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92. Judaism and Jews B R E T T D

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92. Judaism and Jews B R E T T D book identifi es Easter Term as starting the eighteenth day such an overt liturgical allusion as Shakespeare provides aft er Easter and ending the Monday aft er the Ascension. in the title Twelft h Night was certainly not a reference to Trinity Term began the Friday aft er Trinity Sunday and the religious nature of the feast, or even to a performance ended June 28. Michaelmas Term began October 9 or 10 date, but to the atmosphere of frivolous chaos that had and ended November 28 or 29. Hillary Term began January developed over the years. It is far more likely that the 23 or 24 and ended February 12 or 13. During term time, timing of these performances was based on ecclesiasti- the court did not sit on Sundays or on the feasts of the cal rules regarding secular entertainment during certain Ascension, John the Baptist, All Saints, or the Purifi cation seasons of the year. Th e penitential seasons of Advent of Mary. and Lent, for example, were inappropriate for theatrical amusements. Dramatic performances S o u r c e c i t e d and the liturgical year G a r d i n e r , S a m u e l . Th e Cognizance of a True Christian, or the Dramatic performances were oft en scheduled to coin- outward markes whereby he may be the better knowne , etc. cide with certain church seasons or feasts. Th is practice London : Th omas Creede , 1597 . was not new to the English Renaissance, however. Th e medieval mystery plays serve as a prime example of the F u r t h e r r e a d i n g long-standing connection between theater, religion, and B r y a n t , J a m e s C . Tudor Drama and Religious Controversy . holy days, and if the tradition of lively performances at Macon : Mercer UP , 1984 . the more festive times of the year continued in England B u t l e r , A l b a n . Butler’s Lives of the Saints . Ed. Herbert Th urston , under Elizabeth, it could be considered as much a contin- S. J. , and Donald Attwater . 4 vols. London : Burns and Oats , 1956 . uation of Catholic tradition as a uniquely early modern or F o x e , J o h n . Actes and Monuments , etc. Various printings by John Reformation phenomenon. Day, beginning in 1563 , and various editions since. Elizabethan and Jacobean court records do, however, H a s s e l , R . C h r i s , J r . Renaissance Drama and the English Church reveal a large number of masques performed in con- Year . Lincoln : U Nebraska P , 1979 . H e fl ing , Charles , and Cynthia Shattuck , eds. Th e Oxford Guide to nection with various feasts, particularly with Twelft h the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey . Oxford : Oxford Night/Epiphany and Shrovetide. Whether the content UP , 2006 . of those masques had a direct correlation with the reli- R i c k a b y , J o h n , S . J . Th e Ecclesiastical Year . New York : Joseph gious meanings of the liturgical seasons is doubtful; even F. Wagner , 1927 . 92. Judaism and Jews B r e t t D . H i r s c h ttitudes toward Judaism and Jews in in league with the devil but were his descendants. Belief Shakespeare’s England were complex and contra- in this diabolical kinship explained many of the demonic Adictory. For the original audiences of Th e Merchant physical characteristics and behaviors attributed to them. of Venice , Shylock’s announcement “I am a Jew” (MV Medieval and early modern Christian literature, art, and 3.1.46 ) was more than a statement of religious affi liation. popular culture frequently depicted Jews as physically Th e word “Jew” itself – whether employed as noun, adjec- abject and distinct, with large hooked noses, red or dark tive, or verb – was informed by a web of shift ing cultural, curly hair, goatlike beards, and dark skin and features, social, theological, and political associations. Th e Jews were through to more monstrous attributes such as cranial held to be God’s chosen people, keepers of the Hebrew lan- horns, prehensile tails, a foul sulfurous stench, and men- guage and exegetical traditions essential to a comprehensive struation in men. Actual Jewish practices such as male understanding of Christian Scripture, and a nation destined genital circumcision reinforced the belief in an embod- to convert to Christianity and thereby herald the Second ied Jewish diff erence. Jews were also perceived as socially Coming of Christ. Th e Jews could boast eminent scholars, aberrant, as evidenced by frequent accusations of the trusted court physicians, and state administrators among kidnap and crucifi xion of Christian children in mockery their number, as well as wealthy merchants whose inter- of Christ’s Passion, the ritual use of Christian blood, the national networks mediated commerce and trade between poisoning of wells and spread of infectious disease, the various states in Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire. desecration of the Eucharistic Host, acts of cannibalism At the same time, Christian authorities from the New and sorcery, and the fi nancial exploitation of Christians Testament onward maintained that the Jews were not only through coin clipping and usury. 