davidmich - you’re currently starring in a thread in the Pit.
I have a very good book called The Friendly Shakespeare by Norrie Epstein. In her section on The Merchant of Venice, she interviews David Suchet, who has played Shylock. She brings up the issue of the forced conversion at the end and how unsettling it is to modern eyes, and Suchet argues that “we must not look at this play through the eyes of the Holocaust”, that in the time and place it was presented in, it would have been seen as saving Shylock’s soul.
Forced conversion, which was often preceded by torture and/or followed by murder, is still pretty damned unsettling even without looking at it “through the eyes of the Holocaust.”
Good point Herminione.
“in the time and place it was presented in, it would have been seen as saving Shylock’s soul.”
Going back to what Captain Amazing was saying about the Merchant of Venice having a Christian message, I was reminded of what Elizabethan Christians really believed, namely that souls could only enter the Kingdom of Heaven through Jesus " “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” So Shylock’s conversion in the end is the only way to save his soul.