Two Critical Sites about The Merchant of Venice
Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism: The Question of Shylock
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7221/
Internet Public Library describes this critical article by saying this: "This page is designed as an introductory resource for anyone who is interested in the nature of Elizabethan anti-semitism: both in its historical context and, in particular, how it is reflected and embodied inShakespeare's The Merchant of Venice" (http://www.IPLcom).
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis, Character Analysis
A Second Daniel: The Jew and the "True Jew" in The Merchant of Venice
- http://chass.utoronto.ca/emls/04-3/luxoshak.html
- Internet Public Library describes this critical article by saying this: "This essay argues that Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice is anti-Jewish in ways hitherto unrecognized by scholars. The play and its chief characters embrace and endorse anti-Jewish attitudes typical of early modern Protestantism, very sophisticated attitudes based on hermeneutic and soteriological theories of the Jew central to Protestant theology. Two recent books, James Shapiro's Shakespeare and the Jews and Martin Yaffe's Shylock and the Jewish Question, form the immediate context for this argument. Shapiro's suggestion that there's more to Shylock's invocation of Daniel in Act 4 than has been recognized and Barbara Lewalski's reminder that Portia's assumed name, Balthasar, is the biblical Daniel's Babylonian name prompted this essay. The play assigns Portia the role of a Christian Daniel, the 'true Jew' of early modern Protestant imagination, and casts Shylock as a 'false Jew,' virtually a Babylonian" (http://www.IPLcom).
Contains: Character Analysis, Historical Context Author: Thomas H. Luxon From: Early Modern Literary Studies 4.3 (January, 1999): 3.1-37
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