William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice is not antisemitic, for though it contains anti-Jewish expressions and anti-Jewish characters, the main Jewish character Shylock is really the play's only honest dealer, if not necessarily likable.
Introduction
On a superficial level, The Merchant of Venice might appease members of a audience who looked for and wanted some negative traits in a Jewish stereotype, but the character of Shylock is complex and multi-valued. In fact, we are treated to an extraordinary number of other things that Shylock values often moreso than money, which latter may even be a proxy for other things.
Shylock's essentially positive characteristics
Shylock
For a start, Shylock is asked by Antonio what rate of interest he will charge, but Shylock refuses to take interest, preferring a contract that will let him hold Antonio at least temporarily in his power. Later we see Shylock pursue his revenge (for the undisputed wrongs he and his people have suffered) in disdain of money and profit.
Salarino: Why, I am sure if he forfeit, thou wilt not
take his flesh! What’s that good for?
Shylock: To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me and
hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted
my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies—
and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not
a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions,
senses, affections, passions? Fed with the
same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to
the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not
bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you
poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall
we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong
a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian
example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I
will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the
instruction.
We see Shylock mourn his dead wife Leah whose ring he would never sell, and his lost daughter, and her lost respect for him.
Tubal: One of them showed me a ring that he had of
your daughter for a monkey.
Shylock: Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It
was my turquoise! I had it of Leah when I was a
bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness
of monkeys.
We see particularly in the court case that Shylock prizes the law, and learning, and wisdom, and his religion. We see in his condemnation of Christian slavery a side of Shylock that may be empathy, or value honesty over (Christian) hypocrisy (and it is Venice's Christians who are portrayed as hypocrites, not the Jews). We see a man demanding respect and justice, standing up (rather bravely even) against his enemies to demand his rights.
What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?
You have among you many a purchased slave,
Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts
Because you bought them. Shall I say to you
“Let them be free! Marry them to your heirs!
Why sweat they under burdens? Let their beds
Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates
Be seasoned with such viands”? You will answer
“The slaves are ours!” So do I answer you:
The pound of flesh which I demand of him
Is dearly bought; ’tis mine and I will have it.
If you deny me, fie upon your law:
There is no force in the decrees of Venice.
I stand for judgment. Answer: shall I have it?
Shylock is not perhaps a popular or greatly likable man. He has moral convictions without being a moral hero. He seems to yearn for but never quite deserve respect. His vindictiveness is understandable but perhaps excessive. He is tricked in the end because he is not a trickster, but an honest dealer. He is the butt of jokes, the target of abuse in the streets and of false representations. He does complain about expenses, but who would not be horrified by his daughter Jessica's extravagance?
There are many clues to Shylock's character that would be completely unnecessary in an antisemitic play, but to end on just one, in Shylock's summary of Launcelot Gobbo's unsurprisingly unsatisfactory stint of service, weighed against his unprofitable points, his Jewish master says the patch is kind. This is Shylock's valuing of kindness against all the other negatives; he has kept his servant all this time, not solely for productive reasons, but of something that must approach fondness (a fondness which is piquantly unrequited). And Shylock says farewell by putting in a good word to his new Christian master, and warning his servant that he may not be treated so well in his new employ.
The Christians
We might as well ask, with slightly more profit, if The Merchant of Venice is an anti-Christian play. No, it's not, but the Christian characters, polities and institutions are as a whole more questionable and questioned in the play.
Portia is explicit about the hypocrisy the Christians display, telling us she is better at setting rules than following her own. For all Portia-disguised’s banging on about mercy, it is Bassanio who offers to meet Shylock’s post-blood 3 times 3000 ducat claim, and Portia who pursues punishment upon Shylock, perhaps out of spite (at Bassanio's apparent disloyalty), and her anti-patriarchal sentiments (she has already implied she has a hot temper).
Christians of all ranks appear to lie and deceive; the sense is that Venice's competitive trading culture encourages sharp elbows.
Several of the Christians make racist remarks, which are clearly signposted as bias or bigotry or ignorance. We can take it that Launcelot Gobbo is an unreliable narrator, who deceives his own father with relish, as well as Shylock.
The play also contains criticism of corrupt obtaining of estates, degrees and offices in Christian Europe.
Jessica
Shylock's daughter Jessica is a Jew with a contrasting personality to her father, but her ambition is to elope and become a Christian wife. It is unclear if she regrets this decision by the end of the play. It is left to production and performance how Jessica plays her doubt-expressing love dialogue and receives the court-imposed inheritance.
I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
The Continuum of Life
There is also a consideration if animals and humans are on a continuum, broadening Shylock's powerful universalist plea beyond humanism.
Conclusion
The play successfully treats the subject of antisemitism while giving Shylock some of the best lines and the most powerful arguments. Where Judaism and Christianity are compared, the hypocrisy of Christians is shown up, whereas Shylock pursues an honest, open and for a while apparently legal revenge.
That is, there are no 'Good Guys' as any class, faction, faith, ideology, nation etc.
Introduction
It may be very difficult to build popular support for a movement or party without flattering at least one set of people. And to create contrast, the flipside is often demonising, patronising or ignoring Others.
There are no 'Good Guys'
Valorisation and Heroisation
Political parties, movements, factions, religions, activist groups are typically (and perhaps nearly always) partisan in character.
Nationalists spin myths of their compatriots' glorious past. Right-wing populists imagine their 'pure people'. Religions for the divinely chosen, favoured or rewarded. Class war activists proclaim the virtues of the working class, or on the other side the ruling class. Erotic alliances paint their membership in pretty colours or whitewash. New subcultures emerge with their own positive spins, grievances, othering and supremacy cults. Old established cultures like European imperialists perform primitive ancestor worship, whether direct descendants or not, and their racism reverberates around the world.
