|
|
|
| This is only the first few lines of this paper. If you would like to view the entire paper you need to register for free here. If you are already a member then login here. |
| Word Count: |
4548 |
|
|
|
Bard of Bigotry of Merciful Muse: Comments on Shakespear's Portrayal of Shylock and Othello
|
|
|
Alexander 1 Clint Alexander English 640 Dr. Boyd 11 December 2000 Bard of Bigotry or Merciful Muse: Comments on Shakespeare’s Portrayal of Shylock and Othello Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and William Shakespeare have all been branded racist at one time or another. In all the above cases, the accuser has failed to read deeply into the text and discover the authors’ true intent. An author is affected by his society and invariably constructs stories which reflect the prevailing attitudes of his time so cannot be branded for a thing which he merely transcribes; authors are often simply mirrors to our world. Do we blame the mirror for reflecting a displeasing visage? Some do, and those people not only earn seven years of trouble, but reveal themselves to be mentally unreflective and possessors of hair-trigger sensibilities. Chinua Achebe and Spike Lee are two who misread their respective targets by instilling in them racist attitudes that, under closer scrutiny, disappear into the text and become something else- tolerance and understanding. A brief mention of the program of racial cleansing which dominated this century will post stark evidence of the extremes with which Shakespeare’s work have been applied. The entire nation of Germany, prior to World War I, embarked on a literary crusade of deadly eugenics. Gerwin Strobl, in “The Bard of Eugenics: Shakespeare and Racial Activism in the Third Reich,” shows us that the Nazis used Shakespeare’s plays to justify their program of racial euthanasia. Hans T.K. Gunther, an influential academic figure in 1930s Germany and member of the German Shakespeare society, presented a paper to the annual meeting of the society in 1937. Titled “Maidens and Matrons in Shakespeare: A Practical Perspective,” the paper attempted to Alexander 2 connect Shakespeare to eugenic attitudes: “Gunther’s address was not merely distasteful, it was in insult to the Society’s intellectual tradition, and the individual scholarship of its members”(Strobl 327). We see in genocidal relief the ways in which Shakespeare can and has been interpreted over the years. It is important to note, however, that the German scholars vehemently disagreed with Gunther but were unable to effect any change once the Nazi machine began to roll. While this extreme example shows how Shakespeare can be interpreted by persons willing to forgo reason in an attempt to justify a belief already solidified in their minds, the attitudes in Renaissance England were equally strong, albeit without the accompanying slaughter. I will attempt to show in this essay that Shakespeare was merely representing the prevailing cultural attitudes of racism in England in order to popularize his plays, and that he inscribed within the texts clues with which a careful reader may discern benevolent attitudes towards the Other; we will begin our investigation by revealing the consequences and sources which grew out of and shaped the racial stereotypes of Elizabethan England. The racist attitudes of Nazism were not a historically isolated event but one which was merely the culmination of a thousand years of anti-Semitism. In our nation today, there is more prejudice directed towards Blacks than there is towards Jews; Elizabethan England was just the opposite. Years of discrimination had preceded Shakespeare and continued long after he was gone. In 1290 King Edward I officially expelled the Jewish population from England and were not allowed to reenter until 1656(Meyers 33). The two bricks that form the foundation for the especially vehement attitude toward Jews seems to concern Jesus and the absence of a homeland. For Christians, Jews are the people who tortured and killed Jesus, the son of god. While this act may have been preordained, the Jews were responsible for his death. Reflect on this a moment; nowhere in recent history has a human or a group of humans been directly responsible for the death of what is essentially a god. With Jesus being the epitome of goodness, following logic, we Alexander 3 conclude that his killers must be evil; this leap of logic was, in medieval times, not very strenuous: Hyam Maccoby wrote, “Many Chrisitans came to believe Jews had cloven feet and a tail, and that they suffered from an innate bad smell and from diseases of the blood, for which they sought remedies in vampirism”(qtd. in Meyers 33). The fact that Jews had no permanent homeland in which to congregate also added to feelings of anxiety from their host nations. First, history has shown that what is weak often comes to be actively despised. The reason for this, in the case of the Jews, is that they had no military strength to shadow them in their travels to distant lands. Without at least the vague possibility of war with this hypothetical Jewish army, countries and individuals could treat Jews in any manner that they wished. Second, without their own country, Jews were constantly under the suspicion that they would actively seek to supplant the indigenous culture in favor of their own. That many of the Jews were wealthy gave these ideas of revolution at least a small portion of plausibility. Keep in mind also that if a people had the power and inclination to kill a god, the possibilities for mayhem were endless. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council of the Roman Catholic church, called by Pope Innocent III, proclaimed an official policy which ordered all Jews to wear distinctive badges. In cities throughout Europe they were forced to live in special areas, called ghettos, and were not permitted to move around freely. During the 13th and 14th centuries several European monarchs confiscated Jewish property and expelled the owners. The Black Death that swept Europe in the 14th century was, by many, blamed on the Jews; “massacres of Jews were common throughout Europe on the charge that Jews had caused the plague by poisoning Christian wells”(Encarta). King Charles VI of France followed Edward’s example in 1394 and expelled the Jews from his country; Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497, completed the expulsion of the Jews from western Europe. Alexander 4 By Elizabeth’s time England contained a small number of Jews who had ostensibly converted the Christianity. “In many cases, such conversions were merely outward; a class of converts called Marranos (Spanish for “swine”) arose, professing Roman Catholocism but adhering to Judaism in secret”(Encarta). It is doubtful that Shakespeare, or any of his contemporaries, had ever encountered a practicing Jew on English soil(Greenblat 22), so the stereotypes were free to propagate in the absence of contradictory information. One event examined in detail by William Meyers in his article titled “Shakespeare, Shylock, and the Jews,” that solidified antisemitism was the case of Elizabeth’s doctor Roderigo Lopez. Lopez was one of the converted Jews and was accused of attempting to poison Elizabeth. The facts, Meyers, points out, are murky on whether or not the doctor was guilty of the crime for many political intrigues were at work at the time.
|
|
|
|
Still Can't Find What Your Looking For? Then Try a Essay Search!
|
