The Merchant of Venice - Anti-Semitic or Anti-Christian?

It has a Jewish villain, who gets his comeuppance at the hands of Christians, which gave Will's audiences something to cheer about.

Jews have traditionally hated the play and wished it were not in Shakespeare's body of work. Many even protest its presentation. A great number of those protestors have never read the play and some even refuse to see it staged.

To be fair, anyone who sits through a traditional performance should not be condemned for believing Shakespeare was, indeed, a bigot. But, was he?

We are about to get some new insights into the play and the man who wrote it.

Not too long ago, Television screened a documentary on "Shylock" that was interesting - not so much for showing Shakespeare's intention when he created the character - but more for the range of different attitudes towards the Jew. This could not fail to cause confusion in the layman's mind.

No one seemed to agree, not even on the way Shylock looked!

Orson Welles saw him as rather scruffy, with the black garments of the European Hassid, scraggly beard and tangled hair topped with a funny black hat.

At the other extreme was Dr. Jonathan Miller's vision, in the person of Laurence Olivier: a well-dressed, opulent, modern, integrated Jew, very much the British businessman, a far cry from the slimy character with the hooked nose and evil leer of anti-Semitic literature and posters.

The actor Charles Macklin, himself a violent man, who had killed another actor in a duel, played him as a ferocious devil figure. The malignancy he infused into the character had a tremendous (wholly negative) impact on the audience. Alexander Pope maintained he had portrayed Shylock the way Shakespeare wrote him.

On the other hand, Jonathan Miller tried to divest the character of the stereotype Jew devil - the dirty, filthy pig suckler - eater of pig excrement, and the foul polluter of the holy Christian world, so he made him a gentleman, no different from the Christians around him.

However, Miller had a hard time with Shakespeare's text. He could not understand why Shakespeare made him, only momentarily human and then, reverted to the stereotype. Miller felt the line: "I hate him because he is a Christian," was intolerable and too much perpetuated the caricature of the Jew - so he cut it out.

In the latest film of "The Merchant of Venice," Al Pacino was somewhere in between the two extremes. While the director tried to bring out Shylock's humanity, he cut some crucial lines about the Christians.

What exactly was Shakespeare's intent? Let's see if a closer look at the play will tell us.

He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, thwarted my bargains, scorned my nation, cooled my friends, heated my enemies - and what's his reason? I am a Jew.......

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands?, organs, dimensions, senses, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like them in the rest, we will resemble them in that too. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be, by Christian example? Why, revenge? The villainy they teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

A strange speech to put into the mouth of a villain, one that suggests that vengeance and villainy are not part of a Jew's nature and must be learned from Christians, with great difficulty and effort. The play is supposed to be virulently anti-Semitic. Would an anti-Semite have written these lines?

Why does Shakespeare give the Jew, his villain, such words to mouth?

Why does Shakespeare go out of his way to give the Jew grounds for hating Christians?

In Elizabethan times, when anti-Semitic plays were extremely popular, especially so after the Jewish doctor, Rodrigo Lopez, was convicted of trying to poison good Queen Bess, it was enough to say a character was a Jew to make him a despicable villain, one who could and would descend to any level of depravity.

But Shakespeare - atypically - gives Shylock very good reasons for hating the merchant, reasons that even Christians cannot overlook. Why did he do that for an audience steeped in centuries of anti-Semitic tradition? Why did Shakespeare not let the Jew behave - well - like a Jew?

And what about the merchant of Venice? Does he conduct himself like a true-blue Christian? Let's listen again to Shylock's words about Antonio:

He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated my enemies - and what's his reason? I am a Jew....

Is this any way for a true Christian to conduct himself? Isn't Antonio's behaviour the complete antithesis of what Christianity stands for?

We had better take a closer look at the heroes in this play. It may reveal much about our Shakespearean Christians that will surprise you.

However, before we do so, let us first establish, that Shakespeare - recognized as the greatest dramatist who ever lived - was a master of human psychology. His genius lay in his ability to comprehend all the moods of man and every idiosyncrasy of his character. His plays are so well crafted that they move from scene to scene with a logic that no modern psychiatrist could fault.