Such classes are thus valorised: bigged-up as a group, leading to well-known in-group and out-group tendencies. Mythical pasts are favoured over accurate histories. And individuals from these groups are selected for heroisation: hagiographies rather than warts-and-all portraits. Narratives about victims, martyrs, convenient villains, glorious struggles, national or endemic characteristics are created and pushed.
The Biocratic Alternative
The point of good examples is to abstract from, not idolize.
Biocracy rejects theist and humanist hierarchies in Nature. Humans have learnt to live poisonously on Earth. Therefore humans should learn from other lifeforms how to govern better. These lessons learnt, humans can contribute positively to living planet self-government.
So other hierarchical categories, such as favoured animal 'good guys', 'vermin', 'weeds' and so much be rethought, rejected. We can still keep distinctions between invasive species and aliens which disrupt and degrade ecosystems, often carried by human agency or carelessness. Unhealthy monocultures are the result of human favoritism too.
The aim of biocratic governance, as we have described elsewhere, is the promotion and maintenance of Health at every level. And this does mean defending humans, other lifeforms, their environment and planetary systems from 'Bad Guys' (without justifying collective punishment). It is reasonable to prioritise defence against ecocide and work down from there.
Conclusion
The democratic partisan is reduced to slandering opponents and defending the indefensible, flattering a powerbase with word-bribes and ego-stroking.
The biocratic planet-defender transcends poisonous partisanship and rejects the idea of 'good guys', favouring clear-sighted self-reflection and universalist sciences wherever these come from, in the service of (planetary) life.
The remarkable themes of Doctor Who Special: Joy to the World, briefly unpacked.
Introduction
I have previously written about the problems and lurch to the political right of the reboot of BBC television drama Doctor Who. In the 2024-12-25 Special, Joy to the World (the dire plot of which has been adequately addressed in other places), these trends continued. So, onwards, with spoilers.
Death of an alien
Some old favourites
The Doctor abuses women
Not for the first time, harsh negging used by the male protagonist for a female’s (Joy's) ’own good’. Also, wouldn’t it have been kinder not to screw up the hotel-worker woman Anita's life? Coercive control and all that.
Nature Traduced
Dinosaur (and Nature) reduced to a bitey oubliette cameo.
No threat to capitalism
Even Doctor’s sworn ‘enemy’ seems to thrive while he parties around.
The waiting game
Perhaps not so extreme as the writer’s previous obsession with waiting, Joy waits on return, Anita waits for Doctor to leave.
Don’t make me think
Feels. Is ‘some people are lonely at Christmas’ really the height of insight the show aims at? Why yet another ‘Blitz’ reference that ignores the vastly larger number of people the British have bombed? Or are helping bomb right now?
That old one-way door granting strange adults access into a vulnerable young person's bedroom
Seriously, if one of these writers is your landlord, get out now! Don't stay to grab your kettle, just bolt out the front door and never come back. This is not going to work out like Monsters Inc. Anyway, I've summarised previous red flags.
Various others
Once could also add 'Kissing-up to Christians', 'Badly Misjudged Joy' (it was going around), the problem with characters, the deadening Earth-and-Human-centricness of it all…
The 'Good' Immigrant
However, what really stood out for me was the depiction of the 'Silurian' hotel manager character, killed off third-way through. Here's some of the excruciating dialogue, as we are treated to unnecessary racism as the unnamed character dies.
17:03 Doctor: You’re a Silurian, the proudest race I know.
17:10 Dying ’Silurian’: I was lost. In the caves. There was a door. This place. They were so kind. It was so exciting.
From this depiction, we can see how the writers envisage the perfect immigrant:
Dehumanised: this 'Silurian' doesn't even get a name (and 'Silurian' is a misnomer, not a great term then).
Is singular (absolutely no hordes).
Point of entry is singular and sealed… no more to follow.
Doesn't reproduce.
Works in the service industry.
Works in public, brightly-lit spaces with comforting security (is quite unthreatening).
Wears western-style clothing.
Is polite and speaks perfect English.
Is pathetically grateful.
Enthusiastically boosts the wonderful nation of his saviours.
Disses own (mere caves, etc)
Dead.
And dies in the most convenient, tidy and least consequential way imaginable, without imposing any obligations at all (nobody even needs to email their next of kin or whatever).
Quickly forgotten.
Now, I don't have to explain why this panders towards far-right, xenophobic tendencies, but combined with the Doctor's emoting does suggest how foke Doctor Who is these days. Has Modern Who been captured by the far right, is this BBC-core or pragmatic pandering to retain its licence fee?
This is not an argument that Life has any intrinsic or sacred value. Instead it is an argument that creating value is a function of life.
Life generates value
Thought Experiment
Imagine a barren world on the other side of the Universe where humans will never set foot. Now imagine that simple life appears here for the first time. It requires food: a new value is applied to some material subset of the world. Other values appear as life develops, evolves, complexity and variation increase. As life, and the behaviour of living organisms emerges, so do values.
Implications
As an organism grows, its range of values are likely to grow (up to a point, maybe), and even change over its lifetime, and through its encounters and experiences. The values of a hunting predator are likely to be characteristically different from that of a grazing herbivore, say; of a social animal compared with a solitary lifeform.
But the point is that value emerges from life, not as a theoretical or imposed perspective, but organically and instrinsically, as a natural process.
