1Magnabosco
Amanda Magnabosco
English 378
Final Paper
The Merchant of Venice: a Volatile Chemical?
Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” is a play that has been under much scrutiny, particularly following World War II. Much criticism of the work suggests that it carries nothing more than an anti-Semitic message in which the main characters act with outright prejudice and disregard for any individual that is an outsider, but act most viciously toward Shylock, the Jewish lead. Prior to World War II, this text was used in educational institutions around the world and was seen as a light-hearted comedy in which Shylock was nothing more than a bumbling idiot. Since then, many schools have chosen to focus on other works of Shakespeare. Yet, other institutions and towns have gone farther in banning the work from being taught as well as performed. One such town is that of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Waterloo has a large and influential Jewish community that believes it was Shakespeare’s intention to include the anti-Semitic message in his work and cites historical documentation to prove their point. This town has taken definite measures to ensure that its children are not placed in a situation in which they will feel discriminated against in their own classroom.
Waterloo’s Understanding of Anti-Semitism
To understand the actions of the town of Waterloo, an individual must first understand the cultural and political beliefs its residents have regarding the Merchant as well as their views of the opinions of Elizabethan England and the portrayal of Jewish individuals as far back as the Middle Ages. According to Alexander Leggatt of The Toronto Star, “by the Middle Ages, the dark fantasies of racism were well established. Jews were accused of stealing and desecrating the host, stabbing and trampling on it and of barbaric rituals in which they murdered Christian children and drank their blood.” (B1) This attitude is said to have been propagated through Christian Europe for thousands of years and furthered by the blame for the Black Death being placed on the Jewish population leading to mass executions.
Aside from these created fantasies, Jewish individuals were viewed negatively for their practice of usury, although the Jewish had little other means of earning a living as they were barred from nearly every profession and trade. It is interesting that the Christian law forbade usury and looked down upon others for its practice, yet many Christians participated in the act as well. The Christian population relied on the argument that God had authorized all living things to procreate, but since money was a ‘dead thing’, it was not intended to multiply. Leggatt asserts that Shylock’s boasting about making “his gold and silver breed like ewes and rams” was in fact, nothing worth bragging over as it was not in accordance with the Christian god’s wishes.
It is also interesting to note that the chance of Shakespeare actually meeting a Jewish person is incredibly slim as the Jewish population was expelled from England in 1290. (B1) It is easy to assume that there were a few Jewish individuals remaining in the country, but they would not be open in the practice of their faith for fear of persecution. Being that there was no actual community of Jewish individuals to judge the prejudices of the time against, it can be assumed that Shakespeare rested on the views of his contemporaries when creating the caricature of Shylock. Especially considering the fact that, “shortly before Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice, a Jewish physician was accused of plotting to murder Queen Elizabeth.” (B1) This accusation could have done nothing but to further the cause of discriminating against the Jewish, regardless of its level of truth. Leggatt goes on to assert that, although Merchant is classified as a comedy, “laughter can be a vehicle for aggression. Certain types of comedy deal, not always pleasantly, with racial, religious and national stereotypes.” In this piece, much of the comedic elements are intended as derogatory jokes about Shylock or the other obvious outsiders for reasons such as disability or racial identity. Leggatt closes by stating that “Laughter, even Shakespeare’s laughter, can dehumanize its victims.” (B1) This feeling of objectification and dehumanization is clearly apparent in the modern day community of Waterloo, Ontario as the issue has appeared countless times in the city’s local papers during the years preceding and following the conflict over performing and teaching Merchant.
Actions taken by Waterloo and Canadian Jewish Congress
Bernie Farber, the director of research for the Canadian Jewish Congress, attempted to convince the Waterloo school board to cease its use of Merchant in its curriculum. His arguments against the work begin by addressing a personal experience he had when being taught the work in Grade 10. He claims that he was devastated when studying the play as the teacher asserted that “since there were only two Jews in the classroom, (they) would have to alternate the reading of Shylock. When I decided to give a heart-rending rendition of Shylock the teacher stopped me in the middle of it and asked me to use a Yiddish accent.” (D8) He went on to describe experiences in which, during the reading of the play, he would come into class to find swastikas drawn on his desk. He continues by stating that “Shylock is portrayed as a villainous Jew throughout the play and Jewish parents are concerned that this image will be generalized to produce an ethnic stereotype.” (D8) While he, and others, feel that the work is suspect, Farber contends that teaching the work can have merit if it is taught to a higher grade level as “studying the play can be a meaningful and enriching experience rather than a foray along the path to bigotry.” (D8)
This issue was brought to the foreground of the Canadian educational system when Merchant was performed in 1984. At this performance a hate crime was committed by school children. According to Pron, “Students from two Orthodox Jewish schools wearing yarmulkes were pelted with coins by other students sitting behind them.” (A3) This incident, along with pressure from the Jewish community, led to the educational system banning the work from its curriculum. Farber asserts, however, that “he has no wish to challenge a teacher’s choice of curriculum or promote censorship. What he is looking for is an effort by educators to put the play in a historical perspective and deal with its anti-Semitism.” (A16) Regardless of Farber’s charge to reform the system, the Canadian’s chose to temporarily ban the work until a suitable compromise could be found. Farber found this attempt to compromise a moot point which is illustrated by his statement that the administrators should “get away from the debate of whether the play is anti-Semitic . . . the fact of the matter is there is proof that as a result of the Merchant of Venice Jewish children across this province have been slandered.” (A16)
The controversy over questionable literature in the Canadian educational system is not a new phenomenon however, as it has been dealing with problematic racial stereotypes in texts for over forty years. The Merchant debate was attempted to be quelled by a recommendation from a board appointed by the school system and the Canadian Jewish Congress. The recommendation stated that “The Merchant of Venice, banned last summer by the Waterloo County Board of Education, should be used in high schools to break down cultural stereotypes.” (A5) The reintroduction of the text under these pretenses in agreeable by both sides, yet the implementation was still of dispute. The Waterloo B.O.E. asserts that the text be reintroduced at the 9th grade level where as the Canadian Jewish Congress argues that it be introduced into the 12th grade’s curriculum. Regardless of this small point, the committee created more than thirty recommendations of ways to remedy the uncomfortable feeling that many Jewish students develop after studying the work.
