personally participated in the hiding of the Cross, just after the
crucifixion, and had been miraculously preserved through centuries as
“a witness” to reveal its place of concealment, and thereby also to
be “a witness” to the truth of the Christian legend. This might even
have been in the minds of those who gave him the name of Judas, though
perhaps that is merely a token of homage to the True Cross, as potent
enough to convert a Judas. It is in harmony with the endless plots
and counterplots of the True Cross Tale that the traitor of Christ
should live to become traitor to Antichrist. At the same time there
is a suggestion in it of precise retribution in kind which naturally
combines with the story of the “Pound of Flesh.” It is highly probable
that Shylock and the Eternal Jew are twins of the True Cross Mythology,
though Ahasuerus be a later name and figure.
But this Holy Cross itself was, and is, a perpetual symbol of the
pound-of-flesh principle which lay at the foundation of the ancient
Jewish system, and from it, after that foundation had crumbled for the
Jews, was adopted as the chief corner-stone of Christianity. This I
have demonstrated elsewhere,[33] and the history of the legend, with
the conclusions based on it, though they may appear here as an episode,
will be found closely related to the development of our subject.
Mr. Swinburne speaks of Marlowe’s Jew as the real man, while
Shakspeare’s is a mouthpiece for the finest poetry.[34] A surprising
criticism! The genesis of the conventional stage-Jew in England has
already been given in this work (XI.), and my reader will do well to
refer to it at this point.
It is sufficiently remarkable that, in this year 1881, London should
have witnessed on the stage, as acted by two eminent Shakspeare
interpreters, the two stage-Jews which competed for popular favour
in the time of Marlowe and Shakspeare. The “Shylock” of Mr. Booth is
an odious, avaricious, bloodthirsty villain; that of Mr. Irving is a
fatal, powerful and pathetic character. The fine acting of Mr. Booth
cannot strive against the art of Shakspeare, who at no point could
have raised sympathy with a man he meant should be utterly repulsive.
Mr. Booth’s personation rests too much on the traditional make-up of
Shylock, which is really that of Barabas. When Edmund Kean, as a poor
unknown actor, first went to play Shylock at Drury Lane, he raised
some laughter behind the scenes by taking from his small bundle a
black wig! Black it was, not red; human, not diabolic: the smiling
company said, “_That_ will be a failure”; but it was not. One after
another the outside traits of Shylock, costume borrowed from Barabas,
have disappeared; not a word of Shakspeare’s text has had to disappear
with them; the character which the poet conceived has been largely
unsheathed by Mr. Irving.
We know that no such figure as that at the Lyceum appeared on
Shakspeare’s own stage at the Globe. Shylock, as acted by Shakspeare’s
friend Burbage, was a comic figure. His make-up consisted of
exceedingly red hair and beard, a false nose preternaturally long and
hooked, and a tawny petticoat. Such a figure must have been largely
meant to make fun for the pit and gallery, of which Shakspeare was
rarely oblivious, and Burbage never.
But a conventional stage-figure is generally an evolution, and this
farcical Shylock was no exception. The famous Isaac of Norwich was a
typical Jew in his time. A thirteenth century caricature, preserved in
the Pell Office, shows us the popular notion of him. He is pictured
as a three-faced idol surrounded by devils. The three faces are not
especially ugly or comical, but repulsive enough; and we may detect
in the figure the reflection of a period when the diabolical theory
of the Jew was serious, and no laughing matter. Similarly, in the old
Miracle Plays, Satan was a serious figure, though he gradually became
a mere laughing-stock, like Pantaloon in the pantomimes. The stage-Jew
shared the same decline as the stage-devil--his supposed inspirer. In
his malignant and formidable aspect he was, indeed, in Shakspeare’s
day, the main figure of Marlowe’s popular play; but even he had the
long nose and sundry grotesque features; and it can hardly be doubted
that, in the still more ludicrous make-up of Shylock, the Globe Theatre
followed the popular feeling.
Perhaps there may be hidden in the name Shylock the idea of a
lock-shearer, shaver of the last hair from his victim; at any rate
“the shearer sheared” would include the whole significance of the
story which Shakspeare took in hand. In the character of Shylock, he
retained the grotesquerie which might please the rabble, at the same
time turning their scowl to laughter. Even now, while Mr. Irving is
giving his pathetic impersonation, the occasional laugh reminds us
how easily some parts of the text would lend themselves to a farcical
interpretation, if the painted nose and comic gestures were present.
But it is more remarkable to observe how rare and superficial are
these ludicrous incidents. The farcical Shylock has passed away from
the English stage through force of the more real character which
Shakspeare drew. Shakspeare may not have intended all the far-reaching
moral belonging to the ancient legend of the pound of flesh, but surely
no one can carefully compare his Shylock with the Barabas of his
contemporary without recognising a purpose to modify and soften the
popular feeling towards the Jew, to picture a man where Marlowe had
painted a monster, if not indeed to mirror for Christians their own
injustice and cruelty.
