Shakespeare and the Jews

Going against the grain of the dominant scholarship on the period, which generally ignores the impact of Jewish questions in early modern England, Shapiro presents how Elizabethans imagined Jews to be utterly different from themselves--in religion, race, nationality, and even sexuality.

Going against the grain of the dominant scholarship on the period, which generally ignores the impact of Jewish questions in early modern England, James Shapiro presents how Elizabethans imagined Jews to be utterly different from themselves--in religion, race, nationality, and even sexuality. From strange cases of Christians masquerading as Jews to bizarre proposals to settle foreign Jews in Ireland, this book looks into the crisis of cultural identity in Elizabethan England and sheds new light on The Merchant of Venice.