SOURCE: Japtok, Martin and Winfried Schleiner. “Genetics and ‘Race’ in The Merchant of Venice.” Literature and Medicine 18, no. 2 (1999): 155-72.

In the following essay, the critics argue that The Merchant of Venice demonstrates that “racism was already fully operational” in the late Elizabethan era, despite the fact that “race” as a concept had not been fully developed.

Can a cultural historian of Shakespeare's period speak about genetics and eugenics in relation to Jews and Moors? Not only did words like Jews, Moors, and race mean something different then from what they have meant since the nineteenth century, but a glance at a historical dictionary will tell us that the term genetics did not yet exist.¹ Therefore it might be the better part of valor for us as cultural historians to avoid such terms and, someone might suggest, even such topics altogether. The alternative is to sin boldly, i.e...