A.C. Bradley, Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford and lecturer on Shakespearean Tragedy, drew attention to "the multitudinousness of Shakespeare's genius" and spoke of "his almost unlimited power of conceiving and expressing human experience of all kinds."

We can write a whole book on this subject alone but let me give you only one or two examples.

In the opening scenes of King Lear, for instance,
he shows us the sorry sight of an old monarch hovering on the edge of senility;

he shows us the self-sacrificing loyalty of the honourable Kent;

he shows us the cruelty in the goodness of Cordelia;

and he shows us the villainy of deceit in her sisters.

Within a single scene, each of his characters is so sharply drawn that he exhibits the confi­dence of a man who knows what he is about. His plays hinge on the credi­bility of his characters and their behaviour. This realisation is extremely important. For the rise and fall of the fortunes of his characters were based on their behaviour patterns. If he did not give them a solid basis for their motivation, then the grand design of his plays would crumble.

They do not.

Shakespeare weighed every word he wrote scrupulously. He never wrote a careless word. Every speech either drove his story forward or revealed a facet of character necessary for understanding his play.

Hamlet's indecision gives us Shakespeare's greatest tragedy.

In "Julius Caesar," Brutus' naive nobility, his impractical thinking, leads to disastrous errors of judgement, which drag him to his doom.

Macbeth's ambition,

Anthony's obsession with the Queen of Egypt,

Othello's jealousy,

all are so well delineated that we have no trouble believing the motivation which drives these characters to behave as they do.

Shakespeare grabs our hearts and minds and makes us live vicariously through the all-too-human characters that people his stage. No one would argue with this.

Having established that Shakespeare knew exactly what he was about, let us return to our Christians in "The Merchant of Venice."

Antonio, a rich trader, has hazarded all his fortunes in ventures overseas. He is an unmarried man, inordinately fond of Bassanio, a handsome young rake, who is already heavily in debt to him, having borrowed his money to enjoy a wild and reckless life.

Bassanio leaves us little doubt that he has prostituted himself for the merchant's money. Once more, he approaches the merchant - who loves him so dearly. He entreats him to lend him more money, with which to woo a rich maiden and thus (as the law allowed him in those days) to become master of an estate that would pay off all his debts and still leave him rich.

That is the reason Shakespeare gives his handsome hero for needing the money that Antonio the merchant, does not possess in cash as Antonio has invested it all overseas. The merchant not so much as questions his friend's integrity, let alone suggests, that this is another hair-brained scheme to indulge yet another caprice. So much does Antonio love Bassanio that he is prepared to borrow the money himself, to give to his young friend, and he knows just the person from whom he can get it - the Jew, Shylock!

If Shakespeare had wished, he could have found several noble causes for his hero to need money - patriotism perhaps, or philanthropy - but, instead, he subtly implies that Bassanio's homosexual paramour, is prepared to give him, any amount of his fortune for the basest of reasons.

Now let us take a look at our heroine Portia who, to blinkered Christians over the centuries, has been the embodiment of goodness and purity.

Mary Lamb who, with her brother, Charles, wrote "Tales from Shakespeare" quotes Bassanio when describing Portia thus: "The rich heiress that Bassanio wished to marry lived near Venice, at a place called Belmont. Her name was Portia, and in the graces of her person and her mind she was nothing inferior to that Portia, of whom we read, who was Cato's daughter, and the wife of Brutus."

Let us bear in mind, she borowed Bassanio's words describing the wife he desires to his dear friend, the merchant Antonio, from whom he wishes to borrow the money to accomplish his low purpose. "Her name is Portia, nothing under-valued to Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia."

Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing could be more deliberately ironic. It was Shakespeare's private joke for it was he who drew both women.

Brutus' Portia has two major scenes in "Julius Caesar" where, with masterful strokes, Shakespeare shows us a steadfast, loyal woman of honour and love and truthfulness. And what do we see of the Belmont Portia?

Shakespeare introduces her to us through the fairy tale story of the three caskets of gold, silver and lead, to give us the picture of a beautiful, enchanted princess. However, in this castle, nothing is what it seems. Portia spends her opening scene, ridiculing her suitors.

The first to enter upon the stage is a Moroccan prince, whose black skin has evolved from living under a burning sun, for dark skin protects against absorption of Phoebes' harmful rays. He and the Spanish prince of Argon have come to select the casket that wins the fair lady's hand.

