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January 5, 2021 - 12:12pm
Over the weekend, the Sunday Times reported that Michael Morpurgo “refused” to include ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in a forthcoming Shakespeare anthology for children due to anti-Semitism. This comes right after a year which saw the British Library compile “dossiers” on writers, including Ted Hughes, George Orwell, Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde, with historic links to colonialism. The gist of the Times’ story was clear: another day, another long-dead literary titan cancelled for upsetting contemporary mores.
Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, described Morpurgo’s decision as an example of the “dead hand of political correctness… children do not want to be protected all the time against great literature.”
In this instance, I’m not sure McGovern is right. ‘The Merchant of Venice’ certainly has its moments, but like many Shakespeare plays it is patchy, and at least half an hour too long when performed in its entirety. And it is not ‘political correctness’ to reflect on the unpleasant anti-Semitism that’s seamed through it. Harold Bloom, a critic whose love of Shakespeare tended to blunt his faculties, and no friend of the politically correct, wrote that you “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.”
Likely performed for most of its history as a romantic comedy with a Jewish villain, today audiences are used to watching Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew eyes” speech, and the rest of the play, as a dramatic tragedy. When ‘The Merchant of Venice’ was put on in Vienna in May 1943 at the express command of the Nazi Gauliter Baldur von Schirach, the profound anti-Semitism Bloom noted was on full display.
For me, it has always seemed more apparent that the Nazi version — as horrific as this is to contemplate — was probably far closer to Shakespeare’s intentions for this play than contemporary versions are. The bard’s humanism, so vaunted by Bloom and other scholars down the centuries, had its limits.
This morning, Morpurgo said ‘The Merchant of Venice is not a play I enjoy myself’. Anybody who thinks about it for long enough ought to come to the same conclusion.
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SubscribeAs a Jew, I am not offended by the Merchant of Venice. It is a product of its time. If we only retained past literature that conforms to modern standards of political correctness, we will be left with nothing at all (and this is how some people would like it).
It is a product of its time.
Exactly. This incessant demand to judge acts or works of the past by sensibilities of the present never ends well.
I just wish it would end.
Furthermore, it was a satire on the questionable practices of the British shipping industry. Actually, in Venice, these problems were dealt with. Just as importantly, a careful examination of the dialogue indicates that it takes a hard and critical look at anti-Jewish racism. Shylock’s soliloquy is a poignant exposition on the plight of those experiencing racial prejudice.
Mr. Filmus–
Exactly! How can one learn not to be anti-Semitic if one doesn’t know what anti-Semitism is? This is the flip side of Holocaust denial.
The past was always a beautiful, wonderful place, filled with loving people, right? Not admitting that we are our history denies any progress and growth in the human species. This is the “noble savage” redux.
Good point!
Spot on
“denies any progress and growth in the human species”
History has clearly shown that the idea of progress and growth as a “species” is a fallacy. We still behave and react with the same group think , irrationality , superstition, violence , compassion etc as we have always done. There is no “growth”.
The idea is an Enlightenment illusion as much as the idea of “Universal Rights” are an illusion. Not much of that existed in Stalin’s Russia, Pol Pots Cambodia or the thousands of other massacres that have occurred throughout history and continue on today.
We are no different now as a species than were were 250,000 years ago… except that we can different range of foods and that ( possibly) we are slightly less intelligent. We are driven as a species (a largish primate) to reproduce and then live long enough to ensure our offspring have a decent chance of also reproducing. That is it — that is all we do — and we do it very successfully.
Dear Will Lloyd, Of course you are quite entitled to your own opinion, no matter how offensive I find it. What you are not entitled to, is to protect (the impertinence) me and civilized people all over the world from great literature and acting.
Jack Nicolson, ‘Few Good Men’ “You Can’t Handle The Truth!”
Subtlety is wasted on the C21st. You would seriously ban one of the great plays of our civilisation because you (apparently) are unable to see that it is a critique of the times in which Shakespear lived?
