature of the editorial role. Supervising Editor An editor who supervises the work of a student editor. Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Race Anti-Semitism Racial Identity Jews Published file. Updated metadata proofed Review of article finished. updated author respStmt. Created File. Michael Best Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

 Leah Hamby Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

 Navarra Houldin Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

 Laura Huysman Laura Huysman

Laura Huysman was a student at Utah Valley University.

 Kate McPherson Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

 LEMDO Team The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors. University of Victoria https://www.uvic.ca/

Shylock, the Jewish antagonist of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, has become a topic of debate for modern audiences of the play, as his depiction and treatment in the play are distinctly anti-Semitic. In early modern England, Christians continued the suspicion and antagonism towards Judaism that flourished in the Middle Ages. Many policies, traditions, and cultural products such as plays and paintings display efforts to belittle, persecute, and criminalize Jewish people. The Merchant of Venice pits Christianity and Judaism against each other; however, which religion is most guilty in the play remains up for debate.

History of The Merchant of Venice

Early productions of this play performed it as a comedy, as is indicated in the 1623 First Folio. Mocking Jews, who were often portrayed in red wigs, was common in early modern England. Shylock’s character may also have frightened or disturbed later audiences, particularly Charles Macklin’s portrayal of him in 1741; it was Macklin who seems to have originated a menancing Shylock, whom literary critic William Hazlitt described as a decrepit old man, bent with age and ugly with mental deformity, grinning with deadly malice, fixed on one unalterable purpose, that of his revenge. Various other portrayals of Shylock evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries, with actor Edmund Kean famously imbuing his villianous Shylock with a level of dignity not seen previously. However, after the Holocaust ended in 1945, sympathetic portrayals of Shylock became the norm. In the 21st century, Shylock (despite his many faults, such as cruel rejection of his daughter) is almost always played in this manner and is humanized through his famous monologue, Hath not a Jew eyes?, in Act 3, Scene 1 of the play.

Summary of The Merchant of Venice

The play begins with Bassanio, a Venetian who is in need of money to court the wealthy and fatherless Portia. Bassanio asks the support of his friend, the merchant Antonio, for collateral for a loan from Shylock, the Jewish moneylender. Shylock agrees on condition that he receive a pound of flesh if Antonio defaults on the loan, an extreme condition based on Shylock’s past abuse by Antonio. Soon, Antonio’s ships are lost at sea and Shylock brings him to court and demands his pound of flesh. But even when Antonio offers to pay back double the loan’s monetary amount instead of the pound of flesh, Shylock refuses. Portia then disguises herself as a man and defends Antonio and Bassanio on technicalities that result in Shylock either losing his life or converting to Christianity and giving over half of his wealth. In order to save his own life, Shylock converts and is never seen again. Portia marries Bassanio, while Shylock’s daughter Jessica, who has fled her father’s home with much of his wealth, marries Lorenzo.

Shylock as the Jewish Stereotype

Shylock’s character represents the stereotypical view early modern England had of Jews: usurious moneylenders with a thirst for vengeance and no mercy. His demand for a pound of flesh as security for his loan and then his refusal to accept even double the return of the loan is an exaggeration of the stereotypical Jewish greed and bloodlust. He is ridiculed, spat on, and tricked in court, and his forced conversion to Christianity was perhaps meant as his happy ending. This anti-Semitism is apparent in the play’s popularity in Nazi Germany, where it was performed in more than 50 productions between 1933 and 1939.

Shylock as the Sympathetic Jew

Shakespeare’s play highlights the Judeophobic culture of the times, and most modern productions depict Shylock as at least partially sympathetic. The main argument revolves around Shylock’s famous monologue that humanizes Jews and asks for compassion: Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villany you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.(3.1.58–72)

This moving monologue stands out from the rest of the play and reveals the cruelty Shylock has suffered at the hands of Christians. Many readers and audience members want to believe that Shakespeare purposefully gave Shylock a voice to ask people to be more sympathetic towards him and other oppressed Jews of the time. Certainly, this passage starkly contrasts with the one-dimensional portrayal of Jews in other early modern plays, such as Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta. Whatever the motivation for creating Shylock as a character who generates conflicting emotions in audiences, most productions leave viewers with questions. Is Shylock a villain or a victim? Are the Christians victorious or exploitive?

Key Print Sources Gross, Kenneth. Shylock is Shakespeare. University of Chicago Press. 2006. McCullough, Christopher. The Shakespeare Handbooks: The Merchant of Venice. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Riga, Frank P. Rethinking Shylock’s Tragedy: Radford’s Critique of Anti-Semitism in <title level="m">The Merchant of Venice. Mythlore, vol. 28, no. 3, Spring-Summer, 2010, pp. 107–127. Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice: Texts and Contexts. Edited by M. Lindsay Kaplan, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002.
Key Online Sources Ambrosino, Brandon. Four Hundred Years Later, Scholars Still Debate Whether Shakespeare’s <title level="m">Merchant of Venice Is Anti-Semitic: Deconstructing What Makes the Bard’s Play so Problematic. Smithsonian, 21 Apr. 2016, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-scholars-still-debate-whether-or-not-shakespeares-merchant-venice-anti-semitic-180958867/. Accessed 12 Oct. 2018. Best, Michael. Shylock and Depictions of Jews. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, University of Victoria, http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/plays/the%20merchant%20of%20venice/mershylock.html. Accessed 10 Oct. 2018. Shylock—A History. Contexts and Themes: The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare’s Globe. https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/learn/schools-and-teachers/secondary-schools/playing-shakespeare-with-deutsche-bank/the-merchant-of-venice-playing-shakespeare/context-and-themes/shylock-a-history/. Accessed 5 Mar. 2023. Virtual Jewish World: Venice, Italy. Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/venice-italy-jewish-history-tour. Accessed 13 Oct. 2018.