Significantly, Shakespeare chooses to have the Moroccan woo Portia and gives him not one, but two scenes. The Spaniard has only one. Why not an English prince or a French noble or a Nordic king? How can we doubt - knowing only too well the Bard is cognisant of every physical and emotional move of his characters - that he wishes to introduce the subject of racial and colour prejudice?

Listen to these amazing lines Shakespeare gave the regal black suitor, the Moroccan Prince:

Mistake me not for my complexion, the shadow'd livery of the burnished sun, to whom I am neighbour and near bred. Bring me the fairest creature northward born, where Phoebus' (the sun's) fire scarce thaws the icicles, and let us make incisions for your love to prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.

And what does Princess Portia tell Morrocco before he makes his choice?

"If my father had not scanted me and hedged me by his wit to yield myself his wife who wins me by that means I told you, yourself, renowned Prince, then stood as fair as any comer I have looked on yet for my affection."

Again, what does our lovely heroine, Portia say when the Prince finally fails the test?

A gentle riddance! Draw the curtains, go. Let all of his complexion choose me so.

Good riddance says she. She is a racist and a liar. She's not interested in the right character, only in the right complexion, else why would she prefer a man like Bassanio, our hero?

The late, great authority on the Bard, Harley Granville-Barker, rather reluctantly conceded, in his Prefaces to Shakespeare: "Logic may land us anywhere. It can turn Bassanio into a heartless adventurer." Indeed, it can!

To return to Portia: she was entrusted by her late father not to reveal the secret of the caskets. However, when it comes to the choice of the handsome rake, Bassanio, she sings a song:

Tell me, where is fancy bred,

Or in the heart, or in the head?

How begot, how nourish-ed?

Reply, reply.

It is engend'red in the eyes,

With gazing fed, and fancy dies

In the cradle where it lies.

Let us all ring fancy's knell.

I'll begin it - Ding, dong, bell.

"And fancy dies in the cradle where it lies. Let us all ring fancy's knell." From this, Bassanio correctly deduces to spurn outward show and ornament, reject the gold and silver caskets and choose the lead, that which sounds like bred, head, nourish-ed and fed.

So our good, beautiful and gentle Portia cannot even remain faithful to her father's dying wish.

During the trial, she makes a lofty speech about mercy that every child who studies the play is forced to learn by rote. Let's hear it:

The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.
It is twice blest -- it blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest.
It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. His sceptre shows the hold of temporal power, the attribute of awe and majesty wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; but mercy is above this sceptred sway. It is enthroned in the hearts of kings.
It is an attribute to God himself. And earthly power does then show likest God's, when mercy seasons justice.
Therefore, Jew, though justice be thy plea, consider this -- that in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation.
We do pray for mercy, and that same prayer does teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.

A pretty speech! But does the lovely Portia show any mercy? Not a spit's worth! She presents one of the most pitiless women when it comes to punishing the Jew. She's like hard-hearted Hannah, the vamp of Savannah, who poured water on a drowning man. She strips him of everything, including his self-respect. She is, in a word, a hypocrite.

"Nothing inferior to Brutus' Portia," trills Mary Lamb.

"Love comes out supreme in the person of Portia," puffs the Preface to the Folger Library edition, "one of the most attractive of Shakespeare's heroines."

You will probably find the same sort of gush in your own editions of this work.

Let us take one last look at this heroine of heroines.

Portia gives Bassanio a ring and makes him swear he will never part with it. When she comes disguised as a male lawyer and wins the case for her husband's friend, she demands nothing but the ring as token payment. By means of this cheap trick, she forces him into a situation that leaves him no choice but to part with it.

Later, she accuses him (in loving jest, of course) of having given it to a woman (which, of course, he did). He swears, on his honour, he gave it to a Doctor of the Law, who refused even 3000 ducats for saving the life of his friend. What does Portia say to this?

Let not the doctor e'er come near my house......!!
Since he has got the jewel that I loved,
And that which you did swear to keep for me,
I will become as liberal as you;
I'll not deny him anything I have,
No, not my body, nor my husband's bed.
Know him I shall, I am well sure of it. (Know him in the biblical sense, i.e. have sex with him)
Lie not a night from home; watch me like Argus. (The 100-eyed monster)
If you do not, if I be left alone,
Now, by mine honour, which is yet mine own,
I'll have that doctor for my bedfellow.