Conclusion
Life, itself an emergent phenomena, generates value, as an emergent property or behaviour. These values may be simple or complex, stable or unstable, specific or experiential. One could even define life as a value-generating phenomena, although I suspect this would be a problematic reach. As would claiming only life generates value. But as an observation, I think accurate enough.
The City of Alexandria in or shortly after late 1882 is a setting for a key scene in the novel Poor Things (by Alasdair James Gray) and the movie based on it (directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, script by Tony McNamara). Yet the novel only refers in passing (and the movie, not at all) to a key event which took place that summer, the British bombardment of the Egyptian Mediterranean port city, or the subsequent military occupation of Egypt by the British Empire, which constitute massive colonial war crimes and crimes against humanity. Why were these whitewashed out of the story, especially given the effect of seeing child destitution has on the main character, Bella?
Introduction
First, we will cover some accounts of the historical events around the British bombardment of Alexandria in 1882.
British bombardment of Alexandria in 1882
Secondly, we will see what the novel and movie cover, and what they omit, downplay or change.
Thirdly, because it is relevant to the novel and movie, we will summarise a source on prostitution in Alexandria around the time.
Fourthly, we will briefly cover modern perspectives on a similar case of asymmetric bombardment of a largely civilian urban population.
Finally, we will draw some conclusions and attempt to answer the question, why.
History and literature: what happened, who wrote about it
Wikipedia devotes a page to the Bombardment of Alexandria which seems serviceable, but I believe I first read a historical account in John Newsinger's book The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire (now in its second edition), where the author devotes a chapter to The invasion of Egypt, 1882. I later read an account in Priyamvada Gopal's Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent, who draws on the writings of British diplomat Wilfred blunt in Chapter 3: The Accidental Anticolonialist: Egypt’s ‘Urabi’ Rebellion and Late Victorian Critiques of Imperialism.
In preparation for this article, I went for a more in-depth history in William Wright's A Tidy Little War: The British Invasion of Egypt 1882 (2009, 2011), and a contemporary literary treatment in GA Henty's The Young Midshipman, a Story of the Bombardment of Alexandria. The Wikipedia page links to a series of photographs documenting the destruction of the built environment of Alexandria, not confined to the coastal defences but reducing domestic, public and commercial buildings to rubble and causing widespread conflagration (though there are claims some rubble came from later safety-related destruction of damaged buildings and some fires were started by agents other than naval shelling).
Colonial Rule, Neocolonial Rule, and Egypt for the Egyptians
In 1882, Egypt was formally under Ottoman rule. The summary in BND says the Egyptian Khedive (client ruler) handed effective rule over to the British and French in exchange for modernisation of his country, but the profits were leached off by European corporations and wealth siphoned off by corrupt banks. Egyptian fellahin peasants were starving and over-taxed with flogging, torture and imprisonment (p96). By 1880 90,000 Europeans in Egypt had vast privileges exempt from tax and law, government salaries to them accounted for 1/20th revenue. However British and French also alienated the Army, which allied itself with Chamber of Notables, Colonel Urabi heading a revolutionary movement which proposed moderate reforms, rejected by French and British in 1882-01.
The focus in IE is British diplomat Wilfred Blunt, who is sent to Colonel Ahmad Urabi to put a false spin on open threat by Britain and France against Egyptian Nationalists, and support for Turkish viceroy; and fails dismally. Blunt is like other initially pro-Empire British liberals whose encounters with reality turned them against British colonialism. Blunt’s efforts to get British to back down failed, who invaded in 1882-07, defeating the honourable Urabi and trying him for mutiny and capital rebellion. British bombardment of Alexandria had changed some minds about legitimacy of actions, though press had depicted Urabi as military despot. Instead of court martial and death, civil trial and exile to Ceylon, a sentence which Blunt’s campaign eventually overturned. Blunt warned against what we would now call 'embedded journalists'.
Influenced by Blunt, some parliamentarians also enquired why Britain’s way of showing regard for the Egyptian people ‘was to go out and shoot them’.
Frederic Harrison’s speech and essay ‘Egypt’ before Alexandria bombardment critically overturns the Liberal narrative, showed what corrupt privileges the European ‘civilisers’ enjoyed in Egypt, in tax, ownership, justice, law and salaries. French and British were far more extractive than Ottomans. Rather than military fanatics, the resistance was a national uprising against oppressive and exploitative classes. Bombardment let to righteous fury, as would similar foreign aggression produce an identical reaction in his readers. Colonisation inevitably polarises and enraged rather than accommodates.
TLW provides more detail but basically agrees with the other histories in key respects, providing a list of key Egyptian nationalist demands for reform:
Water rights redistributed
Agricultural bank founded
Schools for all girls and boys
Eradication of slavery
Better military defences
British and French attempts to divide the Nationalists were scuppered by their own (Gambetta-drafted) Joint Note of 1882-01-06 which pitched Britain and France as Khedive Tewlik’s backers.
The British Bombardment of Alexandria
According to BND, Gladstone (who personally profited from the war) sent a fleet of Anglo-French warships to Alexandria to intimidate nationalists which failed. Instead, popular street rioters turned on Europeans. The British planned reprisals to deter similar outbreaks. The pretext of Alexandrian coastal fort improvements was used to justify a 10-hour naval bombardment of Alexandria with connivance of new Khedive, causing many civilian casualties. British Cabinet member radical John Bright resigns in protest amid national Jingoism.