If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, as some bloke wrote, the whole point is to draw out the complexity of the human character, and WS does that not least by turning our sympathies to Shylock, and how he is perceived and how Jews were perceived in C16th society.
Sickening to see how wokeism has penetrated the educated. This guy is so loaded with cancel culture wile thinking he is too intelligent and that it is only in others, and perfectly points out the ability to see flaws in others but not the same flaws in themselves. He is proof academia has managed to make censoring mania endemic in all people it has touched. (Before you can remove the mote in anther’s eye you must remove the beam in your own eye, Bible).
Orwell in ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ described ‘A jew, muzzle down in his plate, guiltily wolfing down bacon’. Why don’t you get his books on your wrong/speech bonfire? Orwell did not like Jews and his work is loaded with references of shoddy Jews running the echelons of the Stalin Communist USSR.
Protesting too loudly to cover his own issues with it. Also here on Unherd they have had many an article on how wicked it is to cancel and censor well thought,out and fully believed, points of view, as there is always room to look at all sides. Yet they have deleted entire long posts I have made. These posts would be gained from my long and weird life, I have been exposed to the world in ways an exceedingly few have, and thus it is a different reality to the one you know. I am well educated (self taught mostly, but odd years at university as I drifted) and intelligent, and been around all manner of places, but even here feels the collective truth can not always accommodate anther’s take on it, so deletes it less it harms the reader’s purity of essence.
No offence intended, I often appreciate your comments, but perhaps you just need to adapt to your surroundings a bit more and trim your sails. None of us can have it all our own way.
To be honest Colin Wonder I count it as a badge of honour to have received a down tick from you, thank you very much.
I teach ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in my English Literature classes. It’s one of the more approachable Shakespeare plays to my mind because it starkly defines the differences between Early Modern English mores and the attitudes that are taught today.
The cancel culture we experience today is not rooted in offense, but in control.
Another thing on antisemitism is it formed the Ashkenazi Jews, the millennium of pressure made them remarkably remarkable. Look at the Nobel Prizes. 12,000,000 Jews won 150+ Nobel Prizes, the 1.2 Billion Muslims won 6 (or 12 depending) Of all the IQs in the world taken from the internet the world’s highest regional is 108 for Hong Kong people, but the Ashkenasi can be rated as high as 120.
The Jewish persecution in Europe made them very bright and creative (look at acting and film awards too)
There has been more to the big picture of Jews in Europe than just antisemitism. The ignorant of the real world focus on single issues they have a mania about and miss the entire picture.
This approach is problematic and does not serve Judaism well. It pushes the line that somehow, when the first Jew invented the religion, he was more than human and has remained so.
For one thing, if you want to do a religious assessment of cleverness, the Jews do not come out on top, but Christians do. And in certain times the Hindus and Muslims outstripped everyone.
As an example, let us look at Einstein. His parents were atheists so nothing from Judaism was at work in him and he was educated by the Catholics, so any cleverness from his education came from the Christians.
And to fully understand Jewish achievements, one would need to filter through contributing factors, one of which is the tribal nature of Judaism, common to many religions of course, and the part it plays in supporting, promoting, funding its own.
I don’t think anyone can make a case that religions hand down DNA, so, any religious cleverness has to be cultural. My Jewish ancestors were as smart and as dumb as the Catholics, Baptists, Greek Orthodox, Lutherans and Protestants littering the family tree.
IQ tests are deeply flawed when it comes to real intelligence and my question would be, if there were any truth to this Jewish cleverness, why does Israel make so many disastrous mistakes?
