Shakespeare and the Jews in Early Modern England

Shakespeare and the Jews by James Shapiro

Review by: Stephen Bluestone
The Sewanee Review, Vol. 105, No. 1 (Winter, 1997), pp. x, xii-xiv
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27548280 .
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 CURRENT BOOKS IN REVIEW
reluctant to grant this; and in his I SHAKESPEARE AND THE JEWS
response to Gary Taylor and IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND
Margreta de Grazia, in particular,
he burdens his story with an un and the Jews
Shakespeare
necessarily naive kind of polemic.
by James Shapiro (Columbia
Tacts, not politics, drove his
University Press, 1995. 320 pages.
research," Martin writes, for Illustrated. $29.50)
getting for the moment that facts
don't tell the truth by themselves :
"Isaiah, 'Hear, O heavens, and
people tell the truth with them give ear, O earth,' and Levi of
and through them, and the way Holywell-street?'Old Clothes'?
we present this truth has social both of them Jews, you observe."
meaning. Malone's work had: So Coleridge, whose skepticism
Burke, for one, pointed it out to with regard to stereotypes is a
him. It is also clear that Malone poignant point of departure for
encouraged the methods that have James Shapiro as he charts the
made Shakespeare study, now, relationship between Shakespeare
into a recondite professional and the Jews in early modern
specialty. Malone should not English culture. Shapiro's
perhaps be blamed for this. But, approach demands an explicit
as de Grazia says, it is not the only focus on Shylock, though Shy
way to present Shakespeare to lock's legacy is also a measure of
ourselves. Antonio's. One is tempted to offer
There is a revealing irony be as a subtitle for this volume (after
hind Martin's polemic. Gary John Gross's Shylock: A Legend
Taylor is a distinguished practi and Its Legacy): "Antonio: His
tioner of Malone's own methods; and His Legacies."
Legends
yet the Oxford Shakespeare, which Shapiro reminds us of Coleridge's
Taylor coedited, has done more j amazement at John Donne's ref
to unsettle our traditional notions ! erence to "a barbarous and in
of Shakespeare's body of work humane custom of the Jews," who
and what itmeans than any other "always keep in readiness the
recent work. Even setting out on blood of some Christian, with
the current of documents, you which they anoint the body of
may arrive at unexpected any that dies among them, with
landings. these words, If Jesus Christ were
?Lionel Basney the Messiah, then may the blood
of this Christian avail thee to
"
Salvation.'
The unavoidable answer to
Coleridge's question?Could
Donne have credited "that absurd
legend"??is painful to consider.
Donne's time, Coleridge writes,
was "not an age of critical ac

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 CURRENT BOOKS IN REVIEW
count: grit, bran, and flour were tenor of whose common law
swallowed in the unsifted mass of applied equally to all members
their erudition. That a man like of the nation regardless of
Donne should have imposed religious identity. Central to
on himself such a set of idle tales the debate was John Locke's
for facts of history is scarcely defense of religious dissent in his
credible; that he should have at Letter Concerning Toleration
tempted to impose them on (1689) and the passage of the
others, most melancholy." Act of Toleration in the same
Shapiro's task is "to recover some year. Though Locke rejected
of the grittier and, for many, compulsion inmatters of faith
less palatable aspects of this age." for Jews and Dissenters, still,
Beginning with the Elizabethans as Shapiro argues, the question
and keeping a strict focus on of the status of the Jews
the ways in which, through the remained unresolved. In A Tara
middle of the eighteenth century, phrase and Notes on St. Paul's
"English character could be Epistles to the ... Romans (1707)
defined in part by its need to ex Locke shifted to calling for Jewish
"
clude 'Jewishness,' Shapiro conversion and national restitu
argues that the English "con tion, ultimately arguing that "the
sidered Jews to be unlike them Jews were not to regard England
selves in terms of religion, race, as a
permanent home."

nationality, and even sexuality." Andso, though demographi

His concern is to show "how ideas cally marginal, the Jews were
about difference emerged out of therefore an important measure
post-Reformation thinking in of the "surprising vulnerability
England," and to challenge a of English social and religious
current trend?the tendency to identity at this time: if even a Jew
show "little interest in religion as could be English, what could one
a category of analysis, preferring point to that defined essential
instead the modern trinity of Englishness?" The question, as
class, race, and gender." posed, is sweeping, a culturally
Shakespeare is only part of comprehensive one; and it brings
the story. Working forward to the Shapiro to the role of Shakespeare
controversy surrounding the in a continuing discourse that
passage and then repeal in the bore on the specific political and
same year of the Jewish Naturali religious status of the Jews. Un
zation Act (or "Jew Bill") of 1753, questionably Shakespeare
Shapiro examines discussions of provided for his culture its most
alien status, conversion, and vivid fictional example of Jewish
criminality. At stake in political character, a
stereotype as power
terms was the crucial question of ful as any available to it. As
religious toleration: whether Eng Shapiro amply demonstrates,
land could remain a Christian the character of Shylock was
commonwealth, the force and Shakespeare's own post hoc

