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These pages address a question that invariably arises in discussions of The Merchant of Venice: a question of anti-semitism. Specifically, these pages investigate whether there are anti-semitic elements in The Merchant of Venice and, more specifically, whether Shylock is the embodiment or expression of some anti-semitic attitude that is pervasive in Elizabethan society.

1) The first argues that The Merchant of Venice endorses anti-semitism and, by extension, that Shakespeare is an anti-semite because his work reflects the anti-semitism that was part of Elizabethan culture.

• This first view is well represented by the following excerpt from literary criticism: "[Shakespeare] planned a Merchant of Venice to let the Jew dog have it, . . . The text itself preserves enough evidence of the author's fixed intent to exhibit his Shylock as an inhuman scoundrel, whose diabolical cunning is bent on gratifying a satanic lust for Christian flesh, the Jew, in fact, who was the ogre of Medieval story and the cur to be exacerbated by all honest men" (Charleton 7). 

2) The second argues that The Merchant of Venice subverts anti-semitism and, by extension, that Shakespeare is a great humanist because his work resists or transcends the anti-semitism that was part of Elizabethan culture.

• This second view usually argues that although The Merchant of Venice may portray anti-semitic characters and attitudes, the play effectively criticizes those attitudes. Part of the way in which Shakespeare accomplishes this critique is by emphasizing Shylock's character as a man rather than his identity as a Jew. So part of what the play reveals is how some Christians are bad men, as are some Jews. But the genius of The Merchant of Venice is that it allows us see behind the patina of religious identity that defines Shylock the Jew; beyond that Shakespeare allows us to glimpse Shylock the man who hates and bleeds as does any Christian.