He took the story of the pound of flesh and had to fasten it on someone. The Jew was the safest victim. No Jew was on hand to boycott his financially struggling theater. It would have been unwise policy, for instance, to apply the pound of flesh characterization to the thrifty Scotchman. Just as now anyone may hurl insults at a citizen of Mars, or even of Tikopia, and no senatorial investigation will result. Who cares about them!

Shakespeare does not tell us that Shylock was an aberrant individual. He sets him forth as being typical of the group. He tells of his ``Jewish heart'' -- not a Shylockian heart; but a Jewish heart. This would make anyone crafty and cruel, capable of fiendish revenge.

There is no justification for such misrepresentation. If living Jews were unavailable for study, the Bible was at hand. Reading the Old Testament would have shown the dramatist that the ideas attributed to Shylock were abhorrent to the Jews.

Are we better off for having Shakespeare's idea of Shylock? Studying The Merchant of Venice in high school and college has given many young people their notions about Jews. Does this help the non-Jew to understand this group?

Thomas de Torquemada, Inquisitor-General of the Spanish Inquisition, put many persons to death. His name became synonymous with cold-blooded cruelty. Would we gain by keeping alive his memory and besmirching today's Roman Catholics by saying he had a Catholic heart? Let his bones and his memory rest in the fifteenth century where they belong; he is out of place in our times. Shakespeare's Shylock, too, is of dubious value in the modern world.