'Scorned My Nation'

In this book, the German history of <I>The Merchant of Venice</I> highlights the Central European detour that Shakespearean reception underwent in Hebrew and Yiddish. Such a detour, with its various discomforts, is used to penetrate a current historical and political historiography, rendering Shylock a character that remembers various languages and locations, as well as multiple alternatives for political self-definition. This complex Shakespearean character speaks in many voices and for various purposes and is the only character that can provide the missing link between two contradictory Jewish stereotypes – a persecuted and victimized underling and a merciless and violent plaintive, holding out his knife to draw blood.