The question of antisemitism in The Merchant of Venice has often been written about as if antisemitism is a unitary phenomenon, one not requiring definition. Nevertheless, any discussion of antisemitism implies a definition, one which in turn implies a standard for representing Jews and Judaism When the various critical articles that exonerate the play of the antisemitism charge are analyzed, it emerges that the charge has often been evaded by employing definitions which now must be regarded as over-narrow and which, for instance, rule out religion and folklore as a source of antisemitism. There is a current tendency to regard the play as being 'about' antisemitism, rather than antisemitic, so that the tradition of seeing the play as enlightened on the Jewish question remains Ultimately, a work of art should be regarded as antisemitic if it employs pejorative stereotypes about Jews without clearly repudiating them, and the deficiencies of such stereotypes are best appreciated against the backdrop of a certain amount of knowledge of the Jewish cultural heritage. Held up to these standards, readings that do see the play as antisemitic have also been deficient. One of the earliest and most influential readings of this type, E. E. Stoll's, displays stereotyped notions of Jewish characteristics even as it asserts that the play is antisemitic. More recent up-datings of Stoll's argument avoid the crudest manifestations of this problem, but may exhibit subtle versions of it. Attempts to reduce antisemitism to the manifestation of a single impulse also result in confusion that might be dispelled by focusing on representational standards The criticism of Chaucer's 'The Prioress's Tale' and Marlowe's The Jew of Malta often resembles that of Merchant with respect to some of the above-mentioned issues
