In 1998 the Royal Shakespeare Company, which has probably played The Merchant of Venice more than any other company, issued a publicity brochure referring to their 1997 production and describing Shylocke as 'the tragic hero of the play'.

They were not the first to do so.

Sir Sydney Lee, in his "Life of Shakespeare", first printed in 1898 and revised in 1915 also described Shylocke as 'the hero of the play'. Sir Sydney, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of all time was a Jew born in London in 1859, who died in 1926. He is also famous for being responsible for the completion of the first issue of the Dictionary of National Biography, succeeding Sir Leslie Stephen, the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, who had taken ill.

Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, Lee was a historian and historicist, that is one who believes in looking at Shakespeare's plays in a historical context. He became a Professor at the University of London, then Dean of the Faculty of Arts and was for 23 years the chairman of the Trustees of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-on-Avon.

He was cremated at Golders Green and his ashes buried at Stratford. Why is Shylocke the hero of the play?

In his biography Lee describes Shylocke - "Shakespeare's Jew, despite his mercenary instincts, is a penetrating and tolerant interpretation of racial characteristics which are degraded by antipathetic environments. Doubtless the popular interest aroused by the trial of February 1594 and the execution in June of the Queen's Jewish physician, Rodrigo Lopez, incited Shakespeare to a subtler study of Jewish character than had been essayed before".

The expression "antipathetic environment" is I think rightly important.

 

Shylocke and his daughter, Iessica, are living in a Christian state where everything is against them.

The authorities are anti-semitic and against them.

The Christian citizens are anti-Semitic and commit criminal offences against Shylocke which go unpunished; in fact some of the criminals, Anthonio and Lorenzo, are rewarded.

Throughout the play Shylocke is the Jew, or the devil, or even the devil incarnate and an atmosphere of religious hatred and persecution pervades the play. Actually I believe that this is intended to refer to the then current persecution of the Catholic faith and not the Jews of England. There was a small number, perhaps 200 Jews in England in Shakespeare's day, but they were not persecuted.

In addition to suffering continuous verbal violence Shylocke has suffered physical violence at the hands of Anthonio who has kicked him, spat on his gabardine and vomited on his beard. Anthonio threatens to do it again and this takes place in some modern productions.

Antonio has also tried to destroy Shylocke's business by lending out money free of interest.

Most of the Christians take part in a robbery at Shylocke's house, when his daughter, Iessica leaves taking Shylocke's money and jewels and gold together with her boyfriend. The play has apparently been devised as a law students' question paper, testing their knowledge of both the criminal and civil law. The trial scene as we shall see goes from one example of judicial malpractice to the next. The play was probably written for performance at one of the Inns of Court. It needs a lawyer's specialist knowledge to understand these aspects of the play and Shakespeare must, I believe, have had the help of either a judge or barrister.

The Inns of Court were quite strongly Catholic in 1596.

Usury was an issue in Shakespeare's day and the law was enacted from one Parliament to the next, usually every 3 years.  Anything over 10% was usurious and irrecoverable at law. Usurers, often Puritans, were not popular. Some were Protestants in high places. So far as I am aware none were Jews. Jews had been expelled from England in 1290, but some were allowed in by Henry VIII, mainly musicians but some Spanish/Portuguese merchants came later. A Jew did lend money to Sir Francis Bacon and called the loan in early. So far as I am aware he was not a usurer.

The idea that Shylocke is a stereotype Jew is a strange one. Most Elizabethans had never seen a Jew. Because plays or books contained Jewish usurers does not make them a stereotype in the eyes of the multitude or even theatre audiences.

Why do Bassanio and Anthonio go to Shylocke, a Jew, who they are persecuting because of his religion, to borrow money at a usurer's rate of interest? The reason is obvious.

Both are bad risks. Anthonio has no security as he is mortgaged up to the hilt.

Bassanio is virtually bankrupt.

They are such bad risks that the non-Jewish moneylenders won't lend to them at all.

Bassanio is desperate to get the money to go to woo Portia, lest in the meantime she marries one of her numerous suitors. Why does Shylocke lend the money? Could he fear further violence?

After all he is an old man.

