'Otherness' in Shakespeare's Othello and the Merchant Of

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The Representation of ‘Otherness’ in Shakespeare’s Othello and The Merchant of Venice

Othello and Shylock

Diplomarbeit

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie

an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

vorgelegt von Gerda TISCHLER

am Institut für Anglistik Begutachter: o. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Werner Wolf

Graz, 2013

Acknowledgement

First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Professor Werner Wolf, who has not only offered valuable guidance, assistance, and help in the composition of this thesis, but who has also been an inspiring and very encouraging mentor throughout the rest of my studies, supporting me in many ways. Additionally, I would like to thank my former teachers Waltraud Wagner and Liselotte Schedlbauer, who stirred up my enthusiasm for both the English language and literature.

I also want to express my warmest and sincere thanks to my parents, who have always encouraged me in the actualisation of my dreams and who have been incredibly supportive in any respect throughout my entire life. Besides, I want to thank Christopher for showing so much sympathy and understanding, and for making me laugh wholeheartedly at least once a day.

Lastly, I am indebted to my family, friends, and anyone without whom the completion of this thesis would not have been possible.

Contents

1 Introduction ...... 5

2 The ‘Other’ – Attempts at an Explanation ...... 7 2.1 The Concept of ‘Otherness’ ...... 7 2.2 ‘Otherness’, Stigma and Race ...... 8

3 ‘Otherness’ in 16th - Century England ...... 10 3.1 The ‘Other’ and Elizabethan Thinking ...... 10 3.2 Early Modern Conceptions of Race, and Racial Othering ...... 14 3.3 The Image of Africans ...... 17 3.4 The Image of Jews ...... 21 3.5 The Venetian State ...... 25 3.5.1 ‘Venice, the Rich’ ...... 25 3.5.2 Venice seen from an English Perspective ...... 27 3.6 The ‘Other’ on the Elizabethan Stage ...... 29 3.6.1 Staging the African Myth ...... 29 3.6.2 The Representation of Jews ...... 31

4 Othello ...... 33 4.1 Introductory Remarks on Othello ...... 33 4.2 Othello throughout the Centuries ...... 34 4.3 ‘Otherness’ Welcomed or Rejected? ...... 37 4.3.1 “Your son-in-law is far more fair than black” – The Importance of Colour in Othello ...... 37 4.3.1.1 ‘Black’ vs ‘White’ and the (racial) Connotations of this Opposition ...... 37 4.3.1.2 Othello’s Blackness washed white? ...... 41 4.3.2 The Question of Acceptance ...... 45 4.3.2.1 The General ...... 45 4.3.2.2 Othello, the Husband, and the Issue of Miscegenation ...... 47 4.3.3 Strangeness and the Question of Trust ...... 49 4.3.3.1 The Moor of Venice ...... 49 4.3.3.2 “Honest Iago” ...... 51 4.3.4 Insane Jealousy ...... 56 4.3.4.1 Othello, the Black ...... 56 4.3.4.2 Othello, the Soldier ...... 60 4.4 Results ...... 64

iii 5 Shylock ...... 67 5.1 Introductory Remarks on The Merchant of Venice ...... 67 5.2 Shylock Throughout the Centuries ...... 70 5.3 ‘Otherness’ Welcomed or Rejected? ...... 72 5.3.1 “Because I am a Jew!” – Representations of Shylock as Victim ...... 72 5.3.1.1 The Venetian Upper Class’ Claims of Superiority ...... 72 5.3.1.2 Digression: The Casket Choice ...... 75 5.3.1.3 The Venetian Population’s Inexplicable Hatred ...... 77 5.3.1.4 The City’s Discriminatory Administrative and Judicial System ...... 78 5.3.2 “But since I am a dog beware my fangs” – Representations of Shylock as Perpetrator ...... 79 5.3.2.1 The Jew’s Isolation and Alienation: Cause for, or Result of, his Viciousness? ...... 79 5.3.2.2 The Bond ...... 81 5.3.2.3 Shylock’s Thirst for Revenge ...... 84 5.3.3 “Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?” – The Economies in The Merchant of Venice ...... 88 5.3.3.1 The Importance of Money ...... 88 5.3.3.2 Usury and the Mysteriousness of Money ...... 89 5.3.3.3 The Christians’ Prodigality, and Shylock’s Thrift ...... 91 5.3.3.4 Shylock – A Covert Critique of Puritanism? ...... 93 5.3.4 “Our house is hell” – Shylock and the Domestic Sphere ...... 94 5.3.5 “I will have my bond!” – The Tension between Justice and Mercy ...... 96 5.3.5.1 “I crave the law” ...... 96 5.3.5.2 “Then must the Jew be merciful” ...... 98 5.3.6 “Thou shalt have Justice more than thou desir’st” – Ambivalent Aspects of the Verdict on Shylock ...... 100 5.3.6.1 The Judgement and the Forced Conversion ...... 100 5.3.6.2 The Last Act in Belmont – A Recuperation and Reconciliation of Oppositions? ..... 102 5.3.7 Digression: Jessica ...... 104 5.4 Results ...... 106

6 The ‘Otherness’ of Othello and Shylock – an Evaluation ...... 111

7 Conclusion ...... 117

8 Bibliography ...... 120

9 List of Abbreviations ...... 125

iv 1 Introduction “What a difference a difference makes.” - Mary Ann Sullivan -

Throughout the centuries, none of Shakespeare’s masterpieces have caused more controversy, heated debate and conflicting interpretations than Othello and The Merchant of Venice. The two plays, investigating issues of cultural and ethnic identity and depicting the attempts of two aliens to integrate and obtain acceptance from the society they live in, are paramount examples of polysemy and complex multifariousness, fascinating and appalling readers and audience alike for more than four hundred years. Unsurprisingly, hence, Othello and Shylock, the paradigms of ‘Otherness’ in Shakes- peare’s canon, have become the most famous representatives of ‘Moorish’ and Jewish identity in English literature.

The early modern period, notably, was a time of remarkable socio-political upheaval, tremendously increasing scientific knowledge and vast geographical expansion, leading not only to an enhanced contact with but also heightened interest in the ‘Other’. Notions of ‘racial difference’ and ‘Otherness’ still being highly ambiguous and unstable, the Elizabethans1 were nonetheless progressively aware of a sense of unity and belonging, distinguishing themselves from anything they perceived as the unknown ‘Other’ exemplified, for instance, by Africans or Jews. The latter, as a consequence, were frequently reduced to stereotypes and put in simplifying categories. The immortality of Othello and Shylock, thus, is doubtlessly to a great extent due to the fact that they, at a time when portrayals of the ‘Other’ were essentially representations of emblematic types and stock characters, are depicted as lifelike, rounded, and thoroughly human figures.

For centuries, attempts have been made to dissipate the ambiguities, equivocalness and inconsistencies of Shakespeare’s characters, but, doomed to fail, it has solely been proven that Othello’s and Shylock’s complex multifariousness cannot ultimately be resolved. On the contrary, Shakespeare skilfully suggests stereotypes only to subvert them, he arouses expectations and in some parts fulfils and in other frustrates them. Having, luckily, accepted that his multifaceted characters are open to a multiplicity of

1 The beginning of the Jacobean era overlaps with the first performance of Othello; yet, considering that the norms and values in 1603/1604 were still informed by Elizabethan thinking, the term ‘Elizabethan’ is used in this thesis to cover also the first years of James’ I reign. 5 interpretations sometimes in line with each other, sometimes overlapping, and sometimes contradicting one another, we are today no longer forced to decide whether Othello is the barbarian or the hero or whether Shylock is the villain or the victim, but we are enabled to read them as fascinatingly ambiguous and complex beings raising eternal and transcendent questions concerning morality, justice and humanity in general.

This thesis aims to examine the representation of ‘Otherness’ in Othello and The Merchant of Venice, trying to demonstrate and analyse the ambiguities and contradictions in Shakespeare’s works rather than attempting to resolve them. Considering the vastness of the material and the limited scope of the paper, the analysis has to be re- stricted to a textual examination completely ignoring an investigation of the representation of Othello and Shylock on stage; also on a textual level, however, some aspects have to be omitted and no claim to completeness is raised.

Roughly, the thesis is divided into five larger sections, the first two being narrowly interconnected. Following this introduction, the first part opens with a brief explanation of the concept of ‘Otherness’ and its interrelations with stigma and race. Given the fact that today’s concept is not aptly applicable to texts written at the turn of the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, it is primarily intended as an introductory outline of the underlying theoretical framework. Greater emphasis is given in the second part to notions of ‘Otherness’ in Elizabethan thinking, elaborating on the perception of the strange and unknown as well as on the attitudes towards race and ethnic difference. Furthermore, two chapters are dedicated to the examination of the images and living conditions of Africans and Jews in early modern England. Since Othello as well as The Merchant of Venice are set in Venice (or at least on Venetian territory), another chapter briefly introduces the Italian city-state as well as the associations held by the English therewith. The second part closes with a brief overview of the ‘Other’ on the Elizabethan stage, distinguishing conventional representations of the archetypical Moor or Jew from Othello and Shylock

The third and fourth parts are dedicated to a close examination of Othello and Shylock. Considering that Othello was written several years after The Merchant of Venice, the chronology here is deliberately inaccurate. This is done so because Shylock can be regarded as the even more ambiguous and complex character. Equally structured, the analyses begin with brief introductory remarks on the plays, followed by an outline of reception history especially aiming to illustrate the immense interpretative differences 6 the plays have undergone throughout the centuries. Subsequently, the ‘Otherness’ of Othello and Shylock is examined in greater detail, whereby several aspects interconnected with the characters’ alienation are assessed in sub-chapters and analysed from different perspective, sometimes leading to divergent outcomes. As a provisional résumé, the main results are summarised in a concluding section.

Prior to the conclusion, the fifth and final part of the thesis tries to link the findings of the respective analyses, elaborating on the similarities and differences of Othello’s and Shylock’s ‘Otherness’ as well as on the representation thereof. Focussing on the extraordinariness of Shakespeare’s black and Jewish character at a time when they were usually mere symbols of vicious deviousness and utmost evil, emphasis is again put on the ambivalences and lifelikeness of both Othello and Shylock. Undoubtedly, Shakespeare’s paradigms of ‘Otherness’ deny one-sided interpretations and simplifying reductions, and have thus for centuries fascinated and served as a means of identification for people all over the world.

2 The ‘Other’ – Attempts at an Explanation 2.1 The Concept of ‘Otherness’

To begin with, ‘Otherness’, according to the OED, denotes “the quality or fact of being other; [or the] difference, esp. from an expected norm […] freq. with reference […] to what lies outside the observer’s own cultural experience.” Additionally, the ‘Other’ is a fundamental concept in several strands of continental philosophy, social science and psychoanalytic theory, originally coined by German Idealism, primarily by Fichte and Hegel (cf. Diamantides 2010: 999). ‘Otherness’ might be defined as the outcome of a discursive process in which a dominant, hegemonic in-group (‘we’, or ‘Us’) constructs one or several out-groups (defined as ‘them’ or ‘Other’) by exploiting – existent or imaginary – differences serving as potential motives for bias, discrimination, and aggression (cf. Staszak 2009: 43). The process of ‘othering’, therefore, is closely connected to power-relations as well as domination, and always bears political, social and economic implications.

In this context it is important to underline the differentiation between ‘difference’, denoting facts, and ‘Otherness’, associated primarily with the realm of discourse. ‘Differ- ence’, thus, is an indispensable element in the creation of meaning for a variety of

7 theoretical disciplines. In linguistics, for instance, meaning could, according to Saussure, not exist without differences such as black/white and male/female (cf. Hall S. 1997: 234). Also in anthropology, “culture depends on giving things meaning by assigning them to different positions within a classificatory system. The marking of ‘difference’ is thus the basis of that symbolic order which we call culture” (Hall S. 1997: 236). Finally, psychoanalytic approaches, too, argue that the difference between the ego and the other2 is a crucial aspect in the constitution of the self (cf. Hall S. 1997: 237).

Whereas ‘difference’ is therefore based on facts, the process of ‘Othering’3 is always closely connected to ideology, which, according to Dollimore (1989: 9), refers to a set of illusory beliefs “which serve to perpetuate a particular social formation or power structure; typically this power structure is itself represented by that ideology as eternally or naturally given – i.e. as inevitable, immutable.” As Staszak (2009: 43) elaborates on the issue: The creation of otherness […] consists of applying a principle that allows individuals to be classified into two hierarchical groups: them and us. The out- group is only coherent as a group as a result of its opposition to the in-group and its lack of identity. This lack is based upon stereotypes that are largely stigmatizing and obviously simplistic. The in-group constructs one or more others, setting itself apart and giving itself an identity. Otherness and identity are two inseparable sides of the same coin. The Other exists only relative to the Self, and vice versa.

Evidently, the creation of ‘Otherness’, which is a timeless and universal phenomenon, is inextricably connected to asymmetrical power-relations. Solely the dominant group is empowered to openly value its own particularities and to simultaneously devalue those of less powerful others, as well as to impose discriminatory measures (It must not be forgotten that out-groups tend to value their particularities, too, but are usually hindered from doing so publicly). As a consequence, the dominated out-group turns into the ‘Other’ and becomes subject to the stigmatising practices and categorisations of the dominating in-group (cf. Staszak 2009: 43 f.).

2.2 ‘Otherness’, Stigma and Race

As already hinted at in the preceding chapter, the concept of ‘Otherness’ is closely related to the idea of social stigmatisation. Originally, a stigma denoted the actual inscription of a crime into a delinquent’s skin by means of tattooing or branding in order

2 The term is used in an unbiased way here and therefore neither capitalised nor put in inverted commas. 3 In radical constructivist culturalist discourse ‘Othering’ is regularly considered a purely discursive process. However, as will also be discussed in relation to the concept of ‘race’, such a radical view ne- glects some factual and non-judgemental genetic and anthropological differences. 8 to make them easily identifiable and to render their wrongs universally visible. Social stigmatisation, by contrast, is ‘merely’ symbolic, referring to the process of branding certain characteristics or worldviews of a person as inferior and abnormal compared to the prevalent traits and cultural norms of a given society. A ‘stigma’ in its more modern and figurative sense, hence, is the result of pejorative and discriminatory moral as well as aesthetic associations with some form of noticeable difference which, by a given society’s majority, is defined as a sign of ethnic or moral (or both) inferiority, and consequently serves as the foundation for the construction of ideologies assisting a separation between notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (cf. Lubrich 2001: 110 f.). Social stigmatisation, not unlike ‘Otherness’, thus serves as a highly efficient means of distinction, alienation and exclusion.

Additionally, a stigma is not to be perceived exclusively as the result of stigmatisation but also – and even more so – as the origin of a specific behaviour on the part of the stigmatised attempting to cope with their ‘Otherness’. Since one cannot not react to stigmatisation, any individual carrying a stigma is forced to handle it one way or the other. Regularly, stigmatised individuals who have extensively been confronted with ideologies condemning their ‘Otherness’ as inferior or abnormal tend to assume these discriminatory practices as truthful and righteously justified, subsequently beginning to adopt manners and behaviours expected of them; other means of so-called ‘stigma- management’ are, to name only two, assimilation or aggression (cf. Goffman discussed in Lubrich 2001: 111-114).

Furthermore, it seems impossible to examine ‘Otherness’ and stigma without also discussing the concept of racial identity, a notion denoting a whole system of contradictions rather than a transparent and clear concept which, nevertheless, has functioned as one of the most influential and authoritative markers of difference for centuries (cf. Loomba 1999: 203). Frequently, the term ‘race’ is used to denote biological difference based, for example, on a variation of skin colour and physiognomy. Additionally, the concept has regularly been used to point not only to physical but also (or solely) to religious difference (cf. Harris 2010: 201). Race, therefore, “is at one and the same time visible and invisible, a component of biological identity and a trope of cultural or religious difference. It is, in other words, a cluster of problems” (Harris 2010: 201).

In this context, one has to keep in mind that race, although it is perceived to be something immutable, recognisable and fundamental (cf. Hendricks 2000: 20), “is a fluid, 9 transforming, historically specific concept” (Goldberg quoted in Hendricks 2000: 19). As a passing remark, it ought to be mentioned that the concept has repeatedly been used in a discriminatory way and exploited as a means of justifying certain perverted ideologies such as the Holocaust, segregation, and apartheid. Linked to current attempts at coming to terms with the past, notions of ‘race’ have thus increasingly been regarded as an outmoded cultural construction. Nonetheless, it should not be neglected that the term also denotes some genetic essence that can hardly be denied, and that it is – in this context – not automatically used in a biased and pejorative way. Hence, considering all these aspects, a universally true definition of the notions of ‘race’ is intricate since the concept has been highly instable and fluctuating, bearing in part divergent connotations in the early modern period and today; this will, among other aspects, be examined in the subsequent chapter.

3 ‘Otherness’ in 16th - Century England 3.1 The ‘Other’ and Elizabethan Thinking

The Elizabethan age was a period of tremendous philosophical and technical changes, upheavals and developments. Although most of the English still lived a life rooted in mediaeval traditions and ideals, a fresh wind was conspicuously blowing ideas of the Renaissance over to the island, broadening the perceptions of the insular elite and raising their interest in what they perceived as the ‘Other’.

On the one hand, expeditions and voyages of discovery to distant lands as well as an increase in international trade had begun to familiarise the English and the Londoners in particular with foreign and exotic shores. On the other, it was common courtesy for the prosperous nobility to send their sons (and a very few daughters) on the so-called ‘Grand Tour’ so they were enabled to see both historical and cultural monuments with their own eyes. Besides, the vast majority of English who never had the chance to set foot on foreign lands could at least witness exhibitions of specimens of foreign plants, animals, cultural artefacts, and sometimes even ‘samples’ of native peoples themselves (cf. Greenblatt 2008: 24 f.). Corresponding to a heightened interest in travelling, the ‘Other’, and an enhanced urge for territorial expansion most Elizabethans were fascinated by geography and cartography as a means of rendering tangible a constantly fluctuating and expanding, new and exotic world picture (see Burton 1998). Consequently, travel literature and accounts of voyagers, too, shaped the framework of

10 suppositions influencing Elizabethan society in its perceptions of ‘Otherness’ – perceptions that constantly vacillated between unprejudiced candour and biased scepticism.

Unsurprisingly, increased knowledge about different countries, exotic places and formerly unknown peoples also led to a heightened interest in what was felt to be the ‘Same’ and should thus become part of a truly English nation. However, due to tense internal religious struggles as well as due to the country's relative distance from the Mediterranean – which, back then, was the centre of the world – and its delayed entry into expansionist politics, it was a highly difficult endeavour for England to enhance a sense of national4 self-esteem and identity against which the diffusely unknown could be perceived as the ‘Other’. Initially, the ‘Other’ could only be defined in so far as it seemed to be not quite the ‘Same’, which, as must not be underestimated, proved to be little less mysterious and hotly debated, too (cf. Bartels 2003: 157 f.). By gradually defining what was alien, foreign and consequently ‘not English’ more profoundly, however, they finally commenced perceiving themselves as one, more or less unified, nation (cf. Bate and Thornton 2012: 147).

Additional focus needs to be given to the fact that Elizabethan London hosted increasing amounts of immigrants – primarily Protestant refugees, artisans and merchants from the European continent – who were treated with distrust and contempt since, among other factors, it was claimed they would take jobs away from the English (cf. Greenblatt 2008: 22). As Fryer elaborates in this context, exclusion and preconceptions are particularly persistent in communities that are ethnically homogeneous, geographically isolated, techno- logically backward, or socially conservative, with knowledge and political power concentrated in the hands of an elite. Such communities feel threatened by national or racial differences, and their prejudices serve to reassure them, to minimize their sense of insecurity, to enhance group cohesion. England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a classic instance of such a community – though its geographical isolation was rapidly being overcome and its technology was about to leap forward. (quoted in Hall K.F. 1995: 3)

Apart from numerous conflicts with foreigners in London leading to occasional bloody riots, hostilities existed against the Scots, Welsh and, especially, against the Irish whom

4 In the context of the early modern period the terms ‘national’ and ‘nation’ are not yet used to denote nation-states, but refer to a wider concept deriving from the Latin natio, entering the English language around 1330. ‘Nation’ in this sense denotes, according to the OED, “individuals united by factors such as common descent, language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory, so as to form a distinct people.” 11 the English cruelly but unsuccessfully fought to subjugate, and who were all, too, iden– tified as distinctively ‘Other’ (cf. Greenblatt 2008: 22). Hence, as Skura (2008: 300) encapsulates, xenophobia, although the term had not yet been invented, was a ubiquitous element in early modern thinking.

The only way of relativising and balancing the stark cultural, political and religious differences on the British Isles was by contrasting them to groups even more ‘un- English’ and dissimilar such as Africans, Jews and Muslims who, as was generally agreed, embodied an antithesis to what was perceived as a collective European-Chris- tian identity (cf. Greenblatt 2008: 22; Shapiro 1996: 5). Doubtlessly indeed, the non- Christianity of pagans, Moors, infidels and Jews gave depth to conceptions of ‘Otherness’ that mere differences in European identity could hardly achieve (cf. Hunter 1964: 51).

Non-Europeans were tendentially described according to one of two prototypes – either as innocent noble savages (primarily the peoples of the newly discovered Americas) or as threatening and deceptive agents of evil (usually representations of Jews, Turks and Moors). In this context it ought to be underlined that, despite a dramatic increase in scientific knowledge, Shakespeare’s contemporaries were still influenced by a traditional medieval worldview dominated by religion, placing, as mentioned above, Muslims and Jews in an immutably antithetical and inferior position to Christianity (cf. Hendricks 2000: 3 f.).

Moreover, these religions were linked to one another (and further differentiated from Christianity) by the mark of circumcision, thus yielding, from a Christian point of view, a threatening and irreversible sign of alterity and radical ‘Otherness’ (cf. Loomba 1999: 205 f.). It has widely been argued that the practice of circumcision in a culture unused to such customs must indeed have instigated a tremendously disturbing and consequently negatively connoted sense of bodily difference, leading on the part of the Christians to an enhanced feeling of alterity. Circumcision, therefore, has been regarded as the most significant – since absolutely irreversible – marker of religious difference5 (see, for instance, Boose 1994: 40; Harris 2010: 211).

5 As a consequence, women (whose bodies lacked this physical barrier to conversion) could more easily transgress the religious and racial divide (cf. Loomba 1999: 215). 12 In relation to Judaism and Islam even conversion was regularly perceived as an ever- lastingly unstable condition that could not erase the converts’ fundamental ‘Otherness’ completely. As Bartels (2006: 144) summarises, “conversion could not guarantee belief; it could only legislate the performance of belief.” Regularly, hence, former Muslims and Jews were suspected of interpreting Christianity in the light of Islam or Judaism, or, even worse, of still covertly practicing their previous religion and thus posing a threat to the Christian community (cf. Loomba 1999: 209; Shapiro 1996: 147).

Quite ambiguously, then, the early modern period was an epoch in which a rapid territorial and cultural expansion generated a heightened knowledge of and interest in both the ‘Other’ as well as an own national identity. Simultaneously, however, increased de- velopment and multiculturalism created fears of an absorptive ‘Otherness’, which, by means of degeneration, influence from within, and dangerous miscegenation posed a threat to English culture and values (cf. Burton 1998: 55; Neill 1998: 363).

In general, hence, one might argue that the ‘Other’ was simultaneously object of desirable interest and cause for radical exclusion; in its own way it must have lastingly fascinated Shakespeare’s contemporaries who were both attracted and repelled (cf. Klein 2000: 33). As Neill (1998: 369) argues, it is important to keep in mind, however, that the Elizabethans’ discriminations against the ‘Other’ were not (yet) motivated by distinct beliefs of superiority and dominance, but seem “to have arisen from the pro- found sense of insecurity […], an insecurity felt as a disorienting challenge to their own identity”, which still was, as examined above, highly unstable at that time.

In relation to the ambiguities and instability of national identity, focus ought to be given to the fact that even those whom the Elizabethans habitually stigmatised as paradigms of an irreconcilable ‘Other’ (such as Turks, Jews, and sometimes even Catholic Italians), are remarkably instable entities in early modern England’s imagination. They may emerge for ephemeral, powerful moments as authoritative and great models for both imitation and admiration before they, as quickly as they have materialized, reoccupy their positions as archetypes of abhorrent ‘Otherness’ (cf. Greenblatt 2008: 25).

To summarise, one might argue that the origins of modern perceptions of racial identity and nation can be traced back to the early modern period, an epoch in which Europeans came into contact with other peoples to a formerly unprecedented extent (cf. Shapiro 1996: 170). Despite a drastic increase in scientific and geographic knowledge as well as

13 philosophical, socio-political and economic upheavals, the subjectification and humane- ness of ‘Otherness’ remained dubious during the early modern period; exotic peoples were either completely assimilated or stylised into an inhuman, ungraspable ‘Other’ incapable of integration and adaptation. In either way, the ‘Other’ remained somewhat opaque and instable, and tended to be misused for the creation of an imaginary omnipo- tence of the in-group. Gradually, the constant process of distancing what was perceived as one’s own identity from the ‘Other’ led to an enhanced sense of the ‘Same’ (cf. Mahler 2000: 321).

3.2 Early Modern Conceptions of Race, and Racial Othering

As has already been hinted at briefly in a preceding chapter, attempts at establishing markers of concepts as multifaceted and ambiguous as race and racial difference prove to be highly difficult, especially when these markers operated four centuries ago (cf. Loomba 1996: 171). Hence, as Harris (2010: 201) opens his article on Shakespeare and race, one might agree that “[t]rying to understand race in Shakespeare’s writing is an exercise fraught with difficulty. Even outside Shakespeare’s work, the word race is a slippery one: its meaning can all too easily elude our grasp just when we think we know what it is.”

One has to keep in mind that, as stressed by Hendricks and Parker (cf. 1994: 1 f.), the concept of race was a highly unstable term in the Elizabethan period, a time in which European expeditions and voyages of discovery to ‘new’ worlds and exotic peoples were only gradually beginning to develop into what would later become imperial subjugation and conquest. Throughout the Middle Ages and until the early modern period, race was determined by cultural and social factors rather than by biology; and since customs, language and even religious convictions could be changed, pre-modern differentiations of ethnicity and race tended to be more fluid than those to come (cf. Loomba 1999: 203).

At the same time, however, it must not be neglected that the early modern period was also an epoch in which questions concerning the purity of cultural identity as well as the stability of cultural boundaries were beginning to be raised (cf. Bartels 2006: 143). Following the expulsion of Moors and Jews from Spain in 1492 and the years after, the idea of purity of blood and, linked to that, an increased condemnation of miscegenation took ideological root, gradually becoming the foundation of discrimination in the poli-

14 tical, economic and social realms of England, too (cf. Loomba 1999: 207 f.). Slowly but steadily, prototypical forms of racism were generated, influenced primarily by nascent imperialism as well as racialist ideologies (cf. Bartels 1990: 433, 442). As Loomba (1999: 203) aptly summarises, “Shakespeare’s time […] can be characterized as either the last period in history where ethnic identities could be understood as fluid, or as the first moment of the emergence of modern notions of ‘race’.”

Hence, despite an increasingly distinct sense of ‘Otherness’ according to which the Elizabethans held prejudiced and stereotypical perceptions of what they regarded as different from ‘them’, well-defined lines of perceptions race and ethnicity were difficult to draw since the early modern idea of ‘race’ carried a wide range of connotations. Instead of serving exclusively as a distinguishing trait between cultures, race also was a means of designating particular groups within a given culture (cf. Bartels 2006: 149; Bartels 2003: 159). To put it in other words: “[A]ny attempt to read back into the early modern period an idea of ‘race’ based on post-Enlightenment taxonomy is doomed to failure” (Neill 1998: 361).

Undoubtedly, the Elizabethans, not unlike all other peoples, had preconceptions in relation to foreign peoples such as ideas about a biblical separation of mankind, about genealogy, and about the symbolism of colour. Most differences between peoples were, as ought to be underlined here, however, thought to be accidental consequences of the environment. Consequently, humankind was initially approached with a certain objectivity; furthermore it was, as has already been briefly mentioned above, not classified according to fixed divisions, but subject to constant revaluations and shifting meanings centring more around contradistinctive terms such as ‘civilised’ and ‘barbarous’ than around biological diversity (cf. Neill 1998: 366).

Originally, the word ‘race’ can be traced back to the Latin radix, implying ancestry and genealogical roots. Shakespeare uses the word ‘race’ sixteen times in his complete works and, interestingly, each time its meaning deviates from associations with physiognomy, skin colour and religion, but designates notions of lineage or a certain social rank (cf. Harris 2010: 201 f.). Hence, whenever Shakespeare makes use of the term ‘race’, it “demonstrates what one critic calls the ‘genealogical idiom’ of much pre- modern European thought […] [designating] any group of plants, animals or humans that share traits through a common lineage” (Harris 2010: 202).

15 The term ‘race’ as such, hence, implied biblical or noble lineages of genealogy before it was gradually widened to – pejoratively – denote Jews and Blacks in Spain. Subse- quently, it would be extended further to indicate any form of physical and/or religious difference, which, later on, would become the foundation for modern discourses on racial difference (cf. Hendricks and Parker 1994: 2). Unsurprisingly, the gradual widening of the term during the course of the late fifteenth to the seventeenth century co- incides with the rise of global trade, colonialism and Western European imperialism exposing people to an unprecedented extent to foreign cultures, customs and peoples, gradually strengthening, as has been examined in greater detail above, their notions of othering and racial differences (cf. Harris 2010: 203).

Regardless of Shakespeare not using the term ‘race’ to denote biological differences such as colour of skin and of the Elizabethans’ focus on cultural and religious difference as key determinants in the process of racial othering, one still has to keep in mind that the early modern period was determined by a strong black-and-white consciousness derived from classical antiquity as well as theology (cf. Harris 2010: 204; Kaplan 2007: 4). As Maguire (2004: 35) points out: The Elizabethans inherited from the middle ages [sic] an iconographic color-coding which equated black skin with the devil and hence with moral blackness (because God was light). In medieval plays the devil was portrayed as black […] and in the Elizabethan printing house the printer’s assistant, covered in ink dust, was known familiarly as the “printer’s devil”. Black became a metaphor for evil.

