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 WAS SHAKESPEARE JEWISH?An article written for the Jerusalem Post
byJohn HudsonOne of the most peculiar features of Shakespeare’s plays is the familiarity thattheir author demonstrates with Judaism and Hebrew. Such knowledge wasextraordinarily rare in Elizabethan London. After all, Jews could not legally live inEngland at the time (they had been expelled in 1290 and would not be invitedback until 1656, 40 years after Shakespeare died) and there were only 200secret Jews or Marranos (Conversos) in the whole country. Some years agoDavid Basch suggested that the playwright quoted from the Talmud in half adozen places. Schelomo Jehuda Schöenfeld suggested in
Shakespeare Survey 
that a Hebrew source lay beneath
Merchant of Venice
. Several writers haveseparately noted different examples in which the author used the original Hebrewtext of Genesis. But perhaps the clearest evidence is that there are a few wordsof spoken Hebrew, possibly Ladino, in the plays, as well as varioustransliterations and Hebrew puns.In
The Merchant of Venice
Portia says “I am lock’d” (3,2,40) and “I am contain’d”(2,8,5) in one of the caskets. These are at the very least intriguing statementsbecause it is her 
 portrait 
that is inside the casket and not Portia herself. But aHebrew speaker would know that PoRTia’s name in Hebrew is spelt PRT. Theywould see the lead casket, know that the word ‘lead’ in Hebrew is YPRT(
opheret 
--the first letter is a soundless ’
ayin
), and realize that the Hebrew punshows that Portia (PRT) is contained inside the lead.In
 As You Like It 
another set of puns appear, none of which appeared in Lodge’s
Rosalynde
, the play’s source document.
 
There are several clues that the start of the play is set in Paradise. One of these is the rib-cracking that the playwrighthas added to the wrestling in the original novel
.
We are told that rib-cracking is asport for ladies because it was by rib-cracking that Eve was created in the Bookof Genesis (Gen 2:21). She was thus a “broken consort,” meaning not just acompanion with cracked ribs, but also the kind of orchestra that would play“broken music.” But why does Rosalind say that this broken music is “in hissides” (1,2,134), thereby linking the word rib to the word for side? The answer isthat the Hebrew word
‘tsela
’ was always translated into English as ‘rib,’ but wherethe word appears in the Hebrew Bible it usually means side, referring for instanceto the sides of the Ark of the Covenant. So the playwright seems to be showingknowledge of the meaning of the original Hebrew usage.Now for some of the actual spoken Hebrew or Ladino in the plays, whichFlorence Amit has found hidden in the nonsense language used in
 All’s Well That Ends Well 
. The interpreter says to Parolles, "
Boskos vauvado
. I understand thee,and can speak thy tongue.
Kerely-bonto
, sir, betake thee to thy faith..." (4,1,75-
 
77). In the allegory in the play Parolles is a Jew. Not surprisingly, then, thenonsense language the interpreter is speaking is actually Hebrew. If translated,the interpreter is saying something that makes sense in the context of the play.
B'oz K'oz 
means “In bravery like boldness” and
Vah vado
means “And in hissurety” (
vah
= and;
vado
=
vad,
meaning ‘sure,’ plus an ‘o’ ending for ‘his’). Andso we get: "
In bravery like boldness, and in surety 
, I understand thee, and canspeak thy tongue
.
Similarly,
K’erli, “ 
I am aware” (
ki 
= since,
erli 
= er, aware,
li 
=grammatical suffix meaning to me) and
b’onto
; his deception (b'on(na) =deception, with the grammatical ending ‘o’ meaning his. Thus, “
I am aware of hisdeception
sir, betake thee to thy faith..."Finally an interesting example, discovered by Alan Altimont, appears in
 AMidsummer Night’s Dream
. In the play, Helena questions her beauty, describingherself as being ugly as a bear, while Lysander calls Hermia “tawny” – to whichHelena replies she is fair skinned. The two women are then contrasted in termsof their height, one being dwarfish and the other a maypole. Thus the two womenare successively contrasted in terms of their ugliness/beauty, their darkness/fairness and their shortness/tallness. In the Mishnah, in
TractateNedarim
9:10, there is a discussion of when marriage vows are made in error.The discussion concerns exactly these same pairs of qualities, and they appear in exactly the same order. Moreover, although Helena’s absent father never comes on stage, he is twice referred to by name as “Nedar.”
Nedar 
is of coursethe Hebrew verb meaning ‘was absent’—very appropriate for an absent father—but it is also a pun on the Hebrew word
nedarim
meaning vows, which isprecisely the name of the Tractate the playwright is using.
 
