Shylock as Jew-voice: Rhetorical listening and identifications in The Merchant of Venice

Shylock is a Jewface role, whose effect is to create stereotypes and to distort Jewish ethnicity and religious practice. Yet it is also more than that, as Shakespeare created a complex character who sometimes invites a kind of identification. This article will argue that practicing rhetorical listening and thinking about identifications in The Merchant of Venice – and how they are created especially through sound – can help us to understand the complexities of this paradoxical character. In particular, theories of disidentification and non-identification can help to map out patterns of possible identifications, vexed and otherwise, within the play.