Shakespeare, of course, altered these older stories and added his own unique elements to the play.
The figure of a Jew was not entirely unknown to the Elizabethan audience, though Jews on stage were relatively rare. Jews had been expelled from England in the thirteenth century (and later from other European countries) and were only allowed to return a few decades after Shakespeare's death. Thus, the contemporary audience would have had little or no contact with either the Jewish faith or Jewish people, as no known Jews had lived legally in England for centuries. Jews were convenient outsiders, who in the past had been accused of a variety of wild rituals involving their faith and blamed, among other things, for causing the deadly Black Plague in Europe. In 1588, Shakespeare's contemporary, Christopher Marlowe, wrote his successful play The Jew of Malta, which employed the stereotype of a Jew as a monstrous, amoral moneylender. Then in 1594, a Portuguese doctor living in London, one Roderigo Lopez, was accused of trying to poison Queen Elizabeth. While being tortured on the rack, he admitted to being Jewish and keeping it a secret.
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