One of the most serious blots on the reputation of William Shakespeare has been the allegation that his play, The Merchant of Venice, is an expression of anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, too many persons without knowledge have taken this allegation as a truth when ample evidence to the contrary is available.

Shakespeare was one of the deepest students of human nature and was a universal moral leader. That he would stoop to a primitive anti-Semitism runs opposite to his observed inclusiveness and to the depth of his commitment to justice, as expressed in all his other works. While the charge is made so often often that it has taken on the semblance of truth, unless it can actually be proved conclusively, which it cannot, the charge remains a grievous slander of the poet of the ages.

That there is another side to the story is revealed in the article that follows, which has been modified and adapted from its original version. It informs that, whatever, may be true of William Shakespeare, the idea that he wrote an anti-Semitic play must be forever laid to rest. When carefully studied, the evidence reveals that even with regard to the avoidence of this pitfall of bias, to which bias others may have succumbed, in this the great poet did not fail.

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The trial of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender, one of the more famous trials, of course, never happened. It comprised a portion of Act IV of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, written sometime around 1594.

Shylock was alleged to have plotted against the life of a Christian merchant and was ruled guilty. As punishment, his wealth was confiscated and he was forced to convert. The irony is that, had his trial been held today, Shylock would have been found "not guilty."

Consider the evidence. Those who witnessed the trial in its thousands of reenactments saw what seemed like an angry and obsessed Jew sharpening his knife. Was it for the purpose of cutting a "pound of flesh" from the merchant, who Shylock had believed cut from him his own "flesh and blood" by helping his daughter rob him and flee with a Christian? But what other purpose could Shylock have had in mind?

TO SORT THIS OUT, consider Shylock's character. He is a thrifty businessman, for that is what a moneylender is -- the equivalent of today's banker. Moreover, in the earlier scenes of the play he was seen as a benign and engaging man who gave a FREE LOAN to the Christian merchant as a gesture of peace. The famous "bond of flesh" clause in the loan was originally presented AS A JEST. The amity only turns sour later when Shylock felt himself grievously wronged by the merchant and wanted to strike back at him. It is at that point that, through an unlikely run of bad luck, the merchant is forced to default on his loan, only then giving a vindictive Shylock a chance to invoke his grisly penalty. So much for the Jew's alleged premeditation to harm the merchant, hypothesized unreasonably by some commentators. That could only be true if Shylock anticipated that he would become bereft of his daughter and could, as well, control the raging winds and seas that brought the merchant to ruin and into his clutches -- all most improbable.

But if Shylock was not seeking an understandable but extreme, bloody vengeance, what otherwise was he about in the courtroom? An answer to this riddle and Shakespeare's intention was given more than sixty years ago. At that time, Yiddish actor Abraham Morevski had recognized that the great poet could not have consistently envisioned Shylock as both a seeker of peace and a vicious killer. Apropos, Morevski played the courtroom scene as a "serious jest" in which Shylock meant only to throw a scare into the merchant, to humble him, so that the merchant would beg for forgiveness in public from the Jew he had wronged -- an interpretation amply supported by Shakespeare's text.

For example, an angered Shylock tells Tubal, his Jewish friend concerning his plans for the merchant, "I'll plague him, I'll torture him...." Notably, he did not say, "I'll kill him." Later, during the trial, when a friend of the merchant rants at Shylock, "Can no prayers pierce thy heart?", Shylock retorts, "None that thou hast wit enough to make." Actor Morevski found this line to be key in revealing what was in Shylock's mind, since it implies that, while Shylock would not accept an appeal from the merchant's friend, a crass ruffian in the story, Shylock was indeed open to an appeal for mercy from the merchant himself.

However, no such mercy pierces the merchant's heart or that of his friends in the play. Instead, the judge, who was clearly not impartial -- she was Portia in disguise, the wife of the merchant's best friend -- suddenly pulls the curtain on the trial, convicting Shylock before Shylock could follow through on such a plan, administering instead a harsh sentence ecstatically agreeable to all Shylock's foes.

THIS is a scenario that fits all the facts presented in Shakespeare's play and could remove the onus placed on Shylock. For if a man is on trial and two divergent interpretations can be equally placed on his actions, should not simple justice demand that the more benign of the two be accepted?