TLW claims:
This book is the first attempt to tell the story of that war in any detail since the Official History was published in 1887.
and goes into quite considerable detail from the military perspective, unfortunately for our purposes not so much from the perspective of those calling Alexandria home at the time. British Admiral Seymour was given belligerent and blockading orders, and to gain French naval participation in any bombardment if possible (they would not), issuing Egyptians a 24-hour ultimatum to disarm coastal forts before opening fire. The Egyptian war cabinet decided it was altogether shameful and dishonourable to remove the guns as ordered.
British war correspondents were able to cable news stories back to London in time for evening papers.
The fifteen ships of the attacking fleet, which formed the nucleus of the 43 vessels commanded by Seymour in Egyptian waters during June and July 1882, were as varied as the men who commanded them.
Seymore rejected Egyptian offer of compromise, and launched the bombardment, for the first two hours employing salvo fire which was very inaccurate, despite almost perfect conditions (clear visibility, calm seas, anchored ships), before turning to more accurate single-shot fire. The thick armour of the British ironclads was enough to keep out Egyptian shelling bar the odd dent.
Shells began over-shooting the forts at the rate of about two a minute.
although
Deaths in the city residential districts from the British cannonade were few.
but in absence of evidence. No systematic British attempt to assess civilian casualties in Alexandria was made, or at least reported on, to my knowledge. It is likely that many fled the city if they could, judging by reports of thronging refugees. There were accounts of plundering and rioting, but conflicting reports of who or what started the fires that engulfed Alexandria.
Several European residents complained afterwards about the loss of property and the 'hysteria' caused by the shelling.
Percy Scott, clearing shells a week later, reported that Alexandria hit worse than forts probably as high as 30 per cent of those fired may have overshot their targets but not all exploded. Arsonists worked independently of the bombardment. Rubble shown in photographs may have been from controlled detonation of damaged buildings. TLW concludes:
Seymour’s shells may not have destroyed Alexandria but his failure to land marines or sailors and restore order most certainly contributed to the city’s destruction.
USAmerican marines were first to land, finding death and destruction, pillage and wine bargains. A mixed party of Britons explored burning city, discovering mewing cats, burst mains, burning buildings, looted stores, hissing steam, burning trees and ‘mutilated bodies’ (which on closer inspection turned out to be dress-makers’ dummies) in Place Muhammad Ali.
My impression is that William Wright gives a somewhat sanitised account. There is an awkward passage where he coyly describes Europeans visiting the 'fleshpots' of Alexandria without detail. Wright does however say that British General Wolseley (who took Cairo without damaging that city) wrote the Admiral Seymour's bombardment of Alexandria was silly and criminal in a letter to his wife Louisa: glorification for the Navy, injurious to England (sic).
The British Invasion of Egypt, 1882
BND: Gladstone now sent an expeditionary Force while the House of Commons vote massively in favour of invasion. The British massacre Egyptians defeated at battle of Tel-el-Kebir. Queen Victoria and Gladstone (who benefited financially) congratulated themselves. Contemporary critics who called it a bondholders’ war were vindicated by later research, though there was also a strategic interest in the Suez Canal.
But according to TLW, Ferdinand de Lessops said his Canal was quite safe and the biggest danger, in fact, was the threat of foreign intervention.
A literary account
In TYM, which we have to interrogate for artistic licence, Henty writes in Chapter 12: Free, of an eye-witness account:
Half the city appeared to be in flames. A sea of fire extended from the port over the European quarter, including the great square, while in many other parts separate conflagrations were raging.
and in Chapter 13: Among Friends
Presently they came to the edge of the district swept by the fire. The walls for the most part were standing, although in many cases they had fallen across the road. On they went, making their way very cautiously until they reached a wide open space surrounded by ruins.
It was calculated that upwards of five hundred were killed.
Describing the British 'pacification' which included summary execution of 'looters', and impressed locals to carry out British orders, in Ch14 A Set of Rascals, Henty writes that of returning population Many of the lower class of Greeks and Italians plundered and caused trouble.
In most respects, Henty's literary account matches the historians', and although his framing tends to valourise the British and apply some racial prejudice, not all historians are free from these faults either.
In many ways it is surprising that Britain allowed itself to be drawn into direct intervention in Egypt. The Prime Minister, William Gladstone, was well known for his reluctance to be drawn into imperial adventures. Historians have argued as to whether Admiral Seymour exaggerated the threat from the Egyptian batteries at Alexandria in order to force a reluctant government's hand. Whatever the truth, once the British had successfully attacked the city, a land invasion was their logical next step.
However, it does make the link in 'Aftermath' to another British atrocity, conspiring with the French and Israelis to seize the nationalised Suez Canal once more and blame Egypt for starting another war (although it doesn't say all that, of course). What value system lies behind this criminal 'logic' is unstated in official materials for public consumption, and must be inferred.
Novel and Movie: what they reveal, distort and conceal
In both the novel and movie, Bella and Wedderburn arrive by ship in Alexandria, Egypt, almost certainly in the latter half of 1882 (movie) or perhaps up to 18 months later (novel). During this brief stopover, Bella has a profoundly affecting experience witnessing poor beggar children. In the movie, these even appear to be dwelling in the ruins of a coastal fort, but that is hardly made clear. The British invasion of Egypt is mentioned in passing in the novel (Chapter 15 Odessa to Alexandria: The Missionaries) in this exchange between Dr Hooker, Astley and Bella:
Hooker: Britain has carved up the rest of the planet. Less than two years ago you grabbed Egypt from the French — and from the Egyptians.
Astley: We needed their canal. We paid them for it.
Hooker: You also shelled Alexandria, our next port of call.
Astley: They were arming it against us and we needed their canal.
… Bella: But why are British soldiers fighting Egyptian natives? It makes no sense to me.