Brutus' Portia?! My left eyeball!

It's funny, of course, as the audience knows she is referring to herself, but does she sound like a sweet, wholesome heroine? In my book, she sounds perhaps one notch above a jaded street whore.

The whole of the last scene of the play is charged with emotional tension, from the word game that Jessica and Lorenzo play at the opening, to the very last line when Gratiano says: "Well, while I live, I'll fear no other thing / so sore as keeping safe Nerissa's ring," for he too parted with a ring given him by his wife to keep until death.

Shakespeare seems to be telling us, as the curtain falls, these people are certainly not going to live happily ever after.

The scene is as amusing as it was meant to be - but Shakespeare draws his humour from real emotions. Let us not forget he was on intimate terms with his characters. They do not rule him; he rules them. He just as soon could have had Portia say:

Should I become as liberal as you?
Should I deny him nothing that I have?
No, not my body, nor my husband's bed?

But he did not. He has her speak like the strumpet he created.

And yet she continues to be,
for those who will not see,
the embodiment of pristine purity!

In this play, which is rightly called a comedy, Shakespeare laughs at the idiocy and illogicality of racial prejudice. He gives us Christian heroes with villainous traits and a villainous Jew who makes us uncomfortable because he has heroic reasons to hate. We feel great sympathy for him.

We can only conjecture how the audience would have reacted had Edmund Kean played Shylock, not traditionally costumed in the black garb with pointed beard and black skullcap, not bent over, and not so completely different from our Christian heroes. For despite this time-honoured and woefully wrong picture of Shylock, he acted with such pathos that spectators wept.

All this is amazing because Shakespeare, most likely, never met a Jew. They had been banished from England and very few, mainly converts to Christianity, remained in the country.

In the Middle Ages, Jew baiting was popular. It was enough to say a character was a Jew to accept him as the embodiment of evil. To this day, the word 'Jew' upon the stage has great emotional impact. All those who saw a performance of the play "Cabaret" will never forget how much of an impact.

In Shakespeare's days, literally thousands of these virulent anti-Jew plays were written for the stage, so lacking in worth that only two survived: Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta," perhaps because of his other works, and "The Merchant of Venice," which is acknowledged as being by far the superior.

Shakespeare had his eye on the box-office. He knew a good thing when he saw it. Anti-Semitism pulled in the crowds and he would have been insane not to have used it. But... this was Shakespeare. The man could not write a worthless play
- lacking art,
- lacking depth.

We are discussing mankind's most precious literary gem, one who soars above his fellow humans, even today -- with perhaps the greatest brain ever encased in a human skull.

He was not prepared to let his audiences off so easily. That is not to say he does not pander to the prejudices of his audiences. Jonathan Miller had it the wrong way round. Shakespeare did not make him momentarily human and then revert to the stereotype.

Whenever Shylock enters the stage, he is the epitome of the stereotypical Jew, evil for evil's own sake. This, to satisfy the audience's demands, especially the groundlings, who hissed and catcalled the actor. But as each of Shylock's scenes develops, a subtle change occurs that makes the audience uncomfortable. When they laugh, the laugh's on them.

For the first time, a writer gives the Jew a motive for his hate. To quote Harry Golden from "Only In America," - "Shakespeare was the first writer in seven hundred years who gave the Jew a 'motive.' Why did he need to give the Jew a motive? Certainly, his audience did not expect it. For centuries they had been brought up on the stereotype, 'this is evil because it's evil' and here, Shakespeare comes along and goes to so much 'unnecessary' trouble giving Shylock a motive. At last - a motive!"

Not only that, he gave him emotions and sensitivity of touching humanity. The Jew feels pain and anguish, as when he bemoans the loss of the ring his deceased wife gave him before they were married. The audience is busy laughing at the jackass Shylock's daughter, Jessica, has made of her father, by robbing him. While exulting over the Jew's hysterical outburst at losing so much through his own flesh and blood, the audience hears Tubal say:

One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.

Shylock, in tears, in rage, in primordial pain, cries out:

Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.

