Anti-Semitic Stereotypes in The Merchant of Venice

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice really puts into perspective how Elizabethan England viewed the Jewish people. The very presence of a Jew within the play is clearly meant to be distinctive, made obvious by the fact that the alternate title for the play is The Jew of Venice. The character of Shylock is immediately introduced in clear, uncompromising terms that obviously adhere to a pre-set stereotype commonly associated with Jews at the time. He is presented as a miser, a surly and suspicious money-pinching man obsessed with material goods and wealth—a damning view on the part of Christians, who view this as being tied down to the sins of the material world, forsaking spiritual well-being and heavenly redemption in favor of the vices of sinful, worldly pleasures. Shylock is also represented as being eternally sullen and resentful of all the Christians he comes across, regardless of history or demeanor, accusing them of judging him as a filthy, un-Godly man due to his success in trade and personal interest in maintaining his security and wealth; he maintains that they are continually looking down upon his people unless they require money, at which point they fall upon him and his like wolves. All the while, however, his arguments and resentment directed towards the Christian characters only serve to present them as those in the right and moral end of the arrangement, being accused of ill-manners and depravity despite their utmost efforts at good manners and polite behavior, thus reducing Shylock’s complaints to rank hypocrisy. All this serves to present a striking contrast between those in the “right”—the Christian people of Venice and, by extension, the audience as well—and those in the “wrong”—the Jewish people as seen around the world, thus further ingraining the impressions of the English people.

The all-around character of Shylock is obviously exaggerated, feeding into widely-held stereotypes and prejudices to create a character purely designed to be the play’s ‘fool.’ His hugely exaggerated and apparently typical reactions and behaviors are a clear invitation to comedy, a wide-scale parody inviting the mockery of the audience at large; and his greedy, materialistic values are foreshadowed as being threatening towards Antonio, the main sympathetic character of the play. This makes him an exceedingly easy and satisfying character for the audience to rail against, free of any redeeming qualities that might otherwise provoke some kind of sympathy on behalf of the spectators. In short, he is a true caricature that Shakespeare utilizes in full, to add an element of prejudiced comedy as well as a villain who, rather being presented as dangerous and dastardly, is far too easy to mock.