The Merchant of Venice

No one has ever accused me of being subtle. The Merchant of Venice is famously about Jewish moneylender Shylock who is tired of all the Christians spitting and snotting on him because he’s Jewish. When Christian Antonio (who’s done his fare share of Jew-baiting) needs to borrow money, Shylock stipulates that if Antonio cannot pay it back, then Shylock gets a pound of his (Antonio’s) flesh. Portia, another Christian who’s in love with Antonio, dresses up as a man and impersonates a lawyer to spin some bullshit about ‘the quality of mercy is not strained.’ Then she gets Antonio off on a freaking technicality, because the contract never mentions anything about spilling blood. Not being a faithly sort (an atheistic pox on both your houses) I have never been able to see this play as anything other than the Christians stomping on the Jews. Behind the scenes, I’d say about 70% of the objects you see in this collection are items I just had floating around. But for this one, without knowing what I was looking for, I visited a junk/antique shop up the street. There, I found this lovely little Mary figure (formerly a pencil sharpener) and this little printer’s plate of obviously Jewish content. Just like that I had a female symbol of Christianity ascendant over a symbol of Judaism. Thank you and goodnight.