IQ tests are not *that* flawed, imperfect yes but far from useless. Islam leads to cousin marraige and clannish/tribal societies, very low-trust (corrupt), and even slightly inbred. So much so Islamic countries have actually started to take serious notice of birth defects among their population. Islam also leads ot a shutting down of the human mind, after all, why write literature when you already have the perfect ‘divine’ book sitting on your shelf. The Islamic so-called Golden Age was brief, and was characterised by far less emphasis on the Islamic faith (and was mainly carried out by converted Persians, not Arabs). Sad thing is, unlike Hindu, Jewish and Chritian scriptures, it’s not even very stimulating. Arabic and broader Islamic cultures are subsumed by reverence for this motley collection of scribbles “revealed” to the world by the “angel Gabriel”.
“…certainly has its moments, but like many Shakespeare plays it is patchy, and at least half an hour too long when performed in its entirety.”
Glib, pseudo-transgressive dismissal of the work of great writers is nearly always the hallmark of a second-rate mind.
Shakespeare’s plays are works of art. They are not an instruction manual for life, whatever guidance we might find in them. Let’s hear the author of this piece opine on some other “not of our time” works that do lay claim to the ability to guide people in how they should live. Perhaps he could start with the koran, then we can see how brave and perspicacious he is.
I won’t hold my breath.
He could also try reading a bit of the Talmud – says some rather saucy things about the gentiles, let me tell you.
Excellent post, and I eagerly await ‘Will LLoyd does the Koran, which bits to cut out and which to keep’. I would read it.
And I’m sure the Muslim world would jump at the chance to let pompous intellectuals like Lloyd decide which bits need cancelling.
I don’t see the play as anti semitic. But there is a world of difference between you not liking it – and you stopping anyone else watching it . Who gave you that right.
I’m with voltaire – freedom of expression- and if some folk are offended thats their prerogative. But they are not allowed to be offended on my behalf.
Isn’t it, at least in part,about Antonio (a Christian) who reneges on an agreement? It is a while since I saw it (Dame Judy Dench as Portia)
Ms. Richards–
It was Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in the staging my wife and I saw.
Yes it is and Portia gets him off with a shameless lawyers trick. The Christians don’t end up looking very good frankly. Maybe that’s another reason to ban it?
I don’t see it as anti-semitic either.
I do see Michael Morpurgo as a dripping wet, control-freak woketard though…….and I wouldn’t want my kid taught by him.
Do you really want to start down this rabbit hole, Will? I think you know as well as I do that said hole is bottomless.
(And I’m starting to lose a bit of respect for Unherd.)
Really… only starting?
I like UnHerd because when crap like this gets posted people PAN it mercilessly, which gives me hope for humanity. I don’t want to be in an echochamber in terms of content, so I’m happy to read anything. As long as the author is prepared to hear that he is an idiot (which he clearly is in this case – a shallow, vacuous, narcissistic, judgmental d**k with no sense of history).
Agree on both counts. But it’s Will Loyd in particular who does not deserve our respect. There are better writers.
btw, in 1965 my Catholic school performed Merchant with a cast of 12 and 13 yr olds. It was a great learning experience for us.
My respect is increasing for Unherd. In an age of censorship and never more so than on this topic, any information and discussion vehicle which has the courage to defend and allow freedom of speech and opinion is to be applauded.
Clickbait. The gap between
“The Merchant of Venice is not a play I enjoy myself’. Anybody who thinks about it for long enough ought to come to the same conclusion”
and
“The Merchant of Venice deserves to be cancelled”
is huge. Cancellation implies that others should be prevented from seeing it.
Use it to introduce conversations about antisemitism and how societal norms change over time. Where knowledge and history are hidden or denied, the danger of making the same mistakes over and over again is introduced.
This is a very good idea. Another one is to try to remember the difference between a play in which antisemitic ideas are represented, and an antisemitic play. The latter would be one which seeks to persuade people to be antisemitic. Is MOV such a play? It seems to me that the speech in which Shylock asks “if you p***k us do we not bleed?” would not exist if the play had been written for that purpose. The speech has resonated over the centuries just because of its power as a plea against ingrained antisemitism.
