Anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice

Up until this point in my English major career, strangely enough I'd never been exposed to "The Merchant of Venice". I follow the film industry pretty closely and know that there was a film version of Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons made a few years back that I heard garnered pretty decent reviews. Other than that, I really didn't know what to expect going into it and I was truly surprised by the content. I had no idea that even back in the days of Shakespeare there was this rampant Antisemitism. At first it took me by surprise, that the language used to describe Shylock by Antonio was so hateful. It is not apparent to the audience/reader that Shylock has done anything to Antonio personally to make him hate him, but rather his overall character as a Jewish moneylender gives way to prejudice and hatred. Antonio just seems to be going with the public's opinion of Shylock before judging him for himself. I don't think I've read anything by Shakespeare where there is such an outright prejudice at the forefront of the play. There's always been animosity and hatred and betrayal between his characters, but I never thought it would be directed at a group of people who are truly looked down upon in society. The Shakespeare I imagined in my head was a forward thinking man who was accepting of cultures and religions and was too intelligent to take part in petty societal prejudice's, and I don't know enough to make a judgment on whether Shakespeare actually was Antisemitic, but it's pretty interesting that he used such a heated social issue of the time as a major theme in his play. I also think it's been almost too long since I've been in a history class that I forgot that there has always been this lingering prejudice towards the Jewish community, so I think that was one reason I was taken aback. Also I haven't much other literature from this time period that deals with such outright prejudice. I did a little more research to see if this animosity towards the Jewish community was really all that popular during this time, and found Christopher Marlowe's play "The Jew of Malta" which is about another seemingly evil Jewish character. I'll be interested to learn more about Shakespeare's personal views on the Jewish community. For now I just think it was a really interesting turn on his part to write about just a heavy social subject, and make that such an important theme in one of his works.