Summer’s arrived and our thoughts turn to wanderlust. But why succumb to travel trauma--, virus filled terminals, delayed or canceled flights, schlepping around the world and return jet-lagged and exhausted? Instead, settle in your favorite couch, relax with a glass of chilled Chardonnay and open British author and historian Harry Freedman’s richly informative book about Venice. Learn its amazing history ---its prominence in pre-Shakespearean times and commentary on the city’s most famous Jew, Shylock.

The majority of the 14 million annual visitors to Venice, one of the most beautiful and wondrous cities on earth, are unlikely to pay much attention to the word’s first Jewish ghetto. Nor do we know if Shakespeare had any direct knowledge of Venice or its ghetto (unlikely given the angst of travel in the 16th century was equal to ours). Had Shakespeare visited he would have reveled in meeting colorful, educated characters, a bustling core of medical intellectuals, literary, financial, musical and artistic personalities. And even encountered Talmudic scholars. Shakespeare would have been impressed with entrepreneurial individuals such as the formidable banker, Anselmo De Banco, a hard negotiator with Venice’s mercenary rulers and legendary financier Don Isaac Abravanel. He surely would have been surprised to learn that vigorous religious debates were underway between the clergy of both Jewish and Christian faiths. There is dabate whether Shakespeare based Shylock on a factual model or relied on traveler’s stories? He was known to have, “magpie traits” and frequently employed tales heard in local taverns.

 

As regards the Merchant of Venice, most scholars and Shakespeare aficionados consider Shylock to be a villainous, repulsive harsh character, the play antisemitic at its core. Though it has not always been so. In a 2016 review scholar Brandon Ambrosino offers “ there’s little argument that Shylock was initially written as a comic figure with Shakespeare’s original title being The Comical History of The Merchant of Venice“. The comedic interpretations lasted until the 18th century after-which the play was re-framed as a tragedy and Shylock a monstrous scoundrel. Author Freedman provides provocative food for thought in countering this widely held assertion that Shakespeare wrote the play as an expression of his personal antisemitism rather than exploring the antisemitism of the times. Freedman supports late British Historian Dame Francis Yates who states ”far from being an antisemitic play it is arguably philosemitic,” raising the play’s moral/ethical ambiguities for further interpretation.

Shylock’s Venice contains a cornucopia of fascinating facts and lore and may even entice you to re-read Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice with fresh eyes.