ABSTRACT
As a result of Shylock's ambiguity, versions of The Merchant of Venice often experimented with the stock Jewish figure. From George Granville's toothless and comic Jew, to Charles Macklin's grotesque monster and to Edmund Kean's Romantic outcast, the most popular versions of Shylock in the long eighteenth century demonstrate a wide range of stereotypes. Granville clearly found nothing likeable about Shylock when he staged the character as a villain with no redeeming qualities. Jews were closely associated with the Royal Exchange's positive symbolism of Britain's commercial strength and cosmopolitanism. Just as Fisch and Lampert regard Shylock as a form of commentary on the new social order of the early modern period, Ragussis argues that Beau Mordecai is well suited to the artificiality of eighteenth-century life. Paulson argues that the comedy of the Election print comes from the incongruity of an unassimilated Ashkenazi Jew leading the procession.