Please pay attention to Shakespeare's choice of ring. It is not diamond, nor ruby, nor emerald, but the semi-precious turquoise. What is he saying about Shylock? Tthe intrinsic value of the ring is of no importance to him, but its sentimental value is priceless.

Now, since racism is the renunciation of all logic, Shakespeare uses it to play with his Christian audiences. He knows his patrons feed upon anti-Semitism so he makes them renounce all logic and teases them with insults they do not feel.

First, Shylock knows what no one could possibly know, that not one of the merchant's ships will come through, even though they are due in 30 days - from different parts of the world - so he allows Antonio 90 days credit with impunity.

Then Antonio, this clever merchant - himself descending to duplicity and deceit - knows Bassanio will be successful in his suit. He borrows money from the Jew so he can lend his friend more money on top of what he is already owed, to woo the rich heiress.

The audience must accept as good, a man who, on approaching the Jew for the 3000 ducats, treats him as described in the following manner. Shylock here, speaks directly to his tormentor, who, far from denying his words... but let's hear from Shylock.
(In old English, 'gabardine' means clothes and 'rheum' is spittle or nasal mucus, take your pick.)

Signor Antonio - many a time and oft, in the Rialto, you have rated me about my moneys and my usances.
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, for sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, and spit upon my Jewish gabardine - and all for use of that which is my own. Well then...it now appears you need my help. Go to, then! You come to me and say: 'Shylock, we would have moneys.' YOU say so - YOU, that did void your rheum upon my beard and foot me as you spurn a stranger cur over your threshold.
Money is your suit? What should I say to you? Should I not say: 'Has a dog money? Is it possible a cur can lend three thousand ducats?' or shall I bend low and in a bondman's key, with bated breath and whisp'ring humbleness, say this: 'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last; you spurned me such a day; another time you called me dog; and for these courtesies I'll lend you thus much moneys.'?

Here's what Antonio replies:

I will as likely call you so again, and spit on you again, and spurn you too.
If you will lend this money, lend it not as to your friends, for when did friendship take a breed for barren metal of his friend? But lend it rather to your enemy who, if he break, you may then, with better face, exact the penalty.

Did Shakespeare's subtlety escape you? Did you notice the glaring injustice?

"When did friendship take a breed for barren metal (i.e. interest) of his friend?"

Of course, Antonio can say this unreservedly. He does not need to earn his living by usury; he could turn a penny, any way he chose, even lend money without interest if it pleased him - and he did, to rob Shylock of his living.

Jews everywhere, as most of us know, (and as Shakespeare most certainly did) were forbidden to trade in any way. Money-lending was their sole means of income.

Ironically, Christian money-lenders of the time were notoriously much more usurious than the Jews. That could be the only reason why the merchant approaches the Jew and not one of his own. It is certainly not Christian charity that urges him to give the Jew some business. He knew he would pay less interest on his 'barren metal' - as he derisively calls money.

How did our charming hero Bassanio get into the merchant's debt if not by taking 'barren metal' from his friend?

Why is Antonio borrowing 3000 ducats now if not to bestow this 'barren metal' upon his friend - as a stake to woo a rich, milch-cow?

Does Antonio feel the least bit un-Christian or uncharitable for abusing Shylock and his nation for being what they are and living only as they can? Not at all! "I will as likely call you so again, to spit on you again and spurn you too." Shylock's hatred of the Christians around him is well founded.

Now, the good Christians induce Shylock's only child, his daughter Jessica, to desert her widowed father, to rob him of his money and jewels, and, dressed in man's clothing (a crime in Jewish law), to steal away and elope with her gentile lover. Christian audiences so love it, are so hysterical at this violation of the Jew by his own daughter, they miss the irony of Gratiano's remark when Jessica says:

I will make fast the doors, and gild myself with more ducats and be with you straight.

Gratiano: "Now by my hood, a gentile and no Jew!"

At the trial, this villain, this embodiment of evil, this polluter, this devil, this Shylock, is unrecognised by the erudite woman of quality, Portia. He stands a few feet away, beside the pure Christian, Antonio, but she does not even hazard a guess. Should she not be able to recognize the devil incarnate, the hook-nosed excrement eater, the defiler of Christians? She must ask: "Which is the merchant here? And which the Jew?"