This is the bit for which the play is now famous, and how the play is usually interpreted (as a plea for humanism).
I was surprised when I saw it at the Globe at how I couldn’t help laughing at that speech. I understand that this is actually a common reaction. A genuinely funny Shakespeare comedy – who knew?
Of course one of the great things about Shakespeare is his almost unique capacity to present his characters in a positive and sympathetic light, even if they are utter villains, and to make you doubt the virtues of even the most conventionally ethical heroes.
The thing is, that anti-semitism (or, negative stereotypes about Jews) is not in fact necessarily incompatible with humanistic sympathy for a Jewish character. That may seem contradictory, but if you reflect on it, it isn’t. Another example would be the Jewish characters in Ivanhoe.
Apparently the 19th C audience embraced Abraham, the father of Rebecca, and shortened versions of the text were released which were exclusively focussed on him alone. This is despite his being a bit of a Jewish stereotype – the fact is that he is, beyond that, a father who loves his daughter.
That antisemitism is not incompatible with humanism doesn’t make antisemitism “okay”, but maybe it’s a more valuable life lesson than merely denouncing every text containing any sort of prejudice against anybody.
Indeed!
It’s not as if anti-Semitism is now just an unpleasant memory. Anti-Semitism is alive and well, including among the self-appointed priest class and moral arbiters of the day.
On this argument we should draw up a list of plays that are anti any race or creed, and ban them all.
We can start with Aeschylus’ The Persians, written in 472 BC, as that is obviously ‘Anti-Persian’.
Good luck with drawing up that list, as it might take you a few years.
How about banning anything that offends anyone? Would save the taxpayer a ton of money in theatre grants.
Excellent idea! I am racking my memory to find a worthwhile stage or screen play which offends no one at all. There will be at least one line or phrase which potentially upsets someone, even if it is plainly intended as light hearted humour.
There was a report in today’s DT about a doctor who got a written warning for addressing her clinic (for women) with the words: “Hello, ladies, who would like a cup of tea.”
That is so depressing. I feel that women are being removed from existence.
When you judge something written that long ago vs the standards of today, there is a type of fallacy that’s involved. You cannot ‘protect’ people from the past. Today’s version of book burnings is no better than the far more literal version of old.
Where will this “wokeness ” end?
They cannot help themselves. Look at his picture, the perfect image of a young, white male, university educated. They have been given the Pavlovian Dog kind of conditioned response to loath themselves from year one to year 19 of education, and despise their culture/society and to always be looking for a reason to get out the scourge and do a bit of self flagellation. More points if it is is done in public.
It should start to die when the sanctimonious idiots have children and their children rebel against their transparently hypocritical and stupid attitudes that have become the crypto-religious establishment orthodoxy.
But I damn well hope it ends a lot sooner.
What age group of children is this anthology aimed at ?
If King Lear and Macbeth are to be included, and they are, then I cannot accept that The Merchant of Venice should be left out.
Instead of obsessing about whether it is anti-semitic or not, focus on the morality, the cheating merchants, the courtroom drama, the romance, the cross dressing and performance of Portia as a barrister at a time in history when this was impossible in reality, then the play becomes an extraordinary fantasy and the Shylock character just one facet of that fantasy, and a little bit of the history of the J e w s in England at the time can be included as explanation.
This seems to me to be about Michael Morpurgo’s fear of the cancel culture we are surrounded by, which includes Will Lloyd’s article.
Regrettable.
Actually, is considerable subtlety in the play – the famous Shylock soliloquy that invokes some pity and understanding of thr Jewsih plight, the very apparent malintent and immorality of his defaulting creditors who had agreed to his terms… In historic context, lending or banking was one of the only professions allowed to Jews at the time ( as it was regarded as markedly infra dig for Christians to engage in it) and Shylock’s angry loan conditions could be seen to be a railing against this restrictive manifestation of antiSemitism of the time …
I’m jewish, but there’s been so many jewish commentators, critics, authors, playwrights and actors all saying that they’re huge fans of The Merchant of Venice, that it doesn’t need any more voices being added to that particular chorus.
