**Is Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice’s Pound of Flesh Indirect Antisemitism? Shylock and the Elizabethan Stereotypes of Greed, Cannibalism, and Vengeance**
The question of whether Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice participates in antisemitism has long animated scholarly debate. While the play never explicitly preaches hatred of Jews, it constructs its central conflict around a symbolic act—the “pound of flesh” bond—that draws directly from Elizabethan fantasies about Jewish cruelty, bodily threat, and moral monstrosity. My position is this: the pound of flesh serves as a form of indirect antisemitism : not through overt denunciation, but through the dramatic activation of cultural stereotypes that cast Jews as greedy, cannibalistic, and vengeful. Shylock’s character is built from these inherited mindsets, and the play’s plot depends on them. Shakespeare hides, he complicates these stereotypes by giving Shylock moments of humanity, but the structure of the drama still relies on antisemitic imagery to generate tension, horror, and narrative resolution. I. The Pound of Flesh as the Symbolic Core of Antisemitism The “pound of...