For early modern English, thus, the meaning of black had exclusively negative connotations associated with malignant and sinful behaviour, whereas white had become the symbol of virtue, purity, and moral superiority. Undoubtedly, the binary opposition of black and white preoccupied not only early modern aesthetic thinking, but also cultural imagination. As a consequence, it must have proven unmanageable for Shakespeare’s contemporaries to perceive black Africans from a thoroughly neutral perspective (cf. Smith I. 1998: 170). On the contrary, it was during the early modern period that blackness was gradually and for numerous reasons becoming an incriminating marker of racial difference (cf. Bartels 2006: 140). As K.F. Hall (1995: 2) elaborates, “descriptions of dark and light, rather than being mere indications of Elizabethan beauty standards or markers of moral categories, became in the early modern period the conduit through which the English began to formulate the notions of ‘self’ and ‘other’.” In this context, Callaghan (cf. 1996: 196), too, points out that black skin proved to be one of the most conspicuous and easily discernible markers of racial ‘Otherness’ and,

16 concealing a host of ethnicities ranging from ‘white’ and ‘tawny Moors’ via ‘blackamoors’ to the ‘savage men of Inde’, regularly either absorbed or intensified various aspects and forms of alterity.

To conclude, Loomba (cf. 1999: 207) emphasises that a certain obsession with black skin was firmly established in English discourse long before colonial plunder and enslavement, but as a result of biblical, classical as well as medieval depictions of monstrosity. Consequently, blackness was an indispensable element in the imageries of wildness and evil, and thus, although not in the centre of the Elizabethans’ practices of ‘Othering’, the dichotomy of black and white was an increasingly determining factor in the gradually commencing discrimination against and exploitation of black people.

3.3 The Image of Africans

The African image in sixteenth-century England consisted of a vivid blend of fiction and fact to which both legends as well as accounts of contemporary travellers (who, one has to keep in mind, were nonetheless influenced by heirloom folk-knowledge and thus added further ‘authenticity’ to the old tales) contributed. The ancient tales had grown over the centuries and were primarily influenced by scripture and philosophical writings passed on from classical antiquity. According to them the Nile, for example, was said to rise in paradise and Africans were believed to lack the command of a proper language (cf. Jones 1965: 1-3). Additionally, it was believed that Africa was a continent inhabited by people without heads and Anthropophagi as well as other mythical creatures. At the same time, however, England was beginning to be in firsthand contact with some Afri- can peoples, thereby doubtlessly fostering the pivotal but nonetheless unstable distinction between ‘savage’ (primarily sub-Saharan and Western Africans) and ‘civilised’ (such as Moroccans, with whom the English maintained fruitful relations) (cf. Bartels 2006: 141 f.).

According to Boose (cf. 1994: 36) it was primarily due to England’s geographical isolation as an island relatively remote from Africa that it was, especially in comparison to countries such as Spain and Portugal who had enjoyed intercultural exchange with it nearly one millennium earlier, hardly familiar with the continent and its people at the beginning of the sixteenth century. (Not even a hundred years later, however, Britain was, as should be mentioned here as a passing remark, contesting the Netherlands’

17 monopoly in slave trade and had become one of the primary sources of speculation about the black continent.)

One of the most substantial and popular publications in terms of human and regional geography was Mandeville’s Travels compiled by Sir John Mandeville. Yet, the book created an insatiable appetite for information about the customs and cultures of distant lands rather than satisfied it. Numerous notions held by Elizabethans about Africa and its inhabitants may be traced back to this book whose polyphony describes the continent on the one hand in line with Pliny’s Natural History (reporting of amazons, giants, cannibals, cyclops, dragons, and countless other oddities) and on the other is, in a matter-of-fact way, concerned about the advancing spread of Islam across the northern part of Africa. Additionally, the spontaneous association of Africa with blackness was deeply ingrained in Elizabethan folklore by Mandeville’s Travels since the compiler held the opinion that Africans lived closer to the sun than the inhabitants of any other continent and were thus the blackest (cf. Burton 1998: 48; Greenblatt 2008: 23).

While no need was felt to examine the origins of whiteness – which was believed to be the norm (cf. Harris 2010: 209) – numerous theories attempting explain the origins of blackness were established. Many believed the black skin to be a curse inherited from their ancestor Ham, who, according to Genesis, had mischievously exposed his drunk and naked father Noah6. Routinely, the people’s blackness was perceived as a physical defect in terms of a hereditary infection connoted with numerous other presumptions (cf. Greenblatt 2008: 23) such as the belief that blacks were, not unlike their forefather Ham, disobedient and did not accept authorities (cf. Newman 1987: 147).

Others, by contrast, believed the dark complexion was the result of a constant overexpo- sure to the sun, or caused by disproportionate internal passions or heat (cf. Bartels 2003: 159); yet others explained the Africans’ black skin with so-called ‘geohumoralism’. As Harris (2010: 208) elaborates, ‘Complexion’ here does not just mean skin colour, as it does now. Derived from the Latin complexio, or ‘mix’, ‘complexion’ referred specifically to the body’s internal mix of four ‘humours’ or liquids – red blood, yellow choler, green phlegm and black melancholy (also known as black bile) – that physicians from antiquity to the time of Shakespeare understood as the basis of skin colour and psychological disposition, depending on which humour is most in abundance. […] Africans were often thought to be susceptible to an excess of black bile, thanks to the burning-up

6 See Genesis 9:20-27. Noah’s curse, by the way, was also exploited as a means of justifying slavery. 18 of their other humours by the heat of the sun. This typifies ‘geohumoralism’, the conviction that geography determines racial complexion and temperament.

In relation to notions of sun and African heat the almost automatic connotation of dark peoples and ferocious lust was established, contributing to the Elizabethan folktale that the closer the people lived to the sun the deeper the black and the more hot-tempered, jealous, and sexually aggressive they were (cf. Jones 1965: 5-8). Linked to an alleged sexual aggressiveness was the belief, deriving from classical antiquity already, that blacks were tremendously sexually potent. For this reason, numerous Elizabethan carto- graphers adorned their maps with illustrations of black naked men with gargantuan sexual organs (cf. Newman 1987: 148), which, I believe, exemplifies very well the amalgamation of early modern scientific knowledge and folkloristic myths during Shakespeare’s period.

Although numerous voyages set off aiming at providing more accurate and scientific information on the continent, its fantastic, alien and fascinating aspects were what proved to be firing the imagination of both poets and readers alike. In this context it is interesting to add that the recently discovered America, for instance, which was subject to an extensive amount of topical first-hand, but less impressive information, had a far less significant impact on the imaginative literature of Elizabethan and Jacobean writers than the ‘African myth’ (cf. Burton 1998: 43; Jones 1965: 1-3).

Another relevant aspect that ought to be examined here is the interdependence between Africans and Elizabethan perceptions of the term then identifying them – Moor. To begin with, one has to keep in mind that the terms denoting difference prior to the emergence of modern discourse on race and colour were subject to ambiguities, shifts and contradictions (cf. Bartels 2003: 160 f.; Neill 1998: 364 f.). Consequently, ‘Moors’ were frequently characterized in contradictory extremes; they could simultaneously be presented as civil or savage, as noble or monstrous (cf. Bartels 1990: 434). As Hunter (quoted in Vitkus 1997: 160) aptly summarises, “[t]he word ‘Moor’ was very vague ethnographically, and very often seems to have meant little more than ‘black-skinned outsider’, but it was not vague in its antithetical relationship to the European norm of the civilized white Christian.”

Originally, the term Moor denoted people living in Mauritania, a region in Morocco, and was, accordingly, only used to refer to the inhabitants of Northern Africa (common-

19 ly referred to as ‘Barbary’, denoting the passage along the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic to Egypt). Gradually, however, the term was widened to denote people from the entire African continent as well as other peoples with dark complexions such as Arabs or Turks. To complicate matters further, ‘Moor’ in Renaissance England could not only denote dark skin, but also religious belief since the regions of Moorish origin were frequently associated with Islam. Hence, also Muslims were regularly simply referred to as ‘Moors’, rendering it impossible to distinguish within early modern discourse as to whether the term described colour, religion, or an equivocal combination of both. As a consequence, the expressions ‘Moor’ and ‘Turk’ were frequently used interchangeably, too (cf. Bartels 2003: 160 f.; Neill 1998: 364 f.).

In relation to Turks, moreover, one must not forget that the Ottoman Empire was colo- nising European territory at great speed during the sixteenth and seventeenth century – rendering the Europeans simultaneously both colonisers as well as colonised. The potential Turkish threat to Christianity was so great that even the English, despite their relatively secure geographic position, felt a strong fear of being conquered, captured and converted (cf. Vitkus 1997: 146 f., 156). Hence, although European distrust of the Orient is to be traced back to classical antiquity (manifestly, for instance in Homer’s Iliad or Aeschylus’ The Persians), it was not until the rise of the Ottoman Empire that ‘the Turk’ had become a symbol of the ultimately tyrannic, demonic and barbaric contradicting all Christian norms and values (cf. Vaughan 1994: 13).

Gradually, as mentioned above, the associations of Moorishness with both blackness and Islam became ubiquitous, which, as Loomba and Orkin (cf. 1998: 13) argue, might have been one reason for the frequent equation of these traits as markers of negative qualities such as debauchery and lasciviousness. The Renaissance Christian perception of Islam was characterised by a radicalised and sexualised vision, resembling very much the alleged sexual, promiscuous excess of black Africans desirous of white women. Hence, dark skin, sexual excess and heresy gradually became irreversibly interconnected (cf. Burton 1998: 57).

To conclude, it ought to be briefly mentioned that by the late sixteenth century Africans, being by far the most numerous of racial ‘Others’ in Elizabethan England, were a comparatively common sight. Living a life of assimilation they were gradually, more or less, accepted on English soil. No longer were they only servants or slaves, but they, too, went to church, paid taxes and sometimes even owned property (cf. Callaghan 1996: 20 193; Newman 1987: 154). By 1601 – at a time when unremitting contact between England and Africa had been established for approximately half a century – such a high amount of blacks was living in the English capital that Elizabeth – apparently displeased about the great number – had them (unsuccessfully) deported out of the country, explaining that the Africans were, on the one hand, taking away jobs from English citizens in need and, on the other, lacked the understanding of Christ; consequently they had to be expelled (cf. Bartels 2003: 159; Levin 2003: 101; Schülting 2000: 548).

3.4 The Image of Jews

Contrasting with a comparatively large possibility of meeting a member of the African community, chances of seeing a Jew in Elizabethan England were extraordinarily limited since the Jewish population had, after having been the persistent victim of persecution and harassment throughout the Middle Ages, officially been expelled by King Edward I in 1290. Curiously enough, however, the English population was nonetheless preoccupied with questions concerning Jewish religion, customs and their potential racial difference (cf. Greenblatt 2008: 22; Shapiro 1996: 1).

Also prior to their expulsion, the English Jews, treated with open hostility and persistent distrust, lived in a highly problematic vicious circle. ‘Enjoying’ kingly protection and being forced into practicing usury (the king seized most of their profits as a compen- sation-payment for his patronage), the Jewish community was detested and under constant attack by the common people, and therefore indeed in need of the royal protection which had caused the citizens’ hatred in the first place (cf. Danson 1978: 147 f.). It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that Jews were officially allowed to re- enter England, but also then both their legal as well as social status remained equivocal (cf. Greenblatt 2008: 23).

In the early sixteenth century a small number of approximately one hundred Jews illegally immigrated from the Iberian Peninsula (where they had been expulsed, too) to England, officially practicing Christianity, but clandestinely founding a small secret Jewish community in London. Henry VIII employed nineteen Italian musicians of Jewish origin, and also at Elizabeth’s I court – consistent with a brewing “intellectually motivated philo-Semitism” (Bartels 2003: 158) – several assimilated Jews were to be found, among whom the queen’s physician Roderigo Lopez acquired notoriety. Found guilty for alleged treason on highly questionable evidence, his execution marked the

21 high point of a newly intensified hysteria directed against Judaism. In the week of Lopez’s execution – two to four years before the composition of The Merchant of Venice – Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (which had gained renewed popularity and whose protagonist, Barabas, as will be examined more closely below, is depicted as archetypical Jewish villain) was performed six times (cf. Levin 2003: 100).

Due to the fact that hardly any of Shakespeare’s contemporaries ever had the chance to encounter a Jew on English soil (let alone see them practice their religion), demonising myths about the ‘infidels’ were fostering (cf. Hendricks and Parker 1994: 9). Further- more, these myths – primarily circulating around charges of ritual murder – were pro- moted in sermons and histories as well as painted on the walls of churches (cf. Bate and Thornton 2012: 162). As Berek (quoted in Cerasano 2004: 16) summarises, Jews were “more available to the English as concepts than as persons, more vivid as sites of speculation than as doers of deeds.”

Being traditionally held responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, Jews were continuously connected to the devil and condemned for being involved with satanic powers. Closely related to the central sin of Jewry – the responsibility for the betrayal and murder of Jesus Christ – was the legend of alleged host desecrations, propagated primarily by the mystery plays of the Middle Ages. In Mistère de la Saincte Hostie for instance, a Jewish usurer lures a Christian debtor into passing him a piece of conse- crated host. Immediately, he tries to crucify, burn and boil, to smash and to stone it. Whatever he does, however, the host bleeds but remains undestroyed. The Jew’s wife and children are thus so overwhelmed by the mystery that they inform against their husband and father and decide to be baptised (cf. Schwanitz 1989: 21). Although, as ought to be mentioned here briefly, the Jewish attack on the Eucharistic host lost some of its immediate meaningfulness when the celebration of Christ’s physical presence in the host was no longer a symbol of communal identity for the Protestant English, the underlying threat of Jewish destruction and villainy remained immanent in post- Reformation England, too (cf. Shapiro 1996: 95).

Additionally, stories of Jews committing ritual murder, of emasculating Christian men, and of slaughtering Christian children in order to ferment the unleavened dough of their bread or in order to drink Christian blood had found their entrance into folklore. Furthermore, Jews were attributed with features of devils and witches – who, too, did not celebrate on Sunday but on Sabbath. As a consequence it was believed that they 22 were powerful wizards and masters of occult sciences, having at their disposal sheer immeasurable riches; simultaneously, however, they were also said to suffer from strange illnesses that could only be healed by Christian blood. Only a step further, as Schwanitz (cf. 1989: 21 f.) argues, the Jews’ ‘craving’ for Christian blood and flesh was paralleled by the alleged Jewish craving for money and wealth.

Evidently, usury, which in general might be regarded as a synonym of Judaism, was another factor contributing to the English population’s widespread hatred towards Jews7. As Hunter (1964: 54) points out, usury “was an anti-Christian practice only proper to Jews, not because they were forced to live by it, but because Judas their eponym had sold Christ for thirty pieces of silver.” The associations of usuriousness with Judaism were so close that also Christian moneylenders were frequently referred to as Jews and that, resulting from a widening of the term, ‘Jew’ was frequently directed at Christians in general as a means of expressing detestation and abhorrence (cf. Levin 2003: 100).

Living in today’s societies where credit and interest are – a lately admittedly highly controversial but still unquestioned and integral – part of everyday life, the early modern period’s dismay of charging interest on loans might be hard to comprehend. The Elizabethans’ revulsion against usury was fostered by many motives, partly originating from religious conviction, partly from economic realities, and partly from superstition and prejudice. At the same time, however, it must not be forgotten that the sixteenth century was an epoch of tremendous economic upheaval and novelty, leading to an enhanced necessity for credits and to a drifting apart of moral theory and social fact. Therefore, usury, being both universally condemned as the underlying reason for any social evil as well as a mercantile inevitability, became the foundation of numerous exacerbating frictions (cf. Danson 1978: 141 f.).

As early as in antiquity, Aristotle contemplated on the ominous materiality of money; later, his thoughts were taken up by Bacon (quoted in Danson 1978: 142), who, getting to the heart of the early moderns’ scepticism, wrote “it is against Nature, for Money to beget Money”. Usury was thus closely connected to a certain ‘mysteriousness of money’, which was first noticed during the early modern period and which would perplex and

7 Despite the existence of laws explicitly prohibiting Jews from pursuing any profession but money- lending, it was widely believed to be their ‘degenerative nature’ that was to be held responsible for the Jews’ abandoning of the professions of their ancestors and becoming usurers and cheaters instead (cf. Shapiro 1996: 35 f.). 23 bother people throughout the centuries to come, too – the fact that money, an inanimate thing, seemed to be able to multiply all by itself. Nonetheless, interest and compound interest accrued by moneylenders, were understood as a somewhat ‘perverse sexuality’ of capital and therefore forbidden to Christians, but a – frequently unavoidable – means of existence for the Jewish population (cf. Schwanitz 1989: 25).

In this context it ought to be added that usury in the Elizabethan period was far from being an exclusively Jewish business any longer. As Harrison (quoted in Danson 1978: 146) admits in his Description of England published in 1587, “usury [is] a trade brought in by the Jews, now perfectly practiced almost by every Christian and so commonly that he is accounted but for a fool that doth lend his money for nothing.” Usury was thus a frequent secondary business for numerous people throughout all strata of society – apart from, quite naturally, merchants, it was yeomen and lawyers as well as parsons and government officials accruing considerably large sums by charging exploitative interest rates (cf. Danson 1978: 146 f.). Still, in popular imagination financial exploitation remained inextricably connected to Jewish moneylenders, although they had not set foot on English grounds for three hundred years (cf. Bate and Thornton 2012: 162). As Shapiro (1996: 99) aptly points out, depictions of Jewish usurers “were in part projections: Jews enabled the English to imagine a villainous moneylender whose fictional excesses overshadowed their own very real acts of exploitation.”

To conclude, it ought to be added that the early modern English also seemed to “have been fascinated by Jews and Judaism but uncertain whether the terms referred to a people, a foreign nation, a set of strange practices, a living faith, a defunct religion, a villainous conspiracy, or a messianic inheritance” (Greenblatt 2008: 22 f.). In this context, Judaism was frequently perceived as “a ‘mirror-image of Christianity’, a ‘creed’ religion, whose sacraments (such as circumcision) were comparable to Christian ones (such as baptism) that had superseded them.” (Shapiro 1996: 34)

Simultaneously, however, one must not forget that, despite a certain fascination with and interest in Judaism, the Elizabethan period was primarily an epoch during which government officials held imprisoned those who were merely suspected of being Jews, and in whose theatres the audience laughed at Barabas’ disgrace in The Jew of Malta and sneered at Shylock’s forced conversion (cf. Greenblatt 2008: 22 f.). Evidently, Elizabethans attached particular fear to the demonic, mysterious Jew since he served as

24 a hidden alien within European Christian culture, a stranger whose ‘Otherness’ was not openly visible (as the one of black Africans), but, on the contrary, which could as well be easily disguised. Within the cultural discourse, hence, “the Jew represents the deepest threat of all – that of a secret difference masquerading as likeness, whose presence threatens the surreptitious erosion of identity from within” (Neil 1998: 363 f.).

3.5 The Venetian State

3.5.1 ‘Venice, the Rich’

It is interesting to note that due to ancient trade relations, a favourable climate and reliable sea-routes (to name only three of numerous factors), it was not England but the Mediterranean regions around which cultural as well as economic exchange was centred during the Elizabethan period. “It was in the Mediterranean that the trades and traders of Europe, northern and sub-Saharan Africa, the Levant, and the East all converged, there that multinational alliances formed, and there that cultures crossed and clashed.” (Bartels 2003: 153) Within this framework, it was first and foremost the city-state of Venice, which, being considered a multicultural bridge between Orient and Occident, famed for its judicial system blurring boundaries between cultures and peoples and perceived as a paradigm of emergent capitalism, fascinated and attracted people from all over the world.

Venice, founded around 568 in the swamps of the river Po by refugees of the Lombard invasion (thereby efficiently evading both the control of the Holy Roman Empire as well as the Papacy), quickly developed into an important trade centre for Oriental luxuries the rest of Europe was increasingly demanding. Over the years, Venice, being a significant bastion along the boundaries of Christian civilization, subjugated several outposts in the eastern Mediterranean and collaborated with Crusaders in need of the city-state’s ships as well as its knowledge of Eastern ports. In the fifteenth century, finally, Venice had become so powerful that it held the monopoly of trade between the orient and occident and had turned into one of the most important cultural centres of the world (cf. Draper 1966: 23, 191).

Although the power and wealth of the city-state had begun to decline during the Eliza- bethan period (Vasco da Gama discovered an all-sea route to India in 1498 – a route that saved merchants and sailors expensive as well as time-consuming trans-shipments and tolls), it remained for the whole of Europe, and especially for the English, the splendid 25 Serenissima or ‘Venice the Rich’ (cf. Draper 1966: 23), famous for its wealth and elegance as well as for its just and thoughtful politics. Moreover, Venice had the reputation of being the continent’s capital of luxury, pleasure and forbidden sexuality. Cosmopolitan as it was, it employed foreign mercenaries and served, as already mentioned above, as an important threshold between Orient and Occident.

In this context it ought to be added that, linked to the decline of Venice, trade-relations and politics in the Mediterranean region were primarily governed by the Ottoman Empire, which had absorbed a substantial amount of the region’s principal ports. During Shakespeare’s lifetime, the Turks advanced considerably west, conquering Tunis and Cyprus in the early 1570s (cf. Bartels 2003: 153). In relation to adequate historic writing, therefore, the defeat of the Turkish fleet before Cyprus as depicted in Othello is solely fictitious, wishful thinking.

As far as the Venetian administrative system is concerned, emphasis should be given to the fact that the city state, a hereditary oligarchy, was “famous for its justice, peace and efficiency at home and for its shrewd diplomacy abroad; […] indeed, it probably inspired the polity of More’s ideal Utopia. Practically without revolution, it lasted through the centuries until overthrown by Napoleon” (Draper 1966: 24 f.). Noteworthy, the oligarchic republic of Venice was unique in a period of widespread despotism and envied by countless statesmen for its stability and reputable management8 (cf. Draper 1966: 24-26).

By the early Renaissance, the vast majority of Italian city-states such as Milan and even Florence had fallen under the dictatorship of successful generals like the Visconti or banking houses like the Medici. Venice, by contrast, managed to remain uniquely inde- pendent by holding a highly efficient political system of checks and balances, [and] secret councils with overlapping powers in complex counter- poise that jealously watched each other, so that no single person could hope to seize the power. Citizens were discouraged from talking or thinking politics; the soldiers in the city’s pay were too polyglot to unite with one another or with the mob against the government; and the captain general was never a Venetian and sometimes not even an Italian. (Draper 1966: 24)

8 The Doge, as should be added as a brief side note, was, quite contrary to Shakespeare’s depictions, no feudal sovereign but a mere ceremonial figurehead.

26 Employing strangers, or condottiere, as professional leaders of the army whose status, unsurprisingly, remained ambiguous had become common practice by the early modern period. On the one hand, the mercenaries were fundamental to the city-state’s security, but on the other, they hardly ever became an entirely integrated and accepted part of its society (cf. Vaughan 1994: 5). Hence, despite countless critiques condemning Othello’s plot line as improbable it was not implausible at all to install an African as general commander – how ever shocking for the Elizabethans this might have been (cf. Bate and Thornton 2012: 183).

Furthermore, it must not be forgotten that in an epoch shaped by reformation and counter-reformation as well as by discriminations against various minority groups all over Europe, Venice must have appeared to suggest a completely diverse societal concept. As a commercial city it was filled with strangers of countless denominations and nationalities; moreover, Venice was – at least by early modern standards – known to be extraordinarily tolerant of both religious as well as ethnic difference (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1111).

Primarily in order to uphold smooth trade relations, just and fair treatment for everyone was legally guaranteed, hence offering the probably only model in Elizabethan Europe in which people from entirely diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds could live together (relatively) peacefully (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1111 f.). It is thus no surprise, I believe, that Shakespeare chose this place of “multicultural mélange” (Boose 1994: 39) as the setting for both Othello as well as The Merchant of Venice – the plays of two outsiders seeking acceptance, tolerance and respect from the dominant and privileged members of society. Clearly, the plays recognise both the vigour and the anxieties of a multicultural city in which friends, business partners and foes have to be strictly distinguished. “[F]or Elizabethan theatregoers in their own commercial metropolis based on water trade and on retail rather than on manufacture, Venice must have seemed an ex- citing and dangerous prototype.” (Smith E. 2012: 120)

3.5.2 Venice seen from an English Perspective

England’s perception of Venice is to be regarded as equivocal and indefinite, vacillating between proclamations of similarity and an insistence on alterity (cf. Vaughan 1994: 14 f.). Like England, Venice is surrounded by water and thus enjoyed a fruitful maritime culture; additionally, both states depended heavily on foreign trade, and in London as

27 well as in Venice merchants were acquiring remarkable economic and political power, threatening the importance of the established nobility (cf. Cerasano, ed. 2004: 9). On the other hand, however, Venice was a Catholic state as well as a centre of slack morals and prostitution, fostering English Protestant preconceptions and anxieties. Overall, the Londoners saw in the archetypically modern, multi-cultural and open city-state grown rich through maritime trade a vision of their own future, of their aspirations and anxieties. Consequently, Shakespeare – not unlike other playwrights, too – used Venice as a vehicle for confronting London audiences with issues of concern in both the Mediterranean city-state as well as the English capital (cf. Bate and Thornton 2012: 147-149).

“There was a perceived affinity between Venice and London, derived from their dyna- mism and attractiveness to strangers, their maritime trade and the quantity of human traffic.” (Bate and Thornton 2012: 148). Given that the Italian city-state was a republic famous for its rule of law and its high standards of public administration, it was perceived as a society in which the rule of law was obeyed, peace was regarded to be the highest good and everyone was allowed to live according to his or her convictions. All of this led to the creation of the Venetian myth widely disseminated and influential in early modern England (cf. Vaughan 1994: 16).

In order to maintain harmony among the various citizens and strangers of Venice, rigid but successful systems allocating every inhabitant his or her place in society were const- itutionalized. By contrast, nothing like this was to be found in late sixteenth-century London, in which a coexistence with strangers proved to be a difficult and pressing issue. Consequently, Shakespeare makes use of Venice as the setting for plays exploring English concerns about hybrid religious and racial identities in an epoch of growing global interconnectedness and expansion (cf. Bates and Thornton 2012: 148, 185). As has already been examined briefly before, The Merchant of Venice and Othello, Shakespeare’s Venetian plays, hence, “consider difference and otherness – religious, national, racial, sexual – and fears about how encounters with such differences test, threaten or transform a society’s values.” (Bate and Thornton 2012: 158)

In the days of Shakespeare, the relations between London and Venice were considered to be excellent in every respect; due to numerous young English noblemen eager to enjoy life on their Grand Tour as well as due to an increase in mutual trade relations, a considerable amount of Englishmen had seen the city first-hand. Venice, hence, was for 28 the English of Shakespeare’s time both “a definite reality and a land of dreams” (Draper 1966: 189), an impressive and positively mysterious, half Italian and half Oriental, mercantile city-state (cf. Draper 1966: 23, 190). Moreover, it was perceived to be the margin of Christendom, but also a centre of civilisation, a place of rationality and tolerance forming a stronghold against both papal superstition as well as Islamic terror (cf. Vitkus 1997: 145, 163).

3.6 The ‘Other’ on the Elizabethan Stage

3.6.1 Staging the African Myth

Notably, the Elizabethans’ heightened interest in exotic and mysterious peoples as well as faraway places became manifest in the plays of that era, too. Accordingly, the incorporation of exotic elements was a distinctive feature of sixteenth century English drama. Nothing both fascinated and repelled Shakespeare’s contemporaries to a greater extent than Africa’s striking and enigmatic ‘Otherness’, and therefore, the representations of Moors on early modern English stages might be regarded as the archetypical embodiment of portrayals of a non-European, non-Christian ‘Other’. It comes as no surprise that the accounts of historiographers and travellers as well as traditional folkloristic conceptions of Africa were readily adopted and incorporated into Elizabethan drama (cf. Jones: 1965: 37; Newman 1987: 149).

In this context it should be added that for the dramatists and poets eagerly taking up the travelogues as new sources of inspiration and settings of adventure, the Northern part of Africa was the one most frequently exploited since the local clashes between Islam and Christianity served as a great source for dramatic conflict (cf. Jones 1965: 14). Despite choosing North African settings, playwrights frequently portrayed their characters as if they originated farther south, allowing them to blend the political and religious conflicts of the north with the dramatic impact of the characters’ extraneousness and mysteriousness of the south (cf. Jones 1965: 15, 134). Quite generally, the stage history of Moorish characters lacked any historical reality and thus allowed playwrights a considerably free hand at presenting them (cf. Bate and Thornton 2012: 171).

The first black main character was introduced to the early modern English stage more than a decade before Shakespeare’s Othello, namely in Peele’s Battle of Alcazar of 1588, a play which portrayed the events of a battle which had taken place a couple of years earlier and was of enormous interest in both England and the rest of Europe. Muly 29 Hamet, as he is called, unsurprisingly, is the play’s villain, luring an innocent and naïve young Portuguese king in the African deserts, which leads to the young king’s untimely death. Notably, Peele’s dramatic treatment of the incident was highly influential in both initiating a lasting interest in the ‘Moor’ as well as in fixing the cliché of the habitually villainous stage African (cf. Bartels 2003: 153; Jones 1965: 14).

In general, two main types, sharing, however, some common characteristics, can be distinguished. On the one hand, they were portrayed as ‘villainous Moors’, whose distinctive trait was an emphasized blackness of skin and heart alike, establishing associations with ferocity, deviousness and unrestrained sexuality (cf. Jones 1965: 86 f.; Schülting 2000: 548). Aaron, for instance, the hopelessly vicious Moor created by Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus, recapitulates his life in the last act:

I should repent the evils I have done. Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did Would I perform if I might have my will. If one good deed in all my life I did I do repent it from my very soul. (Shakespeare. Titus Andronicus V.iii.185-189)

On the other hand, Moors whose blackness was not underlined textually but who were usually called ‘tawny’, ‘noble’, or – quite in line with the prevalent colour-symbolism – ‘white Moors’ filled the Elizabethan stage with diversity. Typically, they were impersonating exotic dignified noblemen capable of distinguished demeanour, but who, nonetheless, were able to exhibit cruel behaviour accredited to all blacks, too. The character of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice, for instance, may be seen as an exemplary model (cf. Jones 1965: 86 f.).

To conclude, African characters were hardly ever depicted in greater detail but represented solely as “picturesque inhabitants of a strange, picturesque land” (Jones 1965: 39). Their most salient feature, unsurprisingly, proved to be the colour of their skin, which, quite frequently, was exploited as a symbol of ferocity and mercilessness, but also, especially in relation to female characters, as a paradigm of sensual eroticism (cf. Bate and Thornton 2012: 177; Jones 1965: 39). The inspirational visual difference of black and white characters on stage was further increased by extensive use of black and white make-up as well as differing accents, which, as Harris (2010: 206 f.) points out, might have enhanced the perceived dissimilarity of English and African people, creating an increased sense of alienation in real life, too.

