Ms. Mouse wrote:
> On Dec 9, 10:00 am, Tom Reedy <tom.re...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> O, be thou damn'd, inexecrable dog!
>> And for thy life let justice be accused.
>> Thou almost makest me waver in my faith
>> To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
>> That souls of animals infuse themselves
>> Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
>> Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
>> Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
>> And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
>> Infused itself in thee; for thy desires
>> Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous.
> Is it possible to change direction?
> Who believes that Shakespeare was talking about Dr. Lopez here?
I don't believe we can know that. I have even read a novel (I suspect,
and rather hope, that it's a teenage production, trotted out by the
author years later when her name guaranteed sales) according to which
Shylock is supposed to be a /favorable/ ****trait of Lopez, inspired by
Shakespeare's youthful love affair with his daughter. I leave it to the
group to decide whether this, or Asimov's simultaneous attempts to prove
both that Shylock is a viciously conceived anti-Semitic stereotype and
that he is the noblest character in the play, be the sillier.
The wave of English anti-Semitism that followed the Lopez affair no
doubt had something to do with the fact that tMoV was ever written at
all. But that is not to say that Shylock is in any way a ****trait, even
a bad ****trait, of Lopez, which theory demands a spectacularly intricate
hopscotch dance of similarities-and-opposites. In the end, Shylock and
the hypothetically guilty Lopez have almost nothing in common besides
being Jews and villains.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything...."
-- Emile Cammaerts, "The Laughing Prophet"
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