Or to trick Anthonio into the forfeit? Or both?

Much is made of the fact that Shylocke is a usurer.

Small lenders like Shylocke are often regarded as avaricious, but to-day some of those who lend out sums of money both large and small are called commercial lenders or banks, building societies, finance houses and credit card companies, though they charge high rates of interest and are avaricious in their interest charges and penalties. Some might regard them as thieves

 

Let us look now at what happens in Act IV of the play, the trial scene.

Shylocke has lent 3,000 ducats to Anthonio who has defaulted. Shylocke sues for a forfeiture under the bond, namely a pound of flesh.

The scene heading reads "Enter the duke, the magnificoes, Anthonio, Bassanio, Salario and Gratiano with others." In other words, Anthonio and his gang are in court and the Duke, as ruler and the apparatchiks of state are there but no Shylocke. He has been kept outside the Court room. The Court room is full. The film of the play was correct in showing a full room as the Duke indicates with the words "Make roome and let him stand before our face." The Duke makes plain his sympathy for Anthonio and his detestation of Shylocke. "I am sorry for thee, thou art come to answer a stonie adversary, an inhuman wretch, uncapable of pity, void and empty from any dram of mercy."

This is, of course, grossly improper. Shylocke is out of Court while the Duke talks to Anthonio and the Duke should not talk about the case to him. The Duke is heavily biased in favour of Anthonio and against Shylocke. All these are examples of judicial prejudice and malpractice. In fact the trial scene goes from one type of judicial irregularity to another.

Shakespeare was known for his dislike of the judiciary and probably suffered from aspects of judicial corruption and irregularities himself. In 1596 he was taken to Court for allegedly assaulting a man and bound over.

When Shylocke is admitted to Court, the Duke shows his prejudices in front of everybody.

If that is not putting pressure on the Plaintiff what is? The Duke is, in effect, saying to Shylocke that he has no chance of winning, and tells him not only to give up the forfeiture but part of the principal as well.

But does Shylocke give up? No.

He stands and fights, not simply for himself but for others who are suffering injustice too and this despite being alone and surrounded by his enemies in Court.

He tells the Duke and the Court that if they deny him his rights to his bond and pound of flesh "........ let the danger light upon your charter, and your city's freedom".

Shylocke returns to the subject shortly after.

"If you deny me fie upon your law. There is no force in the decrees of Venice."

In other words if he is deprived of his rights because of his religion, then that is the beginning of the end for the freedom of the city.

The English Catholics lost their civil rights in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and their land.

The decade of the 1590's was one of false imprisonment, torture chambers and the rack and  thumbscrew.

Germany and other anti-semitic European countries went down that road in the 20^th century ending up in the concentration camps in the second World War. Shakespeare was being very prophetic. The plays of Williams Shakespeare printed in  1623 were of an anti-authoritarian flavour on the road to civil war.

Shylocke knows that he cannot win the case. He is the odd man out.

He ends  his speech with:

"So can I give no reason, nor I will not,

More than a lodg'd hate, and a certain loathing

I bear Anthonio, that I follow thus

A losing suit against him. Are you answer'd?"

Shylocke clearly knows he must lose.

He is a Jew in a tyrannical Christian country and the Court is biased against him. Shylocke continues the case despite knowing that he cannot win. The best he can do is to frighten Anthonio.

All the talk of commentators of Shylocke's cruelty to Anthonio and bloodthirstiness does seem misplaced.

Why does he continue? He does so because Shakespeare has put Shylocke's words into his mouth for a purpose. Shakespeare has his own agenda or rather several.

The Duke asks Shylocke "How shalt thou hope for mercy rendering none?" To which Shylocke replies "What judgment shall I dread doing no wrong?" He is after all the Plaintiff and is not on trial, or is he?

 

Shylocke then continues with an attack on the Elizabethan state and society.

 

"You have among you many a purchast slave,

Which like your asses, and your dogs and mules,

You use in abject and in slavish parts,

Because you bought them. Shall I say to you,

Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?

Why sweat they under burdens?

Let their beds

Be made as soft as your: and that their palates

Be seasoned with such viands: you will answer,

The slaves are ours."