30 3.6.2 The Representation of Jews

Not unlike the imageries of Jews in real life, the representation of Jewish characters on stage, too, stemmed from a deeply rooted anti-Semitism inherent in western European tradition. To a great extent taken over from medieval plays, they were intimately connected to widespread horror stories created so multifariously throughout the Middle Ages, and Judaism as such was in large parts not portrayed in its adequate complexity, but reduced to a catalogue of ‘Jewish villainy’ aimed at entertaining the Elizabethan audience. Hence, the archetypical Elizabethan stage Jew was usually depicted as murderer, usurer, poisoner, political threat or economic parasite, and easily recognisable by means of a red wig as well as an oversized, artificial crooked nose (cf. Pfister 2000: 412; Shapiro 1996: 92 f.; Vitkus 2006: 61). As Bartels (2003: 154, 158) explains, the typical “Jew was a popular stock figure on the English stage, a predictable representative of a distinctively greedy, deceptive and murderous ‘tribe’ […] a figure then without a homeland, defined rather by his unbounded interest in capitalist exchange.”

Typically, the Elizabethan stage Jew had a brief appearance, simplistically and one- dimensionally depicting grotesque villainy. Usually embodying minor roles, the very few Jews of importance in Elizabethan drama were mostly paradigms of evil, too, frequently impersonating what the Elizabethans perceived as threatening and problematic, thereby holding up a mirror to English society. This might be perfectly well exemplified by the diabolic, Machiavellian und power-hungry Barabas of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, written not even a decade before Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and being one of the most successful plays of that period.

As Vitkus (2006: 61 f.) points out, Barabas’ speech in which he proudly ‘confesses’ his vicious deeds derives from the archetypical catalogue of Jewish crimes by claiming:

As for my selfe, I walke abroad a nights And kill sicke people groaning under the walls: Sometimes I goe about and poyson wells; [...] I studied Physicke, and began To practice first upon the Italian; There I enrich’d the Priests with burials, […] And after that I was an Engineere, And in the warres ‘twixt France and Germanie, Under pretence of helping Charles the fifth, Slew friend and enemy with my strategems.

31 Then after that was I an Usurer, And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, And tricks belonging unto Brokery, I fill’d the Jailes with Bankrouts in a yeare. (Marlowe. The Jew of Malta II.iii.175-194; my emphasis)

This is to be read as ironical boasting full of exaggeration and black humour rather than as a serious confession. Doubtlessly, the representation of the Jew is based on Christian tradition more importantly, however, Barabas – the Machiavellian villain – is an extraordinarily modern figure embodying emergent international capitalism (and demon- strating its threats to the audience).

Furthermore, it needs to be added that “an ever-increasing weight of the indictment for the killing of Christ is borne by the Jewish male” (Callaghan 1994: 171), who, also on stage, was depicted in a far more negative light than his female counterpart, who, within the boundaries of Elizabethan convention, was portrayed rather positively. In contrast to Jewish men, regularly depicted as demonic patriarchs, the Jewish woman is frequently represented as a likeable girl such as Jessica in The Merchant of Venice or Abigail in The Jew of Malta. Fleeing from their paternal bonds and restrictions they are identified with Christianity (to which Jewish women in the world of fiction regularly convert) rather than Judaism (cf. Callaghan 1994: 170).

Usually, the conversion of Jewish women goes hand in hand with their marriage, which, too, sets them apart from their male counterparts. While female Jewish converts are always portrayed as young and desirable, male converts are perpetually old and impotent, remaining at the periphery of Christian civilization (cf. Shapiro 1996: 132). It ought to be added here, however, that the female Jewish characters of English Renaissance literature might also be perceived as somewhat weak personalities who, by assimilating to the more powerful and prestigious in-group, relinquish parts of their identity.

Interestingly, the early modern period – quite contrary to the Middle Ages – was devoid of any insatiable craving for Jewish characters on stage; on the contrary, prior to Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta and Shakespeare’s Shylock no noteworthy Jewish figures existed in Elizabethan drama (cf. Smith E. 2012: 117). To conclude, it should be mentioned, however, that Marlowe’s success with The Jew of Malta as well as the notorious execution of Roderigo Lopez as an alleged traitor fostered a general air of hysteria,

32 (presumably) influencing not only the creation of The Merchant of Venice, but heigh- tening the Elizabethans’ interest in Jewish characters in general. (cf. Danson 1978: 60)

4 Othello 4.1 Introductory Remarks on Othello

The great tragedy about love, jealousy and intrigues fully titled The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice was written between 1603 and 1604 and has, ever since its first staging, been one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. The first authoritative versions date back to the early twenties of the seventeenth century; the First Quarto (Q) was published in 1622, followed by the First Folio (F) one year later. Today’s versions are usually a blend of both, making Othello one of the most difficult plays to edit in Shakespeare’s canon. The Norton Shakespeare edition used as textual reference in this thesis, too, is primarily based on F but includes some oaths, punctuations, and stage directions from Q (cf. Cohen 2008: 2116; Davies 2001a: 330; Schülting 2000: 544).

As with some other of Shakespeare’s works, the plot of Othello, too, can be traced back to an Italian author, namely to Cinthio’s collection of prose works Gli Hecatommithi published in 1565 in which the story “Disdemona and the Moor” serves as a tragicomic example in a debate on marital fidelity (cf. Davies 2001a: 330; Schülting 2000: 544 f.). Despite adopting most of Cinthio’s plot, Shakespeare alters some of the characters’ motives as well as aspects of the story. In Gli Hecatommithi, for instance, Iago is in love with Desdemona, whose rejection triggers his conspiracies; his deeds are nourished by unfulfilled love turned to hatred. Additionally, Cinthio’s Disdemona senses her destiny, fearing that she will serve as an example of misled love since she, not unlike Shakespeare’s Desdemona, too, is married to the black general against her family’s wish. Quite contrary to Shakespeare, however, Cinthio’s Disdemona comes to the conclusion that she should never have disobeyed her parents by marrying someone so dissimilar to herself. Furthermore, Othello does not commit suicide as in Shakespeare but, never learning of his wife’s innocence, is killed by one of her relatives years after the deed (cf. Schülting 2000: 545; Skura 2008: 307).

First and foremost, however, Shakespeare, expanding on the nameless prototype of the Moor, ennobles and magnifies the character, who had been drawn in a negative and explicitly prejudiced way, thereby diluting Cinthio’s moralising and creating “the first

33 black hero in Western literature” (Davies 2001a: 330). While Cinthio’s Moor becomes a savage and ruthless monster, never repenting but hiding from retribution, Othello, depicted at great length as a serene and dignified general, recovers from his lunacy, judging and punishing his horrible deed harshly (cf. Skura 2008: 314). The tragedy’s true villain, as soon becomes evident, is the white Venetian soldier Iago.

By portraying the Moor as an ambiguous but ultimately heroic figure, Shakespeare’s Othello, as will be discussed later in greater detail, might be regarded as an antithesis to prevailing colour prejudices in general as well as to the stereotypical ‘blackamoor’ portrayed on the Elizabethan stage in particular. Prior to Othello, as has been examined in a previous chapter, Moorish characters tended to be either foolish or horrifyingly wicked, fulfilling dramatic and societal expectations implying that the colour of skin revealed man’s degree of villainy (cf. Hunter 1964: 55). Othello’s behaviour explicitly contradicts portrayals of the stereotypical Moor, and, as Skura (2008: 317) convincingly argues, also foregrounds the “tragic Herculean struggle against passion”; the tragedy may thus be regarded as a reminiscence of famous love murders of classical antiquity and European tradition rather than as a damnation of black ‘Otherness’ (cf. Skura 2008: 314).

Apart from Cinthio’s Hecatommithi, Leo Africanus’ A Geographical Historie of Africa, circulating throughout Europe from 1550 onwards, is another important intertext for Othello. The author of the Historie being a multi-faceted African, several parallels may be drawn between Africanus and Othello; both are Moors of noble birth who extensively travelled Africa, both converted to Christianity9 and ultimately integrated into Euro- pean society (cf. Bartels 1990: 435 f.). According to Jones (cf. 1965: 21 f.) it is highly probable that Shakespeare, on the one hand, referred to Leo Africanus’ descriptions of the character of Africans (such as to their credulity, their high regard for chastity, their jealousy, and their wrath) when drawing the character of Othello, and that, on the other, Africanus’ life served as an influential model for Othello’s tales of his past.

4.2 Othello throughout the Centuries

If Othello is indeed (as has often been claimed) the simplest of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, the question as to why it has been the centre of so much controversy and conflicting comment has to be raised (cf. McLauchlan 1971: 10 f.). Indeed, those who

9 Othello’s conversion, as Bartels (2006: 142) mentions, is nowhere evidenced but commonly assumed. 34 have been calling the play ‘simple’ have frequently differed dramatically not only in their descriptions of its simplicity, but also in their overall responses (cf. Everett 1982: 65). In relation to the countless, sometimes highly controversial, sometimes ridiculously out-dated responses, it is important to situate the Othello of a certain culture and generation within its socio-political and historical framework (cf. Vaughan 1994: 6 f).

Clearly, criticism of Othello has been influenced by various ideologies, worldviews and sets of belief. For centuries, audiences, critics and readers alike have seen in the play “the triumph of Othello’s barbaric African essence over his civilized European surface” (Cohen 2008: 2115). Focussing on Othello’s blackness, it has been argued that his character was shaped exclusively by his complexion and that both his verbal assaults and his physical violence were to be the deeds of a Moor, since no one else would be capable of such horrors (cf. Evans 1989: 248). Thomas Rymer, for instance, who, according to Bettinger (cf. 1977: 1), is one of the most important English critics of the late seventeenth century next to Dryden, believes the miscegenous element underlying the love between Othello and Desdemona to be so unthinkable and dreadful that he suggests rendering the plot more plausible by adding an incident in which Desdemona is instilled with the blood of a black sheep so that she, as a consequence, may only be (sexually) satisfied by a black ram (discussed in Bettinger 1977: 4).

Additionally, Rymer regards Othello as disgracefully transgressing the boundaries of both social as well as tragic decorum and claims that the message of the play primarily is “a caution to all Maidens of Quality how, without their Parents consent, they run away with Blackamoors” (quoted in Bettinger 1977: 96; Newman 1987: 152, see also 155), thereby mirroring the moral of Shakespeare’s Italian source which explicitly states, “Di non si accompagnare con huomo cui la natura & il cielo & il modo della vita disgiunge da noi” 10 (Cinthio. Gli Hecatommithi, quoted in Newman 1987: 152). Without a doubt, Othello was not perceived as ‘one of us’ – neither in Renaissance Italy nor in seventeenth-century England.

During the eighteenth century Othello’s blackness was largely ignored since emphasis was put rather on his position as heroic soldier and romantic lover. The early nineteenth century, again, was an epoch in which Othello’s colour of skin was subject to numerous intense controversies. The play was accused of being implausible by critics such as

10 Do not unite with a man whom nature and heaven and the way of living distinguishes from us. (my translation) 35 Coleridge and Lamb, who, not unlike Iago, Brabanzio and Roderigo in their rhetoric, condemned Desdemona’s and Othello’s love as unnatural, claiming that it was impossible and disgusting for a beautiful young Venetian to fall in love with a “veritable negro” (Coleridge, quoted in Schülting 2000: 550; see also Newman 1987: 144).

In the context of such mindsets Stendhal (quoted in LeWinter, ed. 1963: 117 f.), too, reports of a soldier who shot at the actor impersonating Othello (thereby breaking the latter’s arm) inside the Baltimore Theatre in August 1822 shouting: “It will never be said that in my presence a confounded Negro has killed a white woman!” Even more than 150 years later, as late as in 1978, Elsom and Tomalin (quoted in Evans 1989: 248) argued that “[i]t is the only play in the whole of Shakespeare in which a man kills a woman, and if Shakespeare has an idea he goes all out for it. He knows very well that for a black man to kill a white woman is a very big thrill indeed.”

However, as early as in 1839, Heinrich Heine writes in his critique Shakespeares Mädchen und Frauen: Sie [Desdemona] wäre gewiß immer im Palazzo ihres Vaters geblieben, […] aber die Stimme des Mohren drang in ihr Ohr, und obgleich sie die Augen niederschlug, sah sie doch sein Antlitz in seinen Worten, in seinen Erzählungen, oder wie sie sagt: “in seiner Seele”…und dieses leidende, großmüthige, schöne, weiße Seelen- antlitz übte auf ihr Herz den unwiderstehlich hinreißenden Zauber. Ja, er hat Recht, ihr Vater, Seine Wohlweisheit der Herr Brabanzio, eine mächtige Magie war Schuld daran, daß sich das bange zarte Kind zu dem Mohren hingezogen fühlte und jene häßliche schwarze Larve nicht fürchtete, welche der große Haufe für das wirkliche Gesicht Othellos hielt. (215) By emphasising Othello’s great, fair, and white soul as well as by regarding his physiognomy as a mask which the Venetian majority wrongfully perceives to be his true face, Heine, aiming to rehabilitate the Moor, underlines the character’s moral greatness. When elaborating on the powerful magic Desdemona could not resist, he, doubtlessly, does not refer to evil witchcraft but to the positive charms of love and devotion, defending the rightfulness of the couple’s union.

In line with Heine’s approach, numerous other critics, too, celebrated Othello’s high character, praising him as the most serene and dignified of all Shakespeare’s heroes. Frequently, however, Othello’s blackness could not be aligned with his tragic grandeur, and it was thus (in order to allow a more positive interpretation of Othello) prepon- derantly opted that Shakespeare must have meant a noble white Arab (thereby explicitly contradicting the text). Only one step further, Othello was presented as a white man altogether (cf. Draper 1966: 166). 36 Parallel to the movements portraying Othello as a white man, another, contrary line of interpretation was developed emphasising Othello’s physical as well as cultural and ethnic difference. Against the background of (pseudo-) scientific theories on the concept of ‘race’, the American Civil War, racial laws in the United States and European fascism, the tragedy was increasingly perceived as a play scrutinising racial conflicts. While some regarded it as a study on the eruption of a wild, savage and primitive nature inherent also in assimilated blacks, others celebrated the play as a hopeful story of two lovers trying to overcome cultural and ethnic difference (cf. Schülting 2000: 551).

Additionally, a more authentic black acting tradition was initiated during the early years of the last century, gradually leading to today’s dominance of black actors impersonating the part of Othello. Still, it was not until the 1980s that research and theatrical productions stopped reading Othello as a primarily domestic drama, and began to focus on the play’s political character (cf. Schülting 2000: 545). Throughout the last decades, influenced by postcolonial criticism, highly interesting attempts at breaching the racist tradition have been made, leading to thoroughly different interpretative approaches emphasising issues such as proto-racism and ethnic identity. Additionally, Othello has inspired some thought-provoking literary adaptations focussing on the plot’s gender issues as well as questions concerning race and power relations. The most prominent are Carlin’s Not Now, Sweet Desdemona11 from 1969 as well as Phillips’ The Nature of Blood written in 1997 (cf. Schülting 2000: 551 f.).

4.3 ‘Otherness’ Welcomed or Rejected?

4.3.1 “Your son-in-law is far more fair than black” – The Importance of Colour in Othello

4.3.1.1 ‘Black’ vs ‘White’ and the (racial) Connotations of this Opposition Undoubtedly, the colour of Othello’s skin as manifestation of his foreignness and alienation is one of the essential elements of the plot (cf. Bettinger 1977:100). Right

11 Carlin’s Othello, shaped by postcolonial thought, makes this highly interesting statement about Shakes- peare’s Othello: This play – Othello – is a play about colour. It is the first play about colour that was ever written. [...] Now attend while I speak: Here stands Othello [...] – the black man – the negro. Here he stands, alone of his people. Here stands the only black man on this stage. This stage is full – overflowing – with white people. [...] Now all these white people are concerned with this black man – concerned with him in one way or another. They hate him – or they think they do. They love him – or they think they do. Here he stands, with his blonde white wife, and everybody is talking about him – and her. Everybody is talking about them, all the time. (Carlin, Not now, sweet Desdemona 32) 37 from the tragedy’s opening scene, issues of ‘Otherness’, race, and ethnic as well as cultural difference are among the play’s major themes, frequently symbolised by the allegedly binary opposition of two ‘colours’ denoting polarisation like no other – black and white. Exploiting the discourse of colour symbolism ingrained in the Elizabethan psyche, black and white signify not only the colour of the characters’ skins, but also the (purported) colour of their souls (cf. Cohen 2008: 2114). From the first act onwards, hence, the marriage of Othello and Desdemona is, one might rashly think, the union of complete antitheses, of good and evil, of the innocent and the lascivious, of the ugly and the fair, of black and white. Only gradually does one stop to think and starts to realise that numerous of the divergent connotations are more ambiguous and obscure than they might seem prima facie.

Othello has not yet entered the stage (nor has even his name been mentioned) when Iago warns Brabanzio that

Even now, now, very now, an old black ram Is tupping your white ewe (Shakespeare. Othello I.i.88-89; my emphasis).

By evoking horrendous visions of a degraded animal and devilish sexuality, Iago successfully “rivets Brabantio’s attention, not on a man, but on a blurred image of a black lascivious animal contaminating a purer being” (Jones 1965: 89) He successfully induces allusions to the Senator’s fear of miscegenation. Brabanzio cannot accept that Desdemona, who had rejected numerous Venetian suitors, could indeed have “Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom / of such a thing as [Othello]” (O I.ii.71-72; my emphasis). The progressive form of Iago’s hysteria as well as the redundant ‘even now, now, very now’ emphasise that the action takes place at this very moment, implying that it may no longer be completely averted, but that immediate steps need to be taken in order to avert further calamities. Envisioning popular associations of blackness and hell, Iago urges Brabanzio’s intervention; otherwise “the devil will make a grandsire of you” (O I.i.91). Roderigo, too, is quick to join in the chorus when he mourns that fair Desdemona has fallen into “the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor” (O I.i.127). As early as in the opening scenes, hence, Othello’s blackness is (solely by the negatively drawn characters, however) associated with the strange and unnatural, with vicious malice, barbarous ugliness, unrestrained, brutish sexuality, and the evil of the devil himself (cf. Adler 1974: 251).

38 Notably, it is primarily alienated and disenfranchised figures such as Iago, the by-passed ensign, or Roderigo, the unlucky suitor, who struggle to alienate and marginalise Othello in order to regain more powerful positions or take revenge (cf. Bartels 2006: 144). Tragically but understandably, Othello nonetheless gradually internalises the associations between the blackness of his skin and an alleged viciousness, and, as a consequence, becomes insecure and develops feelings of inferiority. This becomes evident, for instance, when he tries to find explanations for his wife’s purported infidelity (cf. Cohen 2008: 2114). Utterances such as

Haply for I am black (O III.iii.267) or My name that was as fresh As Dian’s visage is now begrimed and black As mine own face (O III.iii.391; my emphasis) emphasise quite well, I believe, the gradual decline of Othello’s self-confidence. Slowly but steadily he begins to believe that it was indeed impossible for Desdemona to be in love with and true to a black man.

When Othello, insanely jealous, in an act of destructive passion finally smothers Desdemona, the play, it seems, has come full circle. Conjuring earlier prophecies and insinuations against Othello, the latter’s blackness may indeed be associated with monstrous violence and unrestrained jealousy. The view that Othello’s Moorish identity is to be held responsible for the cruel murder and, linked to that, the dichotomy of Desdemona’s innocent whiteness and Othello’s vicious blackness are once again emphasised by Emilia, who, after having witnessed Othello’s confession declaring the killing of his beloved wife, exclaims

O, the more angel she and you the blacker devil! (O V.ii.140; my emphasis)

Additionally, Emilia, who did not openly express any disdain of Othello prior to the murder, within a couple of lines refers to him as “filthy bargain” (O V.ii.164), “gull” (170), “dull Moor” (232), “cruel Moor” (256), and to be as “ignorant as dirt” (O V.ii. 171). According to Jones (cf. 1965: 92) Emilia, it appears, must have stashed away her prejudices against Othello in order not to offend her mistress. As soon as her preconceptions appear to be justified, however, all her contained contempt bursts out.

In line with conventional colour symbolism, moreover, Othello’s black skin is constantly contrasted with Desdemona’s “whiter skin of her than snow / And smooth as monu-

39 mental alabaster” (O V.ii.4-5) which, in line with both Petrarchan blason as well as general conventions, implied the utmost opposite to Othello’s alleged viciousness, namely innocence, purity and inner as well as outer beauty (cf. Newman 1987: 145). Indeed, Desdemona fully lives up to the expectations related to the whiteness of her skin, a fact which clearly imposes greater significance and symbolism on the monstrosity of Othello’s murder. This is further emphasised by recurrent imageries deriving not only from the dichotomy of black and white, but also from the contrast between heaven and hell.

While Othello is regularly referred to as black devil, Desdemona is throughout the entire play a paradigm of heavenly purity (stained only by her husband’s wrongful insinuations). In Cyprus, Cassio welcomes her, full of praise:

Hail to thee, lady, and the grace of heaven Before, behind thee, and on every hand Enwheel thee round! (O II.i.86-88) which, doubtlessly, carries unambiguously religious connotations (cf. McLauchlan 1971: 15); furthermore, Emilia refers to her as “angel” (O V.ii.140), “heavenly true” (O V.ii.144) and “sweetest innocent” (O V.ii.206).

Nonetheless, it soon becomes obvious that the play’s villain is clearly not Othello but Iago, whose truly destructive and scheming character sets the tragedy’s course in motion. Simplistic categories being undermined, it proves to be the white skinned Venetian rather than the traditionally vicious black outsider who appears to be the clichéd and amoral devil’s representative (cf. Hunter 1964: 57). Indeed, while Othello tends not to conform to most stereotypes it is Iago who exhibits numerous of the disapproving and unfavourable traits commonly accredited to Moors (cf. Jones 1965: 88; Smith I. 1998: 178) and who is, in the end, referred to as “notorious villain” (O V.ii.246) and “damnèd slave” (O V.ii.250). As Hunter (quoted in Braxton 1990: 11) encapsulates, Iago is epitomised as “the white man with the black soul while Othello is the black man with the white soul.”

Finally, Harris (2010: 205) aptly summarises that “[t]he play’s language is full of antinomies of fair purity and black pollution that draw much of their power from the skin colours of Othello and Desdemona, even as they cannot be made synonymous with them.” Countless remarks throughout the play focus on black Othello’s as well as white Desdemona’s skin colour, but simultaneously conflict these colours with the moral con-

40 notations typically associated with them12 (cf. Harris 2010: 205). Indeed, the seemingly binary opposition is relativised when the Duke, for instance, in an easily memorable couplet states, by referring to Othello’s character, that

If virtue no delighted beauty lack, Your son-in-law is far more fair than black (O I.iii.288-289).

On the other hand, fair-skinned Desdemona is condemned as black when Othello, convinced of her unfaithfulness, wonders

Was this fair paper, this most goodly book, Made to write ‘whore’ upon? (O IV.ii.73-74)

Desdemona’s name is begrimed by Othello accusing her of having an affair; the tainting act of deceit is symbolised by dark letters tarnishing and staining her originally ‘fair paper’ (cf. Harris 2010: 205 f.).

As Parker (cf. 1994: 95) emphasises, the tragedy produces a series of highly symbolic, powerful, antitheses, in which Othello is ‘far more fair than black’ (but still circulates between being an in- and outsider), and fair Desdemona becomes a sexually tainted ‘black’ whore. It ought to be emphasised that neither Othello is the black devil with whom he is associated by some Venetians, nor, and even less so, is Desdemona. The play’s true devil is white Iago and, disastrously, no one realises so until the tragedy has taken its course. Adler (1974: 248), too, suggests “that the complex and confusing values of black and white are used to reinforce the theme of man’s tragic blindness” – his inability to distinguish between good and evil by relying too easily on looks and appearance.

4.3.1.2 Othello’s Blackness washed white? Othello, as has been examined in the preceding chapter, is introduced extremely un- favourably, although the plausibility of his characterisation is, as Jones (cf. 1986: 89) points out, largely counterbalanced by the reliability of the characters making it. Iago’s vehement and venomous testimony, for instance, is shaken by his self-confessed hatred of Othello, “I do hate him as I do hell-pains” (O I.i.155), clearly rendering him an unreliable witness.13 Roderigo’s testimony, considering that he is one of Desdemona’s rejected suitors, is equally suspect. Without difficulty, however, they manage to influence

12 As Adler (1974: 255) points out, Bianca, the whore whose name translates as ‘white’, further compli- cates the dramatic rhetoric of ‘black’ and ‘white’. 13 Interestingly, Iago, before leaving the stage in the first scene, unintentionally testifies to Othello’s essential merit when he admits “Another of his fathom they have none, / To lead their business” (O I.i.153-154). 41 Brabanzio, who, having heard of his daughter’s flight into Othello’s arms shares Iago’s and Roderigo’s contempt for the Moor and suggests, probably not unlike many of both Shakespeare’s contemporaries as well as those after him, that some sort of wizardry making his daughter fall in love with Othello must have been involved.

O thou foul thief, where hast thou stowed my daughter? Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her, For I’ll refer me to all things of sense, If she in chains of magic were not bound, Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy, So opposite to marriage that she shunned The wealthy curlèd darlings of our nation, Would ever have, t’incur a general mock, Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom Of a thing as thou (O I.ii.63-72)

He is unable to relate to Desdemona’s feelings, and since his son in law is black (and therefore, obviously, no darling of ‘our’, the Venetian, nation), associations with traits discussed in the previous chapter as well as with dark magic and witchcraft appear to be only logical suggestions. A little later, Brabanzio will repeat his charges before the Senate, too:

She is abused, stol’n from me, and corrupted By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks. For nature so preposterously to err, Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense, Sans witchcraft could not (O I.iii.60-64; my emphasis).

Othello, however, upon first entering the stage, contradicts all preconceptions and re- futes the picture drawn of him beforehand when, within a couple of lines, Iago and Roderigo referred to him as “thick lips” (O I.i.66), “old black ram” (88), “Barbary horse” (113) and as “lascivious Moor” (127). He remains unmoved by Iago’s provocation and with considerable dignity gives the first direct testimony about himself:

Let him do his spite: My services which I have done the signory Shall out-tongue his complaints (O I.ii.17-19), emphasising his self-confidence and trust in his secure position within Venetian society, which he believes to outweigh his potential vulnerability as black foreigner.

Also when ordered to explain the situation and justify Desdemona’s elopement before the Duke, Othello defends himself calmly and expressively, civilly addressing the

42 Senate (except for Brabanzio whom he, quite unlikely, calls ‘old man’) with respect, as they, too, treat him serenely by naming him “valiant Othello” (O I.iii.48).

OTHELLO: Most potent, grave, and reverend signors, My very noble and approved good masters, That I have ta’en away this old man’s daughter, It is most true; true I have married her. (O I.iii.76-79; my emphasis)

A few lines further, he claims

Rude am I in my speech, And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace, For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used Their dearest action in the tented field, And little of this great world can I speak. (81-86; my emphasis)

Clearly, Othello’s metaphoric language and his skilful choice of words ironically undercut his claim to an unpolished, uncivilized and ‘rude’ speech (cf. Harris 2010: 208). Moreover, the choice of language and vocabulary attributed to Othello, I believe, is a highly significant factor of his implicit self-characterisation.

In the early modern period, an epoch in which oratory skills and rhetoric eloquence were perceived as a marker of prestige and dignity (cf. Smith I. 1998: 168), cultural difference between Europe and the ‘Other’ fundamentally circled around disparities of speech. Typically, Africans were presented as speaking, at best, strange accents. Most of the time, however, they were portrayed as uttering incoherent sentences or muted altogether14 (cf. Loomba 1996: 172). By attributing to Othello, at least as long as he is mentally stable, the richest, most glamorous and most eloquent language in the play, Shakespeare deliberately, it appears, inverts expected racial traits and turns attention to the fact that Othello’s blackness may not be the decisive factor of his personality. On the contrary, his “narrative skills ‘make’ him white, […] shaping the image of this equivocal black outsider to a formidable social persona.” (Smith I. 1998: 177)

When asked by the Duke to relate the incidents in relation to Desdemona’s elopement from his perspective, Othello begins to tell his story by mentioning that he has frequently been invited to Brabanzio’s house for dinner who, as Othello convincingly explains, prior to his daughter’s marriage used to be highly favourable of the black general. At

14 Language, as Smith I. (1998: 173) underlines, is to be regarded as a cultural sign indicating belongingness. Those who lack eloquence are automatically situated on the fringes of civilized society. 43 Brabanzio’s home as well as before the Senate, Othello recounts sensational stories of his life, embedding his past in images of exotic African clichés such as “cannibals” (O I.iii.142) and “men whose heads / Do grow beneath their shoulders” (143-144 ). He is, it appears, well aware of the seductive power of his mysterious origins regularly evoking awe and wonder in his listeners (cf. Bartels 2006: 141). Concluding, he asserts that it was not witchcraft but the mysteriousness of his fantastic tales of exotic places and peoples he encountered in the course of his eventful life casting a spell on Desdemona who has, as a consequence, married him out of her own free will.

My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of kisses. She swore in faith ‘twas strange, ‘twas passing strange, ‘Twas pitiful, ‘twas wondrous pitiful. She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished That heaven had made her such a man. She thankèd me […] She loved me for the dangers I had passed And I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used. (O I.iii.157-168)

By explaining his view of the preceding events and recounting the glittering tales of his past, Othello, unsurprisingly, has not only succeeded in convincing Desdemona, but also persuades the Senate of the truthfulness of his love for Brabanzio’s daughter.

Othello’s assumed identity in Venice, it appears, depends to a great extent on his tales of the mysterious continent he originated from. The fact that it was the stories of his African past (and not his actual character) that ultimately made his courtship of Desdemona successful implies, as Newman (cf. 1987: 150) points out, that his origin is not only oppressive but also empowering, not only threatening but also charming.

His ‘magic’ consists of invoking his exotic otherness, his cultural and religious differences as well as his heroic exploits, which involve strange peoples and territories. He oscillates between asserting his non-European glamour and denying his blackness, emphasising through speech and social position his assimilation into white culture. (Loomba 1989: 54)

Moreover, Desdemona, unsurprisingly, praises Othello’s virtue before the Senate when she explains:

I saw Othello’s visage in his mind, And to his honours and his valiant parts Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate (O I.iii.248-250; my emphasis)

44 Yet also other positively connoted characters such as Cassio think of Othello as “great of heart” (O V.ii.371). Even Iago, amidst his hate, admits in a soliloquy:

The Moor – howbe’t that I endure him not – Is of a constant, loving, noble nature, And I dare think he’ll prove to Desdemona A most dear husband (O II.i.275-278; my emphasis).