Instead, it needs to be recognised that – at the time of its writing – there were no acknowledged jews in England, and the Europe-wide attitude towards jews was one of (at best) suspicion and dislike.
Given that background, Shakespeare’s play is fairly revolutionary in being even slightly sympathetic towards the position of Jews in society at that time. If – for example – you compare the depiction of Shylock to that of Barabas in The Jew of Malta, Shakespeare comes across as radically philo-semitic for the time.
However, this is a rather hysterical headline (and perhaps a hysterical take by Will Lloyd). Morpurgo simply left out The Merchant of Venice from a child’s anthology of Shakespeare’s works.
He’s not cancelling The Merchant at all, nor is he demanding the play be banned (as some on here are representing it as). He just seems to be leaving it out of a collection for kids.
Boiling frogs Steve, stop being deceitful. Hiding literature from children is merely a provisional step towards complete memory-holing.
Oh, please calm down – this is simple hysteria … it’s not “hiding literature”.
I studied one shakespeare play at school (Macbeth), and it was only as I got older that I started reading and going to see the others.
Similarly, I’d assume that most people’s intellectual development and curiosity doesn’t stop at childhood.
So, to claim that a child who’s given Morpurgo’s “Children’s Anthology of Shakespeare” will never be in the slightest bit interested in reading anything by the same author, outside that anthology … well, it seems a tad strange.
By the way, by assuming malicious intent on the basis of an expressed opinion, you’re doing exactly the same thing as those who demand that authors and plays be cancelled.
Look Wormtongue, we have been here before, we know how this game is played. You are not fooling anyone. Noticing your shenanigans and those of others is not hysteria. It’s always deemed to be paranoia, until sometime in 2025……….
……….we’ll find that the Merchant of Venice is strangely no longer being performed anywhere and DVDs/downloads can’t be accessed. The BBC does a remake where Shylock is a Christian who doesn’t let his lesbian daughter Jessica marry Portia, and he is compelled to hand over half his wealth and become a Muslim, or something. The entire cast, with the exception of Shylock, will be BAME.
The director will probably be Jewish 😉
Applauds. If some BBC person has put their copy of Guardian down and read your post I am sure it is being discussed at the highest levels.
Thank you 7882 fremic, but we ought not to joke 😉
I could actually write for these arseholes, they are so predictable.
And don’t get me started on Oliver Twist.
Amends have been made. The (I think BBC but not sure) adaption called Dickensionan features a Black Artful Dodger, and a Black girl is the young girlfriend of Oliver, so all is set right. I turned it off half way through the first episode.
As a Jew, I’m with Yuval and others who agree that the play is anti-Semitic, but SHOULD NOT be banned or canceled. It is a part of the Western cannon, our literature and culture. Plus, I too have always thought it satirises the business practices of the British Empire.
Yes, and Othello is racist; The Taming of the Shrew is sexist and don’t get me started on the anti-Elvish nature of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Let’s just burn the lot!
Alternatively, maybe we should consider that shameless, ill-argued clickbait like this is a lot more harmful than anything in Shakepeare
Romeo and Juliet. Her father was Jewish, unless I have my wires crossed.
Who actually cares which religion is practised by whom in the face of Shakespeare’s brilliance?
I know, right?
I find Will Lloyd offensive, and think that he should be canceled…
Avoiding any such sensitive portrayals will help thinking about prejudice by avoiding them? Laughable.
I taught The Merchant of Venice to Canadian high school students over 20 years ago. The 14 year-olds understood the play and sympathized with Shylock’s anguish in his speech “Hath not a Jew eyes….?” Such a lot of nonsense amongst the WOKE literati.
