IN GENERAL!: CRITICAL QUESTIONS, TRENDS, APPROACHES

‘You are confusing two concepts,’ wrote Chekhov, ‘The solution of a problem and the correct posing of a question. Only the second is obligatory for an artist.’ This observation seems obviously relevant to Shakespeare’s works and, by extension, to critical interpretations of them. Indeed, some of the most interesting essays published recently seem designed, not to posit final solutions, but to consider the ways in which various questions are posed within the works themselves. Representative discussions of The Merchant of Venice may serve to illustrate these points.

In his article on ' The Jew and Shylock', D. M. Cohen confronts, head-on, the problems posed by the overt anti-Semitism of Shakespeare's text. Cohen concludes that critical arguments whereby (a) Shylock is 'a better man than we might be disposed to believe', or (b) that he is' not really human', or that (c) the play is not anti-Jewish (just anti-Shylock), simply cannot account for the 'fear and shame that Jewish viewers and readers have always felt from the moment of Shylock's entrance to his final exit'. These feelings, Cohen argues, represent a more honest and accurate response to the text than sophisticated rationalizations which attempt to 'exonerate Shakespeare from the charge of Semitism'.