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Teaching the Holocaust and other Genocides
 
Created in collaboration with the Holocaust & Human Rights Center, the NYS Education Department, and the NYS Archives Partnership Trust.

The Merchant of Venice

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In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who demads that his contract for a pound of flesh, owed him by a youth who failed to repay a loan, be paid in full. 

First published in 1600 in England, Shylock's characteristics are based upon long standing, stereotypes, still popular in a country where Jews had been expelled in 1290.

Although some scenes make him sympathetic and show how society and his Christian enemies cruelly mistreat him, he is eventually punished and forced to convert to Christianity. 

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Shylock, The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 1

He hath disgraced me and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted by bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies - and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, 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. 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 instruction. 

Offering of the Jews

A Dutch Renaissance painting depicting a Jewish offering

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Discussion Questions

  1. What is your reaction to the text and image?
  2. Although Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 by King Edward II, how did Shakespeare who wrote the play in 1600 depict Shylock?
  3. What might have been Shakepeare's source of information about Jews?
  4. What historic roots of antisemitism does the play reflect?