709 part x. Religion important economic niche for the Jews to fi ll. Englishmen Jews as polarizers of all social ranks, from commoners to members of Since the fi gure of the Jew carried so much symbolic the court and clergy to the monarch himself, relied on potential in late medieval and early modern England, it Jewish loans to fi nance their ventures, from buying land is unsurprising that other social, political, and religious and building churches to waging war and fi ghting in the groups either aligned themselves with or maligned oth- Crusades. Increasingly, a system of credit became essential ers as Jews or “judaizers.” On the one hand, Orthodox to support the economic expansion of the age, and so the and unorthodox Christian groups on all sides of the con- Jewish practice of usury was tolerated as a necessary evil. fessional divide were derided by one another in terms Usury was a profi table enterprise for medieval English of Judaic recidivism. On the other hand, Calvinists and Jews, but fi nancial prosperity came at the cost of growing other Protestant minorities identifi ed with the Jews via the resentment and vilifi cation by their Christian dependents, notion of divine election and a shared experience of perse- culminating in outbreaks of violence and hostility. cution and survival in diaspora. English xenophobia also Despite the fact that Christians also practiced mon- frequently expressed the economic and political threats eylending, usury was understood as a peculiarly Jewish posed by aliens such as the Spanish, Portuguese, French, crime, with the terms “Jew” and “usurer” rendered syn- Dutch, and even the Ottoman Turks, in Jewish terms. onymous. So strong was this association in England that Th us the Jew – real, imagined, symbolic – was simul- it survived the expulsion of the Jews and the subsequent taneously a fi gure of intense fascination and fear, and this relaxing of restrictions against the Christian practice of uneasy dynamic of attraction and repulsion was regularly usury, made necessary by Jewish absence. In A Discourse played out on the stage and page and from the pulpit. vppon vsurye (1572), Th omas Wilson reminded his readers Th ese competing and contradictory impulses, informed that usury was the reason Jews “were hated in England, by centuries of anti-Semitic and philo-Semitic narratives, and so banyshed worthelye,” and called for Christian usu- shaped English attitudes toward the Jews before and aft er rers (termed “Englishemen . worse then Jewes”) to be their wholesale expulsion from England in 1290. In order similarly expelled (Wilson sig. F5v). to better understand the complexities of Shakespeare’s Since Jews and usurers were rendered one and the same representation of Jews and those of his contemporaries, as in the English imagination, the iconography of both fi gures well as the rich and varied preconceptions of their orig- was similarly shared. For example, the wolf, a traditional inal audiences and readers, it is necessary to trace the symbol of avarice, frequently became aligned with Jews origin, transmission, and adaptation of these narratives and usurers alike. Echoes of this association appear in Th e through late medieval and early modern English litera- Merchant of Venice , where Shylock is compared to a “wolf” ture, drama, art, and popular culture. ( MV 4.1.73 ) with “wolfi sh, bloody, starved, and ravenous” ( MV 4.1.138 ) desires on Antonio, the “tainted wether of the fl ock” ( MV 4.1.114 ). As well as a wolf, Shakespeare’s Jews and usury repeated characterization of Shylock as a dog (MV 1.3.103 , Jews migrated to England in substantial numbers aft er the MV 2 . 8 . 1 4 , MV 3.3.6 , MV 3.3.7 , MV 3.3.18 , MV 4.1.129 , MV Norman Conquest of 1066, and in many ways the experi- 4.1.133 , MV 4.1.287 ) throughout the play resonates with ence of medieval English Jewry was no diff erent from that early modern English debates about usury, in which the of their brethren in other parts of Christendom. Th eirs was practice was frequently likened to bestiality, cannibalism, ѹ שנ ך ,a life dogged by state- and church-sponsored sanctions, and unnatural breeding. Th e Hebrew word for usury popular suspicion and hostility, and social and economic (neshe ḳ ), is derived from the root word meaning “to bite,” restrictions designed to humiliate and alienate, culminat- and this etymology was known to early modern English ing with their wholesale expulsion by Edward I in 1290.
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