Comments on: [fragmentary] Chapter 2 Elizabethan Drama Disdains the Bourgeoisie

By: pawel chrobak

pawel chrobak — Tue, 08 May 2007 14:46:02 +0000

Finally a more readable chapter. The language usage seems fine and the chapter follows a good and relative chronological order. Bringing in the Jewish merchants is a fine idea since all the merchants amd bankers were Jeewish. Good use of examples.

By: Deirdre McCloskey

Deirdre McCloskey — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 22:47:26 +0000

Messrs. Tantarri & Boucher, and Mlle. Perea, merci bien.

Allen: Yes, the Japanese case is an important parallel. I work on it some in The Bourgeois Virtues (2006) and will do more with it in this book. The reason it is an important parallel is that Japan under the Tokugawa looked so much like England, so ready for modernity—yet turned from it until 1867.

Paul: Good idea, that both merchant figures, Jew and gentile, come off badly, and that certainly the world of merchant speech is undermined. But all speech is undermined in Shakespeare. I need to study other Elizabethan dramatists, who are more flatfooted and therefore simpler to read than The Bard. I think Antonio is The Merchant of the title, as the first scene esablishes (and the dramatis personae, I recall, says).

Iliana: Shakespeare and Marlowe were just making up their Jews out of more or less ignorant prejudice and folk tale, since neither of them knew any, or many (Jews were still excluded from England). Yes, Jews were learned proverbially, but this did not recommend one in Christian folk ideology, not at all: see the persistent figure of the Evil Scholar (Faust, Frankenstein).

By: Iliana Perea

Iliana Perea — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:30:39 +0000

I am not sure about the strength of Barabas and Shylock as examples because they are Jewish characters. They are stereotyped as merchants and as Jews. Would they be different characters if they were non-Jewish merchants. As for the reason for “their great eloquence before their social superiors”, isn’t it part of Jewish culture to be as cultured as possible? I know that in the 1800s Eastern European Jews were literate even if they lived humbly, so it is possible that the difference in Barabas and Shylock’s speech compared to other middlings is a cultural difference?

By: Paul Boucher

Paul Boucher — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 02:26:48 +0000

Thoughts on Shylock: according to my copy of Shakespeare’s Complete Works, the full title is The Comical History of the Merchant of Venice, or Otherwise Called the Jew of Venice. Is Shylock or Antonio the titular merchant? Also, Shylock speaks in blank verse some of the time, but also in pentameter, such as when he first meets Antonio. It is true that Shylock gets the best lines and still gets come-uppance. And also that of all the various merchants’ motivations (love, profit, revenge), his are the most deeply felt and profound and the most unrealized. I think the play could be read in two ways, both of which are anti-merchant. First that merchants are on a par with Jews, wihch in the Judeophobic ideology of the time was a bad thing. Second that in the world of the merchant the best and brightest can still lose out to trickery and bad luck.

By: Allen Tanttari

Allen Tanttari — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 02:02:29 +0000

Showing how the elite formed in many societies is shown well in this chapter. Could there be more information about the elite in the rise of the fuedal instituions beginning in the 12th century in Japan. But maybe just showing the Tokugawa perios is evident enough. I would of liked to see some more information on the bourgeois in Japan in comparison with other countries.