Mr. Curtis in his reference to Shakespeare's "Shylock" truly says that "there is nothing in Shakespeare more vital and intelligible than the fervent appeal of Shylock to the common humanity around him." Much has been said and written concerning this remarkable creation of the dramatist's genius, and often and again it has been remarked that Shakespeare's Jew was not the real Jew, not even the Jew of his own imagination, but the Jew as mirrored in the distorted consciousness of mediæval Europe. The great pathologist of human feeling only then failed in his diagnosis when he sought to realize the Jew, the real Jew and his attributes were beyond his ken.
One of the grandest and most cherished of our poets, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, long the editor of the New York Evening Post, in a trenchant criticism of the character of Shylock on the occasion of a presentation of the drama by Edwin Booth, wrote as follows:[118]
"In terming Shylock 'the Jew whom Shakespeare drew,' there is a perfect logic, for Shylock is, of all Shakespeare's characters, the only one untrue to nature. He is not a Jew, but a fiend presented in the form of one; and whereas he is made a ruling type, he is but an exception, if even that, and the exception is not to be met with either in the Ghettos of Venice or of Rome. Shakespeare holds up the love of money that marks the race, although he does not show that this passion was but the effect of that persecution which, by crowding the Jew out of every honorable pursuit, and thus cutting off his nature from every sympathy with the world around, sharpened and edged the keen corners of his brain for the only pursuit left to him.
"It is true that money-changers once spat on in the Ghetto are now hugged in the palace. But we fear that it is not so much that the prejudice against the Jews has ceased, but that the love of money among the Christians has increased. Shakespeare was not true in the picture he has drawn of the Jew's cravings for revenge, and in the contempt with which he is treated by his daughter. Revenge is not a characteristic of the Jew. He is subject to sudden fits of passion, but that intellect which always stands sentinel over the Hebrew soon subdues the gust. However strong in Shylock's time might have been the hatred of the Jew towards the Christian, the lust of lucre was more strong, and Shakespeare might have ransacked every Ghetto in Christendom without finding a Jew, or a Christian either, who would have preferred a pound of flesh to a pound sterling; and Jews also shrink from physical contests. Their disposition is to triumph by intellect rather than violence. It was this trait more than any other that rendered them, in the Middle Ages, so repulsive to the masses, who were all of the Morrissey and muscular Christianity school. The contempt of a daughter for her parent is equally uncharacteristic of the Jew. The Jews are universally admired for the affections which adorn their domestic life. The more they have been pushed from the society of the family of man the greater has been the intensity with which they have clung to the love of their own family.
"No one can ever have visited the houses of the Jews without having been struck by the glowing affection with which the daughter greets the father as he returns from the day's campaign and the slights and sneers his gaberdine and yellow cap provoke, and without observing how those small, restless eyes that sparkle and gleam, shine out in a softened, loving lustre as they fall upon the face of Rebecca, or Jessica, or Sarah, and how he stands no longer with crooked back, but erect and commanding, as he blesses his household gods with an exultation as vehement as the prejudices which during the day have galled and fretted his nature. To do justice to the grandeurs of the Jewish race, and to brand with infamy its infirmities, it is not enough to produce a repulsive delineation of the latter. It would only be just to give expression to the former, and to exhibit that superiority of intellect which has survived all persecution, and which, soaring above the prejudices of the hour, has filled us with reluctant admiration on finding how many of the great events which mark the progress of the age or minister to its improvements, or elevate its tastes, may be traced to the wonderful workings of the soul of the Hebrew, and the supremacy of that spiritual nature which gave to mankind its noblest religion, its noblest laws, and some of its noblest poesy and music."
