Comments on: Shakespeare the anti-semite

By: Clarice

Clarice — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:15:32 +0000

Never mind art, what about technology? To be consistent, they’d have to interrogate the beliefs of all kinds of people, from Alexander Graham Bell to Tim Berners Lee. Not that I’m insinuating anything about such people, but a willingness to use these technologies unquestioningly kind of blows their shakespeare argument right out of the water, wouldn’t you say?

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:07:41 +0000

I went to see Daniel Barenboim perform at the Royal Festival Hall the other day. He is famous for being the first to perform Wagner in Israel. He said that you couldn’t really understand other 20th Century music without understanding Wagner.

By: Matt Munro

Matt Munro — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:18:56 +0000

Good post Rob. Similarly, although he was to some extent a parody you could argue that Fagan in Oliver Twist shows Dickens to be at least mildly anti-semitic. I would agree that it’s impossible to understand culture outside it’s context, which is why claiming, for example, that Tintin is racist, when the modern concept of racism didn’t exist when authored, is absurd.
To develop the point slightly, can the artist be separated from the art ? As in does listening to Wagner make you a proxy nazi sympathiser, or is it possible (subject to taste) to listen to Garry Glitter records with a clear concience ?

By: jameshigham

jameshigham — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:27:44 +0000

Shakespeare was an anti-semite or not (and, given his portrayal of Shylock, he probably was) …

He was a product of his time. Revisionism never works.

By: DE

DE — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:36:53 +0000

Its difficult to tell from this distance whether Shylock was intended as an Ali G type joke, or whether Shakespeares was just a vessel for the beliefs of the day. Irrelevant to an English exam either way.

Robert, why do the pupil actions denote “some kind of intellectual purity”? You could - at an extreme stretch - compare them to the scientists who don’t use data from Nazi experiments.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:00:47 +0000

Of course they wouldn’t, Jeffrey. When Islamic school-girls do make a stand, they are rebuffed in the same way. Remember the jilbab case, for example? The head-teacher involved was made a dame, and the girl in question lost the case.

By: Clarice

Clarice — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:42:49 +0000

Well said, Rob, as per.

By: Jeffrey Levine

Jeffrey Levine — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:16:08 +0000

If these were Arab schollgirls complaining about Islamaphobia, the teachers and the scholl officials would be fired and every student would receive an A+!!