The Merchant of Venice

Blood repeatedly emerges as a symbol of the characters’ shared humanity, whether they are White or non-White, Christian or Jewish. Shylock’s speech in defense of his own humanity and personhood crescendos with the famous line, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” (3.1.63). Elsewhere, the dark-skinned prince of Morocco tells Portia to bring him her Whitest suitor and “let us make incision for your love / To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine” (2.1.6-7). The Christian characters, on the other hand, view blood not as a symbol of shared humanity but as a symbol of their status as White Christians. For example, when Bassanio needs to borrow the 3,000-ducat principal from Portia, he says, “I freely told you all the wealth I had / Ran in my veins: I was a gentleman” (3.2.265-66). This notion that Christian blood differs significantly from Jewish blood also lies at the heart of the blood libel, a pervasive anti-Semitic conspiracy that was surely on the minds of Shakespeare’s contemporary audiences, particularly when Shylock jokes, “But yet I’ll go in hate, to feed upon / The prodigal Christian” (2.5.15-16).

In turn, the pound of flesh represents the commodification of human bodies in a protocapitalist society like 16th-century Venice. Driven to sadism by personal and political oppression, Shylock views Antonio’s flesh as a form of currency that is no different than ducats or gold. The buying and selling of human flesh finds a clear analogue in the duke’s ownership of enslaved people. Shylock rightly points out that his demand of a pound of flesh is grotesquely natural in a legal and economic framework that allows the ownership and bodily degradation of human beings.