The Merchant of Venice (Vol. 77) - Thomas Luxon (essay date January 1999)
Thomas Luxon (essay date January 1999)
SOURCE: Luxon, Thomas H. “A Second Daniel: The Jew and the ‘True Jew’ in The Merchant of Venice.” Early Modern Literary Studies 4, no. 3 (January 1999): 3.1-37.
[In the following essay, Luxon investigates the play's treatment of Jews within the context of late Elizabethan society's attitudes toward Jewishness as both race and religion.]
Two recent studies of Shakespeare and early modern attitudes towards Jews come to remarkably different conclusions on the question of whether or not The Merchant of Venice is an anti-Jewish play.1 James Shapiro's richly historical Shakespeare and the Jews offers fascinating evidence about the scope and complexity of anti-Jewish attitudes embedded in the “cultural moment” of Shakespeare's play (Shapiro 10), but he shies away from directly accusing either playwright or play of promoting or trading on anti-semitism, claiming...
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