The purchased slaves in both England and Venice were black Africans, the first of whom were brought into England in the mid 1550's. Some gained their freedom. At the time when the play was written in 1596/7 there was a vicious campaign to expel the blacks from England. One of the accusations being that in a year of famine, they were eating the scarce food. The crops failed in 1597 and more than 8,000 people starved to death in London. Her Majesty the Queen lent her support to the campaign and authorised the removal of the blacks to be sent back to their homes in Africa. Nothing happened. The campaign continued. An Order in Council was made for them to be deported. Nothing happened.

An Act of Parliament dated 1602 has been found ordering the deportation of the blacks, but Parliament did not meet in 1602 and nothing happened.   In the reign of King James I it was all forgotten. The blacks melted into the general population. One of the wonderful things about Britain is that Parliament can pass a thousand laws but if any are particularly inconvenient or uncommercial, no one bothers.

And what about the asses and dogs and mules?

Well, the asses and mules were Roman Catholics. Shakespeare is alluding to a paragraph in "The Scholemaster" by Roger Ascham, the Queen's tutor, published in 1570. Ascham, who died in 1568, was like his mistress a notorious anti-catholic bigot, his work on how children should be taught race hatred reminds one of Julius Streicher's views on the Jews.

In 1551 Ascham went on a trip to Italy where he spent eight days and wrote of the evils that he found there in "The Scholemaster". The greatest of all the evils and the cause of the others, papistry. The English Catholics who went to Italy to be educated "had so, being mules, and horses before they returned very swine and asses home again". He continued "A marvellous monster which for filthiness of living, for dullness to learning himself, for wiliness in dealing with others, for malice in hurting without cause, should carry once in one body, the belly of a swine, the head of an ass, the brain of a fox and the womb of a wolf.

According to Ascham, there was an Italian saying about such English Catholics "Englese Italianato e un Diablo Incarnato", that is to say, "You remain men in shape and fashion, but become devils in life and condition". More directly, an English Catholic educated in Italy is a devil incarnate. Shylocke is also called the devil incarnate in the play.

Shylocke, by using "The Scholemaster" accuses the Protestant queen and her courtiers who are depicted in The Merchant of Venice of the alleged vices of the Italians and the Italianated English Catholics. Nearly all the characters in the play have been endowed with Italianate names rather than Italian ones. The names of Shakespeare's main male characters in the play all end in eo or io, whereas real Italian names often end in the letters i or e. The women's names all end in the letter a.

The name Gratiano was invented by Shakespeare to identify that character as a caricature of Robert Greene. Greene, a violent and dissolute rival poet, who lived with a sister of a well-known gangster, wrote a deathbed attack on Shakespeare called "A Groatsworth of Wit". He died in 1592 but the Groatsworth was republished in 1596. He made all manner of allegations against Shakespeare which the dramatist deals with in the play. He depicted Greene as the nasty, violent Gratiano who constantly interrupts the trial scene and calls several times for Shylocke to be hanged. The name Gratiano is a rough anagram of 1n (the Elizabethan for one) groat. This is Shakespeare's revenge on Greene or one of them. If Shakespeare didn't like you, he put you into one of his plays and let the audiences abuse you.

To return to Roger Ascham and the play and the words "mules and asses" the Roman Catholics were certainly treated as slaves. They were thrown into jails without trial, yoked to wheels like oxen, lost their lands and their civil rights and could not move more than a few yards from their homes. They could not be executors or take legacies under wills.

It may not have been a holocaust but it was certainly a pogrom.

As to dogs, this was a word which could mean homosexuals. Shylocke appears to use it in this sense in Act I Scene III in his row with his Anthonio and Bassanio. Shylocke in the argument also throws in the word dogge, which means a homosexual prostitute. The row between them in Act I Scene III is the first of the play's several climaxes.

So here at the beginning of the trial scene is the persecuted Jew standing up and fighting for those around him who are also persecuted in England.

The Duke cannot cope with this and threatens to dismiss the Court until Dr. Bellario, who has been summoned to hear the case, arrives.

