Stage Depictions of Shylock

This presents an overview--with graphics--of various historical stage depictions of Shylock from the 16^th Century to the early 20^th Century. What these stage depictions reveal is that the character of Shylock has been presented along a continuum from hostility and hatred to sympathy and respect. The variance in these depictions does little to resolve the issue of how anti-semitism relates to Shakespeare's text. But this variance does reveal how an actor's interpretation of the play-text, and how the particular circumstances of a theatrical production, can inflect the characters in the play-text in such a way that the audience's responses are manipulated either to empathize with or to revile a particular character.

Depictions of Shylock