These are not isolated examples, and there appear to be over 100 of themthroughout the plays. So what are the possible explanations? Several differentsolutions have been put forward.The
first 
and most incredible is that the man from Stratford was himself aMarrano. This has been independently proposed by several writers, who havepublished papers in
Midstream
with titles like ‘The Marrano of Stratford’ and ‘WasShakespeare a Marrano?’ But thanks to Stratfordian scholarship, the answer tothat question is quite clear. Mr. Shakespeare grew up apparently as a Catholic,and when he was in London—instead of living in a house of hidden Jews inwhich he could have secretly kept
kashrut 
---he lived instead with a family of French Huguenots, and later in life retired to Stratford which was not known tohave a Marrano community, where he was buried prominently in the local church.A
second 
proposed solution is that Hebrew appears in the plays because theplays were written by the Earl of Oxford – who had an M.A. from OxfordUniversity, where Hebrew was taught. The problem is that the honorary M.A. hereceived was conferred on him as a “gift” and, as Alan Nelson puts it in his recentbiography, implies no “academic accomplishment.”
 
So we come to the
third 
solution has been put forward, that the author of theplays was Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. Now, Sidney
did 
complete her brother’s versification of the Psalms—at least, to be precise, she authorized thecirculation of the completed manuscript. However the standard edition notes thatthere is “no reason to believe that either Sidney or the Countess of Pembrokecould read Hebrew.” Yet there are some indications that whoever did some of theversification was familiar with medieval rabbinic commentaries, and wasresponsible for creating translations that are unusually faithful to the Hebreworiginal. The probable answer to this is that Mary Sidney had an assistant, whichis supported by the inscription on the Bodleian manuscript that they wereSidney’s Psalms “finished by the Right honorable Countess of Pembroke, hisSister and by her direction and appointment.”Now for the
fourth
proposed solution. As Altimont says about the word-play onNedar, the man from Stratford “clearly lacked the wherewithal to use Hebrew socleverly.” However, Mr. Shakespeare may have known a Marrano from Venicewho gave him all the Jewish information he needed. Since in ElizabethanEngland there were only around 200 people living as secret Jews or Marranos,we don’t have to look far for a plausible source. Several writers in the last 15years have proposed that the playwright’s information came from the Bassanofamily. They were a family of Venetian Jews who had moved to England in 1539to become Court musicians. Some of the Bassanos lived in a household withmembers of the Lupo family, some of whom had actually been imprisoned asMarranos, and with whom the Bassanos intermarried.More specifically still, it has been proposed that the source of this Jewishinformation in the plays was Amelia Bassano (1569-1645), the so-called ‘DarkLady’ of the Sonnets. She was a major experimental poet in her own right, aproto-feminist, the author of the first book of poetry published by a woman,
SalveDeus Rex Judaeorum
(1611) and mistress to Lord Hunsdon, the man in chargeof the English theater. Moreover, if she was giving Mr. Shakespeare lessons onHebrew puns, the Talmud, and the Torah, presumably she could also have givenhim the 2,000 musical references found in the plays as well as the Italian andfalconry references, the various allusions from girls’ literature, the views of thestrong women characters and so on.But rather than imagining Mr. Shakespeare merely as a passive receptacle for these references that Amelia Bassano gave him, perhaps
 
we should startimagining her as actually the primary author, while Mr. Shakespeare was simplythe person who fronted the plays and handed them off to the actors. If we look,for instance, at how the playwright used the original Italian of Dante and Tasso,these allusions do not seem to have been simply inserted or added on. Rather they are integral to the way that the verse was composed. So also with theHebrew puns, which are completely integral to the overall verse.
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ILoveMyMusic6156

It is important to remember the history of Iran's nuclear program and its relation with the West to fully comprehend the enduring "crisis." - http://bit.ly/84Q5hF

reply02 / 25 / 2010
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