NO REVERSAL OF FORTUNE

While in real life an opposite scenario from the same facts used to convict a defendant would and has been sufficient to exculpate him and bring about a reversal of fortune, many commentator's have refused to accept the interpretation of a hapless Shylock involved in an ill considered, self-defeating charade. They do so since it would too starkly conflict with the accepted story line of a morally exemplary Portia pitted against the alien Shylock, who challenged the justice of Venice. Otherwise, what on earth could Shakespeare have had in mind if suddenly two VIRTUOUS leading characters faced off -- a jesting, benign Shylock and a just Portia? It is an impossible dramatic situation. It is dramatically impossible for Shylock to be seen in a good light, unless, just as Shylock was misjudged, also misjudged was the character of Portia, as is hinted at in the story. We find a clue for this reading when Bassanio, who later marries Portia, declares, "Portia's counterfeit."

To be sure, Bassanio declares this of her portrait and seems to mean that the painting doesn't do her justice. But, interestingly, the very same line could also be read as stating "Portia IS counterfeit." The line turns out to be highly significant, since there is confirmation in the action of the play that Portia is, in fact, a counterfeit of the virtues she preaches. First, while she makes an impassioned plea to Shylock to render mercy to the merchant, she herself demonstrates A LACK OF MERCY and JUSTICE to the Jew. She had masqueraded as an impartial judge and rendered to Shylock, not mercy, but harsh punishment.

Second, while Portia poses as a dutiful daughter, she does break her vow to her father not to reveal the secret of the "caskets." She had been "forsworn" to marry whichever suitor selected from among three chests -- a gold, a silver, and a lead -- the one which contained her likeness. This capacity for selection was to be the sign of a suitor's worthiness and virtuous ability to see through artifice. Suitor Bassanio superficially appears to be such a worthy.

But, just as Bassanio later breaks his sacred vow to Portia concerning her ring, Portia reveals her duplicity by also betraying her vow to her father. She does so by having her maid, Nerissa, convey the secret to Bassanio -- for which deed Nerissa gets a husband as a "fee." Bassanio directly hints at this deed when he declares to Portia, "O happy torment, when my torturer Doth teach me answers for deliverance!" Moreover, Shakespeare further signals his audience to expect this scam through numerous lines, such as one in which Portia declares her likeness in spirit to the vow-breaking Bassanio. (See The Hidden Shakespeare for full details.)

The hidden scheme turns out to be surprisingly simple when the many signposts to it are pointed out. It had gone unnoticed because no one thought it worthwhile to look beyond the surface glitter of a vivacious Portia to find the many hints of what the poet of the ages had actually crafted -- a play in which Shylock's hypocritical opponents, one and all, while seeming to affirm the most high sounding ideals, fail the test of their virtue in action.

IN FACT, such telltale details have not gone unnoticed by some earlier Shakespearean commentators: British scholar, John Lyon, takes note of Shakespeare's caustic portrayal of Jessica, Shylock's disloyal daughter, pointing out her plundering of her father and the strong insinuation that she bore false witness against him. A. D. Moody sees this play as one which "does not celebrate Christian virtues so much as expose their absence." And Harold Goddard sees in Shylock "a grain of spiritual gold."

CONCLUSIONS

SO WHY WOULD Shakespeare create a play within a play that brings to light the opposite of what seems to be a conventional Jew-baiting story? One undoubted reason is that Shakespeare is always found to be the champion of the underdog and the enemy of hypocrisy and injustice. What his society during his lifetime was not ready to acknowledge and would have punished in recalcitrants to its narrow vision was fully recognized by the inclusiveness of the poet's embrace in a subtle criticism of his milieu, awaiting a more enlightened age to recognize it.

Another reason is the strong implication that the poet had a sympathetic connection to the Jewish people, some of whom, hidden in cosmopolitan London, he may have even known. One can infer this from the abundant presence of allusions to Judaic lore easily seen by those familiar with this material. For example, when Shylock is portrayed as swearing by the "holy Sabbath," the poet seems to be fully aware that in Jewish lore the Sabbath is colloquially regarded as "the witness" -- the witness that G-d created heaven and earth. This is one of many such Judaic allusions that dot Shakespeare's plays, with which he seems to be very much familiar. It has even led to the suggestion that the poet himself may have been a descendent of Jews.

Taken cumulatively, the series of such observations becomes telltale indeed and instructs that a conventional anti-Shylock interpretation of the play will no longer suffice. It is time for a rereading of Shakespeare's play and a new exploration of the influences on its playwright. It is to this new exploration that the modern reader is invited.

For more details on the analysis of The Merchant of Venice, see David Basch's, THE HIDDEN SHAKESPEARE and SHAKESPEARE'S JUDAICA AND DEVICES, available from Revelatory Press, P.O.Box 370-577, West Hartford, CT 06137-0577. More information can be obtained directly from the author at his web page at http://www.ziplink.net/~entropy/