Abstract

The castration references surrounding Merchant's creditors represent dependents' fantasies of selves free of social inscription in an inheritance-based economy. Antonio's castration is an "unmanning," part of an early modern perception of the relatively financially toothless female parent as more giving and less combative than the male. Shylock's castration is part of a more general "unparenting"—a Jewish progenitor threatens the Christians, who like nondramatic early moderns resent Christianity's indebtedness to Judaism. The play's concern with cuckoldry foregrounds a side effect of the symbolic emasculation of fathers: one questions mothers' fidelity.

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