I agree that there is a problem when depicting archetypal villains from a B&ME like Shylock or Fagin , or even Othello. Much of this can be solved through good direction and sympathetic acting. But if we were going to wallow in political correctness, then surely we would also have to rewrite the entire Bond film genre, as virtually every single one of his villains has a disability!
Although at least the Bond series treated women in a politically-correct manner. Oh wait…
It’s this sort of thing that makes me think that maybe some Jewish people like (((Harold Bloom))) really don’t like us goyim, our culture, literature and history. Will Lloyd, you’re a snake, and it will never be Year Zero no matter how much you try to remake the modern world in your likeness.
If you are concerned about anti-semitism, do you really think that these mythical neo-Nazis that hide under every rock were ‘converted’ to bigotry by watching/reading Shakespeare?
And do you really think that banning plays that portray Jewish individuals as anything-less-than-saintly is a great way to counter the idea that ‘the Joooos’ run society clandestinely? It’s a great work of literature, I loved the play, it should be taught to all schoolchildren and gives profound insight into a man whose soul has been consumed by greed and envy, redeemed in the end by experiencing his own kind of trickery used against him and being thus led to the true faith of Christian love.
Shakespeare is the greatest playwright in the English language, and we are shocked that some of his chracters do not comport with 21st century anxieties and neuroses?
Well said.
I am not sure Bloom is the guilty party here. Observing, as Bloom did, that a play is anti-Semitic is not the same as suggesting it be dropped.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with portraying a character in a bad light, unless one is dim enough (as so many of today’s ‘critics’ seem to be) to require that every character be seen as an exemplar of their ‘class’ (whether that class be women, Jews, muslims, ginger-haired people, journalists, whatever…). Every group of humans – however defined – contains its dodgy element. No reason to protect some groups from inclusion in fictional mischief.
Except Jewish people, apparently. You are completely correct, Harold Bloom is not the guilty party here – Lloyd is.
Take away the Jewish element and you have a very interesting story about a vengeful business man using the bizarre penalty clause in a contract to exact revenge on a rival and a clever lawyer who uses a legal technicality to deny him that revenge.
Anyway, Shylock is more than just a stereotype Jew ““ he is able to voice his grievance at being seen as less than fully human by the Christians.
Quite right, and this is an important point, especially when there are self-righteous mobs roaming cyberspace with their pitchforks.
The play shows that Christians were perfectly capable of being nasty pieces of work, despite their supposed moral superiority.
At this rate, we will soon have to go to murderous dictatorships like Russia or one-party states like China if we want to watch the MOV or buy Oliver Twist. Alternatively, we can watch it in Israel. An Israeli company performed it (in Hebrew) at the Globe a few years ago and it has been performed many times in Israel by them and other Israeli companies since they first put in on in the 1930s. Is Morpurgo trying to be more Jewish than the Jews? Apart from telling us about Elizabethan attitudes to Jews, MOV also shows that antisemitism was then more a religious than a racial prejudice. Unlike Late-Modern Germans, the Early-Modern Spaniards never cancelled someone like Torquemada, whose fairly recent ancestors were Jews who converted to Catholicism. When I first sang the Bach Passions, they struck me as notably anti-semitic. Will he be next on the list? And will Morpurgo’s Muslim equivalents start protesting about Mozart’s Flight from the Seraglio, which combines mockery of Ottoman cruelty, slavery and dietary habits with praise for a Sultan who decides (uncharacteristically, it is implied) to forgive an attempt to rescue his slaves?
Well said; as others have remarked, it is not an anti-semitic play but a play that includes anti-semitism (of a kind typical of its period) among its many themes. But as a pedant I thought that the usual English translation of the title of the Mozart opera was “The Abduction from the Seraglio”?
Excellent point, because conversion to the local religion was enough, under Christian and Muslim, it is not antisemitism but anti Judaism.
The article is missing two key facts: what ages are the children for whom the anthology is intended? Why will they read it–In schools or (most unlikely) on their own?
