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Shylock Misunderstood

The character Shylock, from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, has become synonymous with loan sharking, vicious revenge, and anti-Semitism.  Acclaimed television shows (such as The Sopranos) and movies (such as Get Shorty) reference Shylock without much need for explanation.  But have we misinterpreted the character and have we misunderstood a key turning point in the play? 

Todd Pettigrew, an Associate Professor of English, takes on this issue in his next book. As a work of art, Merchant has always held a special place in Professor Pettigrew’s heart and mind, even though the play has been attacked on religious grounds. “It was the first time I was exposed to the complexity and beauty of Shakespeare’s language and thought,” he says, “and it also served as an introduction to the controversy that surrounds the play” Shortly after Pettigrew studied it, Waterloo County, where he was a high school student, removed the play from the curriculum on the grounds that the play was anti-Semitic.

Pettigrew says he was stunned by the school board’s decision even then, since he saw the play as a way to think through the questions around the treatment of minorities, now and in the past. The play is often studied in Nova Scotia, though if the province’s own guidelines for literary texts were strictly enforced, Merchant would likely be cut here, too.

Merchant is a favourite for CBU students of Shakespeare who are endlessly fascinated by the debate over Shylock, the Jewish moneylender who plots against the merchant Antonio, his long-standing enemy. “Students tend to side with Shylock,” says Pettigrew. “Their instincts are all toward tolerance, and so, like many modern readers, they sympathize with Shylock because they see him as marginalized and understandably driven to a desperate course of action.” But while modern readers may tend to sympathize with Shylock, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Shakespeare’s original audience would have been so tolerant, or even that Shakespeare himself saw Shylock as anything but a villain. So, both in teaching the play and in his new book, Pettigrew is trying to take a fresh look at the historical contexts that might shed light on one of the most troubling characters in all of English literature.

In developing his reading of Merchant, and Shylock’s place in it, Pettigrew is conducting an exhaustive review of the criticism on the topic over the last fifty years. At the same time he continues to gather primary documents relating to a wide range of relevant topics, including the place of Jews in European culture, the early modern ethical debate over moneylending, and the nature of religious conversion in the period. This last is particularly interesting, says Pettigrew, because Shylock’s conversion at the end of Act Four is usually glossed over by critics, either as clear evidence for the play’s racism, or as clear evidence for the play’s underlying critique of religious intolerance. Pettigrew suggests that the matter may not be so clear cut, either way. “The narratives surrounding Jews who actually converted in the time provide some fascinating insights,” he says. “Christians of all stripes insisted that genuine conversion had to be sincere, but while almost no one argues that Shylock is sincerely repentant, no one has really thought through what the implications of that might be for a reading of the play.” 

Pettigrew hopes to have a preliminary draft of the book done by the end of this year that might encourage a new interpretation of both the character and the play.  But the question remains: Who will tell Tony Soprano?