Let us take our stand beside Portia when she summons the Merchant and
Shylock to stand forth. The two men have long legendary antecedents and
have met many times before. There are eleven versions of the bond story
in the early literature of Europe. In four of these versions no Jew
appears. Karl Simrock believes that it is an ancient law-anecdote--an
illustration of the law of retaliation pressed to an extreme. The
evidences he gives of its use for this purpose are interesting,
and it appears to me probable that it might have been in this way
that the Jew was first introduced into the story. Where a Jew and a
Christian confronted each other in any issue it might be assumed that
all mitigations of the _summum jus_ were removed from the question;
only the naked technical terms of the law could then be conceived as
restraining either from doing the utmost injury he could to the other.
There is an old Persian version of the tale, in which, perhaps for a
similar reason, a Moslem and an Armenian confront each other; and in
this case the failure of the bond is not because of the blood, but
because of the extreme exactness of weight demanded by the court. An
Egyptian form of the story has a similar end.
Side by side, in all ages and races, have struggled with each other
the principle of Retaliation and that of Forgiveness. In religion
the vindictive principle has euphemistic names: it is called law and
justice. The other principle, that of remission, has had to exist by
sufferance, and in nearly all religions has been recognised only in
subordinate alliance with its antagonist. An eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth, blood for blood, is primitive law. Projected into heaven,
magnified in the divine majesty, it becomes the principle that a deity
cannot be just and yet a justifier of offenders. “Without the shedding
of blood there is no remission of sins.” Since finite man is naturally
assumed to be incapable of directly satisfying an infinite law, all
religions, based on the idea of a divine lawgiver, are employed in
devising schemes by which commutations may be secured and vicarious
satisfactions of divine law obtained. Nature never forgives. No deity
inferred from the always relentless forces of nature has ever been
supposed able to forgive the smallest sin until it was exactly atoned
for. For this reason the divine mercifulness has generally become a
separate personification. The story of the “Pound of Flesh” is one of
the earliest fables concerning these conflicting principles.
The following legend was related to me by a Hindu, as one he had been
told in his childhood. The chief of the Indian triad, Indra, pursued
the god Agni. Agni changed himself to a dove in order to escape; but
Indra changed himself to a hawk, to continue the pursuit. The dove took
refuge with Vishnu, second person of the triad, the Hindu Saviour.
Indra flying up, demanded the dove; Vishnu, concealing it in his bosom,
refused to give up the dove. Indra then took an oath that if the dove
were not surrendered he would tear from Vishnu’s breast an amount of
flesh equal to the body of the dove. Vishnu still refused to surrender
the bird, but bared his breast. The divine hawk tore from it the exact
quantity, and the drops of blood--the blood of a Saviour--as they fell
to the ground wrote the scriptures of the Vedas.
Among the various versions of this story in India I have not been able
to find any in accepted sacred books preserving with the simplicity
of this folk-tale the ancient moral antagonism between the deities
afterwards found in alliance as a triad. Hindu orthodoxy has outgrown
the phase of faith which could sanction that probably provincial
legend. Its spirit survives in one of Vishnu’s titles, Yadjña Varâha,
“the boar of sacrifice,” derived from Vishnu’s third incarnation, by
which he saved the world from demons by becoming himself a victim.
We may see in the fable reflection of a sacrificial age, an age in
which the will and word of a god became inexorable fate, but also the
dawning conception of a divineness in the mitigation of the law, which
ultimately adds saving man-gods or demi-gods to nature-gods that cannot
be appeased.
The earliest version, probably B.C. 300, is the story in the
Mahábhárata (_Vana parva_) of the trial of the best of mankind, King
Usinára. Indra and Agni, wishing to test his fidelity to the laws
of righteousness, assume the forms of falcon and pigeon. The latter
(Agni) pursued by the former (Indra) seeks and receives the king’s
protection. The falcon demands the pigeon, and is refused on the ground
that it is written that to kill a twice-born man, to kill a cow, and to
abandon a being that has taken refuge with one, are equal sins. This
is a quotation from the Laws of Manu. The falcon argues that it is the
law of nature that it shall feed on pigeons, and a statute against
nature is no law. He (the falcon) will be starved, consequently his
mate and little ones must perish, and thus in preserving one the king
will slay many. The falcon is offered by Usinára other food--a boar,
bull, gazelle--but the falcon declares that it is not the law of its
nature to eat such things. The king then declares that he will not
give up the pigeon, but he will give anything else in his power which
the falcon may demand. The falcon replies that he can only accept a
quantity of the king’s own flesh equal in weight to the pigeon’s body.
