The Merchant of Venice

... The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare wrote 'The Merchant of Venice' in 1596, a time of fiercely held Christian views when all Jews were discriminated and persecuted. They suffered huge prejudice during the Middle Ages when they were wrongly accused of killing children and causing the 'Black Death'. Massacres of Jews occurred and eventually in 1290, the entire community was expelled from England and not re-admitted until the mid-seventeenth century, just because of their religion. The Jewish villain was a stock character in medieval literature and re-enactments of the crucifixion of Jesus always portrayed the disloyal disciple Judas, as a stereotypical Jew. Subsequently, authors such as Christopher Marlow and William Shakespeare always cast Jewish characters as villains. They cashed in on the fact that Elizabethan audiences would lap up the racial discrimination towards Jews, because of the huge conflict between the two religions, by writing 'The Jew of Malta' and the 'Merchant

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