Hence, when the Duke refers to Othello as being far more fair than black he not only washes white the Moor’s alleged malice but also introduces a prominent symbol of the play – the blackness of Othello’s skin and his soul’s whiteness. This alleged antithesis is “in harmony with the general attitude of the play, namely that the presence of virtue or vice in the mind is not always indicated by appearances” (Jones 1965: 94). In this context Draper (cf. 1966: 201), too, concludes that Shakespeare, who, in accordance with stage tradition could have depicted Othello as one-dimensional, barbarous Moor, preferred to make him, above all, a man.

Othello’s metaphorical ‘whiteness’ is, it appears, to a great extent limited to his acceptance as a skilled military leader and mysterious traveller rather than to his recognition as fully integrated Venetian citizen. The tensions of these two facets of Othello’s personality will be subject to closer examination in the next chapters.

4.3.2 The Question of Acceptance

4.3.2.1 The General Upon first entering the stage (as has already briefly been mentioned above), Othello counters Iago’s insinuations by solemnly declaring:

My services which I have done the signory Shall out-tongue his complaints (O I.ii.18-19), and a little later:

My parts, my title, and my perfect soul Shall manifest me rightly (O I.ii.31-32).

These being almost his first words on stage, it is obvious right from the beginning that Othello, convinced of his integrity, perceives his ‘services’ as underlying reason for his confidence, power, and secured position within Venetian society. Without them, the general seems to be well aware, his position would be extremely vulnerable and therefore his offices are, equal to his life, his most valuable possession (cf. Jones 1965: 90).

45 Indeed, in the very night of Desdemona’s elopement the Senate calls for Othello since the Ottomans are approaching Cyprus and the black general is desperately needed as “special mandate for the state affairs” (O I.iii.72), as defender of the Venetian state

DUKE: Valiant Othello, we must straight employ you Against the general enemy Ottoman (O I.iii.48-49)

Othello, loyal to his new homeland and Christian values, agrees to defend and protect it from the Muslim Turks. According to Cohen (cf. 2008: 2116), this is in so far extraordinary as Africans were politically, religiously as well as on military grounds connected to the Ottoman Empire rather than to Christian Europe, which Venice represents. Accor- ding to other sources (see, for instance, Draper 1966: 200), however, the contrary holds true since the expanding Turks were mutual enemies of both, Europe as well as Africa. This, I believe, is what the Duke hints at when he refers to the Ottomans as general enemy. When Othello is informed that he must leave at the very instant, he answers, “With all my heart.” (O I.iii.277)

According to Murray (cf. 1991: 220 f.), Othello’s mysterious African roots make him a strong and highly valuable general for Venetian authorities since he, due to his foreignness, is in possession of exotic secrets unknown to the super-civilized Venetian courtiers. Indeed, the Venetian Senate explicitly esteems Othello as “noble Moor” (O IV.i.261) considering him “all-in-all sufficient” (262). As a consequence, it comes as no surprise that Othello, at least initially, perceives the Venetians’ reduction of his personality to his military skills and mysterious ‘Otherness’ as highly positive. Regarding it as a valuable contribution to the plurality of Venetian society, he underlines and accen- tuates his status as a foreigner himself, both as a means of recognition as well as of protection (cf. Orkin 1987: 169).

At the same time, however, the play emphasises Othello’s distinctively vulnerable position within Venetian society. Upon his first appearance on stage, Othello is summoned to court for two conflicting reasons. One the one hand, the Senate and the Duke request the general’s instant appearance in order to enlist his military leadership against the Ottomans advancing on Cyprus. Brabanzio, on the other hand, demands Othello’s imprisonment and that he answer charges for having seduced and abducted Desdemona; Othello, hence, is simultaneously not only called to duty, but also to query (cf. Bartels 2006: 144).

46 4.3.2.2 Othello, the Husband, and the Issue of Miscegenation While Othello’s ‘Otherness’ is perceived as positively valuable in some respects, it is equally regarded as highly dangerous in others. Othello realises very quickly that his marriage to Desdemona, the “emotional core” (Vaughan 1994: 5) of the tragedy, has weakened his position within Venetian society, rendering him, all of a sudden, vulnerable to active hostility and open insults (cf. Jones 1965: 91).

Numerous Venetians (first and foremost her father Brabanzio) think it impossible and unnatural for a young noblewoman to fall in love with Othello, regardless of how honourable he may be. When he exclaims:

– and she, in spite of nature, Of years, of country, credit, everything, To fall in love with what she feared to look on! (O I.iii-96-98) it immediately becomes evident that, although he admired Othello for his military achievements and entertained him in his house, he cannot accept his daughter’s wish to follow the black general. As Greenblatt (1980/2005: 240) emphasises, it is his “blackness – the sign of all that the society finds frightening and dangerous – [that] is the indelible witness of Othello’s permanent status as an outsider, no matter how highly the state may values his services or how sincerely he has embraced its values”.

One realises very quickly that Othello (at least by the majority of the Venetian population) is accepted only as long as he does not aim to integrate into the city-state’s society on a private level, too. Clearly, Brabanzio is infuriated because he has not been asked for his consent to the marriage, but even more so he appears to have particular reservations about Othello’s skin colour and African roots. This becomes evident when he, fearing that the general may leave unpunished, complains in a moralising couplet that

[I]f such actions may have passage free, Bondslaves and pagans shall our statesmen be. (O I.ii.99-100)

Considering the fact that Othello is a man of lofty reputation and exalted rank, it indeed appears very likely that solely his blackness can serve as adequate motivation for Brabanzio’s contempt (cf. Butcher 1952: 244).

Schülting (cf. 2000: 548) continues explaining that the main scandal for the Venetians consists in the mere fact that Desdemona was not, as one might expect, abducted or bewitched but chose Othello because she truly was in love with him. Even worse, she 47 admits to have indeed been “half the wooer” (O I.iii.175) which, doubtlessly, is a decision beyond the stereotypical explanatory model of white society. Furthermore, the lovers do not only flout cultural boundaries but also, by planning and conducting her elopement as well as by marrying without her father’s consent (at a time when Venetian aristocracy, as must not be forgotten, attempted to keep their blood lines pure in order to increase their nobility), become accomplices against Venetian patriarchy. From one perspective, hence, Othello and Desdemona have threatened the cultural order, subver- ted precarious balances and violated social taboos (cf. Vaughan 1994: 28 f.).

Remarkably, it is, again, exclusively the negatively drawn and marginalised characters condemning the relationship. Roderigo believes Desdemona has, by fleeing into ‘the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor’ committed “a gross revolt” (O I.i.135) and Iago evokes nightmarish visions (linking race in the sense of denoting pedigreed horses with miscegenation) when he warns Brabanzio in expressive anaphoras

you’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse, you’ll have your nephews neigh to you, you’ll have coursers for cousins and jennets for germans (O I.i.112-115).

In relation to the other Venetians’ seemingly indulgent attitude towards the lovers’ union and Othello’s acquittal before the Senate, Berry (cf. 1990: 324 f.) and Vaughan (cf. 1994: 30) offer a highly interesting line of interpretation arguing that Othello’s marriage is not saved due to his virtue and rank, but due to considerations dictated by pressing realpolitik. Bartels (cf. 2006: 145), too, points out that the Duke’s dismissal of the charges is at least in part due to the city’s desperate need for Othello’s military leadership. Initially, the Duke promises Brabanzio that

Whoe’er he be that in this foul proceeding. Hath thus beguiled your daughter of herself And you of her, the bloody book of law You shall yourself read in the bitter letter After your own sense (O I.iii.65).

Yet, when it becomes evident that Othello is the offender, he immediately drops the case, overlooking social transgressions he would probably have condemned in differing conditions. After all, Brabanzio’s accusations are convincing enough to interrupt urgent political business. It remains unclear how Duke and Senate would have reacted if Venice had not been threatened by the advancing Ottoman fleet. However, the fear of miscegenation remains the tragedy’s underlying threat, and once the Turkish menace (and hence Othello’s responsibility) is removed, he becomes even more vulnerable to

48 the complex social and psychological forces leading to his downfall (cf. Berry 1990: 324 f.).

By modifying history and having the Turkish fleet sink before Cyprus, Shakespeare turns the attention from the political to the domestic, leaving Othello without an occupation but under immense social pressure. As Bartels (2006: 145 f.) summarises:

This shift highlights the difference between the Moor’s political position within Europe and his social place. It is one thing, the play suggests, to embrace the Moor as military or economically, providing global access or defense, and another to accept him as an integrated citizen, intermingling socially and sexually with Europeans. At the heart of the derogations against the Moor is the marital bond that transforms the hired outsider (if he has been a mercenary soldier) into a legal insider. If Othello’s position as a military leader gives him important leverage and licence within the high circles of the Venetian court, his marriage to Desdemona, in contrast, makes him vulnerable to attack, especially from figures on the outs, looking for some way – some scapegoat – to advance their own positions or to enact their private revenge.

To conclude, I would like to point out, however, that, even when considering the fact that early modern writers treated the issue of miscegenation with great caution, and, even more so, by having Othello successfully courting Desdemona and depicting their relationship as initially exceptionally harmonious and fortunate, Othello may be regarded as exceptional and extraordinary. The play, I believe, despite its tragic conclusion does not condemn the lovers’ union but, on the contrary, illustrates how misconceptions, delusions and unjustified distrust may poison what could be fortunate and prosperous relationships.

4.3.3 Strangeness and the Question of Trust

4.3.3.1 The Moor of Venice As Maguire (cf. 2004: 34) argues, the tragedy’s title Othello, the Moor of Venice may be regarded as an oxymoron. Vitkus (1997: 161) goes even further when he refers to Othello as “a walking paradox, a contradiction in terms”. Indeed, Othello, the African ‘Barbarian’ residing in civilised, super-subtle Venice has, due to his origin in another land, even another continent, and, above all, another culture, at best a partially Venetian identity.

At the tragedy’s beginning, however, we encounter Othello as renowned general who has skilfully adopted the Venetian language, married a Venetian wife, and perceives himself in opposition to the infidel Turks. Interestingly, his true faith in Christianity has regularly been doubted, but, as Draper (cf. 1966: 172) points out, he frequently alludes 49 to Christian concepts15 and applies Christian references so naturally that his belief should not be questioned. Unmistakably, hence, he enjoys social as well as military prestige gained through his martial expertise and reliability; he is enabled to dine with senators, to tell charmingly gripping stories of his mysterious and exotic past, and is the first one the Duke turns to in case of military threats. Doubtlessly, Othello is in certain cultural categories a proper Venetian deeply embedded in the city’s life (cf. Boose 1994: 38; Maguire 2004: 34).

Consequently, Othello clearly is the most prestigious Moor in Venice; that it remains impossible to be the Moor of Venice quickly becomes evident when the Venetians learn of his marriage to Desdemona (cf. Maguire 2004: 34). Othello, who, I believe, beforehand did not even think that he might not be fully integrated into Venetian society, first experiences prejudiced behaviour when having to defend his position as Desdemona’s husband. His father-in-law, openly expresses his detestation when announcing bondslaves and pagans shall our statesmen be, thereby focussing on Othello’s African origins and fanning the Venetians’ fear of subjugation to the mysterious and culturally diverse ‘Other’.

All of a sudden, Othello is subliminally associated with the threats of the Ottoman Empire (against which he actually sets off to defend Venice), and is portrayed not only as a danger to Venetian virgins but also to the city-state’s political stability. No longer is he, it seems, the “all-in-all sufficient” (O IV.i.262) general, but depicted as a fiend within whose indeterminate personality might be liable to relapse and betray the Venetian state. From Desdemona’s elopement onwards, Othello’s hybrid and dual identity is no longer regarded as a valuable contribution enriching Venetian society, but as an allegedly contradictive and threatening, somewhat even schizophrenic doubleness endangering the city’s social stability from within (cf. Neill 1998: 362).

Notably, when Roderigo calls Othello

an extravagant and wheeling stranger Of here and everywhere (O I.i.137-138) he, as Neill (cf. 1998: 362 f.) underlines, fundamentally challenges his identity as Moor of Venice by suggesting that, regardless of how well integrated he may superficially be, Othello remains a profoundly dislocated being, a disoriented nomad originating from

15 According to Myrick (discussed in Draper 1966: 172), the words ‘soul’, ‘heaven’, ‘damned’, ‘devil’, and ‘hell’ occur more often in Othello than in any other of Shakespeare’s plays. 50 the unknown depths of wilderness, an “erring Barbarian”16 (O I.iii.346). From this perspective, Othello represents the intrusion of wild and barbarous disorder into the epicentre of metropolitan civilization, embodying somehow a “civil monster” (O IV.i. 61), a violent contradiction that cannot be overcome. His oxymoronic self as ‘Moor of Venice’, hence, implies a split and unstable identity (cf. Vitkus 1997: 162).

Despite his (in parts successful) attempts at assimilation and integration Othello remains, due to the variant colour of his skin, the indelible signifier of his ‘Otherness’, as well as a twofold ‘Other’ due to his distant and exotic place of origin. Being, one the one hand, no Venetian by birth and thus unfamiliar with its mores and customs and, on the other, deeply unsettled by the sudden animosities reminding him of his status as a cultural alien, he is highly receptive to Iago’s manipulations who, as a cultural insider, is enabled to exploit Othello’s anxieties of not-belongingness to the fullest (cf. Maguire 2004: 36).

4.3.3.2 “Honest Iago” Doubtlessly, it is Othello’s sudden confrontation with the vulnerability and instability of his social position that makes him so extraordinarily susceptible to Iago’s pretence of being his closest confidant. Additionally, as Stoll (1964: 32) stresses, “Othello has a strong and healthy mind and a vivid imagination, but they deal entirely with first impressions, with obvious facts. If he trusts a man he trusts him without the faintest shadow of reverse”. Evidently, hence, the play’s tragic developments are in part due to Iago’s talent to turn Othello’s grandeur against him. His open and dupable, somewhat naïve mind, it appears, renders him even more accessible to Iago’s plotting.

Due to the limited scope of this thesis, the reasons for Iago’s scheming behaviour cannot be discussed at great length, but simplistically one might argue that the driving force behind Iago’s cold-blooded calculations is envy, jealousy as well as universal nihilism. As early as during Othello’s arrival in Cyprus Iago prophesies in an aside:

O! you are well tun’d now, But I’ll set down the pegs that make that music, As honest as I am (O II.i.196-198), ironically referring to himself as ‘honest’. A little later he schemes to attempt to

put the Moor

16 Note Iago’s pun equating Barbary with barbarism. 51 […] into a jealousy so strong That judgement cannot cure (O II.i.287-89) which he, with tragic bravura, masters within the shortest period of time, transforming the noble general into a self-incriminating, reckless and irrational Moor (cf. Bartels 1990: 451). Indeed, Othello, whom, according to Lodovico “passion could not shake” (O IV.i.263) and who until the moment of his temptation also in moments of distress could not be more serene and dignified, begins to act in ways that “would not be believed in Venice” (O IV.i.237). At Iago’s word he falls prey to the stormiest passions without consideration of evidence or judgement, crying out “O blood, blood, blood!” (O III.iii.454) and promising to “chop her into messes” (O IV.i.190) (cf. Stoll 1964: 2).

As McLauchlan (cf. 1971: 33-55) examines, the so-called brawl-scene in which Othello dismisses Cassio may be seen as a terrible foreshadowing of the events to come, illustrating Iago’s gift for manipulating people. After the outbreak of turmoils instigated by Iago during the festivities celebrating the sinking of the Turkish fleet Othello is called to establish order. Regarding the brawl as extremely offensive, he wonders

Are we turned Turks17, and to ourselves do that Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites? For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl (O II.iii.153-155; my emphasis).

By use of semantic fields deriving from the contrastive realms of Christianity and Islam he distinguishes himself from the infidels (also from those within), thereby emphasising his status as Venetian and thus authoritative insider.

The general calmly asks Iago who was to be made responsible for the commotion, and trusting (as, by the way, does everyone else, even Cassio) in his testimony, “I know Iago / Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter” (O II.iii.229-230), he quickly, authoritatively and without any passion expels Cassio in spite of his personal sympathies, regarding his doing as a necessary act of justice. Doubtlessly, Iago has long realised that Othello is incapable of doubt, of pausing and reflecting, and therefore prone to impulsive actions. Indeed, he himself announces:

Think’st thou I’d make a life of jealousy, To follow still the changes of the moon With fresh suspicions? […]

17 The term ‘to turn Turk’ was coined during the fourteenth century, implying not only to become an inhabitant of Turkey or to convert to Islam, but also to be a “cruel, rigorous or tyrannical man; anyone behaving as a barbarian or savage” (Vaughan 1994: 31 with reference to the OED). 52 No, Iago, I’ll see before I doubt; when I doubt, prove; And on the proof, there is no more but this: Away at once with love or jealousy. (O III.iii.181-196)

Iago’s great seduction begins when he and Othello catch sight of Cassio who, embar- rassed by the situation after begging for Desdemona’s interceding so he may be reinsta- ted to his position, sneaks away.

IAGO: Ha, I like not that. OTHELLO: What dost thou say? IAGO: Nothing my lord. Or if, I know not what. OTHELLO: Was not that Cassio parted from my wife? IAGO: Cassio, my Lord? No, sure, I cannot think it, That he would steal away so guilty-like, Seeing your coming. OTHELLO: I do believe ’twas he (O III.iii.33-40).

Skilfully exploiting the scene Iago catches Othello’s attention, leaving, due to the use of the deictic ‘that’, the precise reason of his dislike suspended. When Othello asks for clarification and explanation, Iago at first backpedals by stating ‘Nothing’, only to start again by ‘or if’ which clearly evokes the impression of internal struggles, of him pos- sessing some knowledge he hesitates to share with Othello, thereby successfully plan- ting the first seed of suspicion in the latter’s soul. Being asked whether it was Cassio who just left Desdemona, he denies, although the opposite is evident, since Cassio, surely, would not ‘sneak away so guilty-like’. Confirming, in fact, that Cassio did leave this way, he implicitly indicates that Cassio must be guilty of some offence.

Initially, Othello proves immune to Iago’s plotting. Recognizing that his marriage is unusual, he nevertheless shows confidence in his wife’s constancy:

‘Tis not to make me jealous To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well. Where virtue is, these are more virtuous Nor from my own weak merits will I draw The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt,

53 For she had eyes and chose me. (O III.iii.187-193)

Desdemona’s love, as Loomba (cf. 1989: 54) argues, replaces Othello’s ‘services’ and ‘perfect soul’ as indicator of his worth and becomes the prime signifier of his identity. Thus, when confronted with her alleged infidelity, chaos would descend upon him, smashing not only his worldview in which Desdemona holds a paradigmatic position of purity and goodness, but also his self-confidence. Being aware of all this, Iago carefully, by expressing what Othello might subconsciously fear, stresses his position as cultural insider and includes Desdemona in his negative depictions of Venetian women notorious for deceiving their husbands:

IAGO: Look to your wife. Observe her well with Cassio. […] I know our country disposition well. In Venice they do let God see the pranks They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience Is not to leave’t undone, but keep’t unknown (O III.iii.201-208).

Given the fact that Othello is newly wed and consequently lacks any deeper, real knowledge of his wife, he is even more vulnerable to Iago’s suggestions (cf. McLauchlan 1971: 39). Indeed, he innocently and in surprise wonders:

Dost thou say so? (O III.iii.209)

Othello is bound to trust his confidant, the insider, and remains unsuspicious when the latter claims that the infidelity of Venetian women is a malady one simply has to accept and get accustomed to. Othello’s “I know thou’rt full of love and honesty” (O III.iii. 123) ironically emphasises his disastrous trust in mankind, which Iago, who has long before realised that he “is of a free and open nature / That thinks men honest that but seem to be so” (O I.iii.381-382), skilfully manipulates. Immediately after suggesting Desdemona’s potential infidelity and hinting at Othello’s ‘Otherness’ rendering him unarmed and innocent of Venetian customs, Iago starts another attack on Othello’s confidence in his wife as well as on his self-confidence:

She did deceive her father, marrying you, And when she seemed to shake and fear your looks She loved them most. (O III.iii.210-212)

Gradually, Iago successfully exploits Othello’s status as gullible and increasingly insecure outsider. The formerly proud and self-confident general begins to describe himself

54 as a racial stereotype who, although still convinced of his wife’s virtue, admits that he, too, regards his marriage as unnatural.

OTHELLO: I do not think but Desdemona’s honest. IAGO: Long live she so, and long live you to think so! OTHELLO: And yet how nature, erring from itself – IAGO: Ay, there’s the point; as, to be bold with you, Not to affect many proposed matches Of her own clime, complexion, and degree Whereto we see in all things nature tends. Foh, one may smell in such a will most rank, Foul disproportions, thoughts unnatural. (O III.iii.230-238, my emphasis)

By responding ‘long live you to think so’ to Othello’s assertion of his wife’s fidelity Iago implicitly alludes to her infidelity, subsequently elaborating on the unnaturalness of her love for Othello. For the first time, Othello begins to doubt and, brooding over reasons for Desdemona’s betrayal, he wonders, fully aware of his ‘Otherness’:

Haply for I am black, And have not those soft parts of conversation That chamberers have; or for I am declined Into the vale of years – yet that’s not much – She’s gone. I am abused, and my relief Must be to loathe her (O III.iii.267-272; my emphasis).

Gradually, Othello’s deep devotion turns to destructive loathing, and as the temptation proceeds, he is more and more confused and unsettled, not knowing any longer whom to trust and what to believe.

I think my wife be honest, and think she is not. I think that thou art just, and think thou art not. I’ll have some proof (O III.iii.389-391)

Iago hypocritically tries to appease Othello, but at the same time pretends to have seen the handkerchief Othello once gave Desdemona as a first gift (and which Iago just got from Emila) in Cassio’s hands. Othello, finally overcome by passion, cries for “black vengeance” (O III.iii.451), “blood, blood, blood!” (454) and ultimately falls in a trance. Convinced of Desdemona’s faithlessness and paralysed by frenzied passion Othello exclaims:

55 Ay, let her rot and perish, and be damned tonight, for she shall not live. No, my heart is turned to stone (O IV.i.174-175), and decides: I will chop her into messes. Cuckold me! (O IV.i.190) Iago has succeeded in putting Othello into an uncontrollable jealousy, and the tragedy takes its course.

4.3.4 Insane Jealousy

4.3.4.1 Othello, the Black For centuries, Othello has been inextricably linked to motions of insane jealousy, and his tragedy has been read as “a complete manual of this deplorable madness” (G.E. Lessing quoted in LeWinter, ed 1963: 50). Indeed, the formerly towering character falls prey to frantic passions devoid of any rationality. Convinced that Desdemona, the young white noblewoman, would prefer Cassio to him, an old black general, Othello is pos- sessed with doubt and suspicion, yearning for revenge and damning his beloved wife.

Already convinced of Desdemona’s unfaithfulness, he first confronts her by repetitively demanding to see the handkerchief he once gave her. Knowing that it is lost, Desde- mona, surprised by the unusual harshness of her husband, unluckily tries to change the subject to Cassio’s reinstalment, which, unsurprisingly, leads to a further escalation.

DESDEMONA: Why do you speak so startingly and rash? OTHELLO: Is’t lost? Is’t gone? Speak, is’t out o’th’ way? DESDEMONA: Heaven bless us! OTHELLO: Say you? DESDEMONA: It is not lost: But what an if it were? OTHELLO: How? DESDEMONA: I say it is not lost. OTHELLO: Fetch’t, let me see it. DESDEMONA: Why, so I can, sir, but I will not now: This is a trick to put me from my suit, Pray you let Cassio be received again OTHELLO: Fetch me my handkerchief. My mind misgives DESDEMONA: Come, come, you’ll never meet a more sufficient man. OTHELLO: The handkerchief. DESDEMONA: I pray, talk me of Cassio. OTHELLO: The handkerchief. DESDEMONA: A man that all his time Hath founded his good fortunes on your love, Shar’d dangers with you – OTHELLO: The handkerchief.

56 DESDEMONA: I’faith, you are to blame. OTHELLO: ’Swounds. (O III.iv.77-95)

After having seen Desdemona’s handkerchief in Cassio’s hands as proof18 (and believing to have heard him boasting about his affair when he actually talks about his mistress Bianca), Othello’s jealousy ultimately becomes the decisive driving force behind his actions, causing feverish illusions and nightmarish visions. His former serenity and dignity have vanished; he rapidly deteriorates mentally, speaks incoherent- ly and in prose, falls into fits, publicly strikes Desdemona and repeatedly calls her “whore” (for instance O IV.ii.22).

OTHELLO: Lie with her? Lie on her? We say ‘lie on her’ when they belie her. Lie with her? ‘Swounds’, that’s fulsome! Handkerchief – confessions – handkerchief. […] It is not words that shake me thus. Pish! Noses, ears, and lips! Is’t possible? Confess? Handker- chief? O devil! (O IV.i. 34-41)

As very well exemplified here, Othello’s language dramatically deteriorates propor- tionally to his increase in jealousy. Having been the play’s character with the most glamorous, noble and eloquent rhetoric, he, in line with intensified emotions, speaks in nearly-inarticulate, disjointed agitation, illustrating very well Othello’s internal turmoils turning his worldview upside down. In this context, McLauchlan (cf. 1971: 52) elaborates that Othello’s formerly smooth and graceful speech may be regarded as expressive of the well-ordered universe (with good and evil as clearly distinguishable poles) in which he thought to be living prior to Iago’s great seduction. When he believes Desdemona to be guilty and with good and bad being dreadfully interwoven, not only Othello’s harmonious world but also his language breaks down.

Othello’s pathologic obsession is further demonstrated when Othello tells Lodovico that Desdemona “can turn, and turn, and yet go on / And turn again” (O IV.i.250-51), which doubtlessly refers to her physical movement in bed in which “she with Cassio hath the act of shame / A thousand times committed” (O V.ii.218-219). The constant repetition of ‘turn’ as well as the mentioning of ‘thousand times’ symbolises the steadiness with which Othello’s thoughts circle around his wife’s potential deceit, having again and again envisioned the actual act of infidelity (so often that no room for reason and re- flective thought is left in Othello’s mind). When he kills Desdemona and rejoices “Ha!

18 In Renaissance Venice (as in London), the possession of a lady’s handkerchief was perceived as an impermeable evidence of adultery and led to rigorous penalties (cf. Newman 1987: 155). 57 No more moving. / Still as the grave” (O V.ii.102-103), it becomes evident that smo- thering his wife is the last resort to silence the demonic voices in his head (cf. Vitkus 1997: 154).

Focussing on Othello’s blackness as the main reason for his excessive jealousy, one has again to consider the Elizabethans’ inextricable associations of dark skin, hot temperedness, and an innately jealous and obsessively possessive behaviour. Leo Africanus, for instance, in his A Geographical Historie of Africa, which, as discussed above, most probably served as an important intertext for Othello, writes about Moors: “[W]homsoever they finde but talking to their wives they presently go about to murther them” (quoted in Jones 1965: 22). Apart from Africanus’ reports, countless other accounts of Africans committing murders out of pure jealousy were circulating in early modern England, further ingraining an indissoluble interconnection between Moors and irrational, destructive behaviour.

Interestingly, hence, and quite contrary to what one would might expect of a black- skinned character, Othello, in the first act of the tragedy, inquires to take his newlywed wife with him to Cyprus not

To please the palate of my appetite, Nor to comply with heat – the young affects In me defunct – and proper satisfaction, But to be free and bounteous of her mind (O I.iii.261-264).

Obviously, he is motivated by true love and the wish for his wife’s wellbeing rather than obsessive sexual desire and possessiveness; how quickly he corrodes, however, has already been examined in great detail. It must not be forgotten, however, that, as Jones (cf. 1965: 98 f.) points out, Othello is not (as has widely been argued) innately jealous, but in some ways very vulnerable. Therefore, his jealousy is not, as Emilia suggests when she claims

They are not ever jealous for the cause, But jealous for they’re jealous (O III.iv.155-156) self-generated, but the result of deliberate attacks by Iago aiming at his most vulnerable points, one of them being his blackness of which Othello seems not, however, to have been extraordinarily aware prior to his marriage. In this context it is interesting to mention that the more he doubts Desdemona’s faithfulness, the more he speaks of himself as ‘black’ (cf. Bartels 2006: 148).

58 As the tragedy proceeds, however, a latent misogyny on the part of Othello manifests and, seemingly typical of a Moor, he gradually develops possessive character traits and begins to perceive his love as dependent on absolute ownership:

O curse of marriage, That we can call these delicate creatures ours, And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad, And live upon the vapour in a dungeon Than keep a corner in a thing I love For others’ uses (O III.iii.272-277).

Simultaneous to Othello’s increasing distrust of his wife, Desdemona, by contrast, despite noticing the changes in his character, remains convinced of her husband’s lack of jealousy. When asked whether she believes Othello to be jealous she replies, reversing traditional associations of dark skin and hot-temperedness:

Who, he? I think the sun where he was born Drew all such humours from him (O III.iv.28-29).

Upon preparing to kill his wife, Othello tries to be controlled and authoritative, attempting to convince himself to see his deed as an essential act of justice “else she’ll betray more men” (O V.ii.6). Desdemona’s innocent sleep, however, immediately sows doubts in his mind and “almost persuade[s] / Justice to break her sword” (O V.ii.16-17). When confronted once more with the handkerchief she denies her guilt and begs to send for Cassio. Learning of his death she bemoans him and Othello, tremendously enraged and again convinced of her guilt, kills her, contrary to his intentions, not in an act of justice but in a moment of uncontrollable passion darkening his mental faculties (cf. Draper 1966: 179; McLauchlan 1971: 50). Despite recurrent references to Christian concepts and values such as heaven, repentance and mercy, Othello acts in a distinctively unchristian way which might hint at the impossibility of a true conversion and his relapsing into ferocious wrath and violence.

Immediately after the murder, Othello’s damnation is explicitly proclaimed by Emilia who names him “the blacker devil” (O V.ii.140), implying that the colour of his skin has indeed (as already announced earlier by some of the Venetians) become the external marker of a barbarous spiritual condition. Relapsing into being the black ‘Other’, Othello has become the Europeans’ fearful vision of the fiend within. Having thus become the horrific stereotype of the ‘cruel Moor’ and ‘black devil’ driven by jealousy,

59 mercilessness and violence, his identity as ‘noble Moor of Venice’ has ultimately dis- solved (cf. Vitkus 1997: 173-176).