Usinára gladly accedes to this substitution. Balances are produced, and
the pigeon is placed in one scale. The king cuts off a piece of his
flesh that appears large enough, but is insufficient; he cuts again and
again, but still the pigeon outweighs his piled-up flesh. Finally, all
his flesh gone, the king gets into the scale himself. The two gods then
resume their divine shape, announce to Usinára that for the sacrifice
he has made he will be glorified in all worlds throughout eternity,
and the king ascends transfigured into heaven.
This legend is repeated under the title _Syena-Kapotiyam_ (Dove and
Hawk) in the _Purana Sarvasvan_ in the Bodleian Library, where it is in
Bengali characters. There is another version in the _Markandêyâ Purâna_
(ch. iii.), in which Indra appears to the sage Vipulasvan in the form
of a large famished bird. Finding that this bird can only be nourished
by human flesh, the sage appeals to his sons to give it some of their
flesh; and on their refusal he curses them, and tells the bird that
after he has performed certain funeral ceremonies his body shall be for
its nourishment. Whereupon Indra bids the sage abandon his body only
by the power of contemplation, reveals his divine nature, and offers
Vipulasvan whatever he may ask.
Indra here says, “I eat no living creature,” which shows a moral
advance. Perhaps his conversion may have been in some measure due to
the teaching of Buddha. It is instructive to compare the Mahábhárata
legend with an early Buddhist version cited by M. Focaux from the
_Dsang-loung_,[35] a version all the more significant because the hero
of it, Sivi, was traditionally the son of Usinára and had already
appeared in the fourth book of Mahábhárata as tried in the same way
with his father, and with the same results. Sivi had become a popular
type of self-sacrifice. According to the Buddhist legend, Indra,
perceiving that his divine existence was drawing to a close, confided
to Visvakarman[36] his grief at not seeing in the world any man who
would become a Buddha. Visvakarman declared King Sivi such a man. The
falcon and pigeon test is then applied. But the Buddhist Sivi does
not, like his Brahman prototype, offer to compensate the falcon with
the flesh of other animals. He agrees to give his own flesh. The gods
descend and weep tears of emotion at seeing the king as a skeleton
outweighing the dove which all of his flesh could not equal. Nor is the
Buddhist saint caught up to heaven. He is offered the empire and throne
of Indra himself, but refuses it; he desires only to be a Buddha.
Sivi’s body is restored to greater beauty than before, and he becomes
the Buddha amid universal joy.
Other versions show the legend further detached from brahmanic ideas,
and resting more completely upon Buddha’s compassionateness to all
creatures. Of this description is one in the “Sermons” by Asphagosha,
for the translation of which I am indebted to Professor Beal. Sakra
(a name of Indra) tempted by a heretic to believe that the teaching
of Buddha was false, and that men followed it from motives of
self-interest, sought for a perfect man who was practising austerities
solely for the sake of becoming a Buddha. Finding one, Sivaka Raja, he
agreed with Visvakarman to tempt him. All happens as in the old legend,
except that Sivaka rests his refusal not upon the law of Manu, nor upon
the sanctity of asylum, but upon his love of all living things. To this
his mercifulness the falcon appeals, reminding him of its own young,
and Sivaka calls for a knife and cuts off a piece of his flesh, not
caring whether it is more or less than the body of the dove. He then
faints. All living creatures raise lamentations, and the deities, much
affected, heal the wound.
The influence of Buddhism is traceable in the modifications of the
original legend, which show the sacrifice not accepted as it was in the
case of Vishnu, and to some extent in that of Usinára, whose earthly
life terminates. With Buddha the principle of remission supersedes that
of sacrifice. His argument against the Brahmanic sacrifice of life
was strong. When they pointed to these predatory laws of nature in
proof of their faith that the gods approved the infliction of pain and
death, he asked them why they did not sacrifice their own children;
why they did not offer to the gods the most valuable lives. The fact
was that they were outgrowing direct human sacrifices--preserving
self-mortifications--and animals were slain in commutation of
costlier offerings. This moral revolution is traceable in the gradual
constitution of Vishnu as a Saviour. There is a later legend that
Vishnu approached Sivi in the form of a Brahman in want of food, but
would accept none except the flesh of Sivi’s son Vrihad-Garbha. The
king killed and cooked his son and placed the food before the Brahman,
who then bade him eat it himself. Sivi prepared to do so, when Vishnu
stayed his hand, revealed himself, restored the son to life, and
vanished. This legend belongs to a transitional period. Its outcome is
found in several Hindu folk-tales, one of which has been told by the
charming story-teller, Mr. W. R. S. Ralston. The king of a country is
dying, and a poor man is informed of the fact by a disguised “fate.”
He asks if there is no way to save the king’s life, and is told there
is but one way; if a child should be sacrificed, with its own consent,
that would save the king. The man returns home and proposes to his wife
to slay their beautiful little boy. She consents; the boy having also
consented, the knife is about to descend on the child, when the fates
appear, announcing that they only wished to try his loyalty to his
king, who had already recovered.
