Download Merchant of Venice

Mikayla Shuflat
19 February 2016
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Short Assignment on The Merchant of Venice
Part 1
The view on religion during the sixteenth century in England is actually quite confusing.
It starts off with the monarchs that ruled during this time. Henry VIII was the monarch that
established the Protestant Church of England after breaking away from the Catholic Church.
Under the rule of Mary “Bloody Mary” Tudor, the nation reverted to Catholicism. After her
sister Elizabeth took the throne in the mid-1500s, she reestablished the Protestant Church of
England.
From this point on, England was officially a protestant country. This was when The
Merchant of Venice was written and performed, with a significant catholic minority. There were
stringent laws during this time that forced Catholics to conform and convert to the Protestantism.
This forced conversion could lead to the catholic viewers of the play to be more sensitive to
feeling like a religious minority.
One way that Judaism was different from Christianity, as described by M. Lindsay
Kaplan, was that salvation to a Christian did not depend on “having faith in God’s merciful grace
rather than in performing the law” (Kaplan 244). Also, Jews practiced the laws in the Torah, the
old testament of the bible. In some cases, Jews in Spain were given the option of leaving or
converting. This is how the Spanish government got rid of them all in one swoop. Jewish law
states that one is required to choose death rather than a forced conversion. However, rabbis of the
early modern period were less strict on the issue. Also, forced converts were expected to return
to Jewish practices as soon as possible or practice Judaism in secret rather than give up their life.
By the 1300s roughly 2,000-3,000 Jews were evicted from England. After this, Kaplan
writes, there was “no significant Jewish presence in England until the end of the seventeenth
century” (Kaplan 249). There is belief that there must have been a small community of converts
from Judaism, however nothing large enough to make a drastic difference. After these Jews were
expelled, they would never return to their origin land, except to visit their children and try to get
them to convert to Judaism. The English believed that the Jews were responsible for the reasons
why the kingdom was suffering. The one fact that makes me believed that the Englishmen of the
late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century were just terrible people, in the sense of
religious tolerance, was the fact that they forced the Jews to become Christians because their
tactics of love were not working. It was not just the common people who were in on it; the king
proclaimed that any Jew trying to leave the kingdom would be sentenced to death.
Part 2
I think that Antonio reflects the views on religion in the early modern period very well.
For starters, Antonio is already a Christian when the play starts. However, the merchant and his
friends look down upon the Jews in Venice as they did in England at the time the play was being
written. During this period, in England, there were laws placed so Catholics had to convert to the
protestant church or leave. I could see how, to the catholic audience watching these plays,
forcing Jews to convert to Christianity could upset them because that was what they were going
through. Instead, I thought that it was an intelligent move for Shakespeare to have his characters
talk about saving their Jewish costars instead of trying to convert them. For example, in Act 1, at
the end of scene 3, Antonio finishes making his deal with Shylock and ends with “The Hebrew
will turn Christian; he grows kind” (I. iii. 171). From this line, I took it as Shylock is starting to
seem kind and Antonio is starting to like him as a friend and would wish to bring him to
salvation by converting him to Christianity. This view of saving a Jew for their own good comes
straight from the views on religion and conversion in the early modern period.
One more thing that Antonio does to relate to England’s views on religion is to show
mercy to Shylock. In Act 4 scene 1, Shylock does not get to take the pound of flesh from
Antonio. Before I looked into the views on religion of the time, I would have thought that
Antonio was not showing too much mercy to Shylock because anyone who is forced to convert is
not going to be happy. However, after studying these views, I can see that from Antonio’s
perspective, he is showing Shylock mercy. Antonio says to shylock; “that for his favor He
presently become a Christian” (IV. i. 381-382). This is because Antonio is trying to save the Jew
from a horrible life of being a Hebrew by forcing him to convert to Christianity where he can be
brought to salvation one day. This want to convert Shylock is actually an act of mercy because
instead of making shylock give him half of his land like usually went on in these situations, he
was forced to convert which would ultimately save him. This is a typical English view of
conversion just before it started to get bad in England and they had to be more forceful about
converting all the Jews and Catholics. However, I think that the Jews in the play could be
interpreted as Catholics and apply to England a little bit before the play became a production.
There were a few people who believed that the Catholics were worse than the Jews and therefore
would either want them out of the country as soon as possible or to convert for their own good
like Shylock.
Works Cited
Kaplan, M. Lindsay, ed.. The Merchant of Venice: Texts and Contexts. By William Shakespeare.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002. Print.
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Ed. M. Lindsay Kaplan. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2002. Print.