Shakespeare's Venetian paradigm: Stereotyping and sadism in The Merchant of Venice and Othello

Papers on Language and Literature, Spring 2003 by Hunt, Maurice

My account of a sadistic Venetian paradigm differs fundamentally from Adamson's description of hurting others as compensation in Othello for being literally and figuratively "cashiered." Adamson never considers The Merchant of Venice as relevant to her argument, and thus never considers the possibility that her subject might be a Venetian phenomenon. In fact, she never considers Venice as a cultural determiner in Othello of being hurt and of hurting others. Adamson regards love given and then withdrawn, or love yearned for but never reciprocated, as the catalyst for the impulse to hurt another. But characters such as the Gratianos and Antonio and Portia vis-a-vis Shylock indicate that factors other than love withheld or withdrawn trigger the sadistic paradigm that I associate with Venice. Adamson does not consider the possibility that problems concerning the alien and alienation rather than love might figure in the conversion of pain felt into pain inflicted. Forms of the word "scapegoat" never appear in her study.

For a survey of characters' stereotyping of others in The Merchant, see Thompson, who argues that "Shakespeare takes great pains throughout the play to break down the stereotypes of Jews and Christians of the black-and-white, angel-and-devil kind that he expected to find among his contemporaries" (1).

5 James Shapiro explains why Elizabethans would have been inclined to conflate Shylock and Othello. Shakespeare identified the Jew with blackness in "naming Shylock's 'countrymen' Tubal and Chus, the latter Biblical name immediately recognizable to Elizabethan audiences as the progenitor of all Black Africans" (172).

6 Shapiro recounts contemporary anecdotes of English Christians turned Jew, Jews turned false Christian, and the widespread cultural fear generated by these conversions. He concludes that in England and Europe in general, it was "[n]o longer so easy to tell Christians and Jews apart based on their behavior or actions" (32). The shared persecutory sadism of Antonio and Shylock illustrates the truth of Shapiro's conclusion, while his collected anecdotes of "Judaizing" Christians provide another way of understanding Antonio's "Jewish" sadism in Shakespeare's play.

7 For Venetian slavery as the embodiment of the capitalist phenomenon of the "common trade or sale of living flesh for money," see Mallin 150.

8 Brabantio's concern for the "manners and the civility that gentlemen hold in common" is apparent even during Iago and Roderigo's report of Desdemona's elopement, according to R. A. Yoder 215.

9 Nevertheless, Iago has a Spanish name (Levith 35).

10 Shakespeare never mentions the historical reason for Renaissance Venice's practice of engaging foreigners to command the republic's troops-to prevent Venetian coups d'etat (Levith 29-31; McPherson 73). In keeping with this fact, the playwright never mentions Venice's famous Arsenal. Thus little in Othello violates the impression of a soft, unwarlike culture.

11 The Elizabethan "Fynes Moryson believe[d] the Venetians to be cowardly vis-a-vis the Turks: 'And indeed the Gentlemen of Venice are trayned upp in pleasure and wan tonnes, which must needs abase and effeminate their myndes.' [Jean] Bodin remarked that the Venetians were 'better citizens than warriors'" (McPherson 35).