The time period in the movie is ambiguous and fantasy-flavoured. However, the script I've seen explicitly sets the action in 1882.
Alexandria appears around 1:16:27. We see what could be ruined coastal fortifications 1:17:02 where Astley says Lot of dead babies. Must be hot.They’ll quite rightly rope us, rob us and rape us.
Ruins are more clearly seen as recent 1:18:09 extending from hotel on spur in sea. Bella is upset by the sights she’s seen, gives Wedderburn’s gambling winnings to sailors to give to poor in slum next to hotel. But movie-Bella doesn’t try to understand the Alexandrian poor and suffering children's plight (which is almost certainly caused by the historical factors, European and Ottoman colonialism, European hierarchical racism, indigenous rule, the Mediterranean sex trade, British naval terror (aka gunboat diplomacy) and foreign occupation as described previously).
Furthermore, the movie removes the Dr Hooker character quoted above, and his critique of British imperial exploitation (and specifically of Egypt and shelling Alexandria). Movie-Astley is left to make racist remarks implying Egyptians have too many babies and are incapable of adapting to the heat of their own climate. This is at odds with competing indigenous reforms (Khedival modernisation and Egyptian Nationalist demands) the latter of which would have provided universal education opportunities, water security, eradication of slavery etc.
Prostitution in Alexandria: an academic overview
I found it difficult to find more than a single source here, but at least this chapter-length account by Nefertiti Takla of Manhattan College, New York is well-written, clear and relevant. I will assume for the moment that the account is correct, but obviously corroboration would be helpful. I will summarise it now, using Takla's own headings:
The population of Alexandria grew from around 12,000 in 1820, to 104,000 in 1850, to 320,000 in 1900.
Legal situation and demography
According to contemporary reports, prostitution in Alexandria had reached unprecedented levels by the second half of the 1870s.
The rise and fall of cotton created precarious economics.
More aggressive attempts to abolish slavery in Egypt in the 1870s also brought newly manumitted Ethiopian and Southern Sudanese into Alexandria’s expanding sex economy.
An influx came from Balkans war. Calls for regulation went unmet until British occupation of 1882: yearly licences to adults 18+, mandatory weekly medical inspections with venereal hospital confinement, or punishments (fine, prison): prostitution was professionalised.
But Europeans (and some Christians, Jews) were given legal immunity from local courts, tried in consular courts, including sex workers from 1886.
It was not uncommon to find women of three or four nationalities in a single brothel, and policing such a brothel often required the cooperation of multiple consulates, which was both logistically and politically challenging.
There was competition between French, Greek and Italian communities. European sex workers were brought under colonial control by British by imposition of martial law during World War 1.
In the early twentieth century, it was both the exploitative nature of the capitulations as well as the racism embedded in the prostitution regulations that gave Alexandria the reputation of being the largest centre of traffic in women and children.
Causes of Prostitution
The British colonial-military occupation restricted city economy during WW1 and was a major driving force behind the spread of prostitution. British military base of Levant operations was sited in the city, which was also target for refugees and migrants. Secret brothels appeared around military Labour Corps camps, labourers without means to send money to families. That situation, combined with the rise in the cost of living during the war, led married women and underage girls to turn to the commercial sex industry in increasing numbers.
Organization of the trade
For varied reasons married women, underage girls, temporary/transient and military-serving sex workers evaded the licensing regime.
Wartime colonial state monopoly on transportation led to decline in the international and domestic trafficking of sex workers in Egypt and rise of street walking particularly among married women, and female brothel owners. Postwar lack of work opportunities. With rise of organised crime, Alexandria rose to prominence as the centre of international and domestic trafficking in Egypt that left sex workers increasingly vulnerable to exploitation and organized crime, and since the racism embedded in the regulation system created a higher incentive for native workers to practise their trade covertly, race became a dominant factor in their exposure to gender violence.
An infamous 1920 Alexandria serial murder, known in Egypt as Raya and Sakina case, concerns powerful sister brothel-owners who ordered punitive/competition-eliminating murders of 17 sex workers.
Modern perspectives of child casualties of industrialised warfare
This BBC article references a United Nation designation 'Wounded child, no surviving family': The pain of Gaza’s orphans which could easily apply to survivors of the British bombardment of Alexandria in 1882. The British bombardment of Alexandria is ideal for creating what UNICEF calls 'WCNSFs'. That these desperate children just materialise in the movie without mentioning the perpetrators is exactly the cowardly crime of omission that Western journalism is guilty of in present news reporting when it talks circumspectly of humanitarian crises.
The historical events of 1882 are hardly unknown, and found their way into popular literature of the time. As TLW puts it:
The popular newspapers vied in reports of the battles, denunciations of Arabi and a surfeit of bad poetry… perhaps the worst was a fifteen stanza poem from the Scottish bard, William McGonagall
Given the fixation of Poor Things on prostitution, it seems odd to ignore the British colonial impact on prostitution in Alexandria, especially since the opportunity to counter-critique General Blessington, Astley and other presents itself. Why are modern historians like Wright so coy about what these mysterious 'fleshpots' really are?
(The Pulitzer Prize-winning author doesn’t want to be a voice for the voiceless, he wants to abolish the conditions of voicelessness)
Now, if you are one of the victors or descended from the victors, you have an investment in selective memory that would justify your existence as a conqueror or the descendant of conquerors. If you are not, let’s say you’re an immigrant or a refugee, the power of the mythology of the country you’ve come to is such that you can internalize that mythology so that you too engage in a selective remembering and forgetting because society is rewarding you for that.
