A very Jewish villain (Jonathan Freedland)

It's about time we stopped making excuses for Shakespeare, says Jonathan Freedland. As a new film
version of The Merchant of Venice proves, the play is indeed anti-semitic

The debate is so old it should have its own place in the Shakespearean canon. Is Shylock, the Jewish
moneylender who demands a "pound of flesh" from a debtor, a villain or a victim? Every time The
Merchant of Venice is staged, the debate is restaged along with it. Does Shakespeare's play merely
depict anti-semitism, or does it reek of it? Is the Bard describing, even condemning, the prevalent anti-
Jewish attitudes of his time - or gleefully giving them an outlet? The papers of a million A-level
students are marked forever with such questions.
Yet now they have a new force. Because the Merchant is playing in a new medium, making its debut
as a full-length, big-budget feature film - complete with a top-drawer Hollywood star, Al Pacino, in the
de facto lead.
The film declares its own intentions early. The pre-credit sequence, complete with Star Wars-style
scrolling text, seeks to contextualise. The opening image is of a crucifix, rapidly juxtaposed with the
sight of Hebrew texts put to the flame. The words on the screen tell us that "intolerance of the Jews
was a fact of 16th-century life". To prove it we see a mini-pogrom, with a Jew hurled from the Rialto
Bridge.
It's clear that director Michael Radford does not want to make an anti-semitic film. But he has big two
problems. The first is the play. The second is the medium.
Start with the play. We may want it to be a handy, sixth-form-friendly text exposing the horrors of
racism, but Shakespeare refuses to play along. As the great critic Harold Bloom has declared, "One
would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to recognise that Shakespeare's grand, equivocal comedy
The Merchant of Venice is nevertheless a profoundly anti-semitic work."
There is no getting away from it: Shylock is the villain, bent on disproportionate vengeance. Crucially,
his villainy is not shown as a quirk of his own, individual personality, but is rooted overtly in his
Jewishness.
Thus, he is shown as obsessed by money, a man who dreams of moneybags, whose very opening
words are "three thousand ducats". When his daughter betrays him and flees with a Christian lover, it
is her theft of his money which is said to trouble him as much as the loss of a child. "As the dog Jew
did utter in the streets/'My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!' "
Since the laws that barred Jews from almost all activity besides finance had led to the stereotype of the
avaricious Jew, Shakespeare is dealing here not with a specific trait of Shylock the man but an anti-
semitic caricature.
So it is with his demand for revenge, playing on the ancient notion of the Jews as a vengeful people
("An eye for an eye ... "). The same is true of the very forfeit Shylock demands from Antonio. A Jew
seeking Christian flesh is surely meant to stir memories of the perennial anti-semitic charge, known as
the blood libel, that Jews use Christian blood for religious ritual. Above all, it evokes the accusation
that fuelled two millennia of European anti-semitism - that the Jews killed Christ.
Radford can dress his film up as prettily as he likes - and the costumes, Rembrandt lighting and
Venetian locations certainly ensure that his Merchant is lovely to look at. But he can't dodge this hard,
stubborn fact. Shylock's villainy is depicted as a specifically Jewish villainy. "And by our holy Sabbath
have I sworn/To have the due and forfeit of my bond." Macbeth's murderousness is not a Scottish trait,
nor is Hamlet's indecision a Danish one. But Shylock's wickedness is Jewish.
Doubtless, like the play's other defenders, Radford would cite the bad behaviour of the Christian
characters and Shylock's legendary, humanising Hath not a Jew eyes ... speech. But these defences
don't really work. If Antonio, Bassanio and the rest act badly, the play's assumption is that they have
failed fully to honour their fine and noble faith, Christianity. They are being bad Christians. When
Shylock acts badly, Shakespeare suggests he is fully in accordance with Jewish tradition. Shylock plots
Antonio's downfall with his friend Tubal, promising to continue their dark talk "at our synagogue".
As for Shylock's renowned apologia, it brings only little sympathy. For it turns out to be an "over-
clever" defence by Shylock of his own bloodlust - an argument that, since Jews are the same as
Christians, he is entitled to exact the same revenge they would.
So the film-maker has a problem with the play he has chosen. But - and this may be the bigger surprise
- he has deepened his trouble by making a film.
For the very nature of the medium aggravates the traditional dilemmas of staging The Merchant of
Venice. We may want to dismiss Portia and friends as ghastly airheads, in contrast with weighty
Shylock, but that's tricky when they are played by beautiful A-list film stars, in gorgeous locations
accompanied by delightful music. How can we do anything but sympathise with Antonio, when he's
played by Jeremy Irons - exposing his chest to Shyock's knife in an almost Christ like pose?
Film is an emotive medium, uniquely able to manipulate through lighting and music as well as words.
Shylock's daughter lives in a dank, dark hellhole when she is still a Jew; once she betrays Shylock and
converts to Christianity, she is shown in the flush of youthful love and only in the most sumptuous of
locations. Even if she gives the odd rueful stare into middle distance, hinting at loss, the visual
language of the film is that joy, laughter and sex live on the Christian side of the ghetto wall. Among
the Jews there is only brooding sorrow and malice.
More importantly, Shakespeare is simply experienced differently on stage. Even when it's not at the
Globe theatre, we understand when we see a Shakespeare play that we are seeing a historical artifact,
written several centuries ago. Instantly that provides some context: these were the attitudes of the time.
That sense is diminished in the most modern of forums, the cinema. To hear the words "dog Jew"
shouted on Dolby Surround speakers; to see a Jew fall to his knees and forced to convert to
Christianity on a wide screen, cannot fail to have a different, and greater power.
That doesn't mean that such scenes should never be shown on film. On the contrary, there should be
films that take on anti-semitism. But Michael Radford is not in that game. Amazingly, he told last
week's Jewish Chronicle, "I was never worried about the anti-semitism of the play."
Many, though not all, of the critics have shared his insouciance. I suspect this is because they believe
modern audiences have been so sensitised by the Holocaust that they are all but inoculated against
anti-semitism. The result is that stories of anti-Jewish hatred take on an almost allegorical quality - as
if they are not about Jews at all, but are, instead, parables for racism or intolerance in general. (Radford
has hinted that his film should be understood in the light of the current collision between Islam and the
west.)
This might work if Shylock was, say, an Inca, or a Minoan - if, in other words, the Jews were no
longer around. But Jews are still around - and so, unfortunately, is anti-semitism.