I was first exposed to MoV as a 13-14 year-old in American high school. I imagine ( at my age, I don’t remember those way-back details) there was critical discussion of the play by the teacher and students. Isn’t that what education should be about?
Shakespeare was not the humanist that Bloom and modern academia portray him as being. He’s best understood as a cultural Catholic as opposed to, say, Milton, who is protestant through to to marrow.
The author should watch ‘Upstart Crow’
This article’s heading is a form of clickbait, and its argument barely worth skimming. Unherd needs to do better.
Sure — lets cancel everything that might upset anyone at any time, ever. Personally I’d like to cancel Braveheart for its appalling racist and anti English sentiment.
Can we also cancel EastEnders for its portrayal of lower middle class and working class Londoners as drunken, argumentative, philanderers’.
I find that offensive and therefore that should also be cancelled.
I have no basis for doing this, only my opinion and feelings. But as my world revolves around me, then i must be very important and ( like the author and Michael Morpurgo) my opinions must be right and anyone who disagrees cannot be ” thinking correctly”.
What utter nonsense this cancel culture fetish is.
Wrong Mr Lloyd, just because it’s unpleasant doesn’t mean it should be cancelled. Wagner and Henry Ford were antisemitic in their views, should we ban The Ring Cycle and not drive Ford cars?
This play is blatantly antisemitic, all the more reason it should be studied. If young people see and study the MOV, it will help enable them to recognise antisemitism which today is subtly cloaked in such fig leaves as anti capitalism or support for Palestinian movements. If something is wrong, far better it exists in the open where it can be scrutinised. Ban it, and human nature being what it is, it will gain an aura and mystique which it doesn’t deserve.
If you ban this play, why not all the rest of Shakespeare’s works? After all they are by the same man.
It is unwise and dishonest to retrofit modern values to the past.
I can’t help feeling frequent cries of Antisemitism sometimes look a bit bit like calls for Jewish exceptionalism. That their people and culture are uniquely beyond reproach. The dangers of pushing too had on that door seem obvious. Not everybody responds well to being told you can’t touch me because I’m special and such accusations lose credibility and become counter productive when over used. Regardless of that censoring our most significant cultural figures and denying access to our heritage for whatever is just a very bad idea for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps Mr Lloyd would like to scour the Talmud and Koran along with other Jewish and Islamic writings and tell them which portions should be censored and see how that goes.
Well said. Please see my (I’m afraid extremely long) contribution on this website to the article entitled “How anti-Semitism is being fostered on campus” (author, Pollard)
Well said. Any study of any religion makes it very clear they all have sources of misogyny and bigotry. Judaism is no better than the rest, and with some teachings, vastly worse, i.e. only Jews have souls and are therefore the only true human beings.
However, in every ‘curse’ there is a gift, and the louder the cries of anti-semitism, and the more picky the offended become, the more people will look to Israel, simply because it claims to represent Jews, even if it does not, and take the time to find out how that country was founded and how it functions today. Most will be horrified at the levels of discrimination and bigotry.
So, pot, kettle, black very much applies.
This morning, Morpurgo said ‘The Merchant of Venice is not a play I enjoy myself’. Anybody who thinks about it for long enough ought to come to the same conclusion.
Not at liberty to think about it or come to a conclusion if it is cancelled.
How will anyone know what anti-Semitism is if they never see it? It is not as if anti-Semitism is condoned in The Merchant of Venice. Better in a play than in real life.
How does this align with unherding?
Just cancel everything and get pass those fussy value judgements.
re. ” probably far closer to Shakespeare’s intentions”
My lord, save us from amateurs. Intentions !! Intentions are a) unknowable – even by the author and b) irrelevant. (cf intentional fallacy) Another Jew, the British novelist Howard Jakobson, once opined (? half seriously) that people entirely ignorant of literature should exercise restraint and just keep quiet. I don’t agree with this – the glory of the internet is precisely its rough mix of the dazzling and the doltish – but I feel a certain sympathy.