Before turning the knife on himself, Othello’s final speech epitomises his sense of alienation and self-division haunting him throughout the entire play (cf. Smith E. 2012: 142).

Set you down this, And say besides that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and turbaned Turk Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog And smote him thus. (O V.ii.360-365)

As Burton (cf. 1998: 58) argues, Othello, simultaneously affirming is ‘Otherness’ and desperately attempting to retrieve his position as an honourable member of Venetian society, delivers this final monologue schizophrenically identifying with both a malignant and turbaned Turk as well as with a respectable Crusader who smote him. Notably, it is his rational and virtuous ‘Venetian’ self that slays the cruel and barbarous ‘Turk’ within (cf. Vaughan 1994: 34). As Skura (2008: 306) observes, “Othello’s last words show that he kills himself because he has newly turned Turk, not because [he] has lapsed back into being a stereotype.”

This view, it appears, is shared by Lodovico, who sympathetically laments:

O thou Othello, that was once so good, Fall’n in the practice of a cursèd slave, What shall be said to thee? (O V.ii.297-299) thereby expressing that he, too, does not regard Othello as an innately evil, monstrous black devil but as an originally great personality tragically fallen under the influence of evil plotting. Cassio, too, after Othello’s suicide acknowledges that “he was great of heart” (O, V.ii.371) which is contrasted with Lodovico’s immediately following damnation of Iago as “Spartan dog” (O, V.ii.372). Doubtlessly, these references further underline Othello’s intrinsic goodness that has fallen prey to malice rather than alluding to his personality as ‘black’ and vicious by nature.

4.3.4.2 Othello, the Soldier Parallel to a line of interpretation scrutinising Othello’s jealousy in relation to his blackness, other readings tend to neglect this factor. Undeniably, they argue, Othello’s colour as the obvious symbol of his ‘Otherness’ is of crucial importance to the play’s tragic

60 pattern; it is, however, most probable not its decisive element (see, for instance, McLauchlan 1971: 19). According to Bentley (quoted in Hendricks 2000: 1 as a representative of the line of criticism completely omitting the importance of Othello’s colour of skin), “Othello is a man of action whose achievement was immediately obvious to an Elizabethan audience, in spite of his exotic colour and background, because of his position as the commanding general for the greatest commercial power of the preceding century.” By ignoring Othello’s hue, which, as exemplified in preceding chapters, has been of major concern to the vast majority of critics, directors and readers alike and by focusing instead on his military background as the central basis of his character, attention is directed away from notions of colour and race; instead, emphasis is put on his status as soldier and the complex code of honour this entails (cf. Hendricks 2000: 1).

As Draper (cf. 1966: 228 f.) argues, some Elizabethans probably believed the message of Othello to be that young girls should not elope with foreigners, which, however, is contradicted by the fact that Othello, the paradigmatic alien, is sympathetically treated. Additionally, Moors had not sufficient relevance for most of Shakespeare’s contemporaries to be the main heroes of a tragedy; soldiers, by contrast, were a matter of common interest. Furthermore, choler, commonly associated with soldiers, fiery passions and bravery, is Othello’s in-born humour, influencing not only his character and deeds, but also rendering it difficult for him to control them (cf. Draper 1996: 179 f.). Clearly, Othello is prone to jealousy and impulsive actions; moreover, however, he is, as repeatedly suggested throughout the entire play, a soldier who throughout his entire life had to make quick decision and bear their consequences. In this context it must not be underestimated that for Elizabethans “soldiers were even more notoriously jealous than Moors” (Draper 1966:184).

Othello’s capacity for love is inextricably bound to his understanding of honour, which, among other factors, does not admit infidelity in a marriage. In this context it ought to be underlined that his understanding is by no means unique; quite the contrary, in the sixteenth- and seventeenth century adultery was regarded as detestable sin more horrible even than homicide. Believing that Desdemona betrays him with Cassio, his hand- picked lieutenant, enrages the general even further. Additionally, Othello’s sense of honour is meticulously connected to his belief in justice. Indeed, he appears (as underlined

61 by the extract below) to believe that the murder of his wife was a necessary act of righteousness19 (cf. Orkin 1987: 172).

OTHELLO: Cuckold me IAGO: O, ‘tis foul in her. OTHELLO: With mine officer! IAGO: That’s fouler. OTHELLO: Get me some poison, Iago, this night. I’ll not expostulate with her, lest her body and beauty unprovide my mind again. This night, Iago. IAGO: Do it not with poison. Strangle her in her bed, even the bed she hath contaminated. OTHELLO: Good, good, the justice of it pleases, very good. (O IV.i.190-199; my emphasis)

While pretending to be Desdemona’s judge accomplishing an act of justice, Othello realises too late that he is a murderer and his trial, considering the fact that Desdemona was not even granted the right to hear of the charges brought against her let alone to speak up for herself, an intrinsically unjust travesty. Her answers to the charge remain unheard since Othello has already made up his mind:

Therefore confess thee freely of thy sin, For to deny each article with oath Cannot remove nor choke the strong conception That I do groan withal. Thou art to die. (O V.ii.58-81)

Othello’s refusal to accept reasonable objections and see exonerating evidence, according to Jones (cf. 1965: 104), springs from his unconditioned conviction of the righteousness of his position. Being, as seems to be the substratum of all great tragedy, a mere man, he would be obliged to take and examine evidence as well as to listen to objections. By failing to do so he ultimately destroys what is dearest to him.

After having committed the murder, Othello first publicly states his case against Desde- mona when exclaiming:

‘Tis pitiful. But yet Iago knows That she with Cassio hath the act of shame A thousand times committed. Cassio confessed it, And she did gratify his amorous works With that recognizance and pledge of love Which I first gave her. I saw it in his hand. It was a handkerchief, an antique token My father gave my mother. (O V.ii.217-224)

19 The importance of justice for Othello’s worldview is evident, too, in his dismissal of Cassio despite his personal fondness of his appointee as well as in his suicide which he regards as suitable punishment for the murder of his innocent wife. 62 It takes Emilia only a couple of lines to demolish Othello’s ‘proof’ and consequently his whole case by confessing that she himself gave Iago the handkerchief after he had repeatedly inquired her to do so. Othello, realising his fatal fallacy, stands condemned as murderer and pronounces the verdict in his own case, too. Again, his world has fallen to pieces.

In Othello’s final speech resonates a note of deep humbleness and modesty springing from his cognizance of his own constraints as a human being (cf. Jones 1965: 106). After having expressed his consternation and intense grief by breaking down, wailing aloud and having attacked Iago, his final mood is calm and, again, dignified. Othello’s emotional and moral confusion is resolved, his worldview is restored and good and evil are again strictly separated (cf. McLauchlan 1971: 55).

Soft you, a word or two before you go. I have done the state some service and you know’t. No more of that. I pray you in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely but too well, Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought, perplexed to the extreme; of one whose hand Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe […] (O V.ii.347-357; my emphasis)

One last time Othello emphasises the services with which he has provided Venice and pleads to be remembered not as a vicious monster but as one who ‘loved too well’ and was ‘perplexed to the extreme’ (how ever convincing this may be). His account of the story is fair and it appears as if he was forced to present himself in a positive light in order to do justice to both his powerful position as general as well as his own pride. As Jones (1965: 106) argues, seeing someone who has been so tremendously unfair to Desdemona being fair to himself might offend our sense of justice and lead us to see in his last speech a cheap attempt at self-justification. […] But if we remember that this is also the dramatist being fair to his tragic hero, the balance is restored. Othello, then, is being fair. Most of what he says of himself in this last speech represents the sense of the play, and could be paralleled in the judgements of other fair characters.

63 4.4 Results

“I think this play is racist, and I think it is not” (Vaughan 1996: 70); this bewildered response to Othello is probably symptomatic of most of today’s readers. Yet, to talk about ‘race’ or ‘racism’ in the narrow sense is anachronistic; to ignore it altogether, however, leaves out a fundamental aspect of the play. As Smith E. (2012: 143) convincingly examines: “Othello has been read as a racist play, but it may be more a study of racism, and of its corrosive effects when its inequalities and injustices are internalised”. Indeed, the play explores the emergence and dynamics of racist preconceptions and discrimination and consequently can be regarded as a milestone in the foundation and emergence of early modern racial consciousness in Europe (cf. Neill 1998: 361; Schül- ting 2000: 548).

Clearly, Othello investigates racial difference (sometimes suggesting stereotypes, but more often aiming to subvert them), ethnic conflict and the allegedly antithetical binaries of ‘black’ and ‘white’, as well as jealousy, wrongful trust and misperception. Moreover it investigates power relations, class conflicts and morality (cf. Cohen 2008: 2109). Considering the ampleness and eternalness of the issues revealed in the great tragedy, Othello may not be perceived as the portrayal of an individual Moor in Venice, but as a depiction of the difficulty of intercultural relations in general (cf. Ghazoul 1998: 2).

As the play begins, Othello is presented as a renowned general who, dignified and noble in both speech and behaviour, successfully negates lascivious prejudices and stereotypes. He appears to be a proper, well-accepted Venetian whose blackness seems to be a mere accident easily negated and annulled. Metaphorically, hence, Othello is a white man full of authoritative self-confidence and grandeur. By positioning himself as the military defender of the city-state against the infidel Turks as well as by marrying Desdemona he hopes to further integrate and to ultimately overcome the remnants of his ‘Otherness’.

His marriage to Desdemona, however, quite contrary to Othello’s aspirations, prompts unprecedented prejudice and contempt generated by the subliminal fear of miscegenation associated, as underlined by constant references throughout the play, with violence and perversion. Shown quite plainly the instability of his status within Ve- netian society, Othello’s self-confidence as well as his sense of identity and belonging

64 become increasingly unsettled, making him tragically receptive to Iago’s sinister plotting.

Driven by ever-increasing self-doubt, Othello rapidly deteriorates mentally and experiences insane jealousy, resembling the stereotypical blackamoor rather than the towering Venetian general he used to be during the first two acts. Transforming from a noble Christian soldier and honourable lover to an animalistic murderer, Othello gradually moves from being a subject relatively well integrated into Venetian customs and culture towards alienation and marginalization. Conclusively, he reaches his final position as the ultimate ‘Other’, detached not only from Venetian society but also from himself (cf. Burton 1998: 57; Loomba 1989: 48; Neill 1998: 373).

Frequently, Othello’s jealousy and downfall have been ascribed to his Moorish origin and blackness, which, however, does not accommodate the character’s multidimen- sional subjectivity, denying numerous facets of his complex personality. As Skura (2008: 325) convincingly underlines, “Othello’s crime is monstrous, but Shakespeare does not allow his audience the comfort of thinking that he is capable of monstrosity because he is a Moor.” Clearly, Othello’s excessive and unreasonable jealousy is part of his nature, but choleric temper was believed to be typical not only of Moors but also of soldiers. His dislike of doubt and insecurities paired with his tendency towards swift ad- hoc decisions, too, can be associated with his position as a military leader. Moreover, his jealous behaviour may not only be traced back to his hot-temperedness but also to the unusualness of his marriage. Not only is Desdemona white (and therefore, as it is widely argued throughout the play, ‘erring’ when falling in love with a Moor) and a Venetian who, as Othello learns, are notorious for cuckolding their husbands, but she is also much younger and hence, as he begins to believe, perhaps indeed sexually attracted to young Cassio. Keeping all these aspects in mind, Othello’s predisposition to jealousy may be more understandable.

Additionally, his ultimate downfall is doubtlessly unleashed by his jealousy the reasons, however, are to be found elsewhere. Othello neither belongs to his African origins nor, as he recognises, to his new homeland; having believed in the possibility of fully inte- grating into Venetian society, he is deeply disturbed when he realises that he can be a prestigious and important military leader, but immediately is alienated as soon as he tries to integrate on a personal level, too. As a consequence, he experiences strong feelings of marginalisation and, as already mentioned above, is, due to his lowered self- 65 esteem and awareness of his position as outsider, extremely receptive to Iago’s hypocrisies, the latter being fully aware of Othello’s susceptibility to accept prejudiced notions of his personality as facts. Gradually, Othello perceives himself as his own biased stereotype (cf. Berry 1990: 323).

Increasingly, hence, Othello is a man split between various roles he has been attributed with by society and which he himself identifies with. He is split between his role as heroic defender of Venice and as malignant Turk, torn between his Christian present and African past (cf. Harris 2010: 213). Moreover, his identity is informed by anxieties about being an outsider and indelible ‘Other’. In relation to this, his blackness, the definite marker of his ‘Otherness’, is of great importance for the tragedy’s course, not because his skin-colour and his place of origin innately influence Othello’s character, but because of the preconceptions and biases others as well as he himself attribute to these traits (cf. Berry 1990: 318). In this context, as has been convincingly observed, it is not his blackness as such, but his definite non-whiteness, his non-Europeanness that matters (cf. Loomba 1989: 50). Everett (1982: 72), too, argues that Othello could be “almost any ‘colour’ one pleases, so long as it permits his easier isolation and destruction by his enemies and by himself.”

As far as Othello’s blackness is concerned, further emphasis needs to be given to the reversal of seemingly antithetical binaries and oxymora frequently alluded to in the text. By confronting the readers and audience with Othello, who is both black and noble and Iago who is both white and dishonourable, Othello, stresses that nobility and grandeur as well as depravity and viciousness are neither the monopoly of any colour nor can they not co-exist (cf. Orkin 1987: 166).

As Jones (1965: 87) aptly summarises, Shakespeare used his period’s background very sensitively, exploiting the suggestive potentialities of Elizabethan stage tradition and popular experience in relation to Moors. Simultaneously, however, he negates classical stereotypes “so that in the end Othello emerges, not as another manifestation of a type, but as a distinct individual who typified by his fall, not the weaknesses of Moors, but the weaknesses of human nature.”

Finally, Shakespeare’s decision to turn Othello into a highly complex and multifaceted human being at a time when blacks were habitually presented in subordinate roles as devious and lusty villains or, at best, as relatively value-neutral outsiders, quite explicit-

66 ly implies that Othello distinctively contrasts to the hegemonic ideologies in Eliza- bethan England (cf. Newman 1987: 157). Butcher (1952: 247), too, convincingly concludes that in rendering “Othello undeniably black and in giving [him] heroic stature quite in disagreement with the literary and social practice of his time, in making him profoundly human in its strengths and weaknesses, Shakespeare reveals both the quality and extent of his genius.”

5 Shylock 5.1 Introductory Remarks on The Merchant of Venice

The Merchant of Venice, fully titled The Comical History of the Merchant of Venice, or Otherwise called the Jew of Venice was most probably written between 1596 and 1598, hence preceding the publication of Othello by approximately seven years. Investigating issues of acceptance and discrimination of the ‘Other’ as well as the tension between justice and mercy, the play has frequently been considered the comic counterpart to Othello (cf. Neill 1998: 363). Moreover, it has caused at least as much heated debate and controversy as the great tragedy. Highly controversial not only in terms of interpretation but even as far as its classification is concerned, it is, as Alter (1993: 33) argues, “hard to think of another comedy that pushes so powerfully against the boundaries of genre.” Considering that The Merchant of Venice has throughout the centuries been regarded as a romantic comedy, as a tragicomedy, as a disturbing problem play and even as a tragedy exemplifies very well the work’s openness to multiple readings, its ambiguities and subversive potential (cf. Pfister 2000: 412).

In contrast to Othello and numerous other plays by Shakespeare, the textual history of The Merchant of Venice is relatively simple. Two Quartos (Q1 and Q2) exist, both allegedly produced in 1600, which, however, holds true only for Q1. Q2 was in fact first printed in 1619 by William Jaggard, who also published the First Folio (F) in 1623. Due to its reliability, deriving either from Shakespeare’s manuscript directly or from an accurate copy of it, Q1 forms the most authoritative basis for modern texts of the play. The Norton edition consulted for references in this thesis, too, follows Q1, adopting from F solely some stage directions and the divisions into acts and scenes lacking in Q1 (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008:1119).

67 Tales relating of bonds of human flesh as well as of casket choices (two main aspects of the play’s story line) were traditional and well-established fairy tale motives during the Middle Ages and the early modern period, available, for instance, in Boccacio’s Decamerone and the anonymous Gesta Romanorum. When writing The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare was most probably inspired by one of Giovanni di Fiorentino’s novellas in the collection Il Pecorone dating back to 1378 (cf. Pfister 2000: 411 f.) as well as by other medieval works such as “Gernatus the Jew”, Cursor Mundi, and The Orator, which, too, bear a strong resemblance to the play. The Orator, translated into English shortly before the composition of The Merchant of Venice, probably was among Shakespeare’s primary sources for the pound of flesh plot, reporting, too, of a Jew who would take one pound of a Christian’s flesh20 in case the latter is unable to repay his debts (cf. Shapiro 1996: 122, 126). Additionally, it has been assumed that The Merchant of Venice was influenced by Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta as well as by the execution of the aforementioned physician Roderigo Lopez21 (cf. Davies 2001b: 288 f.).

Although the play correlates in wide parts with the story lines of Shakespeare’s sources, he skilfully expands on the characters’ depth, the plausibility of their motives and on the dramatic and atmospheric impact. In all objectivity, the story around the bond remains highly implausible; still, Shakespeare manages to make it theatrically plausible by rendering the dramatic universe around the contract remarkably realistic and convincing. Additionally, the character of the Jewish moneylender Shylock, in the medieval sources a colourless minor character, becomes one of if not the central figure in Shakespeare’s play who, torn between the longing for acceptance and the desire for revenge, has appalled and fascinated readers and audiences alike for centuries (cf. Pfister 2000: 412; Danson 1978: 89 f.).

Quite contrary to conventional depictions of Jews in Elizabethan drama, Shakespeare, as will be examined later in greater detail, draws his only Jewish character in a highly ambivalent and multifaceted way. Although Shylock is not the merchant but his antagonist, the moneylender present on stage in five scenes only, he has dominated both critical and theatrical history. Moreover, Shylock’s importance as the play’s secret protagonist can be deduced from his share of lines which amounts to 13 per cent and is

20 Flesh, as Shapiro (cf. 1996: 122) stresses, has frequently and especially in the Bible been used to denote ‘penis’. Therefore, the taking of the Christian’s flesh has frequently been associated with widespread myths of Jews emasculating Christian men. 21 Graziano’s reference to Shylock as “a wolf […] hanged for human slaughter” (MoV IV.i.133) is frequently referred to as a punning allusion to Lopez’s (frequently misspelled as ‘Lopus’ or ‘Lupus’) fate. 68 thus surpassed only by Portia; Antonio, the merchant and factual title character, by contrast, is granted only half of Shylock’s speaking time (cf. Smith E. 2012: 116-119). As Davies (2001b: 290) summarises in this context: Shylock, the first of the mature comedies’ great antagonists owes some of his en- during impact not only to his formal status as the comedy’s tragic scapegoat and his religious status as an embodiment of Judaic law in a Christian community nominally committed to love and mercy, but to the skill with which Shakespeare invests his comparatively short role with its own distinctive voice.

Especially in relation to Shylock, The Merchant of Venice raises more questions than it answers. As Lubrich argues (cf. 2001: 98-101), the Jew seems to be an anti-Semitic caricature throughout large parts of the text, and his enemies appear to be the caricatures of anti-Semites. Unsurprisingly hence, it has been hotly debated whether the play – by modern standards – was anti-Semitic or criticising anti-Semitism; or whether it was neither the one nor the other but solely portraying the difficulties of multicultural life, neither condemning nor approving them. Is the play’s irony to be found in its articulation and subversion of anti-Semitism? Is it simultaneously anti-Semitic and anti- racist? Is the Jew a villain or a victim? Is his hatred based on diabolical and ferocious sadism, is it the expression of rivalry among professionals, or is it the legitimate hatred of a harassed and haunted sufferer towards his tormentors? (cf. Pfister 2000: 413) All these questions remain contested even today.

Furthermore, the play phrases some truly universal and timeless food for thought that, undeniably, is even more demanding for today’s readers living in multi-ethnic and all- inclusive societies than it was for Shakespeare and his contemporaries. What respon- sibilities does a society’s majority have towards the minority groups in its country? And do collectively shared human values and characteristics compensate religious, cultural and ethnic disparities, or do the latter outweigh the first? (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1111)

To conclude, it must not be neglected that The Merchant of Venice also examines the influence of modern mercantile practices on society. People, driven by the desire to maximise their profit, the play appears to criticise, seem to have begun to see commo- dities and social relations as interchangeable (cf. Cerasano 2004: 19). In this context, “[t]he flesh-bond plot of The Merchant helps to illustrate, in concrete terms, the ‘interchangeability’ of money and human flesh, as well as the eeriness of the perils therein” (Cerasano 2004: 19). This, doubtlessly, was a threatening but also captivating

69 thought for many Elizabethans, who were witnessing that not only in Venice but also in their home country a growing identification with capitalist enterprise and risky venture was taking place (cf. Moisan 1987: 191).

5.2 Shylock Throughout the Centuries

Without a doubt, The Merchant of Venice is among the most controversial and contested works in Shakespeare’s canon, and undisputedly none of his other comedies have ex- perienced similarly divergent interpretations as this highly ambiguous masterpiece (cf. Lubrich 2001: 98). Evidently, the reception history of The Merchant of Venice is the manifestation of transitions in the perception of Shylock, which, in turn, is inextricably connected to the history of Judaism.

While the Jewish moneylender was depicted at best as a comic character but more regularly as a demonic villain crying in savage fierceness for revenge throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century, it was in 1814 when the previously unknown actor E. Kean revolutionised dominant interpretations of Shylock. Casting off traditional medieval symbols typically associating the Jew with the devil but portraying him as a deeply humane and dignified character, Kean, for the first time, won over the audience’s sympathy for Shylock. Focussing on the character’s contradictory but most understandable impulses, he induced a decisive change in reception history; suddenly, Shylock appeared like a second King Lear – ‘more sinned against than sinning’ (cf. Alter 1993: 29 f.; Pfister 2000: 416).

Gradually, Kean’s approach to the character became the dominant line of interpretation, perceiving Shylock not only as a potentially respectable man distorted by malignantly hypocritical intolerance but also as the representative of a persecuted race. Unsur- prisingly, the Romantics sympathised with the hunted outsider and Heinrich Heine (discussed in Lerner 1995: 145), again in his Shakespeares Mädchen und Frauen, reports of a young woman who, watching a performance of The Merchant of Venice, cries out at the end of the fourth act, “The poor man [Shylock] is wronged!”22 Agreeing with her, Heine decides to count the play among Shakespeare’s tragedies.

By the second half of the nineteenth century, an epoch characterised by growing liberalism, an increasing acceptance of Judaism in political and social life, and, linked to

22 Heine quotes her in English. 70 that, successful and influential Jews, Shylock was primarily presented as the victim of both the Venetians’ hostilities as well as Shakespeare’s alleged ‘racism’. When The Merchant of Venice was once staged in Berlin, the actor playing Shylock was reported to have stepped in front of the curtain, attesting his Jewish contemporaries in a prologue his appreciation while simultaneously apologising for the character he was about to play (cf. Schwanitz 1989: 16).

Clearly, such treatment of Shylock was subject to change in the thirties and forties of the last century, at least in countries in which virulent anti-Semitism was gaining power and influence. Productions in Germany and Austria became either a risky political issue or, more regularly, the propagandistic depictions of a grotesque, repulsive Jew not unlike the ones three hundred years earlier (cf. Pfister 2000: 416 f.). Today, Shylock can finally be depicted in all his fascinating ambiguities and inner conflicts and need not either be condemned as an utterly negative character or be redeemed as wronged victim any longer.

As a tribute to the Jew’s highly complex and ambivalent character, various lines of interpretation and critical understanding have emerged, replacing the prevalently simplifying approaches to the play and exhibiting Shylock’s likeable and vicious character traits simultaneously. Clearly, coined by memories of the Holocaust and ethnic cleanings of cultural and religious minorities all over the world that cannot be disregarded in today’s interpretations, Shylock has become a political character and is predominantly portrayed as a sympathetic figure whose grief and desperation at the end of the trial overshadow any attempts at establishing a recuperative harmony in the last act. Yet, at the same time his wrathful desire for revenge and his destructive motives are being questioned and criticised (cf. Pfister 2000: 412, 417; Smith E. 2012: 118).

To conclude, another (relatively rare) approach which for the sake of completeness should nonetheless be mentioned here briefly has throughout the centuries dismissed any attempts at justifying Shylock’s motivations, perceiving The Merchant of Venice as a typical comedy in which it is solely by coincidence that the role of the dour killjoy is occupied by a Jew (cf. Danson 1978: 127). According to this line of interpretation, Shylock merely meets the requirements of a blocking character who has to be circum- vented and outwitted in order to achieve a harmoniously comic ending (cf. Smith E. 2012: 119).

71 5.3 ‘Otherness’ Welcomed or Rejected?

5.3.1 “Because I am a Jew!” – Representations of Shylock as Victim

5.3.1.1 The Venetian Upper Class’ Claims of Superiority In terms of juxtaposing the collective Venetian in-group with the Jewish ‘Other’, Shakespeare introduces us as early as in the opening scene to the hegemonic group of illustrious Christian gentlemen sharing a mutual system of values and beliefs informed by money, economic thrift and risky ventures. Being intensely aware of their community’s bonds and devoted to the requirements of intimate friendship, all members are benevolent and generous with one another. When Bassanio approaches Antonio and asks for money he keeps spending too prodigally, the latter unhesitatingly assures his friend that

My purse, my person, my extremest means Lie all unlocked to your occasion. (Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice I.i.138-139)

Immediately, he hurries to supply Bassanio with a loan, regardless of the fact that he himself does not have the money at hand.

Thou know’st that all my fortunes are at sea, Neither have I money, nor commodity To raise a present sum. Therefore go forth – Try what my credit can in Venice do; […] Go presently inquire, and so will I, Where money is; and I no question make To have it of my trust or of my sake. (MoV I.i.177-185)

As the play proceeds and Bassanio approaches Shylock to ask for a loan, it is revealed quickly that the members of the Christian community find it hard to cope with those excluded from their group. As Eisaman Maus (2008: 1114) observes, “the Christians’ generosity, grace and self-assurance have a disconcerting racist tinge; […] their society is based as much on the exclusion of the alien as on the inclusion of the similar.” Antonio, who has been introduced as remarkably altruistic, generous and thoughtful, is, as immediately becomes evident, Shylock’s direct adversary and archenemy, hating him relentlessly and articulating his animosities quite openly. He explains his discriminatory motives by reference to economic, religious and idiosyncratic impulses, his main re- proach (probably quite in line with Shakespeare’s contemporaries) being that Shylock accumulates wealth by taking interests (cf. Lubrich 2001: 102 f.). When the Jew tries to 72 justify usury as a legitimate means of making profit, Antonio assures him of his contempt and within five lines refers to Shylock as “devil” (MoV I.iii.94), “evil soul” (95), “villain” (96), as “goodly apple rotten at the heart” (97), and as the personification of “falsehood” (98).

Initially, Shylock defensively responds to the hostile environment with patience, ignoring the insults but reminding Antonio of other attacks he, apparently devoid of any apparent reasons, had to endure:

Signor Antonio, many a time and oft In the Rialto you have rated me About my moneys and my usances: Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, For suff’rance is the badge of all our tribe. You call me misbeliever, cut-throat, dog, And spit upon my Jewish gabardine, And all for use of that which is mine own. Well then, it now appears you need my help. Go, go then. You come to me, and you say ‘Shylock we would have moneys’ – you say so, You, that did void your rheum upon my beard, And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur Over your threshold. Moneys is your suit. What should I say to you? Should I not say ‘Hath a dog money? Is it possible A cur can lend three thousand ducats?’ Or Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key, With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness Say this: ‘Fair Sir, you spat on me on Wednesday last; You spurned me such a day; another time You called me dog; and for these courtesies I’ll lend you thus much moneys’? (MoV I.iii.102-124; my emphasis)

Evidently, Shylock has been assaulted not only for his wealth and his taking of interest but also for his religious convictions, which he submissively regards as a burden all Jews have to bear. Moreover, he reveals that Antonio’s attacks have not been limited to verbal defamation and scorn but that he has become the victim of physical violence as well, that he was spat at and kicked. As the monologue further illustrates, Shylock is denied not only recognition and religious acceptance but even his humanity. While Shylock still refers to Antonio as ‘signor’, the Venetian does not only call the Jew ‘dog’ or ‘cur’ but also treats him in this manner.

73 Surprisingly, Antonio, confronted with the irony of the situation, does not refrain from assaulting Shylock when asking him about the loan but proudly and unrepentantly retorts:

I am as like to call thee so again, To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too. (MoV I.iii.125-126)

Doubtlessly, this further emphasises the merchant’s secure and powerful position, enabling him to attack Shylock, the outsider, in moments in which one would assume he should display a more modest, approachable and unpretentious behaviour. Antonio’s self-confidence and ease illustrate quite well his feelings of superiority and safety, leading him to not even imagine the potential threat Shylock’s bond (as will be discussed later) can impose on him although he knows that the Jew may want to take revenge and admits that he does have his reasons for that. Interestingly, however, Antonio does not believe his ongoing attacks and discriminations against Shylock but economic discrepancies to be the incentives for the latter’s loathing, which, clearly, is indicative of a missing sense of guilt. When explaining his point of view, the merchant implicitly self-characterises himself as a positive character and further condemns Shylock:

He seeks my life. His reason well I know: I oft delivered from his forfeitures Many that have at times made moan to me. Therefore he hates me. (MoV III.iii.21-24)

While Antonio believes the mutual hatred to be based on diverging opinions concerning business, Shylock feels that the reasons for the merchant’s revulsion against him lie in religion23, regarding Antonio’s enmities as directed not towards him as an individual but rather towards his group affiliation.

He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, and what’s his reason? – I am a Jew. (MoV III.i.46-49) When enumerating the catalogue of Antonio’s past injuries, Shylock’s gradually accel- erating rhythm of speech underlines the increasing emotionality and anguish erupting from a formerly composed and calm character. As Danson (1978: 107) observes, the ab- rupt disruption of Shylock’s index of discriminations against him “‘– and what’s his

23 However, as will be discussed later, a clear distinction cannot be drawn since the divergent approaches to usury and the taking of interest are based on religion. Therefore, the religious and economic sphere of the characters’ animosities cannot be separated but are inextricably interrelated. 74 reason?’ startle us into renewed attention. And the attention is fully rewarded by the next four monosyllables: ‘I am a Jew.’”

