One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.” ii) What reaction does it bring forth from the listener? How does this scene strongly vent out AntiSemitism, so prevalent during Elizabethan Period?
Answers
When Shylock refers to his “ancient grudge” with Antonio, he alludes to not just the longstanding personal animosity between the two men, but to the long history of anti-Semitic stories and attitudes that shaped the world of the play. The gruesomeness of Shylock’s demand for “a pound of flesh” might shock a modern audience, but tales of bloodthirsty Jews harming Christian bodies were common in medieval and renaissance Europe. Shakespeare and his Elizabethan audiences probably would have known the story of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, a child whose death was falsely attributed to a Jewish community as “ritual murder” in the thirteenth century, and similar myths of Jewish sacrifices of Christian children. Likewise, the abuse that Shylock endures because of his profession is consistent with longstanding European attitudes toward Jewish moneylenders. In medieval and renaissance Europe,