Yet, the Jew is as hard to keep out as Nature herself: _Expellas
furca tamen usque recurret_. In 1410 we hear of a Jewish physician
named Elias Sabot who came from Bologna with permission to settle and
practise in any part of the realm. There is also reason to believe
that the Jewish remnant left in England after Edward’s expulsion was
strongly reinforced by the immigration of refugees from Spain towards
the end of the fifteenth century. The reign of Queen Elizabeth was
also distinguished by the influx of many foreigners--merchants,
miners,[128] and physicians--and it is highly probable that there
were Jews amongst them. But how perilous such a venture was can be
seen from the following episode. In the year 1581 a certain Jeochim
Gaunz, or Gaunse, came over with a proposal to furnish to the English
Government some new information concerning the methods of smelting and
manufacturing copper and lead ores, and conducted experiments in the
mining districts of Cumberland. For some nine years the enterprising
stranger lived in London unmolested, because unsuspected. But on an
evil day, in September 1589, he went to Bristol, and there fell in with
the Rev. Richard Crawley, a clergyman interested in Hebrew. On finding
that Gaunz knew that language, Mr. Crawley cultivated his acquaintance,
and in the course of one of their learned discussions Gaunz betrayed
his Judaism. The discovery led to his arrest. Cross-examined by the
local magistrates, he boldly confessed that he was a Bohemian Jew, born
and bred, unbaptized and absolutely unable to accept the claims of
Christianity to a divine origin. He was sent before the Privy Council
at Whitehall, where all traces of him are lost.
But the unpopularity of the race in Elizabethan England, apart from
Gaunse’s case, is abundantly attested by the Elizabethan drama. A few
authors made occasional attempts to whitewash the stage Jew; but these
attempts, somewhat dubious at the best, were certainly not successful.
That the general opinion of the Jew continued to be anything but a
favourable one, is implied by casual references in various plays, and
is manifestly proved by the delineation of the Jewish character in
Marlowe’s _Jew of Malta_ and in Shakespeare’s _Merchant of Venice_.
Marlowe’s Barabas and Shakespeare’s Shylock are both replicas of the
Jew as conceived by mediaeval imagination: a money-monger fabulously
rich, ineffably tender to his own people, incredibly cruel to the
Christian. It is a portrait drawn by prejudice and coloured by
ignorance. The two great dramatists adopted the popular lay-figure
and breathed into it the spirit of life. The result is a gruesome
monstrosity, animated by genius.
Barabas in the first scene of the play “is discovered in his
counting-house, with heaps of gold before him.” This wealth is the
fruit of extensive trade with the lands of the East. Every wind that
blows brings to the Jew of Malta
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account