YAFFE, MARTIN D. — Shylock and the Jewish Question

Baltimore, John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999. XII,210 pp. As new. Paperback. Emphasizing that The Merchant of Venice is a work of political philosophy as well as literature, Yaffe raises the intriguing possibility that Shakespeare presents Shylock not as a typical Jew, but as a bad one. Though the book focuses on the Jewish question, it has larger implications for our thinking in a number of areas: the rise of liberal democracy, the development of religious toleration, the relation of church and state, and the interrelation of politics, economics, and religion--in short, a whole range of issues basic to the conception of modernity.