There seems no good reason to include this key scene in Alexandria (instead of child poverty elsewhere) without linking it to British colonialism. Especially given the mini-lectures of Astley. The novel's contrived structure even allows two or three different takes on the main narrative, providing opportunies to reflect differently on the Alexandria episode, which are not taken.
My conclusion is that the director Yorgos Lanthimos and scriptwriter Tony McNamara are complicit in whitewashing the British imperial crimes of bombarding Alexandria, invading Egypt and colonial occupation, with all the moral and legal crimes appertaining to. This is what Establishment-friendly creatives do. The outcome, however small this movie is in the scheme of things, is to encourage similar current and future criminals who see that the British have got away with literal mass murder once again. Author Alasdair Gray made it easy just to remove the relevant lines of dialogue in any movie adaptation, and by various other literary devices (including intellectual dishonesty and fantasising history) undermined his own rather clunky and bolted-on mini-lectures within the text — but at least the 'shelling' and Anglo-Egyptian War are mentioned (even if briefly) in the novel. Whether the depiction of sex work in both novel and movie are also disgraceful, I will let others judge this time.
One of democracy's fatal flaws is its reducibility to a battle of wills.
Introduction
Following our reflections on our thought experiment on the Sea-People’s Citizen Assembly Scenario, we see that democracy pits people against each other in a contest of wills. It does not consider Health at any scale. This leads to Militarism (War as a continuation of politics, not a break from it).
The outcome of Will over Health
Conclusion
Another essential flaw in democracy, that as a political system it elevates the expressed views (or will) of humans, or a subgroup of humans, over all other requirements for living together, ignoring Health. This is not a flaw of biocracy, a political system which prioritises Health.
Almost everyone we encounter in the play bears some responsibility for the ensuing multi-death tragedy.
Introduction
Almost everyone in the play contributes to the tragic deaths of young people. A story not so much about love but a call to change a society where your actions, inactions or mistakes can kill you or someone else. Other named characters such as Rosaline are blameless and therefore do not appear.
Warning: unauthorised wall-scaling and poetic pickup lines in progress
Finally, we will say what the play is not, before tendering our conclusion.
Notes on language
In this article, 'parents' is used as a shorthand for parents/guardians/primary caregivers and all comparable roles. In the play, the parents of interest are the couples: Montagues and Capulets.
Key Quotations from the Play, with Brief Notes, Scene Summaries and Questions
Prologue
Here we encounter the ancient grudge that informs the rest of the play.
Act 1
A1s1 Capulet servants Sampson and Gregory exhibit bravado, belligerence and sexualised threats; they pick a fight with servants of Montague with foreknowledge that this quarrel may lead to tyrannous behaviour and harm to innocents.
Sampson: Draw, if you be men
Benvolio tries to keep peace.
Tybalt: “What, drawn, and talk of peace? I hate the word,
As I hate hell, all Montagues and thee:
Have at thee, coward.”
Tybalt especially shows wilful misinterpretation to exaggerate threats to justify violent response.
Citizens seek to put down brawl with clubs while Capulet calls for long sword to match Montague.
Prince threatens them with torture and death:
Three civil broils, bred of an airy word,
By thee, old Capulet and Montague,
Have thrice disturb’d the quiet of our streets;
Far from fray, Romeo tells Benvolio of his groaning unrequited love for a woman who has foresworn love.
A1s2 Paris sues Capulet for his daughter’s hand but Capulet says she is too young:
My child is yet a stranger in the world,
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;
Let two more summers wither in their pride,
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
but will see if she will become amenable. Do characters simulate more in verse?
Servant cannot read list of party guests: is illiteracy a contributory factor to civil ills? Literate characters may manipulate illiterate ones.
Benvolio names Rosaline as Romeo’s love.
A1s3 Nurse reckons Juliet’s age a fortnight and odd days short of 14 years, a similar age to her own dead daughter Susan. Lady Capulet tells Juliet she was married at a similar early age and other ladies are already mothers by 14 so Paris?
Juliet: “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move:
But no more deep will I endart mine eye,
Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.”
We discover over time that Juliet is under intense and urgent pressure to conform to her parents’ wishes, which transmit to servants.
Servant: “Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called,
my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry, and every thing in extremity.
I must hence to wait; I beseech you, follow straight.”
A1s4 Romeo prepares to gatecrash his familial enemy’s swanky party, bolstered by banter. Mercutio’s intense and rambling speech seems sign of a disordered mind; perhaps he fears he cannot speak clearly and plainly even to his closest friends.
A1s5 Romeo sees Juliet and mentally dumps Rosaline. Tybalt, overhearing him, storms but is checked by Capulet, who is strangely well-disposed towards Romeo, or at least wants his party to go smoothly. Romeo and Juliet flirt, until Nurse reveals her to be Capulet’s heiress daughter. As Romeo leaves, Juliet learns his identity
(stranger in the world, remember).
Act 2
A2s1 Romeo scales Capulet’s garden wall, ditching friends and their possibly restraining advice.
A2s2 Romeo overhears Juliet pining for him, they talk of peril, their families’ enmity, love, oaths, marriage all with unseemly precipitous haste and on very little acquaintance.
This unfathomable speed and secrecy is a caution in itself: who knows what young ones are up to?
Romeo seeks collaborator in Franciscan Friar Laurence.
A2s3
Friar Laurence: “Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;
Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.”
Romeo: “Then plainly know, my heart’s dear love is set
On the fair daughter of rich Capulet:”
Friar ridicules Romeo’s prior doting on Rosaline, says young men love with eyes not hearts, but because he has another motive (ending the feud) he agrees.