The first and most supported recommendation is that all teachers attempting to use this text attend a mandatory training session in race relations. This training will attempt to show the instructor ways to handle any complications that may occur through the teaching of the work. Along with this training is placement of a mandatory committee at each school in which the play is taught, which would deal with biases found in classic literature. Once these programs are put into place, the committee previously mentioned would be charged with assessing books “for racial bias and a determination (would be) made as to the proper placement within the school curriculum or the appropriateness within the classroom.” (A18)
Further Provisions for Teaching Merchant
The Ministry of Education and the Ontario Human Rights Commission agree with the previously set standard and offer further guidelines. These guidelines include “suggesting that students study the play in small groups” with the teacher asking “questions that relate the racial hatred confronted by Shylock to racial incidents that occur today.” (A5) Another suggestion by the Ministry is “to have students dramatize scenes in the play or see it performed . . . to illustrate that characters in plays are open to interpretation.” (A5) These prescriptive ideas are presented in an attempt to preserve the artistic integrity of the work while balancing the needs of the community and the students themselves. The committees all agree that Merchant, if taught properly, will allow students to gain a greater understanding of the effects of prejudice and oppression rather than perpetuating the evil and anti-Semitic stereotypes of the Jewish population.
While both sides agree that these provisions will make teaching the text of Merchant a more positive experience for instructor and student alike, the Canadian Jewish Congress contends that more needs to be done. This organization cited provisions taken by the New York Board of Education in which they take great care to “ensure that ethnic minority students are not ‘alienated or degraded’ by the literature.” (A7) The N.Y. B.O.E. created a draft proposal for the Waterloo B.O.E. suggesting that they have all students participate in survey-style responses throughout their instruction of the work. Enid Lee, the race relations supervisor for N.Y.B.O.E. presented findings that the surveys of students showed that “ethnic minority students were the victims of ‘subtle racism’ during the teaching of ethnic literature.” (A7) After presenting these results to the Canadian Jewish Congress, Lee suggested implementing a similar system as a check to ensure that instructors were refuting the negative messages of the work as well as highlighting lessons of racial diversity and acceptance. Lee believes that if a teacher is found to be consistently lacking in these areas they ought to “undergo rigorous training so they can learn how to use controversial literature to ‘enhance the lives of all students’ by helping them understand the nature of racism and how to combat it.” (A7) Interestingly enough, this system of teacher education has already been prescribed by several committees. The combination of the previously mentioned suggestions satisfied all parties and The Merchant of Venice was readmitted to the curriculum list of the Waterloo County Board of Education.
Performing Merchant in Waterloo
While the conflict over the work being presented in classrooms had been dealt with, the challenge to decide if the work was appropriate for public performance was still debatable due to the previous violent outbursts. Members of society believed that Waterloo, with its strong Jewish population, was not an appropriate environment for the production as the work was still considered to have anti-Semitic messages. Yet, after much discussion, the city agreed to allow the Stratford festival agreed to produce The Merchant of Venice in 1989. Although the play was permitted to be produced and performed, two scenes were deleted with the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Stratford spokespeople denying that these groups reached the decision of cutting the scenes together. The first scene chosen for deletion was the closing scene in which Shylock is forced to convert from the Jewish faith to the Christian and the second scene chosen was a conversation had over the price of pork between Jessica and Lancelot. Quiggley, a spokesperson for the festival asserts that these scenes were dropped due to racial overtones and that the closing scene, in particular, was dropped as “in Shakespeare’s time, people believed the conversion was merciful, but today such a belief is abhorrent, meaningless and insulting.” (A3) These performances were well received by the members of the community and commended by the Canadian Jewish Congress. Farber commented that they (CJC) “did not ask Stratford to drop the lines, they did it on their own, Stratford is leading the way on the issue . . . we hope other theatre companies will follow.” Farber’s statement suggests that the artistic nature of the work is preserved and possibly bettered by the deletion of the scenes that are of particular offense to the Jewish population while leaving in degrading elements in the interest that the audience may learn lessons of tolerance for other groups.
On-going Challenges
The Waterloo Board of Education and the Canadian Jewish Congress seem to have created a strong compromise regarding Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. This decision was not easily reached or readily visible. Unfortunately, this decision was only reached after such a powerful text was censored for a time. While censorship was considered a necessary evil, the discussions regarding the text during that time allowed the community to reach a consensus that allowed the artistic integrity of the work to be preserved while protecting the children of the community and possibly offering them a great education regarding the ills of prejudice and degradation in modern society. It is a wonderful thing that the Waterloo Board of Education chose to reinstate Merchant as its teaching will afford the students with a greater understanding of racist actions and how these actions, however subtle or overt, are received by the individual that is oppressed. It is possible that the education received will cause children to cease in participating in hate crimes and similar actions in the future.