Between 19, there were more than 50 productions performed there. The fact that The Merchant of Venice was a favorite of Nazi Germany certainly lends credence to the charge of anti-Semitism. After being outsmarted by the gentiles, Shylock is forced to convert to Christianity- at which point, he simply disappears from the play, never to be heard of again. His daughter runs away with a Christian and abandons her Jewish heritage. Shylock plays the stereotypical greedy Jew, who is spat upon by his Christian enemies, and constantly insulted by them. It doesn’t take a literary genius like Bloom to spot the play’s anti-Jewish elements. The only way he can keep half his estate is by converting to Christianity. When Shylock realizes he’s been had, it’s too late: He is charged with conspiring against a Venetian citizen, and therefore his fortune is seized. When Antonio defaults, Portia, disguised as a man, defends him in court, and ultimately bests Shylock with hair-splitting logic: His oath entitles him to a pound of the Antonio’s flesh, she notes, but not his blood, making any attempt at collecting the fee without killing Antonio, a Christian, impossible. Antonio borrows the money for his friend Bassanio, who needs it to court the wealthy Portia.

Published in 1596, The Merchant of Venice tells the story of Shylock, a Jew, who lends money to Antonio on the condition that he get to cut off a pound of Antonio’s flesh if he defaults on the loan. In spite of his “ Bardolatry,” Bloom admitted elsewhere that he’s pained to think the play has done “real harm … to the Jews for some four centuries now.” 'One would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to recognise that Shakespeare's grand, equivocal comedy The Merchant of Venice is nevertheless a profoundly anti-semitic work,” wrote literary critic Harold Bloom in his 1998 book Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human. The Merchant of Venice, with its celebrated and moving passages, remains one of Shakespeare’s most beautiful plays.ĭepending on whom you ask, it also remains one of his most repulsive.

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