All About Jewish Theatre - Shylock on Appeal

David Basch was trained as an architect and city planner (MCP from
Harvard), working for many years of his career as an architect-planner
on the staff of the University of Connecticut. Along the way, as a
sideline, Basch wrote a regular column on architecture for the Hartford
Courant (the state's largest newspaper).

While Basch had an early interest in Shakespeare's plays, this became
more intense after having read articles by Neil Hirschson in Midstream
Magazine, a Zionist monthly, which raised the issue of a Jewish
Shakespeare. Using his background as a Yeshivah student, Basch was able
to build on Hirschson's insights and to discern many traces of Talmudic
and other Judaic elements in Shakespeare's work, not observed by others
before. After retirement, Basch pursued this track in detail, writing
to date three books on this subject: The Hidden Shakespeare (1994)
Shakespeare's Judaica and Deviices (1996), and The Shakespeare Codes (2000). e-mail : entropy@ziplink.net web: http://www.ziplink.net/~entropy/

The trial of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender, one of the more
famous trials, of course, never happened. It comprised a portion
of Act IV of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice,
written sometime around 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 what seemed like an angry and
obsessed Jew sharpening his knife. Was it for the purpose of
cutting a "pound of flesh" from the merchant, who Shylock had
believed cut from him his own "flesh and blood" by helping his
daughter rob him and flee with a Christian? But what other
purpose could Shylock have had in mind?

TO SORT THIS OUT, consider Shylock's character. He is a thrifty
businessman, for that is what a moneylender is -- the equivalent
of today's banker. (Incidentally, how many persons do you know
that have ever been mugged by a banker?) Moreover, in the earlier
scenes of the play he was seen as a benign and engaging man who
gave a FREE LOAN to the Christian merchant as a gesture of peace.
The famous "bond of flesh" clause in the loan was originally
presented AS A JEST. The amity only turns sour later when Shylock
felt himself grievously wronged by the merchant and wanted to
strike back at him. It is at that point that, through an unlikely
run of bad luck, the merchant is forced to default on his loan,
only then giving a vindictive Shylock a chance to invoke his
grisly penalty. So much for the Jew's alleged premeditation to
harm the merchant from the first, hypothesized unreasonably by some
commentators, for that could only be true if Shylock anticipated
that he would later become bereft of his daughter and could, as well,
control the raging winds and seas that brought the merchant to
ruin and into his clutches -- all most improbable.

But if Shylock was not seeking an understandable but extreme,
bloody vengeance, what otherwise was he about in the courtroom?
An answer to this riddle and Shakespeare's intention was given
more than sixty years ago. At that time, Yiddish actor Abraham
Morevski had recognized that the great poet could not have
consistently envisioned Shylock as both a seeker of peace and a
vicious killer. Apropos, Morevski 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 the merchant would beg for
forgiveness in public from the Jew he had wronged -- an
interpretation amply supported by Shakespeare's text.

For example, an angered Shylock tells Tubal, his Jewish friend
concerning his plans for the merchant, "I'll plague him, I'll
torture him...." Notably, 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 retorts, "None that
thou hast wit enough to make." Actor Morevski found this line to
be key in revealing what was in Shylock's mind, since it implies
that, while Shylock would not accept an appeal from the
merchant's friend, a crass ruffian in the story, Shylock was
indeed open to an appeal for mercy from the merchant himself.

However, no such mercy pierces the merchant's heart or that of
his friends in the play. Instead, the judge, who was clearly not
impartial -- she was Portia in disguise, the wife of the
merchant's best friend -- suddenly pulls the curtain on the
trial, convicting Shylock before Shylock could follow through on
such a plan, administering instead a harsh sentence ecstatically
agreeable to all Shylock's foes.

THIS is a scenario that fits all the facts presented in
Shakespeare's play and could remove the onus placed on Shylock.
For if a man is on trial and two divergent interpretations can be
equally placed on his actions, should not simple justice demand
that the more benign of the two be accepted?