A2s4 Benvolio and Mercutio talk of duels and Tybalt’s fencing prowess. Romeo jests, Nurse arrives from Juliet, they arrange secret wedding for afternoon.
A2s5 Juliet is impatient that Nurse who left at 9 is not back before noon. Nurse arrives, spins out her tale of Romeo arranging wedding at Friar Laurence’s cell.
Juliet: Hie to high fortune! — honest nurse, farewell.
Is the Nurse honest if she doesn’t tell her employers she is helping Juliet marry secretly in opposition to their choice?
A2s6 Friar: These violent delights have violent ends,
yet marries Romeo and Juliet in secret haste; perhaps also feels they will sin if left alone.
Act 3
A3s1 Mercutio says Benvolio will attack a harmless waiter after two cups of wine and quarrel over anything. Benvolio replies Mercutio is worse.
What is the cause of their distemper?
Tybalt arrives and it kicks off, Romeo arriving, Benvolio attempting to calm. Mercutio thinks Romeo’s pleasant response to Tybalt’s hate is appeasement.
Mercutio, dying, curses both houses.
Incensed, Romeo slays Tybalt in revenge, then flees. Benvolio gives accurate account to Prince, who banishes Romeo on pain of death.
Prince: Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.
A3s2 Juliet waits impatiently for Romeo, Nurse appears with cord ladder and news that someone (Tybalt) is dead, Romeo banished, while Juliet imagines dying, and that Romeo’s beautiful outside hides an opposite nature. They agree Nurse will bring Romeo.
A3s3 Romeo also takes news from Friar of banishment with melodrama, at length. Nurse arrives and with Friar eventually shame some sense into Romeo: to Juliet, then Mantua to await developments.
A3s4 Capulet still wants to hurry Juliet’s wedding with Paris, who can hardly wait. Fewer guests out of ‘respect’ for Tybalt.
A3s5 Juliet and Romeo, marriage consummated, tarry in her bedchamber. They part thinking on death again. Lady Capulet thinks Juliet cries too much for Tybalt, says she’ll send a poisoner to Mantua to kill Romeo in revenge. Juliet is shocked by the ‘haste’ her parents want to see her wed Paris.
Juliet: “I wonder at this haste; that I must wed
Ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo,”
Lady Capulet: “I would, the fool were married to her grave!”
Capulet: “Out, you green sickness carrion! out, you baggage!”
Nurse stands up for Juliet:
God in heaven bless her! —
You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.
Capulet: “An you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend;
An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die i’th streets,”
Juliet seeks delay or death; parents leave and she seeks comfort from Nurse… who, likely thinking on her own dead Susan, betrays Juliet by switching to back Paris and an unrealistic living make-do. Juliet pretends to relent, Nurse leaves to tell Capulets good news.
Juliet: “Ancient damnation! … Go, counsellor;
Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.”
Either the Friar will help, or Juliet considers taking the suicide option.
Act 4
A4s1
Friar: “You say, you do not know the lady’s mind;
Uneven is the course, I like it not.”
Paris claims Capulet thinks Juliet’s grief for Tybalt is dangerous, and hasty marriage a cure.
Juliet arrives and easily gets the better of Paris, dismissing him and saying Friar better have a solution to Romeo’s banishment, or she’ll kill herself:
I long to die,
If what thou speak’st speak not of remedy.
Friar offers a desperate, daring, dangerous hope. Fake your death, Juliet!
Juliet eagerly accepts his offered drug.
A4s2 Juliet feigns obedience to Capulet who accepts her volte-face explanation that Friar taught her obedience in one session.
Juliet: “Henceforth I am ever rul’d by you.”
Capulet: “my heart is wondrous light,
Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim’d”
A4s3 Juliet wonders if she should call back Nurse and mother, or drink the unknown drug, or kill herself with dagger?
Juliet: “What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly have minister’s to have me dead”
to avoid dishonour for Romeo marriage.
What horrors might confront her in the tomb? She drinks.
A4s4 The Capulets and servants are busy with wedding preparations, the external forms of the planned relationship.
Capulet: “Go, waken Juliet, go, and trim her up;
I’ll go and chat with Paris: — Hie, make haste,”
A4s5 Nurse tries to waken Juliet, fails. She, Capulets, Paris, household bar Friar think she’s dead. Lamentation (and some nasty blame from Paris).
Friar: think of it as a promotion.
Act 5
A5s1 In Mantua, Romeo dreams of death, then learning of Juliet’s ‘death’ and burial seeks poison from desperate apothecary:
Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua’s law
Is death, to any he that utters them.
Romeo: “I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.”
“There is gold, worse poison to men’s souls,
Doing more murders in this loathsome world,
Than these poor compounds that thou may’st not sell:”
(which didn’t put Romeo off the fair daughter of rich Capulet!)
A5s2 Friar learns his letter never reached Romeo in Mantua and hastens tombward.
A5s3 Why exactly does Paris hope to gain by sneaking into Juliet’s tomb? Romeo says he is going to see Juliet’s face…
But, chiefly, to take thence from her dead finger
A precious ring; a ring that I must use
In dear employment
but servant Balthasar has his doubts and hangs about.
Paris sees Romeo as Montague who partly caused Juliet’s death by killing Tybalt. They needlessly fight, Paris ignoring Romeo’s plea to leave, Romeo kills Paris, sees, speechifies to and kisses Juliet, then drinks poison and dies. [only seconds too soon…]
Friar arrives too late, talks with Balthasar.
[Events appear to be taking on a dreamlike quality]
Juliet awakes but Friar fails to rescue her, if secretly stuffing her into a nunnery counts. Poison failing, Juliet stabs herself to death with Romeo’s dagger.