It is therefore ludicrous to portray Shylock as an old Jew bent double, dressed in a dirty black gown with a dirty black skull-cap, rubbing his palms together. Jonathan Miller's view of him was the correct one - but he did not take that final leap.

Shylock is no more than 40 to 45 years old, unbent, vigorous and as richly dressed as any Italian aristocrat. At the first meeting of the merchant and the Jew, Antonio, referring to Shylock, says to Bassanio: "Oh what a goodly outside falsehood hath!"

Let us come to Portia's case - the legal points by which she won the suit - and see again the renunciation of all logic:

Tarry a little. There is something else. This bond does give you here no jot of blood. The words expressly are 'a pound of flesh.'
Take then your bond. Take thou, thy pound of flesh. But in the cutting it, if you should shed one drop of Christian blood, your lands and goods are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate unto the state of Venice....
As for urging justice, be assured you shall have justice more than you desire.
Therefore, prepare now to cut off the flesh. Shed you no blood, nor cut you less nor more, but just a pound of flesh. If you take more or less than a just pound - be it but so much as makes it light or heavy in the substance or the division of the twentieth part of one poor scruple - nay, if the scales do turn but in the estimation of a hair, you shall die, and all your goods are confiscate.

With Shylock's demand for a pound of flesh, he makes his audience take a huge leap into absurdity and accept such a demand as normal. Shylock, as a practicing Jew, would never - nay, could never - make such a demand. Even Harley Granville-Barker admitted: "There is no more reality in Shylock's bond than in Jack and the Beanstalk." But let us suppose we all can take that leap, then, the law must remain on the side of the Jew.

(A) The implied condition upon payment of a pound of flesh is that one gets the sinews, the veins and the blood that must necessarily flow. If any of you goes to buy a pen, you do not ask if the nib comes with it, or if a shirt has its buttons. How often have you wished when you buy your meat, it would come trimmed of the fat?

(B) She is quite right in her demand that he take no more than a pound of flesh, but why not less?

For these hundreds of years, people have swallowed this line of thinking in the play, but would reject it out of hand in practice. Of course, he may take less. It is his right to accept less payment. Any court of law, then and now, would have dismissed her silly arguments but Shakespeare makes the court and his audience accept it unquestioningly.

When the villain is finally brought to heel, he is surrounded by Christians pouring forth venom and hate. Harry Golden says: "Shakespeare seems to go out of his way to give us a frightening picture of the 'victors.' He has them standing together pouring out a stream of vengeance. We're not through with you yet, Jew, and the money we have left you, after you have paid all these fines, you must leave to Jessica and your (Gentile) son-in-law who robbed you. Shakespeare keeps them hissing their hate."

The judge appears lenient next to Portia, who wants him stripped of everything.

The final irony is that he must perforce become a Christian - the gift of love thrust upon him, in an atmosphere thick and black with hatred. The only one with a shred of dignity at this stage is the villain, Shylock, who exits on the lines:

"I pray you, give me leave to go from hence. I am not well. Send the deed after me and I will sign it."

The extent of the contempt Shakespeare held for Christian mores of his time is summed up with biting irony when Launcelot Gobbo tells Jessica:

"This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs. If we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money."

Christians - naturally - (and Jews who condemn the play) refuse to take the leap that Shakespeare's text reveals, choose not to recognise the genius of a master satirist at work.

When Shylock is first introduced, Shakespeare gives him the line: "I hate him for he is a Christian."
Absurd, isn't it? Vicious and cruel! Jonathan Miller was afraid to use it. The archetypical Jew in the minds of his audience! But isn't that precisely what anti-Semites say of Jews? Isn't Shakespeare stating: "You are as absurd as this caricature of a Jew you want to see."? For, following upon the heels of that remark, we have Shylock's Rialto speech, wherein he shows us what kind of a Christian we are dealing with and the legitimate reasons for Shylock's hate?

As long as blindness for Shakespeare's intention remains, so long will his Christians in the play remain good and his Jew a figure of extortion and evil, to laugh at when bested. A great pity for here was Bill at his satiric best, brilliantly concealing a shockingly anti-Christian text in the garb of an anti-Semitic play.