Had a spirited debate with one of my editors about "Merchant of Venice." I think Shakespeare mostly wrote it to please the anti-semites in Elizabeth's court -- they had hanged her personal physician, a Portuguese convert from Judaism, just three years before that play was first done. Bill argued that the forced conversion of Shylock would have been seen as proof of how awful the Catholics are, given that the Venetians were certainly Popish.

But still -- I think the play is pretty cynical. Even the "hath not a Jew eyes" speech seems like something Shakespeare crafted so that the final destruction of Shylock could be relished even more. Not that the Christians come out well, either. But the biggest problem? Sitting through productions of that play today with the typical liberal audience, all of them nodding knowingly during the "eyes" speech. As if the essential humanity of the Jews was something that just occurred to them, or (even worse) they are congratulating themselves for being more enlightened than Tudor-era audiences.

Ugh. I told Bill that those productions should be called "Yids Are People, Too." He said "Why not, 'The Yids Are All Right?'"

This is why he's the big chief, y'see.

So...what does Greenblatt say about Shylock? I'm not saying that Shakespeare was anti-semitic, per se -- but I think he was a shrewd enough businessman to realize that making a cartoonish Jewish figure the butt of everyone's contempt in "Merchant" wasn't gonna get him in trouble. I think we tend to forget that Shakespeare, timeless though he may be, wasn't writing for anyone but his audience.