NO REVERSAL OF FORTUNE

While in real life an opposite scenario from the same facts used
to convict a defendant would and has been sufficient to exculpate
him and bring about a reversal of fortune, many commentator's
have refused to accept the interpretation of a hapless Shylock
involved in an ill considered, self-defeating charade. They do so
since it would too starkly conflict with the accepted story line
of a morally exemplary Portia pitted against the alien Shylock,
who challenged the justice of Venice. Otherwise, what on earth
could Shakespeare have had in mind if suddenly two VIRTUOUS
leading characters faced off -- a jesting, benign Shylock and a
just Portia? It is an impossible dramatic situation. It is
dramatically impossible for Shylock to be seen in a good light,
unless, just as Shylock was misjudged, also misjudged was the
character of Portia, as is hinted at in the story. We find a clue
for this reading when Bassanio, who later marries Portia,
declares, "Portia's counterfeit."

To be sure, Bassanio declares this of her portrait and seems to
mean that the painting doesn't do her justice. But,
interestingly, the very same line could also be read as stating
"Portia IS counterfeit." The line turns out to be highly
significant, since there is confirmation in the action of the
play that Portia is, in fact, a counterfeit of the virtues she
preaches. First, while she makes an impassioned plea to Shylock
to render mercy to the merchant, she herself demonstrates A LACK
OF MERCY and JUSTICE to the Jew. She had masqueraded as an
impartial judge and rendered to Shylock, 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 superficially appears to be
such a worthy.

But, just as Bassanio later breaks his sacred vow to Portia
concerning her ring, Portia 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 husband as a "fee." Bassanio directly hints at this deed
when he declares to Portia, "O happy torment, when my torturer
Doth teach me answers for deliverance!" Moreover, Shakespeare
further signals his audience to expect this scam through numerous
lines, such as one in which Portia declares her likeness in
spirit to the vow-breaking Bassanio. (See The Hidden Shakespeare
for full details.)

The hidden scheme turns out to be surprisingly simple when the
many signposts to it are pointed out. It had gone unnoticed
because no one thought it worthwhile to look beyond the surface
glitter of a vivacious Portia to find the many hints of what the
poet of the ages had actually crafted -- a play in which
Shylock's hypocritical opponents, one and all, while seeming to
affirm the most high sounding ideals, fail the test of their
virtue in action.

IN FACT, such telltale details have not gone unnoticed by some
earlier Shakespearean commentators: British scholar, John Lyon,
takes note of Shakespeare's caustic portrayal of Jessica,
Shylock's disloyal daughter, pointing out her plundering of her
father and the strong insinuation that she bore false witness
against him. A. D. Moody sees this play as one which "does not
celebrate Christian virtues so much as expose their absence." And
Harold Goddard sees in Shylock "a grain of spiritual gold."

CONCLUSIONS

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? One undoubted reason is that Shakespeare is
always found to be the champion of the underdog and the enemy of
hypocrisy and injustice. What his society during his lifetime was
not ready to acknowledge and would have punished in recalcitrants
to its narrow vision was fully recognized by the inclusiveness of
the poet's embrace in a subtle criticism of his milieu, awaiting
a more enlightened age to recognize it.

Another reason is the strong implication that the poet had a
sympathetic connection to the Jewish people, some of whom, hidden
in cosmopolitan London, he may have even known. One can infer
this from the abundant presence of allusions to Judaic lore
easily seen by those familiar with this material. For example,
when Shylock is portrayed as swearing by the "holy Sabbath," the
poet seems to be fully aware that in Jewish lore the Sabbath is
colloquially regarded as "the witness" -- the witness that G-d
created heaven and earth. This is one of many such Judaic
allusions that dot Shakespeare's plays, with which he seems to be
very much familiar. It has even led to the suggestion that the
poet himself may have been a descendent of Jews.

Taken cumulatively, the series of such observations becomes
telltale indeed and instructs that a conventional anti-Shylock
interpretation of the play will no longer suffice. It is time for
a rereading of Shakespeare's play and a new exploration of the
influences on its playwright. It is to this new exploration that
the modern reader is invited.

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A full treatment of this subject matter is to be found
in David Basch's book, The Hidden Shakespeare, in
which what seems conventionally "certain" is given new
meaning consistent with the true moral stature of the poet.

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