COMMENTS FROM THE CRITICS
Anne Barton,Riverside Shakespeare
- Jews were banished from England since time of Edward III, nearly three centuries by the time Shakespeare wrote this play. In popular imagination, Jews were figured as mythical beasts, as strange evil beings who had crucified Christ and who would persevere in anti-Christian activities. There were some Jews in Shakespeare’s London, but they had to keep secret their race andreligion.
- Barabas, in Christopher Marlowe’sJew of Maltais a figure of fantastic evil. By contrast, “Shylock is a closely observed humanbeing.”
- Shylock was an attractive role for actors, who played the character in a variety of ways: as a devil incarnate, a comic villain, or as a sentimentalized noblefather.
- The antipathy between Shylock and citizens of Venice is not simply racial nor simply a conflict between merchant and usurer. Shylock is an alien in a society whose religion, pleasures, aims, and attitudes are radically different from hisown.
