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A commonplace slur against Jews is that they would way-lay Christians, especially children, kill them, and sometimes eat their flesh. The play offers a suggestive allusion to such stories if we literalize Shylock's speech. I've often thought it odd that Christians, who believe that they eat the body of Christ in the mass, should be so fond of spreading stories about Jewish cannibalism; it almost seems that they project their worst fears about themselves onto the hated Jewish other.

I think your comments are interesting re: the mass, but remember that only Catholics believe that they literally eat the body of Christ. Protestants believe that the bread and the wine *represent* or *contain the spirit of*, but not *literally become* the body and blood. Your point, though, still sort of sounds.  

Well, this is the big question. Critics have read it both ways, and over the centuries (particularly since Trevor Nunn's 2000 production for the National Theatre in London) the play has come to be reclaimed as not necessarily anti-semitic.

The interpretative possibilities are, very briefly speaking, as follows

1) Anti-semitic. Shylock represents all Jews, and he tries to wrong the nice and decent Christians. He gets what he deserves.

2) Pro-jewish. Shylock is a wronged man who behaves understandably when outrageously treated by a vulgar, yobbish group of Christians. The end of the play is his tragedy.

and, my personal choice

3) Balanced. The play, it seems to me, presents a series of very bad and unpleasant Christians (who are, against the teaching of the Bible, absolutely obsessed with money, just as Shylock is). Shylock's behaviour is partially justifiable in the racism he endures: but the play makes clear that he is a bad man, and a bad Jew. Tubal, his fellow Jew, can be used in production to distance Shylock's growing desire for vengeance from Judaism as a whole.

You can use the ambiguous text of the play to justify any of the three interpretations.