Critical Essay | Critical Essay by John Picker

Critical Essay by John Picker

SOURCE: “Shylock and the Struggle for Closure,” in Judaism: A Quarterly Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2, 1994, pp. 173-89.

In the essay below, Picker describes Elizabethan England's creation of and discrimination against the “other,” or outsider, in order to preserve its own sense of a closed society. Picker observes that this “ghettoizing” is reflected in The Merchant of Venice, where Shylock is consistently excluded from communal life simply because he is a Jew.

1. “go Presently Inquire, and So Will I / Where Money Is”: Theoretical and Historical Considerations

In his seminal work on Shakespearean festive comedy, C. L. Barber introduces a theory of comic form which attempts to account for the role of figures such as Shylock in the early plays. Emphasizing the connection between theatrical practices and social customs such as May Day and the Winter Revels, Barber argues that the early comedies celebrate natural vitality and social identity. He considers the underlying movement of Shakespearean comedy to be the passage “through release to...
(read more)