Traub notes a reading of Twelfth Night that assumes Olivia to be punished 'comically but unmistakably' for her same-sex passion for Viola. But 'to whom is desire between women funny?' Traub asks (1992b: 93). This was my initial topic: must Shakespeare, for out-groups such as Jews, feminists, lesbians, gays and Blacks, be a way of re-experiencing their marginalization? I have been trying to exemplify elements in a critical practice for dissident readers. Mainstream commentators on the Merchant (whether they intend to or not) tend to confirm the marginalization of same-sex passion. Lesbians and gay men may use the play (1) to think about alternative economies of sex-gender; (2) to think about problematic aspects of our own subcultures. But (the question is always put): Is it Shakespeare? Well, he is said to speak to all sorts and conditions, so if gay men say 'OK, this is how he speaks to us'—that, surely, is our business.

With regard to the first of these uses, the Merchant allows us to explore a social arrangement in which the place of same-sex passion was different from that we are used to. Despite and because of the formal legal situation, I have shown, it appears not to have attracted very much attention; it was partly compatible with marriage, and was partly supported by legitimate institutions of friendship, patronage and service. It is not that Shakespeare was a sexual radical, therefore. Rather, the early modern organization of sex and gender boundaries was different from ours, and the ordinary currency of that culture is replete with erotic interactions that strike strange chords today. Shakespeare may speak with distinct force to gay men and lesbians, simply because he didn't think he had to sort out sexuality in modern terms. For approximately the same reasons, these plays may stimulate radical ideas about race, nation, gender and class.

As for using The Merchant as a way of addressing problems in gay subculture, the bonds of class, age, gender and race exhibited in the play have distinct resonances for us. The traffic in boys may help us to think about power structures in our class and generational interactions. And while an obvious perspective on the play is resentment at Portia's manipulation of Antonio and Bassanio, we may bear in mind that Portia too is oppressed in hetero-patriarchy, and try to work towards a sex-gender regime in which women and men would not be bound to compete.⁹ Above all, plainly, Antonio is the character most hostile to Shylock. It is he who has spat on him, spurned him and called him dog, and he means to do it again (I. iii. 121-6). At the trial it is he who imposes the most offensive requirement—that Shylock convert to Christianity (V. i. 382-3). Seymour Kleinberg connects Antonio's racism to his sexuality:

Antonio hates Shylock not because he is a more fervent Christian than others, but because he recognizes his own alter ego in this despised Jew who, because he is a heretic, can never belong to the state. .. . He hates himself in Shylock: the homosexual self that Antonio has come to identify symbolically as the Jew.

(Kleinberg 1985: 120)¹⁰

Gay people today are no more immune to racism than other people, and transferring our stigma onto others is one of the modes of self-oppression that tempts any subordinated group. And what if one were Jewish, and/or Black, as well as gay? One text through which these issues circulate in our culture is The Merchant of Venice, and it is one place where we may address them.

Notes

¹ Lister 1994; see Sinfield 1994a: 1-8, 19-20.

² For a reply to her critics by McLuskie, see McLuskie 1980: 224-9, and for further comment see Dollimore 1990.

³ Another way is blatantly reworking the authoritative text so that it is forced to yield, against the grain, explicitly oppositional kinds of understanding; see Sinfield 1992: 16-24, 290-302.

⁴ See also Jonson 1995: III. iv. 277-8, V. iii. 580-1. On boys in theatre, see Jardine 1983: ch. 1.

⁵ See Bray 1982: 38-42, 70-80; Smith 1991: 47-52.

⁶ See Jardine 1992; Zimmerman 1992.

⁷ See Sinfield 1994b: 25-37; and Sinfield 1992: 127-42 (this is an extension of the discussion of Henry V published first in Drakakis 1985), and 237-8 (on Tamburlaine).

⁸ Bray 1982; Trumbach 1987, 1989; Sinfield 1994b: 33-42.

⁹ See the suggestive remarks in Goldberg 1992: 142, 273-4.

¹⁰ Anti-semitism and homophobia are linked by Fiedler 1974: ch. 2, and by Mayer 1982: 278-85.

Source: "How to Read The Merchant of Venice Without Being Heterosexist," in Alternative Shakespeares, Vol. 2, edited by Terence Hawkes, Routledge, 1996, pp. 122-39.