We may feel pretty certain that originally that king was a deity,
though not so certain that the knife was arrested without killing
anything at all. In several popular fables we find the story preserved
essentially in the old sacrificial form, to teach the rewards of
self-sacrifice, though, in order to escape the scandal of a human
sacrifice, the self-devotion is ascribed to animals. Thus, in the
_Panchatantra_, a pigeon roasts itself to save a famished bird-catcher,
who had just captured his mate; and the bird-catcher presently seeing
its radiant form rising to heaven, spends his life consuming his flesh
in the fire of devotion, in order that he also may ascend there.
In the Hebrew story corresponding to that of Vishnu and Sivi, the Hindu
Abraham, we may see that where a god is concerned the actual sacrifice
cannot be omitted. That may do in the case of a dying king or hungry
hawk, but not for a deity. In the case of Abraham and Isaac the demand
is not remitted but commuted. The ram is accepted instead of Isaac.
But even so much concession could hardly be recognized by the Hebrew
priesthood as an allowable variation from a direct demand of Jahve, and
so the command is said to have been given by Elohim, its modification
by Jahve. The cautious transformation is somewhat in the spirit of the
disguises of the Aryan deities, who may partially revoke as gods the
orders they gave as hawks. It would indicate a more advanced idea if
we found Jahve remitting a claim of his own instead of one made by the
Elohim.
It is worthy of a remark that in some regions where this change of
names in the story of Abraham’s sacrifice is overlooked or unknown
by Semitic religionists, there has sprung up a tradition that the
sacrifice was completed, and the patriarch’s son miraculously
restored to life. Thus, in another branch of the Jewish religion we
find Mohammed flinching at the Biblical story. He does not like to
admit that Allah altered his word and purpose except for a serious
consideration, so he says, “We ransomed him with a noble victim.”
The Moslems believe that Isaac was not then born, and that it was
Ishmael across whose throat Abraham actually drew the knife, which was
miraculously kept from killing the lad, according to some, but others
say resulted in a death and resurrection.
In the year 1879 the highly educated State of Massachusetts was
thrilled with horror by the tidings that a man named Freeman had
offered up his beautiful and only child, Edith Freeman, as a sacrifice
to God. It occurred in the historical town of Pocasset. A thousand
years ago the Northmen who first discovered America wintered there, and
possibly they there offered human sacrifices to their god Odin--that
is, if they got hold of one or two red men; for there has been a
notable tendency among men in such cases to prefer other victims than
themselves for their gods. Since that first landing of white men in
America the religion of Odin had yielded to that of Christ; Pocasset
and all New England had been converted to Christianity; the Bible
had found its way into every home. Yet this well-to-do citizen, Mr.
Freeman, and his wife, had learned in Sunday School about Abraham’s
touching proof of his faith. They had pondered the lesson until they
heard the voice of Abraham’s God summoning them to a similar sacrifice,
and they committed a deed which probably would have shocked even those
rude Vikings who wintered at Pocasset a thousand years before. So much
might the worship of a pitiless primitive deity arrest the civilisation
of a household in the land of Channing and Parker. They prayed over
the little girl, then the knife was plunged into her heart. Little
Edith is now in her grave. The God of Abraham and Isaac got his pound
of flesh this time. The devout priest of that horrible altar has just
passed from his prison to an asylum. To the many who have visited him
he puts questions hard to be answered. “Do you believe the Bible or
not?” he says. “If you do, and have read the account of Abraham, why
should you deny that God could require a man to sacrifice his child? He
so required of me. I _did_ hope and believe that he would stay my hand
before the blow fell. When he did not I still believed he would raise
my child to life. But that is his own affair. I have given that which I
loved most to God because He commanded me.” The American people waited
to see whether a Christian community which trains up children to admire
the faith of Abraham would hang them when they grow up to imitate that
faith so impressed upon them. The embarrassing dilemma was escaped
after eight months, by getting Freeman into an asylum for the insane,
without trial. A rather mean way of confessing that theocratic piety is
republican insanity!
I observed, soon after the occurrence of this tragedy, a picture of
it in the _Police News_ exposed in the shop windows of London. The
designer had placed a crucifix near the little victim’s head. It is
probable that Freeman and his wife never saw a crucifix in their lives;
they belong to the hardest, baldest dogmatic Protestantism. The rude
artist perhaps placed the crucifix in his picture because the Abrahamic
sacrifice was supposed to be typical of a holier one--a sacrifice in
which a Son was offered up to satisfy the fatal law of a Father. In
the human sacrifice symbolised by that crucifix culminated all these
sacrifices of which mention has been made; and there was embodied that
principle which has maintained through the ages that though to forgive
may be human, to avenge is divine.