Watch apprehend Friar and everybody else turns up for a gawk.
Prince holds an impromptu court; Friar and others testify, Romeo’s letter corroborates.
Prince lays blame on feuding Capulets and Montagues, who say they’ll patch up quarrels, raise statues and make amends.
Prince: “And I, for winking at your discords too,
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: — all are punish’d.”
Prince doesn’t yet specify who will be further punished or pardoned, at least implying the form of due process.
Themes and Language
Given this reading as a cautionary tale, it is essential to include language on themes such as suicidal intentions, since these are things that others should be picking up and listening to; and that Juliet’s young age (13 going on 14) be respected (or intervention be too late).
Some other warning signs or contributive factors to the play's tragedies include:
Secretive behaviour (both the Nurse and the Friar encourage this, perhaps such encouragement often has comedic results in plays).
Sexualised speech (where inappropriate and/or threatening, such as the banter which creates an atmosphere of intimidation or lewdness which is divisive).
Unreasonable and excessive haste (a general fault, oft-mentioned word in the play).
Quarrelsomeness; aggression.
Ulterior motives (civil peace; rich heiress).
Displacement, transference, confusion (Nurse’s Susan, see later).
Personal pride and ambition.
People who think both Romeo and Juliet need to be fixed (I don’t mean neutered).
Children who learn to tell parents what they want to hear etc. Juliet lies to father about being ruled by him, but doesn’t bother lying to Paris, instead deftly fooling him. Parents should watch for sudden obedience.
Frustrated competition, either banned, unsafe (like duels) or precluded (like courtship).
Suppression of other opportunities (to learn, to interact, to show true colours, to escape class or gendered roles).
Inconstant counsel (Nurse particularly).
Betrayal of trust (Nurse again, though very likely with Juliet's longterm wellbeing in mind).
Machiavellian tendencies; meddling (Friar, albeit with perhaps good and sincere intentions).
Both young and old can be giddy and serious at the same time — seriousness does not require deep or sustained reflection nor constancy.
Sole heirs (especially under dynastic societies, these are typically subject to considerable pressures).
Overconfidence; simplification; lack of contingency planning (particularly the Friar).
Feuding; grudge-keeping; avenging kin (Capulets particularly, for Tybalt).
Deceit.
Possibly undue leniency (Prince thinks so).
Undeservedly harsh parental treatment (Capulets on Juliet).
Emotional blackmail.
Religious injunctions on obedience.
Autocracy; hierarchy.
Lack of empathy.
Is faking your own death ever the answer?
Poverty is not vice but desperation leads people to consider lawbreaking (the Apothecary).
Puberty transforms (Juliet) while parents may sometimes be too slow or too quick to anticipate changes. It is Juliet's linguistic skill, quick wit and pure determination that lets her wrongfoot the adults about her, who all seem to underestimate her (except perhaps Romeo, hence their almost-instant connection).
I won't go through all these aspects in detail, but consider how at any point the play's actions may be changed to avoid the tragedies.
What the Play is Not
Romeo and Juliet is not a love story. Yet one of the first thing Romeo says is that these broils may have as much to do with love as hate (as factionalism and in-out group psychology shows). Without much doubt, the truest love shown in the play appears to be the Nurse's for Juliet, who she treats like a surrogate daughter, always prattling happily on about her and running errands for her. However, even this love is notably imperfect, as the Nurse may be transferring her love for her dead daughter Susan on to Juliet. Indeed, we don't know if the Nurse's anecdotes about Juliet's infancy were not actually (misremembered) incidents from Susan's childhood. And in the crucial pivot of the play, the Nurse breaks faith with Juliet, preferring a 'safer' marriage with Paris and a live surrogate daughter to a Juliet pining over banished Romeo and suicidal ideation.
The play is not a comedy (though it shares some common comedic components, the remaining cast are united in grief not marriage), nor a typical tragedy (yet undoubtedly tragic in key elements). It has action but not of epic scale. It is not the stuff of history plays, yet it could be local history.
Unlike her parents’ choice, Romeo is Juliet’s alone, just as Juliet is Romeo’s alone (call her mine); this possessiveness (a mansion, robes) combines with deathwishes and nightlonging. Capulet attempts minionisation of Juliet. Both Romeo and Juliet seek to avoid traps. At what point in play do caring adults fail to understand Juliet’s inner life? From the very start? Which is mirrored by Romeo’s interiority. Shouldn’t Romeo and Juliet be Goths? Nurse knows what a dead child looks like, as do Capulets. Romeo bespeaks Tybalt and Paris fair but kills both aggressors.
So the story is probably much closer to social realism than the common comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, epics, histories that Shakespeare's audiences were likely more familiar with. The question is: why?
Conclusion
If Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet as a socially-realistic play, where audience members may have recognised characters like themselves or people they knew, acting in quite believable ways which collectively ended in tragedy, then for what reasons?
I think it is highly plausible that many Shakespeare's plays are intended in main or part to increase empathy and appreciation of the value of human lives. I've already written something about Shakespeare's blood-savers. One could argue (and I would) that many lives may have been saved over the years by plays such as Othello, which should at least make jealous husbands think before murdering their wives (likewise A Winter's Tale, and so on and on).
But in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's focus shifts to children and young people, in the grip of powerful emotions, trapped by circumstance, daring to look death in the eye. I think, quite simply, Shakespeare wants to make us think of them, their worlds, their ambitions, their frailties, their hopes and dreams… and not crush them. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a cautionary tale. For all of us.
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