Holocaust and Shylock

[Gary Thompson]

Glad to see 90+ messages finally arrive. One of these--

FrodeauxB at aol.com wrote:

>  By the way, why
> did Bill have Shylock convert at the end? Seems out of character for Shylock,
> but maybe he didn't really convert, eh? If so, what does that tell us about
> the Jewish people? 

Not to add unduly to the digression (and this is a few days old), but
Shylock
didn't exactly convert voluntarily, any more than Infant Tyrone gave
informed
consent to Papa B. so that Jamf could take a Q-tip to his little dowsing
rod.
Shylock "converted" under threat of capital punishment for threatening
Antonio's 
life with his pound of flesh security. As Terrance sez, that tells us
nothing about
"the Jewish people" and something about English and European myth, and
not a 
whole lot about Shakespeare except that he's hard to find in his plays.
Just a
nudge in the right direction (so Dennis Huston used to say) and this 
becomes not the comedy _The Merchant of Venice_, but the tragedy of
_Shylock,
the Jew of Venice_. Maybe our friend Pointsman is _GR_'s equivalent to
Shylock,
the figure we are all cued to hate, but having sympathetic moments and
more
readerly access to his habits of thought. 

Not overly fond of Bloom's book myself--it's interesting how easily
academic 
Young Turks turn into Conservatives once they start that long downward
glide. 
There's better stuff on Shakespeare if you want it.


Gary Thompson