Furthermore, it becomes evident that not only Antonio but also all of his intimate friends repeatedly discriminate against Shylock by, for instance, never referring to him by name but by publicly calling him “faithless Jew” (MoV II.iv.37), “villain Jew” (MoV II.viii.4), and “dog Jew” (MoV II.viii.14), or “devil” (MoV III.i.16), “most impenetrable cur” (MoV III.iii.18), and “inexorable dog” (MoV IV.i.127) that should be damned. Notably, these torments of verbal abuse are something the Jew does not return once throughout the entire play.

Also when Shylock, distressed by his daughter’s elopement, meets Salerio and Solanio, he once again receives nothing but scorn and derision.

SOLANIO: How now Shylock, what news among the merchants? SHYLOCK: You knew, none so well, none so well as you, of my daughter’s flight. SALERIO: That’s certain. I for my part knew the tailor that made the wings she flew withal. (MoV III.i.19-24) In contrast to the merchant, his friends reproduce their repertoire of anti-Semitic loutish- ness devoid of any economic motivation, implying that the mere manifestation of ‘Otherness’ suffices to provoke aggression. The mechanisms of an exclusion and stigmatisation of the ‘Other’, as Lubrich (cf. 2001: 106) argues, appear to be unquestioned Venetian consensus. Since this is very well exemplified by the casket choice dominating the play’s parallel action in Belmont, too, a brief digression ought to be made here.

5.3.1.2 Digression: The Casket Choice The parallel action of The Merchant of Venice set in fairy-tale like Belmont centres around a casket choice determining Portia’s future husband and illustrates very well that the Venetians’ discrimination of others is by no means limited to Jewish people. The suitors, attracted by the lady’s wealth and beauty, come from various countries, are subsequently scrutinised in relation to their cultural ‘Otherness’ and invariably treated in line with pejorative clichés and stereotypes. The Frenchman, for instance, is mocked as someone made by God “and therefore let him pass for a man” (MoV I.ii.47), whereas the English baron is supposedly handsome but “hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian […] [and] who can converse with a dumb show?” (58-61)

75 In the context of such cultural practices it comes as no surprise that the Prince of Morocco, who due to his skin colour is the most distinct ‘Other’ of all, is immediately condemned by Portia as someone with “the complexion of a devil” (MoV I.ii.110). Right at his entrance he pleas for tolerance when requesting, “Mislike me not for my complexion” (MoV II.i.1), obviously taking it, as Sinfield (cf. 1996: 123) points out, for granted that Portia will be biased.

Dressed entirely in white, which according to traditional colour symbolism implied moral goodness, the Prince emphasises his nobility and great spiritual as well as earthly merit (cf. Moody 1964: 34).

Therefore I pray you lead me to the caskets To try my fortune. By this scimitar, That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince That won three fields of Sultan Suleiman, I would o’erstare the sternest eyes that look, Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear, Yea, mock the lion when a roars for prey, To win the lady. (MoV II.i.23-31)

Despite embodying the archetype of the ‘noble Moor’, Morocco speaks, quite in line with Elizabethan stage conventions, a relatively harsh and somewhat barking language whose “harsh consonants, pounding spondees and violent animal imagery are at odds with the romantic scene he wishes to perform” (Harris 2010: 208), thereby segregating himself from the Venetians’ playfulness also in terms of language. When the Prince has chosen the golden (and consequently wrong) casket and defeated takes his leave, Portia, beauty, wit and love personified, openly delights in her black suitor’s failure and exclaims, “Let all of his complexion choose me so” (MoV II.vii.79).

Also the second suitor presented in greater detail is doomed to fail. Arragon, a Spaniard (and due to his Catholicism for the Elizabethans rather than for Portia a paradigmatic ‘Other’), is full of pride and self-love, and by opting for silver he, too, much to Portia’s delight, chooses the wrong casket. After the African and the Spaniard Bassanio, known to be Portia’s favourite, arrives as third in line. Contrary to Morocco and Arragon he is bid by the young noblewoman to

Pause a day or two Before you hazard, for in choosing wrong I lose your company. Therefore forbear a while. (MoV III.ii.1-3)

76 Of course, Bassanio, familiar with the cultural codes of Venice and supported by Portia’s song, is able to interpret the leitmotifs correctly and chooses the right casket.

But thou, thou meagre lead, Which rather threaten’st than dost promise aught, Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence, And here choose I. Joy be the consequence! (MoV III.ii.104-107)

Repeatedly, it has been argued that both the Prince of Morocco as well as Arragon chose the wrong caskets because they did not understand the true meaning of love but were driven by rash desire and possessive longing, thereby disregarding the principles of love demanding ardent dedication and the taking of risks. Danson (1978: 100), for instance, claims in relation to Morocco that the Prince undeniably is an outsider, but that it is [n]either his complexion, nor his birth, fortunes, graces, and qualities of breeding (the qualities Morocco prides himself on) [that] disable him as Portia’s suitor; he is, in all these things, no doubt a fine person – but he is blind to the fundamental truths to which the caskets’ inscriptions and their contents point.

Lubrich (cf. 2001: 141 f.), by contrast, quite convincingly reasons that it is the African’s and the Spaniard’s ‘Otherness’ which disqualifies them from picking the right casket. Regardless of potential individual qualities, Portia would not want to accept someone alien to her cultural and social codes and only Bassanio, the Venetian nobleman, is the one sharing them. Although living a superficial live of splendour and prodigality, he mysteriously resists the temptations of the golden and silver caskets but chooses the right, leaden one. This, it appears, is less due to his persuasion to “not choose by the view” (MoV III.ii.131) than due to his understanding of the cultural codes Portia’s father has based the casket choice on. Acquainted with the cultural conventions he is well aware of the fact that when confronted with a choice between gold, silver and lead he has to opt for the last.

5.3.1.3 The Venetian Population’s Inexplicable Hatred Returning to the discrimination against Shylock, it is not only the bourgeois-patrician upper class but the entire non-Jewish population of Venice participating in prejudiced acts against him (cf. Lubrich 2001: 107). Salerio only briefly mentions the mockeries related to Jessica’s flight and Shylock’s distress when he reports,

Why, all the boys in Venice follow him, Crying, ‘His stones, his daughter, and his ducats!’ (MoV II.viii.23-24; my emphasis)

77 Nonetheless, this short comment illustrates quite clearly Shylock’s extreme alienation and marginalisation. By giving no motives for the citizens’ scorn, the text further underlines the Venetians’ irrational hatred apparently motivated by group-dynamics, boredom and hypocrisy rather than by substantial and verifiable accusations against the isolated outsider.

Lancelot, Shylock’s servant, too, regards him within a couple of lines as a “kind of devil” (MoV II.ii.19), as the “devil himself” (21) and “the very devil incarnation” (22) while considering running away from his master. When Lancelot’s father Gobbo enters with a present he intends to give to Shylock, his son retorts in a typically Venetian manner:

My master’s a very Jew. Give him a present? – give him a halter! (MoV II.ii.93-94)

Subsequently, he explains that he himself would become a Jew if he served Shylock any longer, implying, obviously, not that he would convert but that he, as a result of serving an outcast, would gradually become more and more excluded and alienated, too, which further emphasises the power of the Venetians’ discrimination (cf. Lubrich 2001: 112).

5.3.1.4 The City’s Discriminatory Administrative and Judicial System Ultimately, also the Venetian judicial system famed for its alleged constitutionality and tolerance to which Shylock as a last remedy appeals does nothing about the Jew’s persecution. Yet, prior to the trial it first seems as if the rule of law was (if not for moral then for economic reasons) indeed the city’s undisputable authority. Awaiting his death, Antonio explains: The Duke cannot deny the course of law, For the commodity that strangers have With us in Venice, if it be denied, Will much impeach the justice of the state, Since that the trade and profit of the city Consisteth of all nations. (MoV III.iii.26-31; my emphasis) Clearly differentiating between ‘strangers’, implying the Jew, and ‘us’, the Venetian citizens, Antonio reasons that a city depending to a high degree on export and foreign investments has to guarantee a minimum of liberality and constitutionality in order not to acquire the reputation of being xenophobic or of fostering legal uncertainty. Contrary to its citizens, it is believed, the Venetian laws do not differentiate between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Shylock soon has to find out, however, that the Venetian legislative powers as well as its jurisprudence are by no means neutral. Hence, evidently without knowing, Antonio reversely anticipates a Venetian law, which, in violation of constitutional

78 principles, after all does differentiate between aliens and citizens (cf. Lubrich 2001: 108).

The law leading to Shylock’s final defeat at court will be examined in greater detail in chapter 5.3.6, but as a brief anticipation it should be mentioned here that a legal norm provisioning divergent consequences for foreigners and Venetian citizens exists. Aliens attempting to seek the life of a Venetian forfeit all their possessions and put their own life at the mercy of the Duke. Considering the fact that the law explicitly refers to alien delinquents and Venetian victims only, one can deduce that the offence of a Venetian seeking the life of a stranger is punished more mildly. Accordingly, the law explicitly distinguishes between citizens and foreigners, thereby declassifying strangers living on Venetian territory and officially defining their status as discriminated beings. As a consequence, Shylock’s confidence in the rule of law and his hope for (legal) equality are smashed as naïve illusions (cf. Lubrich 2001: 109).

5.3.2 “But since I am a dog beware my fangs” – Representations of Shylock as Perpetrator

5.3.2.1 The Jew’s Isolation and Alienation: Cause for, or Result of, his Viciousness? Contrary to the sociable and well-connected Venetian Christians, Shylock remains an alienated, isolated and lonesome character throughout the entire play, deserted at first by his servant and eventually even by his much-beloved daughter (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1114). Despised not only for religious and economic reasons but also for motives that cannot ideologically be explained, he lives the assaulted, persecuted and excluded life of a marginalised outsider. One might expect that, unable to rely on the intimate friend- ships and munificence of the Christians, Shylock would be in good standing with the Jewish community. Although he appears to have a few Jewish confidants such as Tubal, and although he repeatedly and quite passionately refers to his tribe as “our sacred nation” (MoV I.iii.43) and praises “our holy Sabbath” (MoV IV.i.35), the play in general gives, in contrast to the closely-connected Christian community, little sense of Jewish clannishness.

According to Lubrich (cf. 2001: 110), Shylock’s social isolation appears to be neither chosen nor to be his fault, but to be attributable to his Jewishness. ‘The Jew’, he claims, has forever been typecast as a paradigm of the ‘Other’, regardless of how they behave as individuals, implying that they are defined by a social stigma they cannot cast off. 79 Schwanitz (cf. 1989: 79 f.), by contrast, emphasises less programmatically that Shy- lock’s marginalisation is at least to a certain degree of his own making. When Bassanio, apparently without sarcasm, invites Shylock to dinner, the latter immediately retorts:

Yes, to smell pork, to eat of the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite con- jured the devil into! I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. (MoV I.iii.28-32) Neither does he want to dine with the Christians nor does he participate at their feasts and the Carnival. He locks away everything he owns and detests the generosity of prodigality as much as the gregariousness of celebrations; he hates youth and the joy of living. Undoubtedly, it appears, Shakespeare has equipped Shylock with puritanical sourness (cf. Schwanitz 1989: 79 f.).

Consequently, it might be argued that his isolation is due to his selfish character incapable of love, generosity and compassion, and that certain character traits indeed depict Shylock as a selfish miser full of hatred and disdain of those around him. To a certain degree, hence, his alienation and exclusion are self-chosen and linked to his bitterness as well as to his openly displayed focus on monetary values. Being a thoroughly capitalist character, he repeatedly equates monetary and spiritual matter24, which further discredits him in the eyes of the Venetians.

Throughout the entire play, however, it is evidenced that he has been suffering numerous psychological and physical attacks, which, it seems, bear no relation to Shylock’s blame, rendering his aversion of the Venetians and primarily of Antonio quite understandable. As Eisaman Maus (cf. 2008: 1114 f.) stresses, it indeed appears as if Shylock’s egocentrism, caution and paranoia are not due to an utterly negative character but largely the result of his isolated, oppressed and lonesome status in society. It thus becomes comprehensible that he feels no need to act magnanimously and charitably towards those who publicly and openly scorn him. He seems to have learned over the years that he cannot rely on anyone but himself and contractual agreements to redeem him from calamities.

In this context, Shylock’s words uttered before leaving for dinner illustrate very well the ambiguities of his character. Having changed his mind, he has agreed to eat with the Christians but contemplates:

24 This will be elaborated on more closely in chapter 5.3.3.2. 80 I am bid forth to supper, Jessica. There are my keys. But wherefore should I go? I am not bid for love, they flatter me, But yet I’ll go in hate, to feed upon The prodigal Christian. (MoV II.iv.11-15)

This brief monologue exemplifies quite well that the question as to whether his isolation was self-chosen cannot satisfyingly be answered. He is invited, knowing that he is not bid for love but that the Christians are dependent on him and thus try to flatter him. Simultaneously, however, he also confesses quite openly that he does not see the dinner as a chance to better their relations but that he will go in hate, exploiting the Christians he regards as prodigals.

Although the continuous discrimination against him has already left a mark on Shylock during the first two acts, his ultimate marginalisation materialises while he is at the abovementioned dinner and Jessica elopes. Being within a short period of time deserted not only by Lancelot but also by his daughter, a decisive turning point has occurred: All of a sudden, Shylock is deprived of his last small refuge of personal freedom and social security safeguarding him against hostilities from the outside, and is consequently beginning to thirst for vicious revenge (cf. Lubrich 2001: 127).

5.3.2.2 The Bond Considering the importance of the bond not only for the plot but also in relation to the representation of Shylock and the planning of his revenge, this chapter is dedicated to a closer examination of the contract agreed upon by Antonio and the Jew as well as to a closer analysis of the motivations underlying the contracting partners’ incentives to enter into the agreement.

When Bassanio first approaches the Jew to discuss the terms and conditions of the loan, Shylock appears to be a seemingly “harmless, silly old man” (Danson 1978: 151) who talks very slowly, absent-mindedly forgets the subject, digresses and merely repeats Bassanio’s words:

SHYLOCK: Three thousand ducats. Well. BASSANIO: Ay, sir, for three months. SHYLOCK: For three months. Well. BASSANIO: For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall be bound. SHYLOCK: Antonio shall become bound. Well. BASSANIO: May you stead me? Will you pleasure me? Shall I know your answer? SHYLOCK: Three thousand ducats for three months, and Antonio bound.

81 BASSANIO: Your answer to that. SHYLOCK: Antonio is a good man (MoV I.iii.1-12)

When Antonio enters the stage, Shylock secretly expresses his detestation of the merchant but in general, again, appears to be highly absent-minded, apologetic and confused, barely capable of keeping the terms of the contract in mind.

SHYLOCK: Ay, ay, three thousand ducats. ANTONIO: And for three months. SHYLOCK: I had forgot – three months [To Bassanio] you told me so. (MoV I.iii.61-63)

All of a sudden, however, Shylock delivers an amazingly coherent speech shedding light on the two men’s relation and wonders why he, who has constantly been abused, assaulted and mistreated by Antonio for his usury, should now help him by lending him such a considerable amount of money (cf. Danson 1978: 153 f.). Stung by the truthful irony of Shylock’s words, Antonio requests

If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not As to thy friends; for when did friendship take A breed for barren metal of his friend? But lend it rather to thine enemy, Who if he break, thou mayst with better face Exact the penalty. (MoV I.iii.127-132)

Yet, mysteriously and contrary to Bassanio’s and Antonio’s expectation, Shylock agrees to lend the money free of interest.

I would be friends with you, and have your love, Forget the shames that you have stained me with, Supply your present wants, and take no doit Of usance for my moneys (MoV I.iii.133-136)

Considering that Shylock himself was only a couple of lines earlier considering the rates, his decision to lend money gratis is even more surprising.

Three thousand ducats. ‘Tis a good round sum. Three months from twelve – then let me see the rate (MoV I.iii.99-100)

It appears as if Shylock thoroughly enjoys the ironic situation of Antonio being dependent on him, and by disregarding the opportunity to charge interest Shylock grasps at the chance to display unexpected moral greatness, thus denying Antonio the right to justly spit on him again.

Perhaps a little too quickly, however, Shylocks suggests a further stipulation:

82 Go with me to a notary, and seal me there Your single bond, and in a merry sport, If you repay me not on such a day, In such a place, such sum or sums as are Expressed in the condition, let the forfeit Be nominated for an equal pound Of your fair flesh to be cut off and taken In what part of your body pleaseth me. (MoV I.iii.140-147)

Although Bassanio initially regards Shylock’s proposal implying the equation of monetary value with human flesh and vice versa as absolutely outrageous, he finally agrees that Antonio sign the contract, still sceptical, however, about “the fair terms and a villain’s mind” (MoV I.iii.175). Jubilant Antonio, by contrast, is convinced that Shylock cannot be serious about the bond and agrees to the conditions, believing that “there is much kindness in the Jew” (MoV I.iii.149). When taking his leave, he rejoices:

Hie thee, gentle Jew The Hebrew will turn Christian; he grows kind (MoV I.iii.173-174)

According to Danson (cf. 1978: 154-157), Shylock’s proposal of the bond is an act of masterly villainy and his absent-mindedness and confusion nothing but calculating pretence in order to conceal his intentions to exploit the bond as a cruel means of vengeance permitting him to literally tear off one pound of Antonio’s flesh, preferably his heart, right from the start. Alternatively, Goddard (cf. 1951: 148-151) rather convincingly states that it might indeed be a hidden and highly understandable desire of Shylock to tear out Antonio’s heart, which, however, is to be interpreted as nothing but mere daydreams and power-fantasies. That a man as intelligent as Shylock, he further argues, could have counted on the bankruptcy of a man as rich as Antonio is truly preposterous, and, as a consequence, claims that Shylock suggested the bond as a means of revenge in the first place are unjustified. According to this line of interpretation then, Shylock’s conditions to lend money gratis and to have the bond of Antonio’s flesh as ‘merry sport’ are indeed to be regarded as an attempt at improving relations with the Christians in order to be recognised and treated with dignity.

As a middle course, it might be suggested that Shylock originally neither intended the bond to satisfy his lust for revenge nor attempted to bribe the Venetians into a more welcoming behaviour. Rather, he is stunned by the remarkably ironic situation in which his archenemy is asking him for a loan thereby placing himself at the mercy of the Jew. In order to revenge (in a far less intense manner, however!) Antonio’s persistently

83 malevolent attacks and discriminatory actions, Shylock decides to lend money interest- free in order to shame the Christians by exhibiting moral greatness and forgiveness. Furthermore, the bond, equating monetary with human value and thus confusing the realms of matter and spirit, “demands that the Christians violate their own taboo” (Eisaman Maus 2008: 1115) which quite likely must have brought great joy to Shylock. As a consequence, it appears indeed probable that it was only the unfortunate coincidence of Jessica’s flight taking place at about the same time as Antonio’s losses at sea that led Shylock to establish a connection between the bond and his horrendous revenge.

5.3.2.3 Shylock’s Thirst for Revenge As early as during the first encounter of Shylock and Antonio, the Jew in an aside confesses his detestation of the merchant by declaring,

I hate him for he is a Christian; But more for that in low simplicity He lends out money gratis, and brings down The rate of usance here with us in Venice. If I can catch him once upon the hip I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. (MoV I.iii.37-42) Similar to the motives given by Antonio when explaining his hatred of the Jew, Shylock, too, admits that he hates the merchant primarily for economic reasons. Antonio lends money without taking interest, which, of course, has a negative influence on the Ve- netian interest rates. It remains opaque, however, whether Shylock’s attempts at concealing his loathing are the result of his instable and isolated social standing or whether they are indeed due to a destructive and utterly hypocritical character preparing for vengeance.

Hence, although Shylock seems to, theoretically, consider revenge from the first scene onwards, it is, as has been examined above, most likely that he only begins to see the bond as a truly suitable means of vicious revenge when being confronted with his daughter’s betrayal. This is foreboded by Solanio, too, who realises,

Let good Antonio look he keep his day, Or he shall pay for this. (MoV II.viii.25-26)

It is Jessica’s flight which causes Shylock’s final isolation and marks the transition from the defensive acceptance of his identity to an offensive aggressiveness (cf. Lubrich 2001:127). From this moment forth, there is nothing left to lose for Shylock and he

84 immediately expresses his fierce determination to use Antonio’s bond as a means of taking revenge when he repetitively exclaims:

Let him look to his bond. He was wont to call me usurer: let him look to his bond. He was wont to lend money for a Christian courtesy: let him look to his bond. (MoV III.i.40-42)

When Solanio reminds Shylock that taking Antonio’s flesh cannot compensate his monetary losses and wonders “What’s that good for?” (MoV III.i.44), the Jew instantly retorts:

To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else it will feed my revenge. (45-46)

Shylock’s most significant monologue following immediately after renders, at least at first, the Jew’s motives understandably human and asserts “that a common human experience of embodiment ought to override considerations of religious or racial difference.” (Eisaman Maus 2008: 1116)

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, possessions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. (MoV III.i.49-57)

Danson (1978: 106), too, observes that

the initial statement about revenge – that Antonio’s flesh will serve “to bait fish withal, - if it will feed nothing else it will feed my revenge” – is so melodramati- cally horrific that it makes the stunt that follows a tour de force. Shylock allows himself to start from the tactically worst position, then gradually converts his defiant loathsomeness into a seemingly justifiable, even a righteous position.

Trying to exploit the likeness of all human beings as a justification for his right to revenge, however, Shylock relapses into archaic and out-dated ideas:

If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruc- tion. (MoV III.i.57-61) According to Lubrich (cf. 2001: 129), these words mark the transition from humanity to deformation and revenge. Within a couple of lines, Shylock slides from a discourse of universal humanism based on natural right and emphasising the equality and worthiness of all human beings to a speech driven by anguish, revenge and viciousness. At the same time, however, he also lays bare the Christians’ hypocrisy. By arguing that it was 85 them teaching him the villainies he is now aiming to exceed, he implies, on the one hand, that his revenge is the result of continuous maltreatment by the Christians and, on the other, that those who should love their neighbours as themselves tend to disregard the Christian principle of compassion, too.

After having made the decision to take fierce revenge, Shylock’s behaviour is informed by the determination to turn into the vicious devil he has unjustifiably been described as beforehand. Consequently, he begins to aggressively embody the Christians’ prejudices against him and radically mutates into the concept of a monstrously vindictive enemy (cf. Lubrich 2001: 127 f.). Driven by increasingly unreasonable wrath, Shylock rejoices in manic agitation when Tubal confirms Antonio’s losses at sea.

TUBAL: Yes, other men have ill luck too. Antonio, as I heard in Genoa – SHYLOCK: What, what, what? Ill luck, ill luck? TUBAL: Hath an argosy cast away coming from Tripolis. SHYLOCK: I thank God, I thank God! Is it true, is it true? TUBAL: I spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the wreck. SHYLOCK: I thank thee, good Tubal. Good news, good news! Ha, ha, – heard in Genoa? (MoV III.i.82-89)

Insisting on the bond as a means of revenge, he cannot be persuaded to renounce his right and accept the reimbursement of the loan by someone else:

SALERIO: Besides, it should appear that if he had The present money to discharge the Jew He would not take it. Never did I know A creature that did bear the shape of man So keen and greedy to confound a man. (MoV III.ii.271-278; my emphasis)

Jessica, too, tells Antonio’s friends that she

heard him swear To Tubal and to Cush, his25 countrymen, That he would rather have Antonio’s flesh Than twenty times the value of the sum. (MoV III.ii.283-286)

When Shylock and Antonio last meet prior to the trial, the Jew’s irrational obsession with the bond and revenge is further evidenced by their conversation.

ANTONIO: Hear me yet good Shylock. SHYLOCK: I’ll have my bond. Speak not against my bond.

25 Jessica’s use of ‘his’ exemplifies very well, as will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 5.3.7, her complete identification with Christianity (cf. Lerner 1995: 148). 86 I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond. Thou called’st me dog before thou had’st a cause, But since I am a dog, beware my fangs. The Duke shall grant me justice. […] ANTONIO: I pray thee hear me speak. SHYLOCK: I’ll have my bond. I will not hear thee speak. I’ll have my bond and therefore speak no more. […] I’ll have no speaking. I will have my bond. (MoV III.iii.3-17)

Not only does Shylock refuse Antonio the right to speak, but also is his speech broken, full of despair and detestation, and reduced to the manically seeming repetition of the phrase ‘I’ll have my bond’ stated five times in only fifteen lines of speech. Moreover, Shylock’s calling himself a dog ironically mocks Antonio’s insults now dearly paid for and illustrates that the Jew has ultimately transformed into the evil monster he formerly was only accused of being.

As the trial commences, the Duke pities Antonio by stating,

I am sorry for thee. Thou art come to answer A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch Uncapable of pity, void and empty From any dram of mercy (MoV IV.i.2-5; my emphasis)

Not unlike Antonio in the beginning of the play, too, the Duke seems to believe that Shylock cannot be serious about the bond. When he demands an explanation as to why Shylock prefers the forfeiture to a reimbursement of the loan Shylock remains inexorable and retorts,

I’ll not answer that, But say it is my humour. Is it answered? (MoV IV.i.41), thereby implying that he himself is well-aware of the irrationality of his motives. He continues to enumerate certain strange behaviours in other people that, too, cannot be explained and concludes,

So can I give no reason, nor I will not, More than a lodged hate and a certain loathing I bear Antonio that I follow thus A losing suit against him. Are you answered? (58-61)

Following this monologue, Shylock and Bassanio get into a tangle that is interrupted only by Antonio who sees the hopelessness of his situation and appears to have given up.

I pray you think you question with the Jew.

87 You may as well go stand upon the beach And bid the main flood bate his usual height; […] You may as well do anything most hard As seek to soften that – than which what’s harder? – His Jewish heart. (MoV IV.i.69-79)

Bassanio one last time tries to change Shylock’s mind by offering him to reimburse not only three- but six-thousand ducats, but the latter remains merciless, insisting on his bond.

5.3.3 “Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?” – The Economies in The Merchant of Venice

5.3.3.1 The Importance of Money Apart from issues such as religious intolerance and the tensions between justice and mercy, money and the world of finance, too, are important themes in The Merchant of Venice, influencing not only the characters’ behaviour but also their attitudes and actions. The differing approaches to money and moneymaking, as has already been hinted at, deepen the gulf between Shylock and the Venetians and foster further conflict. Considering the extent to which money leads to conflict and division in the play, one might hence easily agree with Maguire (2004: 149) who encapsulates that “[m]oney does not make the world go round; it may do quite the opposite.”

The social world of Venice (and even more so of Belmont) is a gilded, golden world of pleasure, leisure and luxury, a world of frivolity and idle talk based on money which does not only buy goods but also appearance, friendship, and even love (cf. Goddard 1951: 139). The inextricable connection between the material and the spiritual, evidenced throughout the entire play but in fact a taboo for faithful Christians, is, as has already been mentioned above, grotesquely mirrored by Shylock’s bond. As Ryan (1989: 80 f.) points out, “Venice is a world where the human heart is literally a quantifiable lump of meat.” Indeed, in order to sooth Bassanio’s objections trying to dissuade Antonio from signing the contract, Shylock remarks,

If he should break his day, what should I gain By the exaction of the forfeiture?26 A pound of man’s flesh taken from a man, Is not so estimable, profitable neither,

26 Note that he will later contradict this statement, emphasising that Antonio’s forfeit will feed, if nothing else, his revenge. 88 As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats. (MoV III.i.159-163)

Furthermore, the realms of religion and finance are inextricably interconnected and it remains ambiguous whether Shylock’s and Antonio’s animosities are in fact based on religious difference or on economic rivalry. Considering that both give the former as well as the latter as reasons it is, on the one hand, taken into account that both Christi- anity as well as Judaism make divergent provisions for the approach to money and, on the other, it is emphasised that religion and finance cannot be separated but are dependent on and influencing one another in mercantile Venice.

Additionally, the importance of money for the play is further emphasised by countless references to consumer culture and commerce. The words ‘money’ and ‘moneys’ are explicitly used nearly twenty times; additionally, ‘ducats’ are mentioned in every scene and superseded only by the word ‘bond’ which, used forty times throughout the first four acts, is referred to as frequently as nothing else in the play. Moreover, also themes such as love and friendship are described using vocabulary usually associated with the world of finance. The term ‘to purchase’, for instance, is used not only to buy slaves but also to acquire “merit” (MoV II.ix.42) and “the semblance of [Portia’s] soul” (MoV III.iv.20) (cf. Cerasano 2004: 14).

Evidently, hence, the Venetian setting is the type name for a modern and somewhat threatening commercial society in which people tend to act purely self-sufficiently. The Merchant of Venice depicts a world of finance in which friends and foes, servants and noblemen, fathers and daughters all express and value themselves as well as their relationships in terms of money and financial interactions (cf. Hunter 1964: 51). According to Hunter (1964: 51), “the differences between love and hate, bounty and selfishness, Mercy and Justice, Christianity and Jewry are all treated in terms of money and how to handle it.”

5.3.3.2 Usury and the Mysteriousness of Money Antonio’s and Shylock’s divergent religious and ideological convictions are, as has already been examined, most distinctively exemplified by their differing perceptions of usury. Antonio first addresses Shylock with a programmatic rejection of the customs of usury when he declares,

I neither lend nor borrow By taking nor by giving of excess (MoV I.iii.56-57).

89 In order to be able to help his friend he breaks his custom, however, and turns to Shylock. They initiate a debate over the rightfulness of the taking of interest and the Jew, without apparent reason, mentions Jacob, the ancestor of the tribes of Israel, which leads Antonio to ask,

And what of him? Did he take interest? (MoV I.iii.71), to which Shylock responds,

No, not take interest, not, as you would say, Directly int’rest (72-73) implying, quite sarcastically, that there are various ways of making profit and that, as a consequence, Antonio and Shylock sit in the same boat since the merchant’s risky ventures and the Jew’s taking of interest are aimed at the same goal – the accrual of money (cf. Goddard 1951: 145 f.).

Subsequently, Shylock refers in his justification for the taking of interest to the story of Jacob and Laban’s herds. According to Genesis 30:25-43, Jacob is allowed to keep all pied lambs conceived by purely white or black sheep of Laban’s herd as a reward. By peeling off some bark of wooden sticks and putting them in front of the mating animals, he miraculously influences the number of newborn parti-coloured lambs and thus grows very rich. According to Shylock, who compares his own profits to the biblical figure’s revenue, Jacob “was blest” (MoV I.iii. 85) in his ventures to increase his substance and wealth. By using Jacob’s story as a metaphor, the Jew emphasises that he believes breeding money to be “manipulative but inherently natural […] and approved by God” (Bate and Thornton 2012: 166).

