Shylock was a very progressive character for English theater of the time. Remember, there were almost no Jews in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, since they'd all been expelled in the 13th century. They were portrayed on stage as stock villains, as sort of generic Evil Others. If you needed an Outsider to kidnap children, plot, extort money, or do other nasty things to your characters, you made that Outsider character a Jew, and everyone got the point, even the groundlings.
Shylock is shown to have feelings, reactions, love his daughter, be somewhat justified in his actions, even if he goes too far. That would have been an astounding humanization of a stock villain at the time (1596, I think, or thereabouts). The modern equivalent would probably be if a U.S. filmmaker gave the same sort of treatment to a character who's a member of Al Qaeda.
The actual Jews who actually lived in actual cities in Italy at that time experienced wildly varying treatment depending on where they lived, and how the ruler of that particular city felt about them. Venice was busy locking them up in ghettos, while in Mantua, they were serving as court physicians and musicians. Go figure.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-06-21 01:22 am (UTC)Shylock is shown to have feelings, reactions, love his daughter, be somewhat justified in his actions, even if he goes too far. That would have been an astounding humanization of a stock villain at the time (1596, I think, or thereabouts). The modern equivalent would probably be if a U.S. filmmaker gave the same sort of treatment to a character who's a member of Al Qaeda.
The actual Jews who actually lived in actual cities in Italy at that time experienced wildly varying treatment depending on where they lived, and how the ruler of that particular city felt about them. Venice was busy locking them up in ghettos, while in Mantua, they were serving as court physicians and musicians. Go figure.