Treating the same subject the great German critic, ROBERT BENEDIX, writes as follows:[119]
"Let us look at this Shylock closer. Antonio calls him an usurer; the proof he fails in. Shylock takes high interest; so did all the merchants of Venice. Shylock deals in money; to-day we call him a banker. Why does he deal in money? Because it is the only trade permitted. He does not carry on an industry, has no agricultural pursuits, no official station—only trade. If the Jews, under centuries of restriction, ostracised from social life, did cling to money and its uses, whose fault was it? No one can say anything dishonorable of Shylock. He is penurious; in no law-book of the world is that denominated as a crime. What is against this man? Simply nothing more than that he is a Jew. But for the poet, who, enthroned on Olympian heights, there should exist only the man, not the Jew. Shylock is revengeful. Well, who has instigated it? Only they who have despised him. After persecuting and deriding him, they crown their infamy by asking him to turn Christian. That is the very depth of baseness. What is left to the poor Jew, whom you have trodden under foot, when you rob him of his faith? It is the bond that binds him to his fathers, to his home. It has been his solace in persecutions a thousand times repeated. To this faith Israel clings with devoted love, and from this faith shall Shylock turn to become a Christian? No wonder he turns with abhorrence from those who torture him so cruelly. Christians they may be. Men they are not. And is there no feeling for a father? To exalt a daughter who absconds and robs him whom she should honor? Is that Jewish or Christian? The grand speech, 'Has not a Jew eyes,' etc., is the exclamation of a martyr people who for centuries had been the victims of debauched, bigoted priests.
"It is impossible to acquit Shakespeare of the prejudice of his age. He has morally sinned; artistically erred. Contrast Lessing; and he wrote in an age of equal intolerance. His 'Nathan the Wise' is an embodiment of morality and sublime virtues; his figures are apostles of true humanity. Nathan is an evangelist of true worth; and Lessing, taking for his hero a Jew, made thereby the amende honorable in the name of humanity."
As a veritable anti-climax to these utterances of poet and critic, we may here consider the views of the representative proletary of America, who deals with the Shylock theme from an entirely different standpoint. This dissertation is by Mr. TERRENCE V. POWDERLY, long the leader of the organization of wage-earners known as the Knights of Labor, and as such will command the attention of the reader. Under the caption of "The Real Shylock," he writes in the Journal of the Knights of Labor as follows:
"Flings at the Jews are flying about promiscuously on every hand, and it seems to me that this practice is neither just nor manly. Turn the pages of history backward to the dawn of Christianity and notice how the Jew has been persecuted by those who professed to be actuated by Christian charity. Notice how he has been driven from country and home, how he has been driven ahead of the advanced guard of Christianity, and then pause for a moment to ask if the Christian is not in some small measure to blame for the money-lending characteristics of the Jew of this day and generation. Driven from all other branches of trade, with a price on his head, and his home at the mercy of others, how could the Jew protect himself? It is well enough to single out Rothschild and to point to him as a fit representative of an usury-taking class, but when he is pointed to as 'Rothschild the Jew,' the bounds of propriety are overstepped and common justice is violated.
"What right has a Christian to drive a man from every walk in life but that of money-lending and then insult his race and religion because of that fact, in sneeringly calling him a Jew. It is proper to call a money-lender a 'Shylock,' for that is a term that is applicable to men of all races and religions if they practice usury, but to single the Jew out as the only one who should wear that appellation is an outrage. I know Christians, and the reader knows them, who on every Sunday morning will walk slowly down the middle aisle in the Christian church, and with sanctimonious mien bend the knee before the altar of God with no more of Christianity in their hearts than may be found in the stone steps leading up to the church door. If a living representative of 'Shylock' is to be singled out, one whose talon-like fingers itch for usury and stretch out toward your pocket for the principal as well, let us be honest enough to admit that we can throw a stone into any of our temples of Christianity and hit such a sinner. Do not lay it all to the Jew. I admit that he knows how to deal in money, but, who gave him points in the game of usury? Look over the United States to-day. Contrast the acts of pretended Christians with the principles of Christ, and then dare to lay the blame of all the wrong that usury has wrought, to the door of the Jew. Look at our American Congress and tell us if those who obey the voice of greed in that body are all Jews.... Are all who have cornered lands, railroads and homes Jews? Let the reader whose home is mortgaged inquire who it is holds the mortgage, and if he happens to be a Christian, as in nine cases out of ten he will be, ask him to be lenient with you, and you will learn that he wants his 'pound of flesh,' and will be anxious to go old Shylock one better, by sucking the blood along with it."