When Antonio, quite in line with a medieval and early modern commonplace, asks,

[I]s your gold and silver ewes and rams? (MoV I.iii.91) Shylock, proud of his financial shrewdness, responds,

I cannot tell, I make it breed as fast. (92)

As the discussion proceeds, Antonio reaffirms his position that the act of lending money to a friend should be founded on charity and free will alone,

for when did friendship take A breed for barren metal of his friend? (MoV I.iii.128-129)

90 By charging interest rates, he implies, money mysteriously reproduces and thus loses its merely instrumental quality as infructuous and inanimate metal, perversely turning into an animate and somewhat spiritual organism.

In this context it must not be forgotten that the controversy underlying this relatively theoretical framework is not so much about money but about the concept of friendship and the foundation of a common social identity deeply rooted in religion, forbidding the lending of money on interest to those close to you (cf. Danson 1978: 143). As Eisaman Maus (2008: 1115) elaborates, “[u]sury, blurring the distinction between the domain of the spirit and the merely material realm, threatens to collapse friendship, a spiritual relationship, into a mere economic transaction.” Hence, when Antonio tells Shylock to lend his money not “As to thy friends […] / But lend it rather to thine enemy” (MoV I.iii.128-130), he once again underlines the Jew’s alienation from the Christian community who, though themselves forbidden to practice usury among one another, openly display the infidel’s existence as outsider by allowing him to lend money on interest but despising him for it.

To conclude, emphasis should be given to an interesting aspect Goddard (1951: 144) emphasises when he observes that

[t]he contrast between Shylock and Antonio is apparently nowhere more marked than in the attitude of the two men toward money. Shylock is a usurer. So strong is Antonio’s distaste for usury that that he lends money without interest. But where does the money come from that permits such generosity? From his argosies, of course, his trade. For, after all, to what has Antonio dedicated his life? Not indeed to usury. But certainly to moneymaking, to profits. And profits, under analysis, are often only “usury” in a more respectable form. Shakespeare, as Goddard (1951: 144) further argues, most prominently seizes on Antonio’s and Shylock’s actual sameness when Portia enters the courtroom asking “Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?” (MoV IV.i.169). Intending solely to have defendant and plaintiff identified, Shakespeare adds additional meaning to her question: “Merchant and Jew! Noble trader of Venice and despicable money-changer, at what poles do they appear to stand! Yet – which is which?”

5.3.3.3 The Christians’ Prodigality, and Shylock’s Thrift Although Shylock and the Christians appear to resemble one another much more than they like as far as their attempts at gaining riches and wealth are concerned, they are not at all similar when it comes to the spending of money. The Christians, displaying splen-

91 did grandeur and decadent extravagance, reject being concerned with monetary affairs, especially when the desires of friends and beloved ones need to be satisfied. Conse- quently, they are in strong contrast to the equally wealthy moneylender who mourns any cent he has to spend (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1114).

Bassanio, for instance, who calculatingly rejects the allures of riches during the casket choice can otherwise be regarded as the personification of the Venetians’ tendency towards excessive consumption and shallow materialism. Doubtlessly, he must have re- minded Shakespeare’s contemporaries of the “idle borrowers condemned by the anti- usury authors, who seek loans, not to survive, but […] ‘to consume in prodigall manner, in bravery, banketting, voluptuous living & such like’” (Moisan 1987: 195). His constant financial difficulties are quite obviously the result of his extravagant and im- moderate lifestyle, exemplified, for instance, by the fact that he instantaneously orders new liveries as soon as he has received the loan. Moreover, Bassanio’s irresponsible materialism is further emphasised when he praises Portia, mentioning her wealth prior to her virtues and beauty.

In Belmont is a lady richly left, And she is fair, and, fairer than the world (MoV I.i.161-162 )

Considering that the characterising quality not only of Bassanio but of all Venetians is at least at a first glance their worldliness, it is difficult to accept their claims to represent Christian virtues as unchallenged. Their vocabulary circulates around terms such as ‘venture’, ‘hazard’, and ‘chance’, and hardly ever are their minds occupied with other things than merriment and the joys of living (cf. Moody 1964: 10 f.).

Shylock, by contrast, is unwilling to spend his money but aims to conserve everything he owns. Repeatedly, he employs the term ‘thrift’ to distinguish his own economic activities from the negatively connoted prodigality of the Christians27 (cf. Moisan 1987: 198). Hence, while the Christians playfully hazard their wealth, he tries to minimise risks, knowing that he cannot rely on others but is on his own in case of hardship (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1114; Maguire 2004: 148). When Jessica complains that “Our house is hell” (MoV II.iii.2), she arguably implies that her father’s household is austere, somewhat puritanical and humourless, thereby providing a further impetus to her elopement (cf. Langis 2011: 28). Constantly worrying about his possessions and furious

27 As Moison (cf. 1987: 198) stresses, Shylock’s disdain of prodigality is in so far ironic as it is the Chris- tians’ fiscal irresponsibility and love of material things that allow his endeavours to fruit. 92 about the costs incurred by the search for his missing daughter (this although he truly loves her), Shylock is depicted as a tight-fisted, stuffy old man locking away everything he owns. When he learns of Lancelot’s departure who claims to have “famished in his service” (MoV II.ii.94) he consoles himself by calculating how his loss may be compensated by lower food bills.

5.3.3.4 Shylock – A Covert Critique of Puritanism? Repeatedly, Shylock has been described as a thoroughly puritanical figure which gives rise to the question as to whether Shakespeare’s only Jewish character was in fact intended to be a covert critique of Puritanism. With Cromwell’s successful revolution and the Puritans’ rise to power the closure of numerous theatres was among the new government’s first edicts since, as is generally known, Puritans considered the theatre as a place of moral abomination and wanton revelry, believing the staged dramas to be examples of debauchment, vice, and sin (cf. Schwanitz 1989: 41).

As an artist and playwright, Shakespeare (as evidenced by various aspects in his other dramas) unsurprisingly was an opponent of Puritanism. Consequently, it is most likely that the Puritans’ Judaism also influenced the character of Shylock. On the one hand, both Puritans and Jews were believed to share some external characteristics such as separatism, economic prudence and sobriety, and on the other, Puritans, too, were not unlike Shylock notorious for their inflexible interpretations of the law (cf. Danson 1978:78).

Moreover, as Schwanitz (cf. 1989: 41) observes, Shylock’s disdain of Venetian mas- querades and mummeries, his despise for festivities and music as well as his moral contempt for the nobility’s prodigality render him a Puritan miser rather than a Jew.

What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica, Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife, Clamber not you up to the casements then, Nor thrust your head into the public street To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces (MoV II.v.27-32).

As an overbearing father he warns Jessica to keep the doors locked up and condemns the revellers as ‘fools with varnished faces’ and their music as ‘vile squealing’, which, as Danson (cf. 1978: 181) stresses, might from another perspective be seen as the ju-

93 bilant tunes of a magnanimous fun society. Furthermore, Shylock expresses his austere focus on efficiency and industriousness when he condemns Lancelot:

The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder, Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day More than a wildcat. (MoV II.v.44-46)

Shylock thus steps into the role of the archetypical curmudgeon and old spoilsport associated with comic villainy rather than with Judaism, resembling in many facets the ridiculed outsider of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Malvolio, who in fact is a Puritan (cf. Schwanitz 1989: 41).

5.3.4 “Our house is hell” – Shylock and the Domestic Sphere

During the first and large parts of the second act Shylock is presented as an ordinary Jew in a Christian society; he earns his money by usury, loves his daughter, and is proud of his religion as well as of his traditional lifestyle. Regularly, he is confronted with anti-Jewish resentments and aggression but has seemingly learned to accept all animosities, knowing that there is nothing he can do to overcome his status as an alienated outsider (cf. Lubrich 2001: 124). Contrary to his own principles and despite a premonition he joins the Christians for dinner, counselling Jessica to “look to [his] house” (MoV II.v.16) and expressing his unwillingness to leave by admitting, “I have no mind of feasting forth tonight. / But I will go” (36-37). Tragically, it is exactly while Shylock is dining with Bassanio that Jessica elopes.

After his daughter’s loss, interestingly, Shakespeare does not present Shylock himself discovering Jessica’s flight on stage but has the “notoriously unreliable” (Danson 1978: 182) Solanio report of the incident. Aiming at eliciting a laugh, he viciously mimics Shylock who has allegedly been seen roaming around the city, exclaiming:

‘My daughter! O, my ducats! O, my daughter! Fled with a Christian! O, my Christian ducats! Justice! The law! My Ducats and my daughter! A sealèd bag, two sealèd bags of ducats, Of double ducats stol’n from me by my daughter! And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones, Stol’n by my daughter! Justice! Find the girl! She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats!’ (MoV II.viii.15-22)

Clearly, the equation of ducats with his daughter and, even more so, the loss of his treasured wealth seemingly entering his mind prior to the loss of Jessica corresponds precisely to what the Christians would expect of the materialist Jew. 94 One cannot get rid of the feeling, however, that if Shylock was indeed the thoroughly vicious capitalist Solanio mocks him as, he would have been seen on stage himself crying for his money. By withholding a first-hand depiction of the event it appears as if the recipients were made to believe that Solanio distorted the incident’s relation to reality and that Shylock, again, was the victim of Christian scorn and derision.

It is interesting to mention that in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, Barabas, too, laughably confuses material possessions with his daughter when he cries out: “O girle, oh gold, oh beauty oh my blisse!” (JoM II.i.54) Considering that the stage directions read “hugs his bags” there is indeed, and quite contrary to Shylock, little doubt that Barabas’ anguish lies with the loss of his money rather than with his daughter. As Danson (1978: 182) points out,

this difference between Shakespeare’s version and Marlowe’s points up their essentially different artistic aims. In Barabas’ speech the satire is aimed directly at the speaker […]; in Solanio’s speech the satire is also aimed at the speaker […]. The relative crudeness of Solanio’s mimicry, in other words, cuts in two directions, forcing us toward a complicated response simultaneously to the Jew and to the Christian mediator. One hears delight in Solanio’s words when he retells the Jew’s humiliation and dis- composure, thereby exposing his own evil spitefulness and lack of compassion. As a consequence, Shakespeare, and this is an essential aspect of his realism, reminds readers and audience alike that Shylock is hardly the only one indulging in immoral actions. Quite the contrary: those preaching charity and brotherly love cannot live up to their expectations themselves (cf. Danson 1978: 183).

Although Solanio undeniably is an exceedingly unreliable source, his reports do not strike as obviously untrue since one has come to know Shylock as a man who takes care quite obsessively of both his ducats as well as his daughter and who tends to rely on the authority of justice and the law. Still, it remains unclear to what extent Solanio’s gos- siping holds true for when Shylock himself enters the stage and his confidant Tubal reveals to him that Jessica has traded a certain ring for a monkey he exclaims:

Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys. (MoV III.i.100-102)

For the first time, it appears, Shylock is overwhelmed by genuine emotions devoid of any planned calculations or intended ends. Additionally, this brief episode sheds light on Shylock’s biography. The old loner was once a young man in love, courting his later

95 wife Leah who gave him a turquoise ring as a love token he treasured over the years only to have it stolen and traded for a monkey by his daughter born of his marriage. Although these few lines are relatively unnecessary for the plot, Shylock’s grief, agony, and emotional distress give insights into a heart capable of love and full of tender memories (cf. Danson 1978: 136).

Evidently, Shylock refuses the equation of human and economic value in this case but manifests as someone deeply attached emotionally to an objectively not exceedingly valuable ring. He is left behind alone, dismayed at the loss of something of great emotional value and devastated by his daughter’s cold indifference towards a remembrance of her deceased mother (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1116).

5.3.5 “I will have my bond!” – The Tension between Justice and Mercy

5.3.5.1 “I crave the law” Having been crying for the law ever since Jessica’s elopement, Shylock, full of confidence as the trial commences, denies the Duke’s appeal for mercy and insists on a verbatim fulfilment of the contract.

If you deny it, let the danger light Upon your charter and your city’s freedom. (MoV IV.i.37-38)

By trying to threaten the Duke, Shylock emphasises that his claims need to be satisfied unless Venice wants to risk its status as cosmopolitan mercantile city by repudiating the rule of law. Insisting despite numerous pleas for mercy on his bond, Shylock a little later repeats his craving the law:

The pound of flesh which I demand of him Is dearly bought. ‘Tis mine, and I will have it. If you deny me, fie upon your law: There is no force in the decrees of Venice. (MoV IV.i.98-101) He ends with a programmatic question:

I stand for judgement. Answer: Shall I have it? (102)

Feeling secure and strengthened by his trust in the Venetian legal system, Shylock does not only demand the fulfilment of his bond but also, for the first time, reacts to insults he used to bear and ignore during the rest of the play. When Graziano calls him “damned, inexorable dog” (MoV IV.i.127) and his desires “wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous” (137), Shylock, nearly conceitedly, retorts,

96 Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond Thou but offend’st thy lungs to speak so loud. Repair thy wit, good youth, or it will fall To cureless ruin. I stand here for law. (MoV IV.i.138-141)

His words imply that the law he craves has nothing to do with justice or universal principles of humanity but is the expression of an archaic right to revenge that is, as will be discussed later in greater detail, counterpoised by a more modern approach to law informed by tolerance and justness.

While Shylock prepares to whet his knife, Portia, disguised as young doctor of law, enters the courtroom and makes sure to ask who the merchant was and who the Jew, which, as has already been hinted at above, on the one hand emphasises that both protagonists are not obviously distinguishable and, on the other, is symbolic of the Venetian judicial system’s alleged blindness to religious and ethnic difference (cf. Bate and Thornton 2012: 165 f.). Turning to Shylock, Portia agrees that

Of a strange nature is the suit you follow, Yet in such rule that the Venetian law Cannot impugn you as you do proceed. (MoV IV.i.172-174)

Also when Bassanio pledges to twist the law and to deny Shylock his will, Portia responds impartially, “It must not be. There is no power in Venice / Can alter a degree establishèd.” (MoV IV.i.213-214) Unsurprisingly, Shylock rejoices upon hearing Portia’s words and jubilantly honours her as “Daniel” (MoV IV.i.218) and “wise” (219).

Confirming that Shylock may have his bond, Portia, appealing to his charity, bids him to get a surgeon so Antonio’s wound can be stopped, but Shylock only replies drily, “I cannot find it. ‘Tis not in the bond” (MoV IV.i.257). Thus, Antonio prepares to die and Shylock sharpens his knife when, at the last second, he is stopped by Portia: If he insists on the literal fulfilment of the contract, she states, Shylock may take one pound of the merchant’s flesh but must not spill one drop of blood since this is not provided for in the agreement.

Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh. Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more But just a pound of flesh. If thou tak’st more Or less than just a pound, be it but so much As makes it light or heavy in the substance, Or the division of the twentieth part Of one poor scruple – nay if the scale do turn But in the estimation of a hair,

97 Thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate. (Mov IV.i.319-327)

After a moment of bafflement everyone understands that Shylock is beat at his own game. Incredulously he wonders, “Is that the law?” (MoV IV.i.309), and Graziano, ob- serving that the tables have been turned, humiliates Shylock by jubilantly exclaiming, “A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew!” (328). Realising that he has lost his case, Shylock returns to the Christians’ offer denied beforehand to repay him the sum owed by Antonio and intends to take his leave but it is too late. Portia threatens him:

For as thou urgest justice, be assured Thou shalt have justice more than thou desir’st. (MoV IV.i.311-312)

Shylock has refused to show mercy, and so he will be punished.

5.3.5.2 “Then must the Jew be merciful” Contrary to Shylock’s archaic conception of legality based on a literal fulfilment of the law and on revenge, the Venetians seem to be informed by legal principles based on humanity, mercy and compassion. Keeping this in mind, the essence of the trial scene is not so much about the lawsuit but about a confrontation of these two differing approaches to justice. By shifting attention away from a relatively simple legal case to highly philosophical questions, the dispute underlying the trial is no longer ‘who is going to win?’ but ‘who is good and who is bad?’ (cf. Moody 1964: 39).

Trying to dissuade Shylock from his insistence on the law, all Venetians passionately appeal to mercy, still hoping, it appears, that the Jew cannot be serious about his bond. When the Duke concludes, “We all expect a gentle answer, Jew” (MoV IV.i.33), he quite explicitly expresses his conviction that Shylock will act charitably. Portia, too, having confirmed the rightfulness of the Jew’s claim, offers a simple solution to the case by suggesting, “Then must the Jew be merciful.” (MoV IV.i.178; my emphasis) Unsurprisingly, Shylock immediately retorts, “On what compulsion must I, tell me that” (MoV IV.i.179), and he is right “‘must’ and ‘mercy’ have nothing to do with each other” (Goddard 1951: 159).

According to Moody (1964: 41), “[t]here is a grotesque irony in the Christians’ bidding him show mercy […]. For his mercilessness is quite directly the measure of Antonio’s refusing to accept him within the human brotherhood.” Additionally, the Venetians’ double standards are further emphasised when Shylock reveals that they, despising the Jew for his alleged equation of matter and spirit, keep slaves and are consequently

98 setting an exclusively monetary value upon other human beings, too. As should be mentioned as a passing remark, however, Shylock does not condemn the Christians for keeping slaves but only uses this practice as a further means of justifying his bond, denying any appeals to mercy.

You have among you many a purchased slave Which, like your asses, and your dogs and mules, You use in abject and in slavish parts Because you bought them. Shall I say to you, ‘Let them be free, marry them to your heirs.’28 […] You will answer ‘The slaves are ours.’ So do I answer you. The pound of flesh which I demand of him Is dearly bought. ‘Tis mine and I will have it (MoV IV.i.89-99)

Evidently, hence, it is further corroborated that the Christians’ seemingly quite hypocritical call for compassion, charity and universal love does not correspond to their standards, either (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1116). Nonetheless, Portia delivers an inspiring speech based on the Christian principle of salvation:

The quality of mercy is no strained It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. […] It is an attribute to God himself, And earthly power doth then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice. Therefore Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this: That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy, And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. (MoV IV.i.179-197)

Indeed, her moving appeal to mercy counterpoises the New Testament’s vision of universal love and God’s endless mercy to the Old Testament’s principles of vengeance and godly wrath (cf. Schwanitz 1989: 81). As Eisaman Maus (cf. 2008: 1117) convincingly points out, however, Shylock does not accept or is perhaps even unaware of the prayer teaching ‘us all’ mercy – the Lord’s Prayer, prayed only by Christians. “Portia’s plea for tolerance and compassion might seem to rest on universal premises,

28 As has been discussed in relation to Othello in greater detail, “Shylock knows that no white Christian Venetian, however much lip service they pay to mercy and tolerance, will agree to miscegenation” (Bate and Thornton 2012: 169).

99 but in fact Portia’s ‘we’ who ‘pray for mercy’ neatly excludes the Jew.” (Eisaman Maus 2008: 1117)

As soon as Shylock is vanquished, it appears, Portia forgets about her principle that mercy should be shown also to those who do not deserve it. Shylock, as she states, shall have nothing but his deserts and justice. It is Portia now who craves the law and by practicing it with meticulous precision she puts Shylock at the mercy of his enemies. When she commands, “Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the Duke” (MoV IV.i.358), her behaviour, as Moody (1964: 43) stresses, “looks most like mercenary vengefulness.” Bate and Thornton (2012: 166), too, argue that the quality of Christian mercy and forgiveness “is strained when Shylock is branded an alien and an outcast, and his conversion demanded, in a satire on the human nature of justice […]. Shakespeare shows ‘super-subtle’ Venetians at their worst.” Although these views might be rather extreme, the verdict on Shylock undeniably is highly ambivalent and thus ought to be examined in greater detail.

5.3.6 “Thou shalt have Justice more than thou desir’st” – Ambivalent Aspects of the Verdict on Shylock

5.3.6.1 The Judgement and the Forced Conversion When Shylock, realising that he has not only lost the case but also risks his life when further insisting on the bond, is about to take his leave, the play for a brief moment seems to have come to a satisfyingly comic solution; yet, it does not end here. Portia calls him back, announcing,

Tarry, Jew. The law hath yet another hold on you. It is enacted in the laws of Venice, If it be proved against an alien That by direct or indirect attempts He seek the life of any citizen, The party ’gainst the which he doth contrive Shall seize one half his goods; the other half Comes to the privy coffer of the state, And the offender’s life lies in the mercy Of the Duke only, ’gainst all other voice (MoV IV.i.341-351)

Ultimately, Portia wins the case by citing a law prosecuting foreigners who plotted the death of a Venetian. The law never mentioned before explicitly puts into words the constitution of a society in which at a first glance everyone is treated fairly and equally

100 but which on closer examination quite openly privileges the community’s insiders. Ironically, hence, the Venetian law system in which Shylock sought refuge from discrimination has been based on it all along (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1117).

The disturbing verdict provisioned by the law, one comes to realise, does not only allow for the Christians to keep the three-thousand ducats Shylock has lent Antonio, but also has the Jew forfeited his other possessions and, contingent upon the Duke’s leniency and compassion only, his life. When Graziano gleefully calculates,

Beg that thou mayst have leave to hang thyself – And yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state, Thou hast not left the value of a cord. Therefore thou must be hanged at the state’s charge (MoV IV.i.359-362) he paradigmatically illustrates the Christians’ hypocrisy. The Duke, by contrast, acts more solemnly, emphasising the Christian spirit informed by charity and benevolence:

That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit, I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it. For half the wealth, it is Antonio’s The other half comes to the general state, Which humbleness may drive into a fine. (MoV IV.i.363-367)

Shylock, devastated by the verdict, seems not to value the Duke’s mildness but begs for his death, reasoning that by taking his possessions and the means whereby he lives the Christians take his life anyway, which thus does not need to be pardoned.

When it is Antonio’s turn to speak it appears as if he truly epitomised the ideal of mercy. Having nearly been killed by the Jew who has proven unwilling to show the smallest trace of compassion, the merchant nonetheless begs the Duke to relinquish the fine so Shylock may retain half of his estate. The other, Antonio’s share, will not be spent but held in trust to demise to Jessica and Lorenzo after Shylock’s death. The ‘only’ condition Antonio sets is that Shylock “presently become a Christian” (MoV IV.i.382). Considering the Elizabethan mindset, the merchant’s decision can be regarded as exceedingly merciful indeed. Most probably, the complete confiscation of Shylock’s possessions would have been perceived as an appropriate penalty by most of Shakespeare’s contemporaries29, and also the forced conversion enabling him to be

29 Shakespeare’s audience was probably still familiar with the so-called ‘Domus Conversorum’, a refuge established in 1232 hosting impoverished Jewish converts, who, upon their conversion, had forfeited all their possessions to the Crown as they were accused of having acquired them by sinful usury. 101 ultimately saved by Jesus Christ was doubtlessly seen as an act of mercy (cf. Danson 1978: 164).

The Venetians, too, perceive their sentence as merciful; they have spared Shylock’s life and his forced christening will pave the only way to the Jew’s salvation. By delivering the verdict they compel Shylock to live the life of a virtuous Christian and father, wor- shipping in church, guaranteeing his daughter’s economic welfare and distinguishing between economic and spiritual values. Accepting the sentence he claims to be “content” (MoV IV.i.389), but what else is there for him to say? (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1118) Bloom (1991: 1) goes even further by arguing that the conversion is highly improbable since a Jew as proud as Shylock would doubtlessly have preferred death to Christianity. However, had Shylock’s character been drawn consistently, his putting to death by the Christians would have tainted the joy in Belmont and consequently “might have cost Shakespeare the comedy of his comedy.”

Quite generally, most contemporary lines of interpretation (see Maguire 2004: 149; Wells 2010: 113, and many more) regard Shylock’s end as tragic, seeing him leave the court as a broken man. Indeed, his last request, “I pray you give me leave to go from hence. / I am not well” (MoV IV.i.391-392) suggests that both the verdict as well as the denial of the laws he had trusted in have thoroughly devastated him. As Eisaman Maus (2008: 1118) concludes:

The coercive inclusion of Shylock in the Christian community seems all the more violent because it professes to renounce coercion, dropping “as the gentle rain from heaven.” If designating people outcasts is bad, compelling them to participate in a society they find intolerable may be even worse.

5.3.6.2 The Last Act in Belmont – A Recuperation and Reconciliation of Oppositions? In relation to the play’s conciliatory comic ending leading to the harmonious union of three couples in fairy-tale-like Belmont one might indeed read Shylock as a miser spoilsport who, aiming to inhibit the couples’ joyful bliss, needs to be eliminated. Does the last act suggest the opening of a magical world in which consistently positive characters celebrate values such as love, friendship and loyalty and from which Shylock as the ‘scoundrel’ is rightfully excluded? To put it in other words, does The Merchant of Venice come to a unitary and appeasing conclusion in which Shylock is reduced to the role of the comic blocking character whose Jewishness is only an accident, implying that the discriminations on the part of the Venetians are motivated not by ideological

102 conviction but by dramatic convention? (cf. Lubrich 2001: 137 f.) Again, all these questions cannot be answered conclusively.

As Coghill (quoted in Moody 1964: 16) argues: “We return to Belmont to find Lorenzo and Jessica in each other’s arms. Christian and Jew, New Law and Old, are visibly united in love. And their talk is of music, Shakespeare’s recurrent symbol of harmony.” Clearly, Jessica’s and Lorenzo’s blissful joking constitutes a vivid contrast to the fierce sentence passed on Shylock in the scene before. The loving couple, it appears, represents a complementary concept of interaction between different religious groups based on love rather than on revulsion. One has to keep in mind, however, that their affection is founded on assimilation and not on mutual respect and tolerance (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1118).

Hence, although the last act aims at recuperation and reconciliation, the seemingly harmonious closure is in parts disavowed by subversive elements such as the enumera- tion of unfortunate lovers like Troilus and Cressida or Pyramus and Thisbe, undeniably ill-suited to rejoicing newlyweds (see MoV V.i.3-14). Especially Jessica’s reference to Medea is highly ambiguous when considering the tragic heroine’s betrayal of both her father and her culture, ultimately leading to horrific destruction and misery (cf. Lubrich 2001: 139; Shapiro 1996: 158).

Nonetheless, the scene evokes visions of peaceful solitude and joyful happiness and more important, probably, than their allusions to tragic couples, Lorenzo and Jessica refer, as has already been mentioned above, to the music of the spheres, a recurrent symbol of universal and eternal harmony.

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubins. Such harmony is in immortal souls, But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. (MoV V.i.59-64)

Contemplating on Lorenzo’s words, one might deduce that he has come to realise that God’s creation is a place of eternal harmony, yet mankind is so preoccupied with hatred and discord that it has forgotten how to hear the music. Ultimately, however, all souls – Shylock’s, too – are immortal and will once be united in the harmonious eternity of the

103 universe. Considering this, the closure of The Merchant of Venice arguably pleas for tolerance and may thus be regarded as truly reconciliatory.

5.3.7 Digression: Jessica

In relation to an examination of Shylock’s ‘Otherness’ it is interesting to relate him to other characters subject to discriminatory acts and to study how they, in contrast to the usurer, handle their stigmatisation (cf. Lubrich 2001: 101). Accordingly, this chapter aims to investigate Jessica’s attempts at handling her ‘Otherness’ in greater detail. Being a Jew herself she, contrary to her father, aims to elude her alienation by distancing herself from her roots and by assimilating into the Christian community. Having grown up with and consequently internalised the Venetians’ ideologies, Jessica sees herself through the eyes of the Christians, accepting the attacks on her faith as valid and justified (cf. Lubrich 2001: 114 f.).

Although she is usually portrayed as a quite positive and virtuous character providing a contrast to her father’s negative traits, Jessica, too, has (especially in relation to her elopement and the disavowal of her roots) been subject to harsh criticism. As Quiller- Couch (quoted in Danson 1978: 132) infuriatedly remarks, she is “bad and disloyal, unfilial, a thief; frivolous, greedy […]. Quite without heart […] she betrays her father to be a light-of-lucre carefully weighted with her Sire’s ducats.” In this context it ought to be mentioned, however, that Jessica, too, feels guilty at having deceived her father.

Alack, what heinous sin is it in me To be ashamed to be my father’s child! (MoV II.iii.15-16)

Torn between the acceptance and rejection of her Jewishness as well as between identification with her own group and the other Venetians, the prospect of becoming a member of the prestigious in-group finally asserts itself against feelings of solidarity to her origins. Therefore, she aims to gain a new identity and to supress, or even better, to give up her despised old one. Her sense of belonging clearly lies with the Christian majority, regardless – or perhaps also because – of all the humiliation and attacks her husband’s friends have directed towards those of her tribe (cf. Lubrich 2001: 116).

Her marriage to Lorenzo, it seems, seals her supposed path towards de-stigmatisation, acceptance and, ultimately, salvation. Delighted she exclaims, “I shall be saved by my husband. He hath made me Christian” (MoV III.v.15-16). The word ‘saved’ in relation to Christianity may be looked at from two perspectives. On the one hand, it can be

104 regarded as salvation in the literal sense, especially in relation to Shylock’s forced conversion. On the other hand, a Christian husband enables Jessica to leave behind her status as an alienated outsider, ‘saving’ her from further shames, assaults and discrimination.

That Jessica integrates moderately successfully into the in-group is, as Harris (2010: 211) argues, a matter of culture rather than biology. “Using language that evokes the black-and-white antinomies of other Shakespeare plays [e.g. Othello] as well as Recon- quista Spain’s obsessions with bloodlines, Salerio recasts Shylock and Jessica as racially divergent” when he states that

There is more difference between thy flesh and hers than between jet and ivory; more between your bloods than there is between red wine and Rhenish. (MoV III.i.33-35; my emphasis) By playfully referring to the dichotomy of black and white Shylock is associated with jet black and Jessica with ivory white which, in consonance with traditional colour symbolism that has been discussed at length in relation to Othello, links Shylock to notions of unmitigated evil whereas Jessica is related to visions of pure innocence. By blackening Shylock he is even further alienated as the paradigmatic ‘Other’, resembling an outsider not only in terms of religion but also in terms of a symbolically dark skin.

The question remains, however, how successful Jessica’s attempts at becoming a worth- while member of the Venetian society are. As Lubrich (cf. 2001: 118) concludes, her assimilation keeps her away from the most aggressive forms of anti-Semitism, but by offering her blind love to Lorenzo, by deceiving her loving father, by stealing from him and by disrespectfully exchanging her mother’s ring for a monkey (which, according to Lerner (cf. 1995: 148) ultimately affiliates her with the Christians’ frivolity), she only trades explicit discrimination for the more implicit stigma of a converted, sexually accepted Jewish woman. Indeed, it is also after her conversion that she remains Lorenzo’s “infidel” (MoV III.ii.217).

