Aug 17 2021 44 mins 6
Few literary characters have loomed as large and felt as "real" as Shakespeare’s Shylock. Though, as early 20th-century British Jewish historian Cecil Roth reminds us, he is a "sheer figment of Shakespeare’s imagination." Or was he? In this episode, Dr. Chaya Sima Koenigsberg illuminates Shakespeare’s (in)famous portrait of Shylock with her research on medieval Ashkenaz Jewry and the lives of the Rokeach and his wife, Dulce. She also sheds new light on the presence of Hebrew bible figures Jacob and Leah and the underexamined presence of prayer in the play.
Audio Credits
Paterson Joseph as Shylock, “You call me misbeliever” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vSR6W8_uBU
Upstart Crow, “The Apparel Proclaims the Man” (Series 1, Episode 3)
The Merchant of Venice, dir. Jonathan Munby, Shakespeare’s Globe (2015)
The Merchant of Venice, dir. John Sichel (1973)
The Merchant of Venice, Arkangel Shakespeare Collection, 2005)
Laura Carmichael as Portia, “The quality of mercy” https://youtu.be/wmmBT_4dmI0
Mentioned in this episode
Rokeach, Rabbi Elezar of Worms
James Shapiro’s Shakespeare and the Jews
Janet Adelman’s Blood Relations: Christian and Jew in The Merchant of Venice
Michelle Ephraim’s Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage
Sara Coodin’s Is Shylock Jewish? Citing Scripture and the Moral Agency of Shakespeare’s Jews
Hosted by Straus Center Resident Scholar Dr. Shaina Trapedo
Produced by Uri Westrich and Sam Gelman
Outro by Straus Scholar Ayelet Brown
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