Was Shakespeare anti-Semitic?
Yes. Proof: Shylock.
Was Shakespeare anti-Italian?
Yes. Proof: Yago.
Was Shakespeare anti-York?
Yes. Proof: Richard III.
Was Shakespeare a feminist?
Yes. Proof: Portia.
Was Shakespeare pro gay marriage?
Yes. Proof: Hamlet and Horatio.
Since I don’t know who wrote the Shakespeare-was-a-Bigot bit, I don’t know whom I’ll be offending to say how nonsensical I think the charge is! But the great grandeur of Shakespeare consists in his ability to capture the essence of an enormous range of characters, to portray them as real. To then accuse him of personally holding the views of those characters is, so far as I can see, to miss the point.
The author of this posting is the author of all the SKETCHES unless otherwise indicated. His semi-serious purpose was to show up the idiocy of those who believe that Shakespeare was more anti-Semitic than other Elizabethans because he invented Shylock. And the author happens to know that such people DO exist. To demonstrate his conviction that Shakespeare was the opposite of a bigot, he culminated the posting by making the admittedly outrageous gay-marriage-joke, for which he begs your indulgence.
Is Shakespeare pro cross-dressing?
Yes. Proof: Viola and Rosalind.
Shakespeare didn’t so much invent Shylock as he appropriated the stereotype character from an earlier play, Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, whose title character, Barabas, says such things as “I walk abroad a-nights / And kill sick people groaning under walls; / Sometimes I go about and poison wells.” Marlowe’s play was written about 1589-90, and was a big success with Elizabethan audiences, which is probably why Shakespeare had a shot at the same theme, writing Merchant of Venice in 1596-98. What Shylock proves is not that Shakespeare was anti-Semitic, but that Elizabethan England was.
A most useful, illuminating, erudite comment, thank you, Curmudgeon. I was goaded into composing this blog by a remark an Israeli judge made, that Shakespeare was anti-Semitic, when the judge looked with disfavour on a litigant - the son of a friend of mine - because he happened to be a Shakespearean actor.
Nothing to add except this is a great debate.
I could have guessed that this was a posting by that friendly and provocative Mr. Sketches! But speaking of anti-Semitism in this or that time, we have not come so very far: right now in West Virginia there is a special election to fill the seat of a departed State Senator, and the leading candidate roused his audience with an anti-Semitic joke. If anything, it seems to me that Shakespeare was able to do what few did, to show more than one side of a person (speaking of Shylock). It is perhaps we who are inclined to think in stereotypes.