Another scene frequently omitted in contemporary productions due to its miscegenist and proto-racist bantering, too, is highly revealing about Jessica’s status and barely conceals that Lorenzo is believed to stain the purity of white Christian Venice by marrying a converted woman (cf. Shapiro 1996: 131 f., 173).

105 LANCELOT: We were Christians enough before, e’en as many as could well live one by another. This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs. If we all grow to be pork- eaters we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money. (MoV III.v.17-21)

Still, by escaping the most severe forms of anti-Semitic discrimination Jessica has managed relatively well to adapt and to become a part of the Christian majority. Marrying a Christian has allowed her to escape her father’s fate, but she is forced to leave behind her roots which is best symbolised by flogging off her mother’s ring. This possibility to overcome one’s ‘Otherness’, however, is not an option for Shylock. Incapable of assimilating and unwilling to betray his roots he is excluded from any attempts at reconciliation.

5.4 Results

Kermode (critically quoted in Danson 1978: 13, and Moody 1964: 9) argues,

The Merchant of Venice is ‘about’ judgement, redemption, and mercy […]. It begins with usury and corrupt love; it ends with harmony and perfect love. And all the time it tells its audience that this is its subject; only by a determined effort to avoid the obvious can one mistake the theme of The Merchant of Venice.

As Moody (cf. 1964: 10) convincingly responds, the play is indeed about these qualities but treats them in a much more critical and ironic way than Kermode suggests. The supposed oppositions of perfect and corrupt love, of mercy and revenge as well as of good and evil are by no means clearly distinguishable but obscurely blurred and interrelated, thus refusing the adequacy of any simplistic conclusions. “No account of the play which offers to see it in terms of simple good and evil can hope to satisfy. It is too subtle and exploratory for that” (Moody 1964: 10).

What holds true for the play in general clearly does so even more for Shylock, its hidden protagonist. Few of Shakespeare’s other characters are depicted similarly ambivalently and in a way that is as difficult to grasp. Shakespeare’s only Jew remains opaque throughout the entire play, constantly shifting between non-linear representations of him as both an appealing and an abhorrent figure. Tremendously skilfully, Shakespeare emphasises Shylock’s ambiguities throughout the whole play, directing the audience’s and readers’ reactions towards the Jew from antipathy to sympathy, from understanding to revulsion, and vice versa. Consequently, the recipient is forced to identify with numerous perspectives, automatically leading to inconsistent viewpoints and responses (cf. Lubrich 2001: 129-131, passim).

106 Quite generally, Shakespeare’s comedies treat contemporary issues of society such as social unrest and approaches to the ‘Other’ far more obliquely and open-endedly than, for instance, Ben Jonson’s satirical comedies full of caricatured and exaggerated humour-types openly eliciting the audience’s derisive laughter. Most of Shakespeare’s comic characters lack the bitterness, pungency and scorn typical of classically comic figures. They cannot be reduced to utterly contemptible caricatures of ridicule, but by means of a differentiating self-display they open themselves at least in parts to the understanding sympathies of the audience (cf. Pfister 2000: 381 f.). Considering this, any attempts to reduce Shylock to an archetypical blocking character are doomed to fail by not taking into account the complexity of his motives.

More regularly than being reduced to a comic villain, Shylock has either been rated as a thoroughly inhuman monster or as a deeply human victim of anti-Jewish resentments. Undeniably, some aspects of Shylock’s character are disturbingly repulsive and thus correspond to stereotypical Elizabethan constructions of Jewishness informed by medieval horror-stories about Jews. On the other hand, Shylock is undoubtedly being mistreated by the other characters of the play, which has led numerous scholars to argue that The Merchant of Venice might as well be perceived as a tragedy.

Primarily modern approaches tend to perceive Shylock’s story as an allegory symbolic of the universal history of anti-Semitism, regarding Shakespeare’s Jew less as a distinctively individualised character than as the representative of a race. Indeed, Shylock himself, as early as in the first act, believes the assaults directed against him to be “the badge of all our tribe” (MoV I.iii.106) thereby (as so frequently throughout the play) blurring the line between the particular and the general (cf. Danson 1978: 127 f.). Ortega y Gasset (quoted in LeWinter, ed.: 333), too, reads The Merchant of Venice as a paradigmatic treatise on universal questions of religious difference and multiculturalism. “In the Venetian Jew,” he argues, “Shakespeare conjures up a millennial pain: with poetic licence, unflinchingly, he portrays the cruel image of hate among the races, and of enmity among their Gods.”

Returning to the representation of Shylock’s ‘Otherness’, it appears as if the Jew was to be perceived as the distinct ‘Other’ on the one hand, but on the other he also resembles the Christians in an ironic and somewhat troublesome way. Impersonating an archetypical scapegoat, he allegedly resembles the society’s malicious potential and can easily be detested, disdained and ultimately expelled (cf. Danson 1978: 11). Being aware of their 107 own shortcomings, the Christians hypocritically project all hostilities onto the alienated Jew in order to distract attention from their own flaws.

As the play opens, the Venetians and Shylock are clearly separated, both aiming to distinguish the inclusive ‘us’ from the respective ‘Other’. The Christian nobility is presented as well connected, generous, slightly superficial but nonetheless likeable whereas Shylock is introduced as a comparatively lonesome alien loyal to his tribe, his religion, and tradition. As early as during their first encounter it becomes evident that the moneylender has repeatedly been confronted with anti-Jewish prejudices and aggression, which, however, he has seemingly learned to accept. Throughout the entire play it remains opaque whether Shylock has been driven into isolation and exclusion by ongoing attacks on his religion and, inextricably linked to that, his status as usurer or, conversely, whether his mistrustful and calculating personality triggered the assaults directed against him in the first place. To all appearances, however, the Venetians appear to be a community benevolent and generous towards their members but insuffer- able and discriminatory towards those outside their group. As Lubrich (cf. 2001: 125) encapsulates, Shylock probably is not per se cynical, vindictive, and uncompromising, but has become so as the consequence of constant discriminations.

When the highly ironic situation occurs that Antonio, openly despising Shylock for his usury, approaches him to take out a loan, the Jew ostensibly seeks recognition rather than rebellion. For a brief moment it appears as if he is given the chance to become an equally worthy member of the Venetian community. He even wishes, at least he does say so, to be reconciled with his enemies. In this context the bond, provocatively equating material with spiritual matter, may be read ambivalently and paradoxically, too. It is Shylock’s last attempt at acceptance, simultaneously, however, equipped with a hideous option to avenge (cf. Lubrich 2001: 125).

It is only shortly afterwards that Jessica elopes, which constitutes a decisive turning point in Shylock’s behaviour. Deeply distressed by his daughter’s betrayal, her theft and by the fact that she fled into the arms of one of his archenemy’s friends, the Jew is now ultimately isolated and marginalised. Mocked and spitefully laughed at by the entire Venetian population, he is aware of his status as alienated outsider more than ever and swears to take revenge. Additionally, Shylock is reported to have cried for his ducats at least as much as for his daughter, which does not strike one as particularly surprising

108 since he has appeared to perceive and measure those around him in exclusively monetary terms, unscrupulously equating the realms of materialism and spirituality.

Surprisingly, however, he tends to act contrary to one’s expectations in decisive scenes of the play, thus negating stereotypical preconceptions and becoming a strangely appealing figure (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1115). When Shylock himself enters the stage, for instance, he is devastated by the news that his daughter traded a ring he once had from his deceased wife for a monkey, implying thereby that some things in his life cannot be compensated for by all the money in the world. Considering this, monetary values and spiritual ideals prove to be more intimately connected for the Venetian Christians than for the allegedly materialist Shylock.

Although Antonio, for example, claims to be disinclined to view friendship as an economic deal, it seems to be quite obvious that his generosity is linked to the expectation of having ‘bought’ Bassanio’s affection. The latter’s courtship, too, is to be seen ambivalently; on the one hand he undoubtedly loves Portia, but on the other it appears as if her wealth (which Bassanio is desperately in need of) makes her even more lovable in his eyes (cf. Eisaman Maus 2008: 1116). As Danson (1978: 4) thus pointedly notes, Shylock is “in truth no more materialistic than the hedonistic Beautiful People of Belmont.” Consequently, as he further argues, it has become a widely acknowledged line of interpretation to read the play as an “at heart deeply ironic play condemning the hypocrisy of predatory Christians.”

Driven by wild desperation and deep frustration, Shylock increasingly irrationally insists on his bond to feed, if nothing else, his revenge. Informed by a legalistic concept of justice and the law he appeals to the court, convinced that his contract will be fulfilled verbatim and his rights acknowledged. As Eisaman Maus (cf. 2008: 1115) points out, the Mosaic code, relevant for Jewish conduct and putting major emphasis on the concept of justice, constitutes a decisive foundation of Shylock’s convictions. Therefore, “Shylock’s Judaism reveals itself not merely in his distinctive dress and his avoidance of pork, but in his trust of literal meanings, his respect for observable facts, his expectation that contracts will be rigorously enforced” (Eisaman Maus 2008: 1115).

The Christians, by contrast, base their understanding of the law on mercy and compassion, emphasising a conception of justice based on universally valid human principles rather than on literalism. In this context, a highly interesting argument is

109 presented by Danson (1978: 63), who compares The Merchant of Venice to Aeschylus’ Eumenides. According to him, both Shylock and the Erinyes underline the importance of the old law needed in order to uphold a society’s traditions and stability. Regardless of their claims, however, the solution presented by Aeschylus as well as by Shakespeare is relatively similar: an authority of the old law is not to be denied but lacks a proper relationship to mankind; as a result, a more comprehensive and inclusive interpretation of normative rules and regulations has to be established, preferably based on both justice and mercy. Consequently, The Merchant of Venice may not only be read in terms of religious, social and economic conflict but also as an allegory of the importance of a linkage between justness and forgiveness (cf. Danson 1978: 69).

Schwanitz (cf. 1989: 84), too, puts the representation of Shylock in a wider perspective. According to him, The Merchant of Venice discusses three of the most important codes of modern society namely money, law, and love. Throughout the play these codes are, by means of distinguishing between Judaism and Christianity as well as between the old law and the new, subject to a positive/negative differentiation. Shylock’s ‘Otherness’, in this respect, serves as a vehicle of negativity contrasting with the more positive values of the Venetians. In terms of money, hence, credit and generosity are regarded as positive whereas usury and miserliness are not. As far as love is concerned, devotion and risky ventures are celebrated whereas calculation and claims of possession are negatively connoted. In terms of law, finally, mercy and benevolence surpass vengeance and wrath. In this context Moisan (1987: 189-192), too, argues that the distinct dissimilarities in the representation of Shylock and the Christians are symbolic of some of the major frictions of a society in transition from the Middle Ages to the modern period.

Throughout the trial, the initially blatant dissimilarities between Christians, full of love, charity and compassion and the vengeful Jew seem to gradually blur and it is emphasised again that the Venetians, too, fail to live up to their standards. Ultimately, however, the Duke and Antonio show mercy. Although the verdict on Shylock, especially with regard to the Elizabethan worldview, can doubtlessly be perceived as remarkably merciful and compassionate, the Jew, it appears, leaves the court as a broken man and is excluded from the reconciliatory last act.

According to Eisaman Maus (cf. 2008: 1118) Shakespeare, too, must have felt that the issues presented in the play may not be resolved easily but, on the contrary, that perhaps they cannot be resolved at all. In relation to the last act she observes that 110 [m]ost Shakespeare comedies return to the city or the court at the end, or at least look forward to that return; but in The Merchant of Venice, the play ends at Belmont, the nostalgically depicted, magically copious “green world.” It is as if the formal demand for comic closure conflicts with Shakespeare’s awareness that no neat resolution of Venice’s problems is forthcoming. (Eisaman Maus 2008: 1118)

On the other hand, however, the peaceful and quiet countryside can also be regraded as a positive refuge from the materialistic city life in Venice. Lorenzo’s reference to the music of the spheres evokes visions of eternal and universal harmony in which perhaps Shylock, too, will be included.

6 The ‘Otherness’ of Othello and Shylock – an Evaluation Once again, it ought to be recalled that depictions of the ‘Other’ in sixteenth-century England were essentially the representations of “an emblematic figure, not a ‘natural- istic’ portrayal” (Vitkus 1997: 160) of a somewhat diverse individual. Regularly, the ‘Other’ was reduced to the embodiment of utmost barbarism and villainy, serving as an efficient instrument to strengthen the sense of a gradually incipient ‘Englishness’ as well as of a Christian unity, aiming to quiet internal conflict. Frequently, hence, common prejudices as well as alleged notions of villainous Jewish-Moorish interests were exploited quite blatantly in numerous plays of that period, too (cf. Hunter 1964: 52 f.).

Undoubtedly, it is Shakespeare’s break with tradition as far as his representation of the Moor Othello and the Jew Shylock is concerned that has rendered Othello and The Merchant of Venice so immortal. The two paradigms of ‘Otherness’ in Shakespeare’s canon are anything but biased, symbolic generalisations, and consequently the depictions of as well as the responses to them are remarkably multifaceted, ambiguous and in parts even contradictive but at the same time fascinating, appealing and offering much food for thought.

One cannot deny completely, however, that Othello as well as Shylock show some traits typically associated with Moors and Jews during the Elizabethan period. Othello, driven by insane jealousy, commits a cruelly barbarous murder, and Shylock is a usurer informed by materialistic values who wants to take gruesome revenge on a Christian enemy. Although the two characters represent emblematic archetypes in those respects, they simultaneously are highly individualised personalities one can identify with despite their ‘Otherness’. Additionally, it must not be neglected that even if the two characters

111 in part correspond to traditional stereotypes, it is repeatedly emphasised throughout the plays that the actions marking Othello and Shylock as distinctively vicious ‘Other’ are not due to innate savagery and inhumanity. On the contrary, to a great extent, it seems, the characters are motivated by their apparently unjustified marginalisation and exclusion from society.

As the plays commence, the two characters are depicted in their plain ‘Otherness’: Othello is the black-skinned Moor in a white society and Shylock the Jew in a Christian community. Apart from these shared distinguishing traits, however, their prerequisites could not be more different. Othello has seemingly adapted to Venetian society extraordinarily well and is convinced of the possibility of full integration. He has converted to Christianity and as a general he is a valuable and worthy member of the community, which manifests, for instance, in his frequent invitations to dine with senators. His blackness, he is made to believe, is regarded as a fascinatingly exotic and mysterious trait rather than as a cause of repulsion. Shylock, by contrast, lives the secluded life of an alienated outsider. Thoroughly rejected and knowing that he will never be able to integrate, he suffers continuous verbal and physical assaults by the Venetian Christians who openly despise him for his Jewishness and, linked to that, for his usury. Whereas Othello fully embraces the Venetian society and believes that he has become part of it, Shylock refuses any attempts at a harmonising reconciliation.

When Othello marries Desdemona and Shylock’s daughter Jessica flees (the elopement, notably, of two daughters; one into the arms of the black alien, the other abducted voluntarily by a member of the Christian majority) a decisive turning point for both characters occurs. Othello, who has intended his marriage to the white senator’s daughter as the ultimate expression of his integration and inclusion, is all of a sudden confronted with open hostility and detestation. He has to realise that he can integrate on a professional level that is of service to the Venetians, but must not dare to overstep cultural boundaries by marrying a Venetian noblewoman. For the first time, it appears, Othello is painfully made aware of his status as segregated ‘Other’.

By losing Jessica, Shylock is deprived of his last refuge of social warmth protecting him from aggression and discriminatory acts from the outside. When realising that his daughter has not only betrayed him for a Christian detesting him but that she has also stolen from him and traded a ring he was immensely attached to emotionally, he is devastated and left behind in ultimate alienation and lonesomeness. From this moment 112 on, Shylock thirsts for revenge and gradually turns into the inhuman monster he has formerly only unjustifiably been described as.

Othello, too, is deeply unsettled by the unexpected hostilities towards him. Rapidly losing his former self-confidence, he falls prey to Iago’s plotting who has immediately taken advantage of Othello’s awareness of being an alien to Venetian culture and its codes of conduct. Skilfully, he exploits the Moor’s growing anxieties, stressing, on the one hand, that it is unnatural for a young white girl to fall in love with an elderly black man and, on the other, reminding him that he is a cultural outsider and consequently unaware of the Venetian women’s notorious unfaithfulness. Surprisingly rapidly, Iago triggers Othello’s insane jealousy and cries for revenge.

Shylock, too, swears vengeance but while Othello deteriorates linearly, the Jew’s transition from a passive victim to a vindictive perpetrator takes place less straightforwardly. Craving the fulfilment of his bond and cursing his daughter for having stolen from him, he nonetheless evokes sympathy when expressing deep emotional commitment to the ring Jessica has traded for a monkey and which he had treasured as a valuable reminiscence of his deceased wife. Contrary to Othello who frequently offers insights into his most intimate feelings and motives, Shylock is never present on stage alone throughout the entire play and therefore his thoughts are hardly ever expressed totally freely. When he bemoans the loss of his turquoise, however, his anguish appears to come from the bottom of his heart, rendering him an appealing figure and making his motives to take revenge deeply understandable and human.

Othello, by contrast, who has initially been presented as dignified nobleman speaking in ornate verse, deteriorates devoid of any prospect to regain his sanity, which is most explicitly expressed by his increasingly irrational and broken language. Being convinced of Desdemona’s guilt his formerly harmonious worldview has fallen into pieces and he is thoroughly uprooted. While, as Berry (cf. 1990: 323) points out, Shylock has at least his Jewishness as cultural anchor, Othello loses ground completely. According to her, the Moor’s alienation goes much deeper than Shylock’s […]. Othello sees himself either as an exotic Ve- netian, a convert in the fullest sense, capable of complete assimilation, or he sees himself as a barbarian, worthy of destruction. His failure […] to achieve a true sense of personal identity, is one of the play’s most powerful sources of tragic feeling. (Berry 1990: 323)

113 Gradually, both Shylock and Othello begin to identify themselves with the prejudiced assumptions they had to endure earlier. Shylock, it appears, shows Antonio with malicious satisfaction that he has finally turned into the exonerate dog he has without a cause been called before, and Othello regards his blackness and status as cultural outsider as the main reasons for his wife’s infidelity. Ultimately, Othello commits a cruel murder out of jealousy and Shylock wrathfully insists on his archaic right to revenge. Quite explicitly, however, Othello as well as The Merchant of Venice demonstrate, as has already been briefly mentioned above, that the Moor’s and Jew’s seemingly perverse behaviour does not offer a belated justification for the Venetians’ animosities and antagonisms, but, on the contrary, that it is the logical corollary thereof (cf. Lubrich 2001: 128). Nonetheless, it would again be too simplistic and one-sided to reduce Shakespeare’s outsiders to mere victims who are determined by the discriminatory acts directed against them and who only respond to the hostile climate they are confronted with; as so much about these two fascinating characters, some aspects of their incentives, too, remain opaque.

Additionally, Othello as well as Shylock rely heavily on justice and the law. The general regards the murder of his wife as a necessary and absolutely righteous act of justice since she might otherwise betray more men. Considering this, Othello is not only characterised by ‘typically’ Moorish jealousy but also by the strict codes of honour he adheres to as a military leader and wholehearted soldier. Simultaneously incorporating the roles of both judge and prosecutor he, together with his merciless wrath and desire to revenge, is informed by archaic conceptions of the law. Although he frequently, and even upon killing Desdemona, makes references to Christianity, Othello seems to have forgotten about the Christian ideals of compassion and mercy. Shylock, firmly adhering to his Judaic codes of conduct based on a strictly legalistic interpretation of rules and regulations and trusting in the Venetian rule of law, too, craves the law in order to mercilessly satisfy his revenge. By doing so he is strictly contrasted to the Venetian Christians who are informed by universally human principles that supersede the mere wording of a law but are based on compassion and benevolence – at least when it suits them.

When Othello realises his major mistake his world again falls into pieces, but ultimately his harmonious worldview of good and bad being clearly distinguished is restored. Repentant and devastated he commits suicide torn between his two identities. Simulta-

114 neously referring to himself as a renowned and heroic Christian soldier and as a viciously malignant Turk, he emphasises that he was not, against general expectations, easily jealous but perplexed to the extreme. After his death he is acknowledged as someone great at heart, which further supports implications of Othello being a tragic hero rather than a barbarous villain.

Shylock’s character is depicted even more ambiguously and opaquely. Insisting on the bond and his right to revenge he is emblematic of the old law that is superseded by more modern conceptions of justice and mercy. Keeping this in mind, Shylock is less a villainous and vindictive Jew than the symbol of an archaic legal system conflicting with modernity. Contrary to Othello he does not acknowledge his misconceptions and heresy but has to be converted forcibly to Christianity in order to be kept on the straight and narrow. Although one might argue that Shylock’s end is less tragic compared to Othello’s destiny since the Jew’s life his spared, it must not be neglected that Shylock leaves the stage a broken man excluded from the reconciliatory happy ending whereas Othello is redeemed.

To conclude, it might be encapsulated that although the two most famous ‘Others’ of Shakespeare’s canon are diverging not only in their prerequisites but also in their attempts at managing their ‘Otherness’, they both ultimately seek recognition and acceptance by the Venetian majority group. Being denied their status as equal beings they are painfully made aware of their ‘Otherness’ that cannot be overcome and that hence eventually forms the basis for the deeds sealing their fate.

Moreover, the two plays examined explore in how far appearance and reality may differ and how frequently preconceived ideas are proven wrong. In Othello it is not the Moor but Iago the white soldier who is devoid of any honour and conscience, proving to be the true barbarous and malicious ‘black devil’. In The Merchant of Venice, too, the Christians in parts belie the expectations on them as allegedly moral superiors. Repeat- edly, they fall prey to the same flaws they despise Shylock for: some Venetians indulge in material values, some display gruesome glee, and some are disinclined to show mercy to those different from them.

As Pfister (cf. 2000: 382) elaborates, Shakespeare depicts an entire spectre of diverging and sometimes even contradictive perspectives relativising one another and offering food for thought to the recipients. Thus, Shakespeare’s plays exceed the mere

115 affirmation of established moral norms but rather put them to the test. Even if the anarchic and subversive impulses are restrained by a ‘happy’ ending, reminiscences of them cannot be entirely obliviated, encouraging readers and audience alike to question, re-evaluate and perhaps to even alter conventional and normative sets of belief.

Schabert (cf. 2000: 283) further explains that Shakespeare must have been influenced by Montaigne’s Essais regarding mankind as irrational and ultimately enigmatic beings, and has confirmed these assumptions in his work. Depicting human reality not as harmonious and fundamentally unchangeable but as a constant struggle, he perceives mankind as constantly torn between the extremes of good and evil. As a consequence, sudden transfigurations, conversions for the better as well as lapses for the worse can never be ruled out. Additionally, it has quite convincingly been argued that the ambiguities in Shakespeare’s characters are to some extent the manifestation of ideological upheavals and of a certain fragmentation of an epoch vacillating between the traditions of the Middle Ages and the innovations of the early modern period (cf. Lubrich 2001: 10).

Although Shakespeare was in some respects doubtlessly still influenced by the conventions of Medieval Drama, already Pushkin (quoted in LeWinter, ed 1963: 155) observed that – quite contrary to most characters of Shakespeare’s contemporaries (and to many of those of his successors) – his figures tend not to be the mere personification of one certain vice or virtue but are multi-faceted and manifold. “Molière’s miser is miserly”, he writes “and no more; Shakespeare’s Shylock is miserly, shrewd, vengeful, child-loving and witty.” Schabert (cf. 2000: 284), too, underlines the challenges actors as well as the audience are faced with when tackling Shakespearean characters full of inconsistencies, equivocalness and ambiguities; the discrepancies in their words and actions remain mysterious, and the work-immanent other-characterisations frequently complicate the mysteries further rather than solving them.

Considering all this, Shakespeare’s plays are examples of extreme polysemy open to multiple readings and systematically evoking contradictory lines of interpretation (cf. Lubrich 2001: blurb). Undisputedly, hence, responses to Othello as well as to Shylock prompt ambivalent and even paradoxical assessments of their character (cf. Moody 1964: 14); yet, it is exactly these ambiguities and contradictions that make them so captivating.

116 Fascinatingly skilfully Shakespeare arouses stereotypical expectations in line with conventional portrayals of ‘Otherness’ in the Elizabethan period but, as has been elaborated on, they are only fulfilled in parts. More frequently, archetypical preconceptions of the barbarous Moor and the vindictive Jew craving Christian blood are frustrated and the ‘Other’ is portrayed in its entire complexity and lifelikeness. As a consequence, interpretative approaches aiming to depict Othello and Shylock either as heroes or as villains, as victims or as perpetrators, and as entirely good or thoroughly evil are to be rejected as oversimplifying and superficially neglecting the characters’ full complexity.

Nonetheless, literary criticism and research have for centuries attempted to dissipate the ambiguities and inconsistencies of Shakespeare’s characters, which, of course, has been doomed to fail, proving that the contradictions underlying their depictions cannot be resolved once and for all. On the contrary, at best temporarily convincing interpretations can be achieved (cf. Schabert 2000: 284). As Foakes (2005: 193) in this context points out: It is curious that at a time when we have come to take for granted the instability of the text […] and the existence of multiple versions of many plays, together with the implication that meanings also are instable, there is little recognition that character, too, may be indeterminate.

Daniell (1986: 109), too, argues that “[w]e are seeing clearly, now, one of the principles of mature Shakespeare, that of indeterminacy. The plays are more open, more patient of interpretation, than is comfortable.” Doubtlessly, it is the ambivalences and lifelikeness of Shakespeare’s characters that render one-sided interpretations and readings impossible but that have for this very reason fascinated people all over the world for centuries. Dryden (quoted in Smith E. 2010: 257) may still not be disproved today when he stated less than fifty years after Shakespeare’s death that “of all Modern and perhaps Ancient Poets, [he] had the largest and most comprehensive soul.” Indeed, and as has been investigated in relation to the multifariousness of Othello’s and Shylock’s ‘Other- ness’, Shakespeare’s plays surpass the contexts of the period they were written in but raise more eternal and transcendent questions.

7 Conclusion For all times and in any given culture, the strange and undefined has mesmerizingly fascinated mankind but also served as a powerful instrument to distinguish the ‘Other’ from what is perceived to be the ‘Same’. Even in today’s (post-) modern societies, the

117 unknown simultaneously conjures alluring desire as well as radical exclusion, leaving people vacillate between curiosity and fear. Not unlike today, the perceptions of ‘Otherness’ of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, too, were persistently fluctuating. Due to a growing internationalisation, a tremendous increase in scientific knowledge, vast geographical expansion and, linked to that, the discovery of previously unknown continents and peoples, the early modern period was an epoch of unprecedented contact with the ‘Other’, leading to a heightened interest in the mysterious and unknown, but also raising a cluster of questions and anxieties.

Notably, Shakespeare’s time was an age of tremendous socio-economic and political upheaval marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity in which not only the concept of ‘Otherness’ but also the ‘Self’ remained highly ambiguous and unstable. Notions of nationhood and racial identity, for instance, were still flexible and highly contested, but gradually an enhanced sense of European-Christian identity and unified belonging was established by distinguishing oneself from what were perceived to be the epitomes of ‘Otherness’, exemplified, primarily, by Moors, Turks, and Jews.

Unsurprisingly, the paradigmatic ‘Others’ were habitually reduced to prejudiced stereotypes and exploited as the archetypes of vicious barbarism and inhumane cruelty. Additionally, myths of malignantly deceitful and barbarous Africans as well as of Jews slaughtering Christians were not only traditional elements of English folklore but also readily incorporated into the plays of that era, an epoch in which the integration of exotic elements was pervasively popular. Regularly, hence, the stage depictions of Moors and Jews in Elizabethan England were the representations of blatantly devilish villains embodying utmost evil and providing a marked contrast to the virtues of the plays’ heroes.

Shakespeare, by contrast, disregarded the simplicity of conventional depictions of ‘Otherness’ and drew Othello as well as Shylock as exceedingly complex and multifaceted figures prompting highly divergent and in parts irreconcilably contradictive responses. Undeniably, the continuous fascination with the two most enigmatic ‘Others’ in Shakespeare’s canon is largely due to the fact that, at a time when depictions of the ‘Other’ were essentially portrayals of emblematic types and stock scoundrels, they are depicted as lifelike, rounded, and thoroughly human figures. Trying to cope with their status as foreigners in different ways, they offer the possibility of wholehearted identification as well as of thorough rejection. 118 Clearly, it is precisely their realistically convincing authenticity, their inner turmoils and their inconsistencies that render Othello and Shylock paramount examples of complex polysemy, stimulating inspiringly controversial interpretations. Influenced by various ideologies and conflicting worldviews, it has nonetheless for centuries been attempted to dissipate the equivocalness and ambiguities of Shakespeare’s characters; unsurprisingly, this was doomed to fail, proving only that Othello’s and Shylock’s ambivalent traits cannot ultimately be explained. By ignoring certain aspects of their personalities or by overemphasising others at best temporarily valid interpretations could be attained, which, however, disregarded the characters’ complexity, thereby failing to do justice to the ingenious brilliance of Shakespeare’s work.

Skilfully and quite subversively, Shakespeare invokes stereotypes of a devious ‘Other- ness’ but in large parts rejects them, illustrating that prejudiced perception and reality may differ considerably and emphasising that those who are believed to personify utmost evil can have ephemeral moments whereas those who are thought to be virtuous and good may prove to be thoroughly vicious. Fortunately, we do not feel the need to force Shakespeare’s immensely complex characters into simplifying categories, but are enabled to enjoy their multifariousness and depth allowing us to perceive them from multiple perspectives. Neither are Othello and Shylock solely tragic victims nor, and even less so, are they merely malignant villains; much rather, they are highly ambivalent and in parts problematic individuals generating feelings of repulsion and sympathy alike even today. Most definitely, this forms the foundation for the perpetual success of Othello and The Merchant of Venice which continue to raise eternal questions in relation to tolerance, morality, and mankind in general. Considering all this and realising that Shakespeare’s works are today, more than four hundred years after their first staging, still breathtakingly relevant, one can only whole-heartedly agree with Ben Jonson who stated that ‘He was not of an age, but for all time’.

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9 List of Abbreviations JoM The Jew of Malta

MoV The Merchant of Venice

O Othello

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