Dr. Bellario of Padua is the play's main character, Portia, disguised as man. Presumably they could not find any corrupt judges in Venice. Prior to the trial she married Bassanio, whose kinsman Anthonio has borrowed the money to equip Bassanio to go to woo Portia. In the main source story, II Pecorone, Portia's equivalent has gone to Court as Anthonio's barrister. Shakespeare has changed this for his own purposes. Portia is the judge and a corrupt judge too. She has gone to Court to save Anthonio and not to act as an impartial judge. She is not a judge at all, but is masquerading as one. She has no legal qualifications. Nor did Lord Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton, who organised the trial of Mary Queen of Scots. Hatton was the Queen's lover just as Bassanio is Portia's husband. Portia also has personal and financial interests in the case because the money borrowed from Shylocke was used to enable Bassanio to go to woo her and to marry her to avoid bankruptcy and and he is now her husband. If Shylocke is repaid it will be with Portia's money, Bassanio having been a virtual bankrupt.

So was the penniless Earl of Essex who arrived at Court in 1598 and became the queen's lover immediately. His kinsman and homosexual lover, the Earl of Southampton no doubt had the same feelings as Anthonio.

After a short interchange between Portia, the Duke and Shylocke, Portia says "Then must the Jew be merciful".

"On what compulsion must I? Tell me that" asks Shylocke.

Portia then embarks upon the famous Quality of Mercy speech.

  <>
The speech has nothing to do with Venice, it is all about kings and monarchs and sceptres and crowns and majesty.

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth I, was known as Mercy in her Court and called Mercy or Mercilla in Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queen".

In writing the Quality of Mercy speech, Shakespeare took words from two stanzas of the  "Faerie  Queen"  telling  his  readers  all  about  the  Queen  and  her  mercy.

Immediately before he had told his readers "and even to her foes her mercy is multiplied".

It can be seen how Shakespeare used Spenser's words at the centre of the Quality of Mercy speech. Probably he expected his audience or some of them to have remembered the "Faerie Queen" which had only been published in 1596. Shakespeare makes an important change. Whereas Spenser had written that the sceptre in the Queen's hand was "the sacred pledge of peace and clemency", Shakespeare had altered this to "Her sceptre shows the force of temporal power".

Spenser was a scycophantic liar. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I was in the 1590's rarely in the frame of mind for showing clemency. The country had been at war with Spain for over 15 years and there was no sign of peace. Elizabethan trials, particularly treason trials, were for the purpose of pronouncing guilt and sentence of execution, the accused like Shylocke had been effectively found guilty before the trial started. That is what happened to Dr. Lopez, the Queen's Jewish doctor in 1594. That is what happened to Mary Queen of Scots.

Mr. Shylocke is now in serious trouble. It is one thing to row with the Duke. It is another matter to take on the merciless Queen Elizabeth I. At least, however, Shylocke did have the author on his side.

In the turbulent trial scene Mr. Shylocke decides to throw up the case which, of course, he knew all the time he could not win. He tries to leave Court saying "I'll stay no longer question", but Portia promptly stops him leaving the Court and convicts him of a criminal offence, the penalty of which is that he will lose half his goods to the state and the other half to Anthonio and that his life will lie at the mercy of the Duke. The offence can only be committed by aliens. I suspect another reference to the trial of Dr. Lopez.

Shylocke, it will be remembered, has not been charged with any offence or given an opportunity to defend himself or offered legal representation. He has been found guilty without a trial of an offence carrying the death penalty. What happened to Portia's quality of mercy? No wonder the European Convention of Human Rights was so badly needed in England. Shylocke, like Dr. Lopez and Mary Queen of Scots had no chance. Shylocke in order to save his life and some of his property is forced to agree to convert to Christianity. So were the English Catholics. Shylocke is defeated and accepts his fate saying "I am content". His tragedy and that of the Catholics was that they were compelled to give up their life's blood - their religion -which ran through their veins.

In all this partial analysis of the play we must never forget that Shakespeare wrote a comedy, and political satires no matter how serious are intended to be funny. The hilarity would help to mask the play's intent as, would the genuine and intensely patriotic element of the casket scenes attacking the Queen's suitors particularly Philip II of Spain at a time when the country was menaced by armadas in 1596, 1597 and 1598.