Doubtless 400 years hence people will still be marvelling at the brilliance of the work of Will
LloydShakespeareThe writer is not wise enough to realise that his great grandchildren will consider him either wicked or ignorant or stupid for everything he believes now. That is how mores work, by pitching current values as perfect and a reference against which to judge the rest. If only wisdom were a pre-requisite for opinionating!
This is another instance of the villain shall not be of an oppressed class.
Morpurgo chose ten plays, he didn’t refuse to include Merchant of Venice. It’s not unreasonable to assume Shakespeare was anti-Semitic, most people were in those days. Let’s face it, a lot of Shakespeare’s women are pretty terrible too. I would struggle to stage Merchant without anti-Semitic sentiment creeping through but I understand it has been attempted and would like to see such a production.
It’s clear that the play depicts anti-semitism. It’s not clear that the play therefore espouses or promotes anti-semitism. After all, Othello depicts racism, Macbeth depicts treachery and murder, Titus Andronicus depicts rape and mutilation. Can we say that these plays ipso facto promote those things?
Let’s not forget that the play is called, The Merchant of Venice, not, The Moneylender of Venice. Shylock may dominate when he is on the stage against the ‘mannered’ Christians, but the play can also be seen as a demonstration of how ruthlessly a status quo may be maintained. Depends, I suppose, why you go to see the play: to reflect upon why Jewish Lives Matter, or to enjoy a courtroom drama and the feel the warm glow of white supremacy.
I don’t think ‘white’ was a category of thought for Shakespeare as such.
JLM is already a thing, its called Holocaustianity and nearly everyone is sick to death of it. Let me repeat: Its. Not. All. About. Jews.
Shakespeare thought Christianity was a better moral option than Judaism, sure – undoubtedly. As do pretty much all non-Jews (can’t imagine why). But the play is more interesting than black/white good/evil, it highlights that Christians themselves could be silly, imprudent, spendthrift, deceitful even, thus giving others undue power to harm them.
Probably my least liked Shakespeare play and one frequently queried as being not written by him.
And that’s not just because my great grandmother was a refugee from the pogroms in St Petersburg.
But, I’m afraid it reflected public opinion at the time, and seems to meet many resonances in attitudes today.
It was written by Shakespeare, he doesn’t need sanitisation.
Sorry about your nan but to be honest I don’t care, long time ago in far off land. Lots of people suffered in Russia in the 20th century, it’s not all about your people.
The play might not resonate so much if Jewish people like Harold Bloom, and their familiars like Will Lloyd, didn’t constantly snipe at our heritage and try to delegitimise our own history and literature.
Another load of nonsense, cancelling work should have no place in our democracy, being offended is going to happen occasionally, grow up and accept.
One of my running partners at work was Jewish and had seen “The Merchant of Venice” at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario. I had recently read the biography of Shakespeare by A.L. Rowse. Rowse wrote about how Shakespeare had removed all of the anti-Catholic content from an earlier play about King John when he wrote his own play as evidence that he was a tolerant man. My friend said that maybe Shakespeare was tolerant when it came to Catholics, but he certainly wasn’t tolerant towards Jews. I certainly wouldn’t ban “The Merchant of Venice” from public performances, but I don’t think it is an appropriate work to include in a Shakespeare anthology intended for children. I studied “The Merchant of Venice” in high school, many years ago. I really hope it has been replaced by “Twelfth Night” or some other less problematic Shakespearean comedy.
‘Rupert Bear has Two Fathers’ would be my choice. Hits every correct point and is good for ages 5 to 25.
The exact opposite of Mozart is Auschwitz. To be fully adult, we must learn about both.
And to be truly adult we must also learn about Gaza. It is only in knowing painful truths of any kind that we can make some attempt not to repeat such wrongs.