The postcolonial school of critics which dwells fondly on the issues of culture and
race, views William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice as a play with
colonial color. They accuse Shakespeare of being unjust to the subaltern or the
marginalized in the play. Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci applies this term, borrowed
from military, to represent any person or group of inferior rank or station because of his
race, class, gender, ethnicity or religion. In other words, a subaltern refers to one who
exists outside the hegemonic power structure—socially, politically and culturally, and as
Gayatri Spivak (Leitch, 2001, p. 2193) avers, “has no voice of his own.” In this context,
the Jewish community of which Shylock is the most significant representative in this play
can be termed as subaltern. Quoting Marianne Novy in her study, “Marginalized Voices
in The Merchant of Venice,” Oldrieve (1993) avers that Jews in this play “could be seen
as symbolic of absolute otherness—aliens, mysterious, uncivilized and unredeemed”
(p. 87). In this context, the tragic fate of Shylock, and by extension, all Jews in this
romantic comedy, leads the postcolonial critics to accuse Shakespeare of being anti-Semitic.
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