xii

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 CURRENT BOOKS IN REVIEW
contribution to the latter-day Iwork, Shapiro's point surely needs
debate about the Jew Bill. In any to be made. The New Histori
case whatever Englishness meant cists, as he correctly argues, have
by the middle of the eighteenth "rediscovered virtually every
century, it surely included Shake marginalized Other that passed
speare, who, as Jane Austen through early modern England?
wrote, was an integral part of including witches, hermaphro
an Englishman's "constitution." dites, Moors, cross-dressers,
It followed that, as occasion Turks, sodomites, criminals,
called, the figure of Shylock, like prophets, Eskimos, and vaga
that of Hal, of John of Gaunt, and bonds?[but] have steered care
of Falstaff in different ways and fully around the Other of Others
other contexts, stood ready to in the Renaissance, the Jews."
serve as a point of reference in One may well ask, even as the
the far-reaching debate. author piles up evidence for his
In terms of cultural history thesis, whether a narrow focus on
Shapiro's basic concern iswith the the role of the Jews as a touch
place of an irrational stereotype stone of English identity is not
in the stories a culture tells to itself a limiting form of identity
itself and about itself. In this politics. Do we see Shakespeare,
sense Shylock?and the myths the iconic national bard, as "care
that cluster about his name? fully positioned [as in David
belongs not so much to a parti Garrick's play The Jubilee (1769)]
cular authorial canon and the against those at the periphery
literary criticism associated with of English culture"? The
it as to a general political, social, contemporary metaphor of
and theological context appearing marginality may or may not be
at a complex and dynamic mo useful here, depending on one's
ment in history. Shapiro also perspective. What could periph
wishes to tax both the cultural ery as a social category have
materialist and new historicist meant in a class society? Are Gar
schools of criticism, whose "re rick's illiterate Warwickshire
luctance to deal with Jewish rustics, who confuse the celebra
questions undoubtedly has much tion of the Shakespearean Jubilee
to do with problems that the with a plot by Jews and Papists,
[contemporary] cultural Left has to be taken as serious evidence
had in reconciling itself to that the Shakespearean legacy by
Zionism and Israeli policy, with mid-eighteenth century had be
the prevailing legacy of Marx's come the exclusive property of the
account of the 'Jewish Question,' English establishment? I doubt it.
and with the fact that in their My sense is that whatever Garrick
view Jews no longer constitute a was up to, Jane Austen and
disadvantaged or threatened others were certainly right: to
social group." Indeed, in the the extent that Shakespeare was
light of much recent academic a
I defining element of the English

xiii

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identity, so too was his general English culture's most glorious

human inclusiveness. And, not to legacy? How does the approach
beg the troubling issues Shapiro of identity politics clarify (or
raises about the uses to which annul) everything we may still
a culture may put its best want to believe about a common
heritage, I also wonder whether moral center rooted in the humane
it is not still possible to find in enterprise of literature? What
Shylock's own compelling and common values, if any, might yet
complicated humanity some small be salvageable? Shakespeare and
proof of this. Even within the the Jews sets the stage well to
horrific context of post consider such questions.
Elizabethan thinking about
?Stephen Bluestone
differences, might not the Shake
spearean legacy have also been
a counter
moderating?even
cultural?influence?
I offer this as a constrained
Such a view, Shapiro ENGLISH DRAMA IN
qualification.
(and others) might argue, is HIBERNATION
detached and ahistorical, even
apologetic. The central question Winter Fruit: English Drama,
this book poses is this: Was 1642-1660
Shakespeare?and therefore the by Dale B. J. Randall
English culture that enshrined (University Press of Kentucky,
him as its national poet?deeply 1995. xiv+ 454 pages. $39.95)
anti-Semitic? John Gross raises a
similar question: "How far," he Common wisdom still has it
asks, "can a stereotype be that the progress of English drama
transformed and yet remain the came to a halt with the
" closing
same?" 'Shylock" myth' and of the public theaters in 1642
'Shylock figure,' he writes, "are and resumed only with the acces
useful bits of shorthand, and an sion of Charles n in 1600; but,
acknowledgment of Shylock's as scholars from Louis B. Wright
preeminence in this particular to Alfred Harbage have noted, the
rogues' gallery; but the stereotype light of British drama was never
existed before him, and itwould extinguished during the interval
have gone on flourishing without of civil wars, Commonwealth,
him." Like Coleridge we are left and Protectorate. Playbooks
to deal with what Edgar Rosen continued to be published and
berg has called the "massive read; simpler shows of various
durability of a stereotype." kinds took place as before; and
The considerable evidence plays from the repertory were
James Shapiro gathers also leads performed, surreptitiously in such
to related questions: Where do theaters as the Fortune, the
we now stand in relation to Cockpit, and the Red Bull?

xiv

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