Wrestling with Shylock
Jewish Responses to The Merchant of Venice

This book explores responses to The Merchant of Venice by Jewish writers, critics, theater artists, thinkers, religious leaders and institutions.

Edna Nahshon (Edited by), Michael Shapiro (Edited by)

9781107010277, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 March 2017

452 pages, 51 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 3 cm, 0.73 kg

'This is a superb and fascinating collection of essays that produces new thinking on the play, in terms not only of its complex and provocative history but also of the ways in which the 'problem of Shylock' continues to reinvent and reinvigorate questions about the relationship between history and story, performance and complicity. It is a very important collection for any Shakespearian who understands the power of the play, and the legacies, as well as spectres, of theatrical history.' Charlotte Scott, Shakespeare Survey

Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice occupies a unique place in world culture. As the fictional, albeit iconic, character of Shylock has been interpreted as exotic outsider, social pariah, melodramatic villain and tragic victim, the play, which has been performed and read in dozens of languages, has served as a lens for examining ideas and images of the Jew at various historical moments. In the last two hundred years, many of the play's stage interpreters, spectators, readers and adapters have themselves been Jews, whose responses are often embedded in literary, theatrical and musical works. This volume examines the ever-expanding body of Jewish responses to Shakespeare's most Jewishly relevant play.

Preface Edna Nahshon
Part I. Introductions: 1. Literary sources and theatrical interpretations of Shylock Michael Shapiro
2. The anti-Shylock campaign in America Edna Nahshon
Part II. Discourses: 3. Shylock in German-Jewish historiography Abigail Gillman
4. Yiddish Shylocks in theater and literature Nina Warnke and Jeffrey Shandler
5. Lawyers and judges address Shylock's case Richard H. Weisberg
Part III. The Stage: 6. David Belasco's 1922 production of The Merchant of Venice Marc Hodin
7. New York City, 1947: a season for Shylocks Edna Nahshon
8. The Merchant of Venice in mandatory Palestine and the state of Israel Shelley Zer-Zion
9. Fritz Kortner and other German-Jewish Shylocks before and after the Holocaust Jeanette Malkin
10. Evoking the Holocaust in George Tabori's productions of The Merchant of Venice Sabine Schülting
11. The Merchant of Venice on the German stage and the 1995 'Buchenwald' production in Weimar Gad Kaynar-Kissinger
12. Recasting Shakespeare's Jew in Wesker's Shylock Efraim Sicher
13. Jewish directors and Jewish Shylocks in twentieth-century England Miriam Gilbert
Part IV. Literature, Art and Music: 14. Zionism in Ludwig Lewisohn's novel, The Last Days of Shylock Michael Shapiro
15. Jessica's Jewish identity in contemporary feminist novels Michelle Ephraim
16. Christian iconography and Jewish accommodation in Maurycy Gottlieb's painting, 'Shylock and Jessica' Susan Chevlowe
17. Shylock in opera, 1871–2014 Judah M. Cohen
Part V. Postscript: 18. Shylock and the Arab-Israel conflict Edna Nahshon
Index.

Subject Areas: Judaism [HRJ], Historical fiction [FV], Literature: history & criticism [DS]