William Shakespeare couldn't possibly have been antisemitic

Many people make the mistake of thinking that The Merchant of Venice proves that Shakespeare was an antisemite. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth. In fact, The Merchant of Venice proves that Shakespeare could not possibly have been an antisemite. Sure, Shylock is presented in fairly antisemitic terms, as being at times, and with some people, greedy and predatory. However, he is also presented as being capable of deep love and devotion, and of having extremely human feelings and needs, and of experiencing deep suffering for very human reasons, that anyone can relate to. And, bear in mind, this was during a period in which England, and Europe as a whole, were still virulently antisemitic, despite tendencies to religious tolerance under Elizabeth I. Also, remember who we're dealing with here. We're dealing with William Shakespeare, a man of infinite subtlety of expression, perhaps no one in history more so, almost certainly no one in English, more so. The Merchant of Venice presents Shylock in terms, however superficially antisemtic, that can actually be rather easily acted, without changing the text at all, to represent Shylock as the hero of the play, and this has actually been done, particularly in the early twentieth century, in the Yiddish theatres of New York City. Shakespeare certainly would not have written the play this way, unless it was his quite specific intention to write the play this way. Indeed, the subtext of the Merchant of Venice probably is, quite specifically, that Jews were being put in a position by Christians where they must, always, have their "pound of flesh", for money, simply to survive, and Shakespeare is indeed criticizing society for this fact, and for arranging things this way. It can quite easily be seen that Shakespeare isn't criticizing Jews, he is satirizing European Christianity, and its marginalization of those "outside the fold". Shakespeare was obsessed with and fascinated with religion. He grew up a few years after the heretic burnings during the reign of Bloody Mary, he had heard and read of, from across the English Channel, the horrific massacres of Protestants perpetrated by Catherine de Medici, in particular the St. Bartholomew Day Massacre, during his own lifetime. He was living, in England under Elizabeth I, during a period of comparative freedom of expression and religion, and he valued this immensely. However, he could see what was coming, and anticipated the thirty years war, and Oliver Cromwell. Shakespeare's own treatments of religion are extremely tentative and coded -- notably, the presentation of Falstaff aka John Oldcastle, leader of the Lollard rebellion, executed as a rebel and a heretic, in Henry IV parts I and II, and in the Merry Wives of Windsor, all of which, particularly the latter, are coded historical representations of Oldcastle's rebellion and execution. No one has ever even attempted to present The Merry Wives of Windsor for what it really is -- not a silly farce, but, actually, an extremely black satire of John Oldcastle, and of Christianity in Europe, prior to the Reformation. Wouldn't it be interesting to present these two great works of Shakespeare -- The Merchant of Venice, and the Merry Wives of Windsor -- for what they really were, perhaps on a single double bill: satires of European Christianity, and the extreme dangers of religious intolerance?