Introduction: Is Shylock Jewish?

The introductory chapter of the book begins by acknowledging the long, painful historical legacy associated with Shakespeare’s Shylock, and his character’s deep imbrication with persistent and invidious anti-Semitic stereotypes. Rather than attempting to bypass that legacy, the introduction outlines how the book will delve even deeper into the primary designation the play assigns to Shylock and Jessica -- “Jew,” asking whether Shakespeare endows his Jewish characters with a source of ethical deliberation and moral agency that is more than a mere amalgam of historical anti-Semitisms. If Shylock and Jessica are Jewish in a way that transcends invidious stereotypes, what is it that makes them recognizably so? The introductory chapter outlines the central argument of the book: Merchant’s Jewish characters are constituted via distinctively Jewish ways of reading and interpreting foundational stories, epitomized in the play through Shylock’s citation of the parable of the parti-coloured lambs as he explicates his lending practices to Antonio. The Merchant of Venice deploys Judeo-Christian biblical inter-texts in ways that deliberately call attention to their divergent interpretive traditions, producing a nuanced and challenging point of entry for audiences, who must decide whether and to what degree they are willing to interpret Shylock’s utterances through the lens of his distinctive way of seeing and evaluating the world rather than evaluating him through the eyes of his persecutors.