Racism and Homophobia in The Merchant of Venice

A close reading of The Merchant of Venice within the micropolitics of its immediate historical moment shows that the play originates as an antiracist response to the hanging of Rodrigo Lopez in 1594. By shadowing the representation of Shylock's Jewishness with the depiction of Antonio's paradoxical ethnic, sexual and religious identity as a "Machiavellian merchant," Shakespeare offers a critique of the essentializing operation that produces stereotypes. The symmetry between Antonio and Shylock reflects a repetitive historical process: The production of the irredeemably perverse "homosexual" was anticipated by the imposition of the concept of blood purity on early modern Jewish converts to Christianity.